“With AI” covers four different jobs
Most guides answer this question as though there were one method. There are four, they produce genuinely different things, and picking the wrong one is how people lose a weekend. Before any advice about prompts, you need to know which route you are on.
The difference is not the model doing the work. It is what you are handed at the end: a finished site at an address, a folder of files you have to host yourself, a template with your words poured into it, or a codebase you now maintain. Those are four different Saturdays.
The table below is the whole decision. Everything after it assumes you took the first route, because for a normal business or personal site that is the one that ends with a website rather than a project. If you want the long version of how that route works, the AI website builder page is it.
The four ways to build a website with AI, side by side
| Route | What you end up holding | What it assumes you can do | What free means there | What it hands off, and to whom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| An AI website builder 8B, Hostinger, Durable, Wix AI |
A designed, hosted site at an address you can hand out | Describe a business in a sentence | Usually free to design; publishing, a real domain or removing someone else’s branding is the paid line | Checkout, bookings and stored customer records, to a service you connect |
| A general chat model ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini |
HTML and CSS pasted into a chat window | Save files, buy hosting, upload them, fix what breaks | The chat may be free. Hosting, the domain and your evening are not | Hosting, publishing and every future edit, back to you: there is no editor and no publish button in a chat window |
| AI inside a classic builder Wix ADI, Squarespace |
A template with your words poured into it | Learn that builder’s editor afterwards, because you will be in it | Wix’s free plan gives a wixsite.com subdomain and puts a Wix advert at the top of every page | The look, to whichever template it started from, which is the one other people picked too |
| An AI app builder Lovable, Bolt.new, v0 |
A working codebase you deploy and own | Read code, debug it, deploy it, keep it running | Metered. Lovable gives 5 build credits a day capped at 30 a month, v0 five messages a day, Bolt.new a million tokens a month | Nothing, which is the point and also the cost: you own the code and you keep it running |
Free-tier details checked September 2026 on each vendor’s own pages; this category changes its limits often, so treat the shape as stable and the numbers as perishable.
Six questions to ask before you pick an AI tool
Reviews age badly and rankings are bought. These six answers do not move much, and you can check every one of them in about a minute on any tool you are considering.
Can you see a result before making an account?
If a tool wants an email before it shows you anything, you are agreeing to its quality sight unseen. The ones confident in the output tend to show it first.
Whose name is on your page?
Free plans are often paid for with your header. A builder’s advert or a subdomain in the address tells every visitor which plan you are on.
Can you get the HTML out?
Export is the difference between a website you own and a rental. Check it before you invest an afternoon, not on the day you want to leave.
What happens if you stop paying?
Does the site go offline, lose its domain, or keep working with a badge on it? Every builder answers this differently and almost none of them answer it on the pricing page.
Is the output a website or a project?
Some tools hand you something live. Others hand you a repository. Both are legitimate, but only one of them is finished when the generating stops.
Does it start from a template?
Ask what the first draft is made of. If the answer is a template with your text in it, the ceiling on how distinct your site can look was set before you typed anything.
What kinds of websites you can make this way
Worth answering before the steps. A page is very good at explaining something to a stranger and getting them to act, which is most of what a small site is for. The last column is the practical half: the service each kind of site usually sits next to, so the page does the convincing and something purpose-built handles the transaction.
| Kind of site | The one job it has | Put this in the brief | What you connect alongside it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A one-page business site | Make a stranger phone or email you | Trade, town, and the single action you want | A checkout or payment link, once you sell something. The page makes the case and hands over |
| A portfolio | Get the work looked at before the biography | Who you are pitching to, and that work comes first | A gallery or file service if some work is private. Public work needs nothing extra |
| A restaurant or café | Menu, hours, and how to find the door | Size, style, and whether you take bookings at all | A reservation service, if you take bookings. The page is where people find you and decide |
| A trade or local service | Prove you are real, nearby and reachable | The area you cover and what you charge for | Whatever you already use for the diary and the invoices. The site is the front of the shop |
| An event or announcement | One date, one place, one action | The date, the venue, and the ask | A ticketing page, when the event sells seats. Free events need nothing but the details |
| A personal or CV site | Be findable by your own name | What you do, in the words someone would search | Nothing at all. This is the easiest case there is |
The pattern in that column is worth noticing: the connected service is almost always one you already use, and the site’s job is to get someone to it wanting to be there. That is a smaller job than building software and it is the one that decides whether the rest happens.
How to make a website with AI, start to finish
Assuming the first route, this is every step between an empty screen and an address you can put on a card. About twenty minutes, of which four are spent typing.
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1. Settle three things
What the site has to accomplish, who arrives, and the one action a visitor should take. Not a plan, three sentences. Everything else is changeable later, which is the honest advantage of building this way.
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2. Describe it in one line
The section below is entirely about this, because it is the only step where what you do changes the outcome dramatically. Around thirty words, made of facts rather than adjectives.
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3. Read what came back, properly
The draft looks finished on arrival, which is exactly why people publish weak ones. Six checks are listed further down and they take under a minute.
