You have probably seen the ads. Type in your business name, answer three questions, and a finished website appears in under a minute. For a small business owner who has been putting off a website for two years, that is hard to ignore.
Should You Use AI to Build Your Website?
A web designer telling you every AI website is garbage has an obvious reason to say so. The honest answer is that AI has become genuinely useful for certain kinds of sites and certain parts of the job, and it is still weak at the parts that actually bring you customers.
What people mean by “using AI to build a website”
The phrase covers three fairly different things, and they carry different risks.
- All-in-one AI builders – Wix, Hostinger, 10Web and similar tools generate an entire site from a short questionnaire. You get a layout, stock imagery, and placeholder copy about your business, all in a few minutes. This is what most people picture.
- AI features inside familiar platforms – Elementor AI, Divi AI, and a growing pile of WordPress plugins add AI to a platform you may already use. You keep the underlying site and use AI for individual pieces: a section layout, a block of copy, an image.
- Using ChatGPT or Claude – Some people skip builders entirely and ask a chatbot to write their page copy, or to generate the HTML and CSS for a simple site. This gives you more control, but will require more input from you.
Where AI genuinely helps
It helps get you started. The hardest part of building a website is not the building. It is staring at an empty screen trying to decide what your homepage should say. AI is very good at producing a rough first version of something, which is far easier to react to than nothing at all.
The upfront cost is low. An AI builder subscription might cost a few hundred dollars a year. A custom site will cost you more.
It is fine for simple websites. A one-page site for a trades business that mostly needs a phone number, a service list, and a service area does not require much. An AI builder can handle that. If your customers find you through word of mouth and just need to confirm you exist, you are not the person who needs a custom build.
I use AI in my own process. I use AI for keyword research, to create the websites structure, for generating first draft copy. AI saves me time, and my clients benefit from that. Pretending I didn’t use AI would be dishonest.
Where AI websites fall short
Websites built with an AI builder all look the same. They usually have a Hero image, three feature boxes, a testimonial strip, a contact form. The site might look fine. It also looks like the site of every competitor who used AI to build their website.
AI-generated business copy tends to be generic and empty. It might say you are committed to quality and customer satisfaction. It does not say that you answer the phone on Saturdays. Specifics are what convince people, and specifics are exactly what a questionnaire cannot extract from you.
SEO gets skipped.
An AI builder gives you a site out of the box. It does not give you title tags written for the searches your customers actually type, or a sensible internal linking structure, or local business schema, or a strategy for which page should rank for what. These are not visible on the page, which is precisely why they get missed. Then six months later your website is not generating any traffic.
There is no conversion path
Most AI-generated sites describe a business. They do not move a visitor toward doing anything. There is a difference between a page that lists your services and a page that answers a customer’s real question and then makes the next step obvious. That difference is the whole point of having a site.
Accessibility and performance problems
Poor colour contrast, forms that don’t deliver your messages, images that load at full resolution on mobile, headings used for styling instead of structure. AI builders do not optimize your website for performance.
Ownership and lock-in
With most AI builders, such as WIX, you cannot export the site and move it to a different platform. They use proprietary code built specifically for their hosting infrastructure and the site will not function outside WIX.
When an AI builder is a reasonable choice
Use one if you are validating a new idea, if you need something online this week, if your on a tight budget, or if the site is only temporary while you get the business running. A basic site that exists beats a perfect site you keep meaning to build.
When you are better off hiring a web designer
- When you will depend on the website as a source of leads rather than just a business card.
- When you are in a competitive market and you need to rank higher then your competition in the local search results and AI overviews.
- When you have specific requirements like booking, e-commerce, or intake forms.
- When a bad first impression costs you a job worth more than the build.
- When you have tried the AI route and cannot work out why no leads are coming in, you should consider hiring a web designer.
The middle ground
The most sensible approach for most small businesses is not choosing between AI and a person. It is using AI for the parts it handles well and applying judgment to everything else.
That is roughly how I work. AI helps with drafts, options, and repetitive work. The decisions about structure, positioning, what the page needs to say and what it needs to leave out, those stay with me, informed by conversations with the client about their actual customers. AI is a tool. It is not the person doing the thinking.
Frequently asked questions about AI websit builders
Not for using AI as such. Google’s guidance focuses on whether content is helpful and original, not on how it was produced. What does cause problems is mass-produced, low-value content made purely to rank, which is a common outcome of AI use rather than a rule about it.
Yes, and plenty of businesses do. Just check the export situation on whatever platform you choose before you commit, so that migrating later means moving a site rather than rebuilding one.
For a small business site it typically lands in the low thousands, depending on page count, functionality, and how much of the content you supply. The more useful question is what one new customer is worth to you, and how many the site needs to bring in before it pays for itself.
Deciding what fits your business
If your website needs to do real work, it needs real decisions behind it, and those decisions come from understanding your customers rather than from an AI tool.
If you want a straight answer about whether an AI builder would work for your business, I am happy to have that conversation. Sometimes the honest advice is that you do not need me yet.
Larry is a local web designer located in Oshawa, Ontario. He specializes in building WordPress websites for service-based businesses in Durham Region, and is committed to helping his clients outrank their competition.
