A Honest Guide to Help You Decide if You Should You Use a Website Design Company or Build a AI Website Yourself
By Rob Mackley, Founder of Red Box Web Design
I started out as a web designer myself, hand-coding sites long before ‘AI website builder’ meant anything. So when clients ask me whether they should hire a company like ours or just build their new site with an AI tool, I don’t give the answer you might expect from someone who runs a web design business. The honest answer to should you use a website design company or build a AI website yourself is: it depends on what you’re building, who’s going to look after it, and what it needs to do for you once it’s live.
AI has changed web design faster than almost anything else in our industry, and it’s changed how we work too. We use AI in our own process. But there’s a big difference between AI as a tool a professional uses and AI as the whole team used for a DIY website. This article is my honest, no-sales-pitch answer to the question I get asked most.
Should I Build My New Website Using AI?
AI Website Design Vs Website Design Company
Yes, for some businesses. No, for others.
AI website builders such as Wix ADI, Framer AI, 10Web, Durable, Squarespace’s AI tools and similar platforms can now generate a genuinely decent-looking site from a short brief in minutes. If you need a simple, low-stakes site quickly and cheaply, such as a landing page for a side project, a placeholder while you find your feet, or a very small local business with a handful of pages, building it yourself with AI is a reasonable option.
Where it gets riskier is anywhere your website has to do real work: generate leads, rank in Google and AI search results, convert visitors into paying customers, integrate with booking systems or CRMs, or represent a brand that needs to look credible against competitors who have invested properly. That’s where the gap between ‘AI made me a website’ and ‘a specialist used AI, along with everything else they know, to make me a website that performs’ becomes obvious, usually a few months in.
The Benefits of Using AI to Build Your Website
I’ll say this plainly, because a lot of agencies won’t: AI website builders are genuinely good at some things.
- Speed. A working site in an afternoon instead of weeks.
- Cost. Often free or available for a low monthly fee, versus a project fee for custom design and development.
- No technical skill needed. You answer questions or type a prompt; the tool does the rest.
- Good enough for simple needs. A one-page portfolio, an event page or a very early-stage idea you’re testing.
- Fast iteration. It’s easy to regenerate a layout or swap content while you’re still figuring out what you want.
The Downsides of AI Website Builders
Here’s the balance most ‘AI vs agency’ articles skip. AI-built sites tend to fall down in the same handful of places:
| Area | What tends to go wrong |
|---|---|
| Strategy | The AI designs from a template pattern, rather than from your customer’s journey, objections or your competitors’ weaknesses. |
| Brand | Generic layouts and stock imagery can make your website look like everyone else using the same tool. |
| SEO foundations | Technical SEO, site structure and page speed can become an afterthought rather than being built in from the start. |
| Copywriting | Generic AI copy rarely reflects your actual tone, expertise or what makes you different. |
| Conversion | Forms, calls to action and page flow are rarely tested or optimised around what makes people enquire or buy. |
| Flexibility | Custom functionality, such as bookings, calculators, integrations and membership areas, is often limited or impossible. |
| Ongoing support | If something breaks, you’re usually on your own or relying on generic support tickets. |
| Ownership | Some AI builders lock your site into their platform, making it hard or costly to move later. |
None of these are reasons to dismiss AI outright. They’re reasons to be clear-eyed about what a purely DIY build can and can’t do for you.
Will an AI Website Actually Save Me Money?
Over a single month, yes, almost always. An AI builder subscription is a few pounds versus a project fee. But most businesses don’t judge a website over a month. They live with it for two to three years, and money is only half the cost. The other half is time: yours.
On the AI side, the subscription stays cheap, but you, or someone on your team, usually become the person who fixes it. A broken layout, a form that stops submitting, a plugin conflict or a hosting hiccup is now your afternoon, an evening, or however long it takes to find the answer in a help forum.
It’s rarely urgent-sounding on a task list, but it adds up over two to three years. It’s time pulled away from actually running the business. If the site goes down or breaks in a way you can’t fix quickly, there’s no one who knows your site to call. You’re down until you solve it yourself or find someone who can.
