Refactoring: Cutting Costs Without Cutting Corners
A Red Collar and Product Team Perspective: How to Decide What to Refactor, When to Do It, and What It’ll Actually Cost You
We packed this article with real-world cases from years in the trenches. If you’ve got a digital product and are thinking, “Eh, refactoring can wait” — this one’s for you.
About the authors and the origin story
This article grew out of our talk at the local conference in December. We’re Max and Alina — and we broke down refactoring in plain business speak.
About Red Collar
We’re Red Collar — an agency that’s been building digital solutions for businesses since 2011. Our team tackles everything from logistics and tourism to fintech and telecom, working across stacks like Java, Python, PHP, Bitrix, React, and Next.js. Our portfolio includes both quick-launch startups and massive, years-long projects.
What is refactoring, anyway?
Wikipedia says it’s “changing the internal structure of code without changing its external behavior to make it easier to understand.”
Cool definition. But here’s the thing:
Refactoring doesn’t change how the product behaves. So yeah, it’s invisible to users — and clients often wonder why it takes six months and a dev team to make “nothing” happen.
And about that “easier to understand” part? That’s kinda outdated. Today, clean, readable code is table stakes. With code reviews baked into workflows, less than 5% of modern refactoring is really about readability.
So what’s the real value of refactoring?
- Make the system faster
- Make it more stable and secure
- Cut down support and dev costs
- Prep the system for major changes
Over the years, working on both product and agency side, we’ve seen just about every kind of refactor. We’ve grouped them into three types: Migration, Optimization, and Cleaning. Let’s break down what they mean — and how to figure out what it’s gonna cost you.
1. Migration: Moving to a new stack, architecture, or cloud
This is the big one. Migrations usually involve:
- Switching frameworks, languages, or databases
- Changing external services (auth, data providers, message brokers)
- Restructuring architecture (splitting or merging services)
- Moving to/from the cloud
Case 1.1: Migration blocks new features
Red Collar: “We had a client with a monolith that wasn’t scaling. They also wanted to launch new features before year-end. We mapped out the effort for each feature vs. effort for the migration. Then we built a roadmap that aligned with their priorities — no wasted time, no nasty surprises.”
Product experience: “In long-lived systems, tools get outdated. When that happens, we hit pause on new features and focus on moving to something sustainable. Otherwise, we’d have to rewrite every new feature twice. Nobody wants that.”
What to calculate:
- Forecast revenue from the new feature
- Cost of building it pre- vs post-migration
Case 1.2: Without migrating, support gets expensive
Red Collar: “A client had a hybrid system — Java and some old C++ mixed in. They couldn’t support the C++ in-house anymore. We brought in a short-term C++ dev to keep things running, then ported the whole thing to Java. Boom: consistency and cost control.”
Product experience: “In mature products, you can track how many bugs or incidents are tied to legacy components. That data helps justify the migration budget.”
What to calculate:
- Time and money spent fixing bugs
- Cost of migration, broken down by service
- Projected support cost post-migration
Case 1.3: Can’t find the right devs anymore
Red Collar: “A backend written partially in Go landed on our desk. We didn’t have Go devs at the time, and hiring one wasn’t practical. So we rewrote the service in Java, kept all the functionality, and moved on with our lives.”
Product experience: “If your tech stack becomes a unicorn hunt, you’re in trouble. We’ve seen internal teams locked into obscure stacks from years ago, and now there’s no one left to hire. Pro tip: check how popular your framework really is — today and five years from now.”
What to calculate:
- Market rate for devs with your stack
- Time and cost to recruit/train
- Long-term maintainability risk
2. Optimization: Make it faster, safer, and cheaper to run
This is about metrics: performance, stability, security. The most expensive part? Figuring out what to optimize.
Case 2.1: Slow site = expensive traffic + poor retention
Red Collar: “Every e-com client hears this: ‘Page load under X milliseconds.’ But it’s more than a nice-to-have. If your site takes 2+ seconds, you’re bleeding users.”
Product experience: “When you’re paying for traffic, every delay burns cash. Speed helps with SEO too. A fast product brings in more organic users — and that means less ad spend.”
What to calculate:
- Cost per user (paid vs. organic)
- Share of paid vs. organic traffic
- Traffic growth potential from better speed
- How fast your competitors are
Case 2.2: Security gaps = expensive mistakes
Red Collar: “We build complex systems for industries like banking and telecom. Any slip-up with personal data is a disaster. So we run serious security testing before go-live. No shortcuts.”
Product experience: “Some teams run Bug Bounty programs — if a user finds a vulnerability and reports it, they get paid. It’s cheaper than a breach. Sometimes a lot cheaper.”
What to calculate:
- Estimated loss from a data breach or DDoS
- Drop in user trust or traffic after an incident
- Bug bounty payouts
Case 2.3: You’re burning money on servers
Red Collar: “Optimizing infrastructure is often a goldmine. Just identifying unused compute can cut costs. Even a 1% reduction in server load adds up fast.”
What to calculate:
- Monthly server costs
- Cost of investigating optimizations
- ROI of shaving X% off usage
3. Cleaning: Kill the cruft
Refactoring isn’t always about adding. Sometimes it’s about taking out the trash: dead code, outdated APIs, whole sections no one uses anymore. Especially important for long-lived products.
Case 3.1: Legacy code that slows everyone down
Product experience: “That old function that ‘doesn’t do anything’? It’s still costing you. Developers touch it by accident, fix bugs that don’t matter, or get stuck trying to understand it.”
Red Collar: “In agency work, we see this less often, but when we do — we track edits to unused code over time. If the noise hits a threshold, it’s time to clean house.”
Case 3.2: Outdated APIs can be a liability
Red Collar: “Aging APIs are a security risk. Over time, you end up with Frankenstein services — still working, but full of holes.”
Product experience: “Mobile apps with legacy versions make it tricky — you can’t just yank an API. So we dig deep to understand real usage before pulling the plug.”
What to calculate:
- Risk level of the old API (especially if tied to payments or user data)
- Cost to keep it running
- Infra load it adds
Case 3.3: Removing entire sections or services
Red Collar: “Big projects grow new features like weeds. Eventually, some sections are just dead weight — but they still eat QA time, confuse users, and slow you down.”
Product experience: “Sunsetting parts of a product is a visible change — users notice. So timing, communication, and measuring traffic are key.”
What to calculate:
- Dev or QA time spent on the old section
- Number of user visits
- Impact on SEO or navigation
TL;DR and Takeaways
Not all refactoring is equal. Cleaning is cheap but often necessary before a migration. Migration is costly but essential for future growth. Optimization can pay for itself in performance and security.
Ideal order (when applicable): Clean → Migrate → Optimize.
To make the call:
- Identify what’s broken or expensive
- Match to the refactoring type
- Look for blockers (e.g. need to clean before migrating)
- Do the math
- Commit, execute, and prep for the next phase
Red Collar’s mini-checklist:
- Are your pages slow, legacy code piling up, bugs multiplying, or security standards falling behind? Then yep, it’s time.
- Not every project needs all three types — MVPs might skip cleaning, for example.
- Think ahead: what’s your stack, your hiring pool, your infra spend going to look like in 6–12 months?
- Let numbers guide your strategy — not gut feelings.
Refactoring isn’t about “clean code.” It’s about running leaner, safer, and faster — so you can build what matters instead of putting out fires.
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