Most business website migrations cost between RM6,000 and RM100,000. A simple plugin-based move to new hosting can run under RM2,000. A full enterprise re-platform with custom integrations can clear RM200,000. Where you land depends mainly on three things: how big your site is, how much you're changing (hosting only, or platform and design too), and who's doing the work.
That's the short answer. Below is the full breakdown by migration type, the factors that push a quote up or down, and what it takes to protect your SEO along the way.
Website migration cost at a glance
Site type | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
Small brochure site (under 20 pages) | RM2,000–RM10,000 | 3–7 days |
SMB site or blog (20–100 pages) | RM6,000–RM32,000 | 2–4 weeks |
Mid-market CMS move (100–500 pages) | RM20,000–RM80,000 | 3–6 weeks |
E-commerce site | RM20,000–RM200,000+ | 4–10 weeks |
Enterprise / headless re-platform | RM100,000–RM400,000+ | 3–4 months |
These ranges assume the migration includes redirect mapping and basic QA. Add a redesign on top and expect the higher end of each band, or beyond it.
What counts as a website migration?
"Migration" gets used loosely, and the price tag changes a lot depending on which of these you actually mean.
Hosting migration. Moving the same site, on the same platform, to a new host. No code changes, no new domain. This is the cheapest kind of migration by a wide margin, and many hosts will do it for free to win your business.
Domain migration. Keeping the platform but changing the domain, for a rebrand, an acquisition, or consolidating multiple sites under one URL. The build work is minimal. Nearly all the cost is SEO: redirect mapping, updating every internal reference, and managing the ranking transition.
CMS or platform migration. Moving from one system to another, WordPress to Next.js or Astro, WooCommerce to Shopify, Squarespace to a headless CMS. This is where most of the complexity and cost sit, since content, templates, and functionality all have to be rebuilt or converted.
Redesign plus migration combined. This means giving the site a visual refresh while switching platforms. It is efficient in theory, since you run one project instead of two, but you test a new design and new infrastructure at the same time, so the budget needs more room for revisions and QA.
Full re-platform or headless migration. Rebuilding the entire stack, often moving to a headless CMS with a custom frontend, new integrations, and a different content model entirely. This is the most expensive and highest-risk category, and it's rarely a DIY or freelancer job.
Website migration cost by type
Hosting migration: RM0–RM2,000
Usually just DNS changes and a file transfer. Many managed hosts include this free when you sign up. Pay a freelancer if you want someone to handle it and verify nothing broke; there's little reason to pay an agency for this alone.
Example: A 15-page WordPress brochure site moving from shared hosting to a managed WordPress host. Free migration through the new host, plus a few hours of a freelancer's time to spot-check forms and page speed. Total: under RM1,200.
Domain change: RM2,000–RM12,000
The build is trivial. The cost is almost entirely SEO work: mapping every old URL to its new equivalent, updating canonical tags and structured data, and monitoring rankings through the transition.
Example: A consultancy rebranding to a new domain and name, 40 pages, no platform change. Redirect mapping and a 6-week monitoring period. Total: around RM7,200.
CMS-to-CMS migration: RM10,000–RM80,000
This is the broadest and most common category. WordPress to Shopify, WordPress to a modern framework, or one CMS to another entirely. Cost scales with page count, custom functionality, and how much content needs restructuring rather than just moving as-is.
Example: A services business with 80 pages moving from WordPress to Astro for speed and a cleaner content model, as-is design. Roughly RM24,000–RM36,000 depending on how many custom page templates need rebuilding.
E-commerce migration: RM20,000–RM200,000+
Products, orders, customer accounts, reviews, discount rules, and every payment and marketing integration all have to move and keep working. A store with thousands of SKUs and several app integrations costs a lot more than one with fifty products and no plugins.
Example: WooCommerce to Shopify, 300 products, Klaviyo and a loyalty app to reconnect. Typically RM32,000–RM60,000. A larger catalog with ERP integration can push well past RM120,000.
Enterprise or headless re-platform: RM100,000–RM400,000+
Multiple stakeholders, custom integrations (CRM, ERP, marketing automation), often a new content model built around a headless CMS with a custom frontend. Timelines run months, not weeks, and the cost reflects the amount of custom engineering involved, not just content transfer.
