Can AI build your business website? What it misses

Can AI build a website for you?

Yes, an AI tool makes a working website in an afternoon: you describe what you do and for whom, and the tool makes a design, text and the code. For a website with one purpose, such as a business that wants to be found or an event people have to be able to book, the result is often good enough. Take, for example, an accountancy firm that wants a website of three pages: what it does, for whom and how clients get in touch.

Developers use AI tools when programming too, which makes having a website built cheaper than a few years ago; what a website costs works it out. That is also what AI is good at: writing what is already known faster. The hours go into what AI is not good at: understanding your business, choosing and checking.

What are the options?

A website can be made with AI in three ways:

Way	What you get	What you do yourself	What it costs	Suits
A website builder with AI	A website on the builder’s platform	Describe, adjust, connect a domain	A monthly subscription	A simple website you want to change yourself
A chat assistant that writes the code	Files you have to put somewhere	Find hosting, check everything	Little, plus hosting and your time	Someone technical enough who wants to take the site with them
A developer who uses AI	A website that is designed, built and checked	Supply text and facts, decide	From €995, once	Someone who does not want to check and maintain it

What does AI do well, and what does it not do well?

AI is good at four things. It makes a first layout in minutes, so you see what you want and what you do not. It writes text in a certain tone and gives variants to choose from. It makes standard parts, such as a menu, a contact form and a page for a service. And it rewrites what you already have.

AI is not, or not reliably, good at seven other things:

Your facts: opening hours, prices, certifications and your history. A model writes what sounds likely, not what is true, and Google says checking AI text by hand before publication is crucial.
The legal details: your KvK number, VAT ID and privacy statement are not added automatically, or are added wrongly.
Accessibility: a design that looks good can be unusable for someone who uses only a keyboard or cannot see the screen.
What comes along in the background: a tool sometimes places statistics, fonts or chat widgets from other parties, and then you suddenly need a cookie banner and a processing agreement.
Ownership: in whose name is the domain, who owns the account, and can you take the website with you if the tool stops?
Maintenance: the part that stops working a year later is yours.
Distinctiveness: text from the same tool looks alike, and a visitor who sees three such websites remembers none.

What should you check before you go live?

Ten points, each a few minutes to an hour:

Every fact and every number: address, times, prices, names, claims. Read everything as if a competitor were checking it.
The business details: your name, address, email address, phone number, KvK number and VAT ID, on one page with a link at the bottom of every page.
The form: where does what someone fills in end up, and who sees it? Put a reference to your privacy statement next to it.
Cookies and third-party parts: open the website in a private window and look at what is loaded. If something needs consent, remove it.
Accessibility: walk through every page with the Tab key. Can you get everywhere and see where you are? Do images have a description, and is the text easy to read against the background?
A real phone: open the website on a phone, not in a window you have made smaller.
Title and description for each page: these are the words that appear in search results, and Google names them explicitly as things to check.
The domain name: is it in your company’s name?
Taking it with you: can you download the website as files and put it somewhere else? If not, you are stuck.
Who maintains it: who does the updates, and what happens if the tool stops or raises its price?

For points 2 to 4, what must be on a website says what the law asks.

What does it cost?

You pay in money and in hours. This is how you work it out:

subscription × 36 months + your hours × what an hour of yours is worth

Say the accountancy firm makes a website of three pages with a website builder at €25 a month, and spends 20 hours on it itself, with an hour worth €50. That is 36 × €25 = €900 plus 20 × €50 = €1,000: €1,900 over three years.

Having a five-page business website built on a ready base design costs from €995, plus maintenance, domain and hosting afterwards; the cost breakdown works those amounts out. Over three years that is in the same range as the €1,900 of doing it yourself, but you have nothing to check and no subscription that ties you in.

Count on 10 to 30 hours of your own time for a website of three pages: the brief, the adjusting and checking the ten points above. Adjusting takes more time than making the first version.

Want to set that €1,900 against a real price for your own website? Request a quote, so you can weigh your own hours against the build cost.

When is AI enough?

AI is enough in four situations. You want one page or three: who you are, what you do and how people reach you. You want a temporary page, for an event, a campaign or a sign-up. You want a test, to know whether people respond before you have something built. Or you want to be able to change the website yourself, and then a website builder with AI is often better than a website a developer builds for you.

When is AI not enough?

AI is not enough in four other situations:

People sign in, book or pay. Security, permissions and payments are then the work, and a mistake in them is expensive.
You process customer data that goes beyond a name and an email address.
The website has to connect to a system you already use.
You cannot check it. Someone who cannot judge whether the website is right depends on the tool.

If you are looking for a website with a sign-in or a booking, first read what a web application is.

Do visitors to your website need to sign in, book or pay? Then request a quote and describe what they have to be able to do.

Will a website made by AI be found in Google?

Google judges whether a page is useful, not how it was made. On its page about AI text, Google calls AI useful for research and for structure, and spam when it is used to make many pages that add nothing (Google). For your website that means: write the pages your customers need, with what you know, and let AI help with the wording. A website of ten pages that you have checked and added to does better than a hundred pages from a tool.

How do you give an AI tool a good brief?

The more you put in, the less you have to repair. A good brief says who the website is for and what a visitor has to be able to do: call, book, request something. It names which pages you want and what each has to say, and gives your facts the way you want to see them: address, times, what you do and do not do. It gives the tone, with an example of a text you like, and says what must not be in it: client names, promises you cannot keep, prices you do not state. And it ends with a request: have the tool write down which assumptions it made, because that is where your mistakes are.

Frequently asked questions

Can ChatGPT build a website?

Yes, for the text and the code. Hosting, the domain name, the checking and the maintenance stay with you. ChatGPT and the GDPR says which data you keep out of a chatbot.

Which AI can make a website?

Website builders with AI built in and chat assistants that write code both exist; the table above sets them next to a developer who uses AI. Which you choose depends on what you want to do and check yourself.

Is a website made by AI free?

The tool sometimes, a domain and hosting never. What it costs shows that the largest amount is your own hours.

How much time does it take?

Count on 10 to 30 hours for a website of three pages, most of it in adjusting and checking.

Can I switch to a builder later?

Yes. The text and images go with you to a builder. If your website consists of files that are yours, a builder can also take over the code. If it runs on a builder’s platform, you usually start again, with your text as the starting point.

Is a website made by AI secure?

A website with only text and a form has little to attack, provided the form is protected against spam and misuse. A website with a sign-in or payments is only secure once someone has checked those parts: that is where the mistakes that matter most are.

Do I have to say the website was made with AI?

The rules for an ordinary business website, which you read in what must be on a website, do not mention it. If your website has a chat function that answers with AI, separate rules for AI apply to it.

If you want us to build the website

If an AI tool is enough, you do not need us. If you want a website you do not have to check yourself, that works for everyone and whose domain name, account and source code are yours, it starts at €995 with us. Tell us in the request form what the website has to do and you get a quote with hours, schedule, price, what is not included and an estimate of the running costs.

See an example website quote first.

Want this built, or want to talk it through?

Write to us with what it is for, who will use it and when you need it. We reply within one working day.

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