how long should a website last before rebuilding
a website should last until it stops working for the business. for most small businesses, that is five to ten years with maintenance. not two years. not every time a new design trend appears.
what ages a website
three things make a website genuinely outdated:
technical failure. the underlying software becomes unsupported. security vulnerabilities appear that cannot be patched. the site breaks on modern browsers or devices.
business change. your services change significantly. your contact details move. you rebrand. the site no longer reflects the actual business.
performance degradation. the site becomes slow. google deprioritises it. visitors leave before it loads.
none of these happen on a fixed schedule.
what does not age a website
design trends. a website that looked clean and functional in 2018 still looks clean and functional in 2025 if it was built well. the impulse to rebuild because something looks dated is mostly a design industry sales mechanism.
content going stale is a maintenance problem, not a rebuild problem.
when to rebuild
rebuild when the technical foundation is broken and cannot be repaired economically. rebuild when the business has changed so fundamentally that the existing site cannot be adapted. not before.
what computer web builds
flat-file websites with no database, minimal dependencies, and very few things that can break. they do not go out of date technically. they require maintenance, not replacement.
a computer web site built today should still be working in 2030 without a rebuild.