On the specialist-built side, you’re paying, in part, to make that someone else’s problem. A fix or an edit goes to a person who already knows the site, so it tends to get sorted faster and with far less back-and-forth guessing. Downtime can also be reduced when the site is properly maintained, and when something does go wrong, there’s a clear point of contact instead of a support queue.
So, the honest two-to-three-year answer, money and time together: AI can still be the right call if you’re genuinely happy being your own troubleshooter and can absorb the odd bit of downtime. But if your time is better spent on your business than on your website, or a few hours of downtime would actually cost you customers, the ‘cheaper’ option isn’t always cheaper once you count what it takes from you, not just what it charges you.
Can You SEO an AI-Built Website vs a WordPress Site Built by Specialists?
Yes, you can technically do SEO on most AI-built websites. Many now let you edit meta titles, descriptions and basic on-page elements. But ‘can you’ and ‘will it perform’ are different questions.
A specialist-built WordPress site, or any properly coded site, usually has the edge for a few reasons. The site structure and internal linking are planned around what you actually want to rank for, rather than generated generically. Page speed and technical SEO, including clean code, proper markup and image optimisation, are built in rather than bolted on. There’s also far more flexibility for the plugins, schema markup and content structures that help both traditional Google rankings and visibility in AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews.
Many AI builders are improving here, and some are genuinely SEO-capable for simple sites. But if organic visibility and AI search visibility are central to how your business gets found, the groundwork a specialist puts in place at the start tends to save you rebuilding it later.
What If I Have a Problem with My AI-Built Website?
This is the question I think people underestimate most. With an AI builder, if something breaks, a page won’t display properly, a form stops working, or the site gets hacked, you’re generally relying on the platform’s generic support, community forums or trial and error. There’s no one who understands your specific site to call.
With a website design company, you have a point of contact who built the thing and knows how it works. Fixes, updates and changes go through a person, not a support queue. That’s not a reason to avoid AI tools. It’s simply the trade-off worth knowing before you’re mid-launch with a broken checkout page and nobody to ring.
So, Should You Use a Website Design Company or Build a AI Website Yourself – How to Decide:
AI-Built Websites Are for You If…
- You need something live quickly and cheaply, and budget is the main constraint.
- Your site is simple: a handful of pages, no bookings, no e-commerce and no complex integrations.
- You’re testing an idea and don’t yet know if it needs a proper website investment.
- You’re comfortable being your own web developer if something needs fixing.
- Ranking highly in Google or AI search results isn’t critical to how you get customers.
A Website Designer Makes More Sense If…
- Your website needs to generate leads or sales, rather than just exist.
- You want to rank well in Google and show up in AI search results such as ChatGPT and AI Overviews.
- Your brand needs to look genuinely different from competitors, rather than templated.
- You need custom functionality, such as bookings, quote calculators, integrations or membership areas.
- You want ongoing support from someone who knows your site, rather than a generic help centre.
- You’d rather get it right the first time than rebuild it properly in a year.
How We Actually Approach This at Red Box
This isn’t a false choice between ‘AI’ and ‘a real web designer’. That’s not how we work, and honestly, it’s not how most good agencies work anymore.
We offer AI-designed websites for businesses that want speed and value, with a specialist still steering the strategy, SEO and quality control. We also build fully custom, developer-coded websites from scratch for businesses that need something no template or AI tool can replicate. And, for everything in between, we customise proven templates around your brand and your goals.
The honest advice, from someone who started out designing websites himself, is to pick based on what your website actually needs to achieve, rather than what’s fastest or cheapest today. If you’re not sure which route fits your business, that’s exactly the conversation worth having before you build anything. Get in touch and we’ll give you a straight answer, even if that answer is ‘you don’t need us yet’.
Should you use a website design company or build a AI website yourself – that is a personal & business choice. But, if you want to speak to professional website designers with a team of SEO experts to get your website structure and content right, from day one, then give me a call and let’s discuss what is right for you.