AI website builders: an honest look
An AI website builder can turn a sentence into a site while you watch. I design sites for a living, so you might expect me to dismiss that, and I do not. These tools are useful, and they also have limits that the demos do not show.
What does an AI builder actually do?
You describe your business in a few lines, and the tool produces pages: a layout, headings, paragraphs and pictures. Behind it is usually a library of sections that the tool selects and fills in. The speed is real. What you receive is a reasonable first draft of a typical site for a typical business of your kind.
Where is it useful?
When you need something online today, when you want to see your idea as pages before investing in it, or when you would otherwise have no site at all. It is also a good way to discover what you want. Reacting to a draft is easier than describing a site from nothing, and that reaction is valuable to bring to a designer later.
What does it not know?
Your business. It knows what businesses like yours generally say, so that is what it writes. It does not know why customers choose you, which service earns the most, or what people ask before they buy. The text reads smoothly and says little. Check every sentence, because a tool can also state things about your business that are simply not true.
Why do the results look alike?
Because they are assembled from the same parts by the same logic. A site that resembles many others is fine when your visitors only need an address and opening hours. It is a weakness when the site has to make someone remember you or trust you over the alternative. The tool gives you an average. Standing out is by definition not average.
What should I check before relying on one?
The same things as with any builder. Can you use your own domain? Can you edit every part afterwards, or only regenerate it? Can you add what you will need later, such as a store or a second language? Can you take the content out if you leave? And who looks at the site on a phone and corrects what the tool got wrong?
Does it replace a designer?
It replaces the blank page. It does not replace the decisions: what goes first, what is left out, what your photos should show, how the site handles the awkward parts of your particular offer. These tools will likely keep improving. The judgement about your business still has to come from someone who has asked about it.
How I handle it
If you have made a draft with an AI tool, send it to me. It is a useful way to show what you have in mind. From there I design the site in Figma around your real content, and you approve the design before the build starts. You get the dashboard and edit the text and images yourself, and support runs 180 days from the day the site goes live. Tell me about your project and what the draft got right and wrong.
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