Building your website with AI: what to know before you decide

By Gecko Studio · updated October 2026

One hour, zero euros and a finished website. It is the headline repeated by TikTok videos, viral LinkedIn posts and the advertising of platforms such as Lovable, Wix AI or Squarespace AI. And technically it is not false: in an hour you can have a site online, generated from a couple of written prompts, without touching any code.

The problem is what that headline leaves out. What happens in month six, when you try to get your site to appear in Google. When you want to add a second language. When you change provider and discover the site is not portable. When a potential customer finds you on their phone and the page takes five seconds to load.

Every month at Gecko Studio we hear from businesses that have already been through that experience. So this article is not trying to convince you of anything: it aims to help you decide with the full picture before you start, not after.

What exactly are these platforms and how do they work?

We are talking about a group of tools that have matured a great deal over the last twelve months: Lovable, Wix AI, Squarespace AI, Webador, Hostinger AI, Framer AI and similar. They all share a pattern:

1. You describe your business in plain language, as if telling a person.
2. The AI proposes a ready-made site (design, copy, sections).
3. You adjust it by asking for changes or using a visual editor.
4. You publish it on a domain provided by the platform, or connect your own.

The difference between them lies in what happens to your site afterwards. Lovable hands the site over in a form you could, with some effort, move to another provider. Wix AI and Squarespace AI keep you inside a closed system: the editor is comfortable, but the site lives inside them and cannot be taken out. Webador and Hostinger AI work in a similar way, aimed at small local businesses.

That difference looks like a detail, but it conditions everything that follows.

What they promise versus what you get

The marketing of these platforms makes one reasonable promise and one exaggerated one.

The reasonable one: you will have a visually decent website in very little time, without hiring anyone. That is true. The result is similar to having bought a good template.

The exaggerated one: the site will rank in Google, grow with you and serve your business for years. Here the crack appears. A website is far more than its appearance. It is how it is built inside, how its pages are organised, how fast it really loads on your customer's phone and, above all, how far it can adapt to what your business will need in two years. All of that sits outside what you ask the AI to do.

What is yours and what is not

Before talking about Google, check something more basic: what happens to your site the day you want to change something important.

• You are tied to the provider. In most cases the site cannot be taken off the platform. If tomorrow you want to move it elsewhere or ask an agency to work on it, you start from scratch.
• The site lives on their servers, not yours. If the platform raises prices, changes the rules or disappears, your site depends on that decision.
• Your site goes only as far as the editor goes. What the platform offers works very well for the standard. When your business needs something specific (a price calculator, a link to your customer system, a form that asks different questions depending on the answers), you find the editor does not reach and the available add-ons are whatever the provider decides.
• When something breaks, nobody has your project in their head. If a form stops sending or an image does not load on mobile, there is no professional who knows your site. There is general support that replies in hours or days, following a standard script.

These four points are not fatal for every project. They are for those that depend on the website to win customers in the medium and long term.

The six SEO risks you cannot see at a glance

This is the part that changes the most decisions once it is properly understood, because it directly affects whether Google will bring you customers.

1. Google does not understand a well-built site and a flat one in the same way. There are ways of organising the code so that a search engine understands exactly what is a heading, what is a menu, what is an article and what is secondary information. Most of these platforms generate a site that works, but inside it is all at the same level. For an informational blog that is not critical. For a site competing to appear for specific searches, it is.

2. The extra information you give Google is very basic. When you see a Google result with review stars, expandable FAQs or a product price underneath, it is because the site has passed Google extra structured information. AI platforms implement that information in a very basic, automatic way, with no scope to fine-tune it. You lose enhanced visibility in the results.

3. The real speed on your customers' phones is not the one you see. The site seems fast when you open it on your computer with a good connection. But Google measures the real experience of the people who visit: on their phone, on their connection, in their conditions. These platforms tend to fall short there: they load heavy elements, generic animations and layouts that are not optimised for each device.

4. Your page addresses are rigid. The way a site's pages are organised and named (what you see after the domain, for example /services/local-seo/) is one of the most important and least understood ranking levers. These platforms leave very little room to define short, clear, well-structured addresses, and even less to reorganise them as your business evolves.

5. If your business works in several languages, be prepared. If you work in English and another language (or more), telling Google which version to show to each user, translating addresses properly and keeping each language as a solid site in the search engine's eyes is where these platforms are weakest. There are solutions, but not at a professional level. If you target several markets, our guide to international SEO audits shows what is involved.

6. The day you want to leave, you lose almost everything. This point ties the rest together. If you decide to change platform, you take your texts and little else. The addresses change, old links break, and the authority you have built up in Google is diluted. It is the most expensive hidden cost of the whole operation.

