The verdict in three sentences
An agricultural cooperative with 3,200 members and 11 business lines replacing a 2016 website should budget EUR 25,000 to 45,000 excl. VAT for the public site, plus EUR 10,000 to 20,000 for a members' portal connected to the ERP (intake dockets, prices, circulars). The real risk is not design but the migration of 600 pages and the 301 redirect plan, which protect organic traffic and member trust. Plan for 4 to 6 months and EUR 250 to 500 per month for maintenance.
What the redesign costs, line by line
A cooperative website serves several audiences at once: dairy and livestock farmers, store customers, job applicants, local officials and supply-chain partners. The cost structure reflects that. The figures below are 2026 orders of magnitude for Dublin agencies and studios.
| Item | 2026 range (EUR excl. VAT) | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Audit and business-line workshops | 2,500 to 5,000 | 11 business lines to interview, target sitemap |
| UX, mock-ups and web style guide | 5,000 to 9,000 | Desktop and mobile, WCAG accessibility |
| Public site development (CMS) | 9,000 to 18,000 | Business-line templates, news, jobs |
| Migration and rewrite of 600 pages | 4,500 to 8,000 | Sort, merge, rewrite key pages |
| 301 redirect plan and SEO QA | 1,500 to 3,000 | Page-by-page mapping, pre-launch tests |
| Editor training | 1,000 to 2,000 | 8 to 15 editors across business lines |
| Members' portal connected to ERP | 10,000 to 20,000 | Login, connector, documents |
| Monthly maintenance | 250 to 500 / month | Updates, backups, small changes |
The public site alone therefore lands between EUR 25,000 and 45,000. The spread depends mostly on the number of business-line templates (dairy, beef, grain, feed and inputs, retail stores, agronomy advice...) and on how much content must be rewritten rather than migrated as is.
The members' portal: what it must contain
The members' portal is the main reason for the redesign. A dairy or beef farmer wants to check intake dockets, statements, daily prices and technical circulars from a phone, often in the farmyard on an average 4G signal.
| Feature | Complexity | Indicative budget (EUR excl. VAT) | Data source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Secure login (member number + two-factor) | Medium | 2,000 to 3,500 | Member directory |
| Intake dockets and statements as PDF | High | 3,000 to 6,000 | ERP (export or API) |
| Milk, grain and livestock prices | Medium | 1,500 to 3,000 | Sales team, daily feed |
| Circulars and technical notes per line | Low | 1,000 to 2,000 | CMS back office |
| Email or SMS notifications | Low | 800 to 1,500 | Existing sending tool |
| Annual supply dashboard | High | 2,500 to 4,000 | ERP, aggregation |
The most uncertain item is the ERP connector. If the ERP vendor provides a documented API, integration stays at the low end. If nightly file exports are required, expect more testing and a one-day lag on data. GDPR also requires a processing record and a retention period for member documents.
Method: migrating 600 pages without losing traffic
A 2016 website accumulates outdated pages, duplicates and orphan PDFs. The proven method has four steps: full inventory (crawl and the last 12 months of analytics), triage into three groups (keep, merge, delete), priority rewrite of the 80 to 120 pages that carry 80% of traffic, then page-by-page 301 mapping checked before launch. A redesign without a redirect plan commonly loses 30 to 50% of organic traffic for several months.
Typical 4 to 6 month schedule: scoping and workshops (4 weeks), UX and design (5 weeks), development and ERP connector (8 to 10 weeks), content migration in parallel, QA and training (3 weeks), go-live outside the silage season and the AGM.
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Seán, communications director of a cooperative near Dublin, receives about 180 member calls a week asking for a docket or a statement. Each call takes an admin officer 6 minutes, or 18 hours a week. With a EUR 15,000 members' portal, the estimate is 70% of calls avoided, or 12.6 hours a week. At a loaded cost of EUR 32 an hour, savings reach about EUR 400 a week, close to EUR 19,000 a year over 47 weeks. The portal pays for itself in under 10 months, before counting member satisfaction.
FAQ
Should the public site and the members' portal be rebuilt at the same time?
It is recommended, since login and branding are shared. Splitting into two phases is possible: public site in 4 months, then the portal 2 to 3 months later, with roughly 10% extra coordination cost.
Which CMS suits 15 editors spread across business lines?
A CMS with an approval workflow and section-level permissions is essential. A well-configured WordPress, Drupal or a headless CMS all work; the difference is maintenance, EUR 250 to 500 a month.
How many of the 600 existing pages should be kept?
In practice 35 to 50% of pages survive a redesign, often merged. The rest are removed with a 301 redirect to the closest page.
Can member data be hosted outside Ireland?
Hosting within the European Union satisfies GDPR, although many cooperatives prefer an Irish or EU data centre by contract. The extra cost is small, EUR 30 to 80 a month.
What timeline if the ERP has no API?
Add 3 to 5 weeks to set up and test automated exports. The connector budget then moves to the high end, around EUR 6,000.
Let's scope your project. Send us your page count, your business lines and your ERP: we price the public site and the members' portal separately, with a schedule that avoids your busiest collection periods. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.
Mohamed Bah
Fondateur, Kolonell
Passionate about digital and entrepreneurship in Africa, Mohamed has been helping Sénégalese businesses with their digital transformation since 2020. Founder of Kolonell, he believes every SME deserves a professional and accessible online présence.
