Key Takeaways
- This website redesign RFP example fills in all eight sections of a standard RFP for a fictional 40-practice dental group, with a note under each excerpt on why it's worded that way.
- In any of the website RFP examples worth copying, the lines that protect the most money are the dull ones, meaning a written out-of-scope list, a printed budget range and scoring weights the bidders can see.
- Requirements written as pass-or-fail tests, such as WCAG 2.2 AA confirmed by an outside audit or a redirect for every old URL, can be priced up front and checked at launch, while "modern" and "flexible" can't.
- An RFP written in 2026 also needs a line on AI editing, because an AI agent that can publish to your sites should answer to the same permissions as your human editors.
Five agencies can read the same website redesign RFP and price five different projects, usually because it spends three pages on the dream site and one sentence on what's out of scope. The fix isn't a longer RFP, it's one where every line can be priced by an agency or tested by you, and the quickest way to show that is to fill one in.
So here's a complete website redesign RFP example for "Quillfield Dental Group", a 40-practice group moving off WordPress Multisite (one WordPress installation running many sites). Quillfield is invented, it isn't a Content.One customer, and every figure in its RFP is illustrative. Each excerpt fills one section of our website redesign RFP template, with a note on what the wording does, and what comes before section one is covered in how to write a web design RFP.
The whole RFP example on one page
Each row is one section of this website RFP example set against the version that turns up in most inboxes.
| RFP section | What Quillfield's version commits to | The vague version | What vague costs you |
| Background and goals | 40 practices, a three-day wait for simple updates, success measured at 90 days | "A modern, refreshed web presence" | Bidders price their guesses as padding |
| Scope and exclusions | In-scope list, out-of-scope list, change-order rule | An in-scope list only | Every unlisted item becomes an invoice |
| Multi-location governance | Practice managers edit their own site only, one publish reaches all 40 | "Flexible permissions" | You find the gap mid-build |
| Technical and CMS requirements | WCAG 2.2 AA confirmed by audit, a redirect map, AI edits under human roles (like Content.one!) | "Accessible, SEO-friendly, AI-ready" | Nothing to test at launch |
| Timeline | 10 practices in 16 weeks, all 40 in 28 | "As soon as possible" | No pilot, so mistakes repeat 40 times |
| Budget | $85,000 to $120,000, licensing excluded | "Please provide pricing" | Bids you can't compare or afford |
| Vendor questions | Three questions, a page each | Forty questions from an old RFP | Boilerplate answers |
| Scoring | Four weighted criteria and a timed demo | "Best overall value" | The loudest voice picks |
The eight sections of the Quillfield example. Quillfield Dental Group and every figure in its RFP are fictional.
If a line in your own RFP reads like the third column, expect proposals that look like the fourth.
The background an agency can price from
Quillfield Dental Group runs 40 practices across six states, and each practice has its own site on a shared WordPress Multisite install, which we want to migrate to a headless CMS.
Updates such as opening hours, new dentists and seasonal offers go through one outside developer, and a typical change takes three business days. We want all 40 practice sites and our corporate site rebuilt on a platform our marketing team and practice managers can publish to themselves.
Ninety days after launch, success means a practice manager can change opening hours the same day, and online appointment requests are tracked for each practice. Our VP of Marketing owns the project, and the decision committee includes IT and one regional operations director.
Five sentences give an agency the size of the estate, the platform being retired, the problem behind the project and who has to be convinced, and the 90-day measure hands your committee and the winning agency the same finish line.
Write down what's out of scope, or pay for it later
In scope. A template system for practice pages and a separate design for the corporate site, build of all 41 sites, migration of about 1,800 pages, a rebuilt dentist directory, and training for 40 practice managers. Out of scope. Logo or brand identity work, the patient portal (a separate system we'll link to, not integrate), paid media landing pages, and writing new copy. We'll supply final copy for the corporate site, and practice pages will reuse their existing copy. Design direction is set by the three reference sites in Appendix B, and the full list of current URLs is in Appendix C. Any work outside this list needs a written change order showing the cost and timeline impact, signed by our VP of Marketing before the work starts.
Most RFPs skip the out-of-scope list, and every unlisted item becomes a conversation in week six and an invoice in week eight. Calling the patient portal a link, not an integration, stops one bidder pricing a full build while another prices a button, and the change-order sentence names one signer, because a change order anyone can approve controls nothing.
Who edits what across 40 sites?
Headquarters owns brand components, legal and compliance notices, and the dentist profile template. Each practice manager can edit opening hours, team listings and offers for their own practice only. Regional directors approve offers before they go live in their region. A compliance notice must reach all 40 practice sites in a single publish, without anyone editing each site.
Every sentence here can be tested in a demo, because "practice managers edit their own site only" either works when you log in as one or it doesn't, while "flexible permissions" passes every written response. The single-publish line catches the costliest multi-site failure, one legal update turning into 40 separate edits (more in our piece on why content operations break in multi-location businesses).
Requirements an agency shouldn't wriggle out of
Every page template must meet WCAG 2.2 AA, confirmed by an independent accessibility audit before launch, with fixes included in your fee. Your team will map all of the roughly 1,800 current URLs to their new addresses, send us the redirect map for review two weeks before launch, and keep the redirects live for at least a year. If the platform you propose includes AI or agent-based editing, every AI action must run under the same roles and approval steps as a human editor and show up in the same activity log.
WCAG 2.2 AA is the accessibility standard auditors test against, and naming the level plus an outside audit turns a good intention into a deliverable. That matters because "accessible" rarely survives the build, and WebAIM's 2026 scan of the top million home pages found an average of 56.1 detectable errors per page, up 10.1% on the year before.