The costs that do not appear on the product page

The headline price is misleading. It is worth looking at the real cost over one and two years:

• The monthly subscription rises in steps. The starter plan covers the bare minimum. When you want to use your own domain, remove the provider's branding, connect your professional email or have more pages, you move up a plan. The price multiplies easily.
• Good designs and blocks are paid for. The nice template is usually in the higher tier, as are specific functional blocks.
• Connecting to other tools has small print. If you want to link your site to your customer system, your preferred payment gateway, your email tool or your booking system, expect to find that some connections exist, others do not, and others only on higher plans.
• Translations are usually extra. If you need your site in several languages at a professional level, it is normally an additional module.
• Support that actually solves things costs more. Basic support is by chat or generic email. Support that fixes a specific problem on a Saturday afternoon, when your site has stopped accepting bookings, does not exist on the starter plan.

A project that apparently costs nothing a month can end up at €50-150 a month depending on the provider, not counting the time you or your team spend configuring and maintaining it.

When it IS a sensible decision

Not every project needs a site built by an agency. There are scenarios where an AI platform is the right call:

• A first version to test an idea. You want to validate a business before investing seriously.
• A one-off page for a campaign. A site for an event, a temporary promotion or a specific launch that will last a few months.
• A personal project with no budget. Something experimental where minimum cost weighs more than long-term planning.
• A business that does not depend on the website to win customers. If your customers come by recommendation, word of mouth or channels other than Google, and the site is just a showcase, an AI platform may be enough.

In all these cases the decision is coherent: the cost is low, the risk is low and what you gain lies elsewhere.

When NOT

There are also scenarios where an AI-built site ends up costing far more than it seemed to save:

• Businesses that depend on Google to bring in customers. If Google is your main channel or you want it to be, the technical limitations translate into customers who never arrive.
• Businesses that work in several languages. Tourism, international companies or those with customers in several countries need a serious language solution that these platforms do not handle well.
• Online shops with a large catalogue or complex rules. Products with variants, stock control, different prices per customer, a link to your internal system. The basics work; the serious stuff does not.
• Regulated sectors. Health, finance, law, any sector with privacy or accessibility requirements. It is easier to comply when you control how the site is built.
• Businesses with many connections to other tools. Bookings, customer system, internal system, stock management. The more connected your site is to the rest of the business, the less room you have to depend on a closed editor.
• Businesses planning three or more years ahead. Any business that expects to grow over several years ends up leaving the platform. The cost of that exit is usually greater than the initial difference.

Is your website's role the real question?

The decision to build a site with AI is almost always framed as "AI or agency". That is the wrong question. A far more useful one is: what role does my website play in the business? Almost everything else follows from the answer.

A site that works as a business card, so people who already know you can check a phone number or opening hours, has little to lose from a quick solution. If it fails or looks generic, the damage is small because nobody relied on it to find you.

It changes completely when the site must bring in customers who do not yet know you. Then things start to matter that no tool solves by itself, because they depend on decisions about your business:

• Which pages should exist and which specific search each one is built for. A generated site tends to spread the same lukewarm content everywhere.
• What is promised and what is not. Fluent text can claim things about your service that are not true, and nobody notices until a customer reads them.
• Who owns what was built. Before starting, know whether you will be able to take your content, domain and structure with you if you ever change tool.

A practical rule: if you build the site yourself with AI help, review every sentence as if it had been written by an intern with no experience in your sector. It is quick and well-intentioned, but it does not know your customers or what you are not willing to do. This is also why we warn about silent false successes in AI: output that looks right and is not.

The 8 questions to ask before you start

Before opening Lovable, Wix AI or any other, answer honestly:

1. How many visitors do you expect to reach your site from Google in the next 12 months?
2. Do you need more than one language at a professional level, or is one enough?
3. Does your business depend on the website to win new customers, or is it more of a showcase?
4. Which external tools do you need to connect to the site today, and which might you need in two years?
5. Are you prepared to start from scratch if the platform raises its price, changes policy or you decide to switch?
6. How much of your or your team's time will go into configuring and maintaining the site each month?
7. Who will solve a critical problem for you on a Friday at nine in the evening?
8. Have you worked out the real cost over two years, not just the first month's price?

If your answers make clear that the risk is low and what you gain is speed, go ahead with AI. If they leave the long term open, it is worth pausing to think.

If in doubt, ask before you start

The most expensive part of a technical decision is usually having to correct it six months later, when you have already invested time, money and learning in an option that did not suit your case. In our experience most of those corrections could have been avoided with a twenty-minute conversation beforehand.

If you are weighing up building your site with AI and want an honest second opinion, get in touch: at Gecko Studio we offer a free twenty-minute consultation with no commitment. We will tell you when we think your case fits an AI platform and when it does not, with concrete arguments about your business. If you decide a professional build is the better route, see our web design services.