Building a website with AI: what it can and can't do

Building a website with AI: two very different things

Search for building a website with AI and you'll find two kinds of offer. On one side, tools that let AI generate a website for you, such as Wix, Lovable and other AI site builders. You type what you want and within minutes there's something on screen. On the other side, web builders who use AI as a tool, then make the choices and finish the work themselves.

I belong to the second group. I build every website with AI and finish it by hand. In this article I'll tell you honestly what AI does well, what it can't do and when building a site yourself with an AI tool is perfectly fine.

What AI does well

AI has changed my work a lot in recent years. Not because it takes over everything, but because it removes a lot of manual work.

AI can also be part of your website itself, for example an assistant that answers customer questions. You can read more about that under AI on your website. Here, I'm talking about AI as a tool. It mainly saves time on these points:

• Design variants. Where I used to work out one direction, I can now show three variants quickly. Then we choose together.
• Code. Standard building blocks like a menu, a form or a pricing table are done much faster. I then check and improve them myself.
• First drafts of copy. Based on a conversation with you, AI produces a first draft. I rewrite it, and you approve everything before it goes live.
• Translations. A second language is no longer a big extra cost. Useful if your customers speak Dutch and your team speaks English, or the other way round.
• Checks. AI helps find errors, missing alt text and inconsistencies faster.

What AI can't do

AI knows nothing about your business. It doesn't know your customers, doesn't know why people choose you and has no idea which services bring in the most. Without that knowledge you get a website that looks tidy but says nothing.

These are the things I still do myself, and that an AI tool won't solve for you:

• Understanding your business. A good conversation about who your customers are and what they're looking for is still the most important part of the job.
• Making choices. What goes at the top? What do you leave out? AI gives options, not judgement.
• Checking facts. AI sometimes makes things up: a certification you don't have, a service you don't offer. Every sentence needs checking.
• Accessibility. Contrast, keyboard navigation, screen readers. AI regularly forgets them.
• Performance. Correctly sized images, no unnecessary scripts, clean code.
• SEO details. Titles, descriptions, structured data, internal links and submitting the site to search engines.
• Finishing. The small things that make a site feel professional: spacing, the mobile layout, a contact form that actually lands in your inbox.

Using an AI site builder yourself: when is that fine?

I'm not going to tell you never to use an AI site builder. In some situations it's a good choice.

Just starting out, testing whether there's demand for your service, or simply in need of an online business card? Then a site from Wix or a similar tool is fine. You pay a few tens of euros a month and you're online.

The downsides show up later. These sites often look alike, because they come from the same templates. The structure is often weak for search engines: messy headings, slow pages, little structured data. And you're locked into the platform. Stop paying and your website is gone.

What it gets you: faster and more affordable

The biggest advantage of building with AI isn't the technology. It's time. Work that used to take days now takes hours. You see that saving in the price and in how quickly your site goes live.

At truck8.dev, for example, a business website of up to 8 pages costs €1,495 excluding VAT, including copywriting and setup of Google Search Console and Bing. Extra languages are included, so English and Dutch costs the same as one language. It's often live within one to two weeks, depending on how quickly your input and feedback come in. For a broader look at prices, read how much does a website cost. Examples of my sites are under portfolio.

One caveat. The time saved should come from the tedious work, not from the checking. A builder who uses AI as an excuse to test and review less will give you a cheap site with expensive consequences.

Built the modern way: less maintenance

There's another advantage that gets mentioned less often. AI makes it easier to build a website the modern way, for example as a static site or with Next.js, instead of with WordPress.

That saves you a lot later on. A WordPress site runs on plugins that need constant updating. If you don't, the site becomes vulnerable. A modern static site has no plugins to go out of date. It loads fast, is hard to hack and needs far less maintenance. What that means for your monthly costs is covered in website maintenance costs.

Being found in Google and in AI assistants

More and more people no longer ask Google, but ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini. If you want to be mentioned there too, your website has to be easy for those systems to read. An AI site builder rarely gets this right. This is the foundation I include with every site:

• Structured data, so search engines understand who you are, what you do and where you're based.
• A clear page structure: logical headings and one topic per page.
• Fast loading, even on a phone with a weak signal.
• Setup in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing matters more than you'd think: Copilot runs on it and ChatGPT uses it for part of its search results.
• IndexNow, so new and updated pages are passed on to search engines straight away.

What to look out for when having a website built with AI

Does a builder work with AI? Fine, so do I. But ask these questions before you start:

• Who checks the copy and the facts before they go live?
• Is the site tested on mobile, speed and accessibility?
• Are the SEO basics in place, including Search Console and Bing?
• Do I get the code, or am I locked into a platform?
• Who maintains the site after launch, and what does that cost?