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4. Replace the invented parts
Prices, hours, claims, photographs. Generated copy fills gaps confidently and does not flag which numbers it made up. This is the longest step and no tool can do it for you.
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5. Add pages only when you have something to put on them
One good page beats five thin ones, and a first site rarely needs more than a home page, something about you, and a way to get in touch. Menus with empty rooms behind them cost trust.
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6. Publish, then check it as a stranger would
Publishing is a button, not a project: hosting and a certificate come attached. The hour after it goes live is worth more than a week of tweaking before, and the last section of this guide is what to do with it.
How to write the sentence that does the work
This is the second step, and it earns a section of its own because it is the one place where a beginner and an expert produce visibly different results using the same tool. A brief works when it contains things that could only be true of you.
Most tools call this a prompt. This guide calls it a sentence on purpose, because the word carries the instruction. A prompt can be a page long and often is, complete with a preamble telling the machine what profession to imagine itself in. None of that helps here, and the length is what does the damage.
Adjectives are the trap. “Modern”, “clean” and “professional” describe roughly nine million websites, so they steer nothing. Nouns steer: what you sell, where you are, who buys it, what the visitor has to be able to do.
| A weak brief | Why it produces nothing | The same brief, usable |
|---|---|---|
| A modern website for my business | Contains no fact. Every output is a guess, so you get the average of all businesses. | A one-page site for a two-person accounting practice that files tax returns for freelancers |
| A clean, professional site for a restaurant | “Restaurant” is a category of thousands. Nothing chooses between a canteen and a tasting menu. | A neighbourhood pasta place, twenty covers, no bookings, menu changes weekly |
| A portfolio website | No audience, so no hierarchy. The work and the biography end up the same size. | A portfolio for an illustrator pitching to children’s book publishers, work first, contact one click away |
| Something like Apple | Names a look you cannot use, made for a product you do not sell. | Serious and quiet, lots of space, one photograph, no more than three colours |
Two habits worth keeping. Say what the visitor must be able to do, because that decides the layout more than any adjective: “they need to see prices without scrolling twice”. And stop at about thirty words. Longer briefs do not get more specific, they get more contradictory, and the contradictions are resolved by something that is not you.
How to tell a good first draft from a bad one
The step nobody teaches. The draft arrives finished-looking, and finished-looking is not the same as good. Six checks, in the order that matters.
Read the first line only
Cover the rest of the screen. Does that line tell a stranger what this is and who it is for? If it is a slogan rather than a fact, everything under it will be vague too.
Count the requests
How many things is the visitor asked to do before scrolling? More than one and the page has no opinion about what matters.
Hunt the invented facts
Hours, prices, years in business, a founder story. Every number on the page has to be one you supplied, and none of them will be marked.
Check it at arm’s length
Lean back until the words blur. You should still see one dominant thing and then supporting things. If everything is the same weight, the layout is decoration rather than structure.
Open it on a phone
Most visitors will. Long headlines break differently and a two-column layout can become a stack of unrelated boxes.
Ask what you would remove
If nothing comes to mind, look again. There is almost always a section that exists because a page was expected to have one.
What the AI cannot know about your business
The division of labour that decides whether the finished site is true. The generator is good at shape, rhythm and hierarchy. It knows nothing about your business and it will not say so.
Anything with a number in it
Prices, opening hours, lead times, headcount, the year you started. If you did not supply it, it is decoration that looks like a fact.
What you are actually good at
Every business claims quality and service. The specific reason people recommend you is not inferable from your industry, and it is usually the best line on the page.
Your photographs
The real room, the real work, the real face. One honest photograph beats a page of arranged stock and is the fastest way to stop looking like everyone else.
Anything with legal weight
Refunds, guarantees, licences, qualifications, delivery terms. Read every such sentence as if a customer will hold you to it, because they will.
The practical version: let it write the structure, then replace every claim with something you would be comfortable defending on the phone.
Asking the AI for a second version
Follow-up prompts work the same way the first one did. Describe the problem, not the remedy, because the remedy is a guess about a system you have not seen.
“Make the heading smaller” assumes the heading is the fault. “The top of the page takes too long to get to the point” describes what you noticed and leaves room for a better answer than the one you had in mind, which might be shorter copy rather than smaller type.
Change one thing per prompt and look at the whole page after each pass. Design decisions interact: shrink the headline and suddenly the photograph below it is too heavy. Batch five instructions into one request and you will not know which of them caused the thing you now dislike.
Where free stops, honestly
This belongs here, before you invest an afternoon, rather than in grey text at the bottom.
In this category “free” means one of four arrangements. Free to try until a countdown ends. Free if you accept somebody else’s name in your address and their advert above your headline. Free but metered, in credits or tokens that run out mid-afternoon. Or free to build and paid to publish. None is dishonest, but they are not interchangeable, and which one suits you depends entirely on whether this site has to exist in public or merely has to exist.
On 8B it is the fourth. Designing is genuinely free and not a trial: describing a site, watching it get built, restyling it, changing your mind about the whole approach twice, looking at it on your phone. What costs money is putting the result at an address the public can type, with hosting and a certificate attached. That is $9 a month billed yearly, and the same plan is what exports the full HTML and CSS if you would rather host it elsewhere.
