The short answer: it depends on what’s broken. If your site loads, looks right on mobile and still shows up on Google, then it usually needs maintenance, not a rebuild. But if it won’t open on mobile, you can’t update it yourself and it fights you every time you want a change, patching isn’t enough. This article shows you where the line falls.
When you DON’T need a new site
Plenty of sites you’d call “old” aren’t broken. They’re neglected. The difference matters, because the second kind can be fixed with a small job instead of a whole new project.
Keep the site you have if the following are true:
- It opens on mobile without you having to zoom, and people find what they’re looking for.
- It loads in a reasonable time.
- You still show up on Google for your name and for the basic searches in your line of work.
- You can change a phone number, a price or a photo without paying every time.
If the problem is a dated logo, a few broken links (links that lead nowhere) or copy that no longer says what you do, that’s a repair. A good technician sorts it out fast. You don’t need to throw away the structure, the address and the history you’ve built on Google just to change some colors and a couple of pages.
The signs it needs to be built again from scratch
Other times, patching costs more than the fix. Here are the signs that a site wants to be rebuilt:
- It doesn’t open properly on mobile, and that’s where most people find you. “Responsive” (the page adapting to every screen) usually can’t be bolted onto a site built many years ago.
- It runs on a platform that’s no longer maintained or on a version that no longer gets updates, so it’s exposed to being hacked.
- Every small change breaks something else.
- You don’t have access yourself: not to the admin panel, not to the files, not to the domain.
- The code is so tangled that every fix gets billed like brand-new work.
The clearest sign is financial. When the repairs over a single year add up to near the cost of a new site, you stop paying for maintenance and start paying to postpone. The same is true if you’re losing orders because the cart doesn’t work on mobile, or if you can’t add a payment method your customers keep asking for.
What you keep from the old site
A rebuild doesn’t mean starting from a blank page. Most of what matters carries over.
The copy first. The service descriptions, the “about us”, the answers to frequently asked questions. You wrote them with effort and Google has read them for years. You keep them and rework the parts that have aged, instead of writing them all over again.
Your material. Good product photos, a logo at the right resolution, video. They go into the new site with no new production cost.
The domain and the email. The address your customers know and have saved stays the same. So do the business email accounts.
And the structure that works. If certain pages reliably bring in visitors or phone calls, you don’t touch them without reason; you move them into the new look.
In other words, the visible part changes. The years’ worth of work underneath stays put, as long as it’s carried over by someone who knows what they’re looking at.
Google ranking: the mistake that costs you
This is where many people slip. The new site goes live looking great, and a little while later the calls thin out. The reason is usually the same: the page URLs changed and nobody set up redirects.
How it works. Every page on the old site has an address. Google has it indexed and sends people there. If, on the new site, that same page gets a different address and you don’t tell the browser where to go, the visitor lands on an error page (the familiar 404). You lose twice: both the person and the spot in the results.
The right order is simple to describe:
- You record every URL that brings in visitors before you touch anything.
- For each one, you decide where it maps to on the new site.
- You set a permanent redirect (301: automatic forwarding from the old address to the new one).
- You check for broken links in the first stretch afterward.
It isn’t tacked on once the old site is gone. It’s done beforehand, with a list in hand. When it’s handled by someone who’s done it before, the dip in traffic usually stays small and temporary, instead of turning into permanent damage.
How much it costs and how long it takes
The cost depends on what’s being built. A rebuild starts at €500 + VAT, whether it’s a presentation site or an e-shop with a cart and payments. The exact price comes out once we see how many pages, how many products and which integrations are needed (with a courier or an invoicing program, say).
At DOT we work in WordPress and WooCommerce, and in custom builds where the project genuinely calls for it. The upside of WordPress for you is practical: you update copy and products yourself, without depending on anyone for every change.
Delivery time is typically 2 to 10 days, and it’s written as a date in the quote, not floated as a verbal estimate. If we’re late through our own fault, the final payment milestone is free.
Payment is made in two installments: a 40% deposit when you assign the work and the remaining 60% on delivery. You know from the start what you’re paying and when, with no hidden charges along the way.
Repair or rebuild? A simple test
Put your site through a simple test, with your phone in hand.
Open it as if you were a customer. See whether you find a phone number and opening hours right away, without hunting. See whether the homepage loads without keeping you waiting. If you sell, go from the product all the way to payment and note where you got stuck.
Count how many “no”s you collected. A few small “no”s mean a repair. A lot of “no”s, or even one decisive “no” at the payment step, mean a rebuild.
Then do the money math. Add up what you paid in fixes over the past year and what you’re losing on orders that never go through. Compare it with the cost of a new site. The number usually decides on its own.
And one thing the test won’t show: how much you depend on someone else to change a price. If every change goes through a third party and gets billed, that cost runs quietly every month, even when the site looks “fine”.
What to do now
If, reading all of the above, you’ve concluded that a repair is enough, good. Keep the list of signs and ask your technician to go through them one by one. Many are quick to solve.
If instead you’ve realized the site needs to be built again, the next step isn’t to sign anything. First you figure out where you stand. Send us your site’s address and a few words about what’s bothering you. We’ll take a look and tell you honestly whether you need a new site or whether maintenance will do, even if the answer means less work for us.
If we go ahead, you’ll get a written quote with a fixed price, a delivery date and a clear account of what we keep from the old one: text, URLs, ranking. Without those on paper, no decision is safe.
Take your time. The site you have won’t break while you think it over. When you’re ready, you know where to find us: 294 Iera Odos, Egaleo.