7 factors that drive migration cost
Site size. Pages, blog posts, media files, and database records all add hours. A 500-page site with ten years of blog history costs more to migrate than a 20-page site, even on the same platform.
Platform complexity and custom functionality. Custom post types, member portals, booking systems, or bespoke plugins all need to be rebuilt or replicated, not just copied.
Integrations. Every connected tool (payment processor, CRM, ERP, email platform, analytics) needs to be reconnected and tested. More integrations means more places something can break, and more hours to verify it didn't.
As-is migration vs. redesign. Moving the existing design as-is is the cheaper path. Redesigning at the same time roughly doubles the scope, since you're now building new templates, not converting old ones.
SEO preservation scope. A full redirect map, metadata migration, and structured data carryover take real time, especially on large sites. Skipping this is how migrations lose traffic, more on that below.
Content cleanup and restructuring. Auditing and pruning old, thin, or duplicate content before migrating adds hours upfront but usually pays for itself in a cleaner, faster site and fewer pages to QA.
Who does the work. DIY costs the least in cash and the most in your time and risk. Freelancers in Malaysia typically charge RM50–150 an hour. Agencies price by project rather than by the hour, which costs more upfront but includes testing, SEO work and monitoring after launch that most freelancers leave out.
The hidden cost nobody budgets for: SEO
SEO is easy to leave out of a migration budget, and it's usually where the most expensive mistakes happen.
A botched migration can lose a large share of your organic traffic, and that traffic doesn't always come back. The usual causes are avoidable: missing or wrong redirects, changed URLs with no redirect map, metadata that didn't carry over, or a launch with no SEO check before or after.
Treat SEO preservation as insurance, not a line item you cut to hit a lower quote. That means:
- A full list of your current URLs before you touch anything.
- A redirect for each old page to its new one, not all to the homepage.
- Your metadata carried over.
- Weeks of monitoring after launch to catch and fix ranking drops.
A migration that costs RM8,000 less upfront but costs you six months of lost organic traffic was never actually cheaper.
DIY vs. freelancer vs. agency: which should you choose?
Cost | Risk | Timeline | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
DIY | RM0–RM2,000 (tools/plugins only) | High if platform or domain changes | Days to weeks | Small same-platform, same-domain moves |
Freelancer | RM50–RM150/hr | Medium, depends on their SEO experience | 1–4 weeks | Small to mid-size sites, straightforward platform changes |
Agency | Project-based, RM6,000–RM400,000+ | Low, includes QA and SEO handling | Days to months | Platform changes, e-commerce, anything with real traffic to protect |
DIY is genuinely fine for a small WordPress site staying on WordPress, staying on the same domain, using a migration plugin. If you're changing platforms or domains, or running a store with real revenue, mistakes get expensive. Lost sales, lost rankings and weeks of cleanup usually cost more than hiring help.
How long does a website migration take?
- Hosting migration: a few days
- Small-business CMS migration: 2–4 weeks
- E-commerce migration: 4–10 weeks
- Enterprise re-platform: 3–4 months
On same-domain moves, rankings typically stabilize within 4–6 weeks post-launch. Domain changes take longer to recover, since search engines are reassessing a new domain's authority signals, not just re-crawling moved pages.
How to keep migration costs down
Audit and prune your content before you migrate anything. Every outdated, thin, or duplicate page you cut is one less page to move, test, and pay for.
Keep your existing URL structure where you can. Changing URLs unnecessarily creates redirect work and SEO risk for no real benefit.
Migrate as-is first, redesign later. Bundling a redesign into a migration doubles the variables you're testing at once. Get the move stable, then improve the design as a separate project.
Get a fixed-scope quote, not an hourly estimate with no ceiling. Fixed scope forces a clear conversation about what's included, redirects, testing, and post-launch monitoring, before work starts.
Don't skip staging and QA. Testing on a staging environment before the live switch catches broken forms, missing redirects, and layout issues before they're public, which is far cheaper than fixing them after launch.
Get an exact migration quote
Every number above is a range because every migration is different. If you want a real figure instead of an estimate, tell us your current platform and where you're moving, and we'll send back a fixed-scope quote.
Get a free migration quote, or see how our CMS migration service handles redirects, testing and monitoring.