The tells that make a site look generated
People cannot always say why a page feels machine-made, but they notice, and they trust it less. The signals are consistent and every one is avoidable at the brief.
| The tell | What causes it | What to say instead |
|---|---|---|
| Three benefit boxes with icons | The default answer to a brief that did not say what matters. | Name the one thing worth knowing and ask for it to be the biggest thing on the page. |
| Copy that could be any company | Nothing in the brief could only be true of you. | Give it two facts a competitor could not copy. |
| A headline that is a mood | Adjectives in, adjectives out. | Ask for a headline stating what you do, in the words a customer would use. |
| Everything the same size | No hierarchy was requested, so nothing was subordinated. | Say what should dominate and what is allowed to be small. |
| Stock photographs of nobody | Placeholders survive to publication. | Replace them with your own, even imperfect ones. This single change does the most. |
A page can be assembled in seconds and still look considered. What makes it look automatic is not the speed, it is the absence of a decision.
After you publish: findable, fast, readable on a phone
The part guides skip, because it happens after the screenshot. None of it takes long.
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Say what you do in the page title
The title is what a search engine shows and what a browser tab says. “Home” helps nobody. Your trade and your town in six words does most of the local SEO a small site ever needs.
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Search your own name after a few days
If nothing comes back, the words a person would actually type are probably missing from the page. That is a copy problem, not a technical one.
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Open it on a real phone
Yours, outdoors, one-handed, on a patchy connection. Different from a narrow browser window on a desk in every way that matters, especially the photographs. There is more on what a phone asks of a page if that is your main audience.
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Watch one person use it
Not feedback, observation. Send the link to someone who does not know the business and notice where they hesitate. That pause is the whole usability report.
Then fix one thing rather than ten. The site is editable forever, which quietly becomes an excuse to keep fiddling instead of doing the work it advertises.
Questions about making a website with AI
Which of the four routes should a beginner take?
An AI website builder, unless you already write code. It is the only one of the four that ends with a site at an address rather than files to host or a repository to maintain. Chat models are excellent at producing HTML and terrible as a workflow, and app builders are built for software rather than for five pages about a business.
Can I just ask ChatGPT or Claude to build my website?
You can, and you will get real HTML and CSS. What you will not get is hosting, a domain, an editor, a preview, or a way to change one paragraph in three months without another round of copy-paste. It is a good route if you enjoy that part and a poor one if the website is the point.
How long does it really take to create a website with AI?
Minutes to have something complete on screen and about half an hour to have something you are willing to show people. The gap is spent replacing generated placeholders with facts about you, which is work no tool can do on your behalf.
Do I need to know anything technical?
Not on the first route. Nothing to install, no hosting to arrange before you start, no code. If you can describe your business to a stranger in a sentence, that is the whole skill requirement, and the sentence is what this guide spends most of its time on.
Is it actually free, or free until something?
It depends on the arrangement, and there are four of them: time-limited trials, free with someone else’s branding on your page, metered credits, and free to build with publishing paid. On 8B it is the last one. Designing has no timer on it; putting the finished site at a public address is $9 a month billed yearly.
What should I write in the first sentence, the prompt?
Facts that could only be true of you: what you do, for whom, and what the visitor needs to be able to do on arrival. Skip adjectives like modern or professional, because they apply to almost every site ever made and steer nothing. Around thirty words, which is why this guide keeps calling it a sentence rather than a prompt.
Will people be able to tell it was made with AI?
They will if the brief was vague, because vagueness produces the recognisable pattern: three feature boxes, interchangeable copy, a headline that states a mood. Specific inputs, your own photographs and a clear hierarchy remove the tells, and the table above lists the ones people react to.
Can an AI-built site rank in search?
Yes. Search engines index the HTML that gets served and do not know or care what produced it. What decides ranking is the same as always: whether the page says what a person searched for, whether it loads quickly, and whether the title describes the business rather than saying Home.
Can I edit it afterwards, or am I stuck with the first version?
You can change anything, either with a follow-up prompt or by editing the page directly. Describing the problem rather than prescribing the fix produces better second versions, and one change per prompt beats five at once.
Can I use my own domain and my own images?
Yes to both. Your own photographs are the single most effective change you can make to a generated page. A domain you own can be pointed at the published site on the Pro plan; buying the domain itself happens at a registrar and is not included, which is true of essentially every builder whatever the landing page implies.
Can it build a shop, a login area or a database?
The way small sites usually do it: the page carries the products or the service and the button, and a checkout or reservation service handles the payment and the records behind it. That split is standard, it costs less to run than software you maintain yourself, and it leaves the site doing the part it is best at, which is getting somebody to want the thing before they click. If what you actually need is software rather than a site, the fourth route in the table above is where that starts.
Write the sentence now, while it is fresh
You have just read what makes a brief specific, and that knowledge has a short shelf life. Spend it: one line about what you do, who it is for, and what a visitor has to be able to do. The rest of this page will still be here afterwards.