Everything people say about it is true: AI has made it so that almost anyone can build themselves a website. You describe what you want, and a few minutes later you have a page that looks decent. It feels like the whole question of building websites is settled.
It is not, and that has nothing to do with whether AI is any good. AI is excellent. It has to do with what happens in month three, when you need to change a price, add a page, or the site simply stops working and you have no idea who to call.
Here is where the line sits, and when an AI-built site is perfectly enough for you.
What you actually get out of an AI tool
Tools like Lovable, Bolt or v0 generate code for you. That is genuinely powerful and it is not a trick. In a couple of hours you get something you would once have paid a developer for and waited two weeks to see.
But generated code is the start, not the finish. Someone has to put that code somewhere, maintain it, change it when you need a change, and keep the site online when something shifts under the bonnet. AI did the first step quickly. The remaining steps are still there, they are just invisible until they trip you up.
“I built it in five minutes” and “it went down in five days”
I have seen this too often to skip it.
Someone builds a site in Lovable, connects it to their domain, everything works, they share the link. A few days later the site simply goes down. The tool loses its connection, the project falls apart, or something breaks on the next edit, and the person is stranded. Not because they did anything wrong, but because they never had control over where the site actually lived. They built a site, but they did not get hosting that is theirs, an account they can return to, or a person to call when it stalls.
When your site depends on the tool it was born in still being up and still talking to your domain, you do not have a website. You have a demo that happens to be working right now.
Why a static site on a developer host rarely pays off for a business
The other common route is a static site deployed to a developer platform like Vercel. For a developer who knows what they are doing, that is brilliant. For a business owner it is a trap you do not see straight away.
These are platforms built for developers. Every content change is, in effect, a code change. You want to update a price, add a sentence or publish a blog post, and it is no longer a two-minute job in some panel, but a trip back into the tool or a call to a developer. The site looks modern and loads fast, but you cannot change it yourself, and changing it is exactly what a business site does every week.
They all look the same, just in a different colour
There is one more thing you only notice after you have seen twenty of these in a row. They all look alike. AI generates from the same patterns, so without someone directing the design you get that recognisable look: the same layout, the same kind of sections, a different colour and logo. Your customer will not consciously mind, but the sense that they have seen it all somewhere before stays with them, and it does not help you stand out.
When an AI-built site is perfectly enough
I am not going to manufacture fear where there is none. There are cases where I would tell you to go ahead with an AI tool and not spend more.
You are testing an idea. You need a page to find out whether anyone cares about what you are offering. If you do not need it to be yours forever, fast and cheap is exactly right.
You are building something short-lived. A page for one event, one campaign, one promotion that switches off in a month. There is nothing to maintain, because nothing needs to survive.
You are technical and maintain it yourself. If you know where the site lives, can bring it back when it goes down, and do not mind making edits through code, then the control others are missing is not a problem for you. In that case an AI tool is just a faster way to do what you already know how to do.
If you recognise yourself in any of these, go cheap and fast, and do not pay for infrastructure you do not need.
When you need something that holds itself together
The line is simple. Ask yourself one question: who edits this site in month six, and can they do it without going back into the tool or calling a developer every time.
If the answer has to be you, and you are not a developer, then you do not need a page that looks good today, you need a system you can change yourself tomorrow. WordPress and tools like it are not the answer because they are modern, but because you edit them from a panel, the hosting is yours, and when something breaks there is someone to call who knows exactly where to look.
That is the whole difference. AI solves your first day. The question is who solves every day after it.
Related: Who owns your website · Wix, Squarespace or WordPress
If you have already built a site in an AI tool and got stuck, or it fell apart when you tried to connect it to your domain, send us the link and what you tried. We will tell you whether it can be saved as it is, or whether it is worth moving to something you can hold on your own.