A redirect map is a spreadsheet pairing each old URL with its new one, so Google and anyone with a bookmark still land on a live page. Google's guidance on site moves says to build that mapping before the move and to leave the redirects in place for at least a year, longer if you can, which is why both are in the requirements (our CMS migration guide shows how to build one).
Older templates have no AI line at all. If an agent can publish to 40 practice sites, it needs the same guardrails as the practice manager it works for, and our CMS RFP questions cover the follow-ups to put to platform vendors.
Print the budget range (yes, really)
Our budget for design, build and migration is $85,000 to $120,000. Platform licensing is excluded, and we'll contract it separately. We'd like the first 10 practices live within 16 weeks of kickoff and all 40 within 28 weeks. Tell us which of these dates you think are unrealistic, and why.
Hiding the budget mostly buys you weeks of reading proposals you could never afford. Whittington Consulting's 2025 figures, which Verlua reports, put most B2B website redesigns at $25,000 to $40,000, so roughly two to three times the top of that band for 41 sites and an 1,800-page migration is a number with reasoning behind it. Excluding licensing keeps build quotes comparable across platforms, and the phased dates make the first 10 practices a pilot, so a template mistake gets fixed once instead of 40 times. The agency that tells you week 16 is tight is usually the one worth hiring.
Three questions every bidder answers
Answer each of these directly, in no more than a page each.
Name the two people who'll run our project day to day, and tell us what else they're working on.
Show us a multi-location site you launched where local staff edit their own pages, and give us a contact there.
Walk us through how you'd test the redirect map before launch. Questions about this RFP are due by the end of week two, and we'll send every answer to every bidder. Proposals are due at the end of week four as a single PDF of no more than 15 pages, and shortlisted agencies will demo in week six.
Three questions give you three answers you can lay side by side, and the 15-page cap makes agencies lead with what they'd do for Quillfield instead of their company history.
Tell agencies exactly how you'll score them
Proposals will be scored on multi-location experience (30%), migration approach and redirect plan (25%), platform fit against the requirements above (25%) and cost (20%). In the demo, a practice manager from our team, not yours, will change one practice's opening hours and publish the change while we time it.
Agencies write to whatever gets scored, so published weights pull every proposal toward Quillfield's priorities, and a 20% cap on cost stops a cheap bid winning on price alone. And if a platform needs a developer on the demo call to change opening hours, you've seen the next five years before signing anything.
How Content.One handles a 40-site RFP like this one
Quillfield is invented, but its governance, migration and AI lines are ones we can show you working, so here's how a group like it would run on Content.One.
It starts at launch.content.one, where you enter your domain, the site gets analyzed, and after you sign up we pre-configure an instance from what we found.
The 1,800-page move doesn't need a separate migration partner, because our On-Demand Developers handle a migration off your current CMS end to end, as engineers who join your team on a six- to twelve-month contract. Once you're live, our SEO role includes access to redirects, so an SEO lead can manage them without touching code.
Roles reach down to a single site, section, entry or field, so a practice manager edits one practice's opening hours and nothing in the other 39, and approval paths can be set by region, which is how a regional director signs off an offer before it goes live.
A compliance notice is published once and syndicated to all 40 sites, and corporate-approved components such as the dentist profile template stay locked while each practice localizes the rest.
Once the new designs are signed off, a marketer can paste a screenshot of a section into Claude, Gemini or another MCP-compatible assistant connected to our MCP server, generally available since June 15, 2026, and get a matching HTML component back, so a seasonal offer block doesn't wait for a developer. Whatever the assistant does is limited by its role, exactly as a human editor's work is, and full audit logging stays on while it works.
And when the 10-practice pilot turns up a template mistake, template versioning shows the change side by side and rolls it back in one click, before it reaches the other 30.
Swap in your numbers and send it
Your numbers won't match Quillfield's, but every line still faces the same test, which is whether an agency can price it and whether you can check it at launch. Grab the blank website redesign RFP template, swap in your answers one section at a time, and before the proposals come back, put your domain into launch.content.one and we'll analyze the current site and pre-configure an instance to match.
FAQ
Does Quillfield Dental Group exist?
No. We invented Quillfield and every figure in its RFP for this example, and it isn't a Content.One customer. If you want to read published website RFP examples, public bodies such as cities, colleges and transit agencies post theirs on their procurement pages, which makes them the easiest place to see how other buyers word scope and scoring.
How long would Quillfield's finished RFP be?
Around 8 to 15 pages of substance, with the appendices (reference sites, the URL list and standard contract terms) on top. The excerpts above are the core, and the remaining pages hold the detail each section points to, such as the full page inventory behind the migration line.
Should we share our current site's analytics in the RFP?
Share the numbers that change the price, meaning your total page count, your top pages by organic traffic and the pages that bring in leads. Migration and redirect work scale with those figures, so agencies that see them can quote the migration instead of guessing at it.
Can we send the same RFP to agencies and platform vendors?
You can, as long as pricing is split the way Quillfield's is, with design and build in one line and platform licensing in another. Without that split, an agency quoting an open-source CMS and one bundling a licensed platform will look far apart for reasons that have nothing to do with the work.
Does this example work for a single-site redesign?
Yes. Drop the governance section and the phased rollout, and keep the exclusions, the budget range, the requirements written as tests and the weighted scoring, since those do the same job at any size.
What changes for a nonprofit with chapters?
The governance section maps neatly onto chapters, but volunteer editors, donation tools and accessibility obligations change what goes into the requirements. Our guide to the nonprofit website RFP covers those differences.