By Mehdi HassanHow long does a website migration take?
A website migration usually takes from a few weeks to about three months from kickoff to launch, plus a few weeks of monitoring after. Quoted timelines we see run about 2–5 weeks for Framer to Webflow, 6–10 weeks for leaving HubSpot CMS and 6–12 weeks for WordPress to a headless Next.js setup. Simple sites rebuilt with coding agents can move much faster.
The clock is set less by how many pages you have and more by how many decisions are open. A site where everyone already agrees on what to keep moves quickly. A site where the team debates the navigation, rewrites copy and adds a language mid-project doesn't. Our hub on website migration cost shows how the same drivers set the price.
- Typical quoted timeline for Framer to Webflow
- 2–5 weeks
- Typical quoted timeline to leave HubSpot CMS
- 6–10 weeks
- Typical quoted timeline, WordPress to headless Next.js
- 6–12 weeks
What are the phases of a website migration timeline?
Every migration moves through the same six phases, whatever the platforms: audit, plan, build, content, QA and launch, then monitoring. Their relative length changes with the site, but skipping one always costs time later.
Phase | What happens | What makes it long |
|---|---|---|
Audit | Crawl, traffic export, keep or drop decisions | Many URLs, no clear owner for decisions |
Plan | Content model, redirect map draft, scope sign-off | Redesign debates, new requirements |
Build | Templates, components, CMS, integrations | Bespoke pages, complex interactions |
Content | Import, image re-hosting, cleanup, metadata | Large blogs, messy HTML, languages |
QA and launch | Redirect tests, forms, analytics, DNS | Stakeholder review rounds |
Monitoring | Search Console, 404s, rankings | Fixes found after launch |
If you want these phases as a ready-made plan with owners and go/no-go gates, copy our website migration project plan template.
How long does a 6-page site migration take?
A 6-page marketing site with no blog is the fastest migration there is. The work is mostly rebuilding the design, reconnecting a form or two and redirecting a handful of URLs. With decisions made upfront, the build and launch can fit into a few weeks, and much less if you keep the current design.
Hypothetical week-by-week plan: 6-page site, no blog
This is an illustrative schedule, not a quote. Real timelines vary by provider and how fast feedback comes back.
Week 1: crawl the site, confirm the six pages and any URL changes, list forms and integrations, and agree the design direction.
Week 2: build the pages and components, connect forms and analytics, and draft the redirect map.
Week 3: review rounds, copy fixes, redirect testing, metadata checks and launch.
Weeks 4 to 5: monitor Search Console and fix anything that surfaces.
The thing most likely to stretch a small migration is a redesign that creeps in halfway. If you want both, decide at the start, using our framework on whether to migrate and redesign at the same time.
How long does a 30-page site migration take?
A 30-page site with a modest blog and a few integrations usually takes several weeks to a couple of months. The extra time comes from more templates, more content to review and more URLs to map, not from building each page one at a time.
Hypothetical week-by-week plan: 30-page site, small blog
This is an illustrative schedule, not a quote.
Weeks 1 to 2: audit every URL, decide keep, merge or drop, and design the content model for the blog and any collections.
Weeks 3 to 5: build templates and components, rebuild unique pages, and connect forms, CRM and analytics.
Week 6: import blog posts, re-host images and check metadata on every page.
Week 7: full QA, stakeholder review and redirect testing.
Week 8: launch, then monitor for two to four weeks.
How long does it take to migrate a 300-post blog?
A 300-post blog takes longer than most teams expect, because every post is its own small migration: export, clean the HTML, re-host images, map authors and tags, carry over metadata and add a redirect if the URL changes. Even with automated import, review takes time.
Source platforms add their own delays. WordPress posts often contain shortcodes and page-builder markup. Webflow's CSV export turns rich-text images into placeholders, and images point at Webflow's CDN, so they must be re-hosted. Our guides to moving between code and visual builders and fixing React SPA marketing sites cover other sources.
Hypothetical week-by-week plan: 300-post blog plus marketing pages
This is an illustrative schedule, not a quote.
Weeks 1 to 2: crawl, export traffic per post, prune thin or duplicate posts and define the content model.
Weeks 3 to 5: build templates and write the import script or mapping.
Weeks 6 to 7: run imports, fix HTML and images, map authors, categories and tags.
Week 8: sample QA across post types, full redirect test and metadata audit.
Weeks 9 to 10: launch, resubmit sitemaps and monitor rankings and 404s closely.
Can AI make a website migration faster?
AI makes the build and import phases much faster. Vellum described migrating off Webflow with coding agents in about a week, and cursor.com was reportedly rebuilt in three days. For a site with clean content and few decisions, agents can compress weeks of build work into days.
They don't shorten the parts that depend on people: deciding what to keep, reviewing copy, approving design and checking that rankings hold after launch. On most projects those are the long phases. Our guide to AI-assisted website migration explains where agents save real time and where they still need supervision.
What slows a website migration down?
Most delays come from decisions and feedback, not engineering. These are the ones we see most.
- No single decision-maker. When three people approve every page, each review round stretches out.
- Scope creep. A refresh becomes a redesign, or a new language joins halfway through.
- Late content. New copy that arrives after the build forces rework on templates already finished.
- Unknown integrations. A forgotten form, script or embed surfaces in QA and has to be rebuilt.
- Access delays. DNS, CMS, analytics or Search Console access held by someone outside the project.
- Weak quotes. A proposal that left out redirects or content import; our migration quote checklist helps you catch that before you sign.
Choosing who does the work also changes the timeline. A small internal team juggling other priorities moves slower than a dedicated team, which is one of the trade-offs in our comparison of DIY vs freelancer vs agency migrations.
How long until rankings recover after a migration?
With good redirects and preserved metadata, many sites see only a short dip while search engines recrawl and process the changes. Watch Search Console daily for the first week and weekly for the following two months. If traffic is still falling after a few weeks, something specific is wrong, usually missing redirects or changed content.
Recovery timelines vary by site size, crawl frequency and how much changed. A site that kept URLs and content identical has less to recover than one that also redesigned and rewrote copy. For new sections and new content, our guide to how long SEO takes for a new website sets expectations, and our website redesign timeline covers projects where the redesign is the main event.
