Buyer’s guide
How to choose an AI website builder.
Most website tools now say they use AI. They are still three different kinds of tool, built for three different jobs. Here is how to tell them apart, and the questions to ask before you pick one.
Three kinds of tool
The label says AI. The shape underneath decides the work.
Look past the chat box and every tool on a comparison list is one of these.
A box of parts, with an assistant
Template builders and theme-and-plugin systems. The AI fills in a template or writes a paragraph, and the site is still whatever you can arrange from parts somebody made in advance. Easy inside the set; a different job one step outside it.
An AI that builds any software
General app builders turn a conversation into an application. They can make almost anything, so they come with the controls almost anything needs: databases, deployments, keys and logs. Powerful, and more machinery than a site that people read.
An AI that builds websites
Tools made for one job. MightyBuilder is one: you describe the site, it writes every page, and you change it by asking. Because every project is a website, the dashboard only has what a website needs.
Before you choose
Seven questions to ask any website builder.
Ask them of every tool on your list, this one included. Each answer below is how MightyBuilder answers it.
Who does the work after launch?
A site is never finished: hours change, prices change, a new service starts. Find out whether a change means dragging parts around, configuring an app, or asking. Here you type what you want changed and review it before it goes live.
Can one page be different from the rest?
A page with no menu, or one laid out unlike any other, is where template systems start to fight you. Here each page is written for its job, so a different page is a sentence, not a workaround.
Can a search engine read the pages straight away?
Some tools send software to the visitor’s browser and build the page there. A search engine has to run it first, and a phone on one bar waits. MightyBuilder writes each page out in full when you publish and serves it finished.
What happens to an address when you rename a page?
Links from search results, old emails and other sites point at the old address. Ask whether forwarding it is your job. Here a renamed page forwards its old address permanently, in the same release as the rename.
What does it cost to keep the site running?
Ask what you pay every month whether or not you change anything, and what you pay for the AI’s work. Here there is no subscription necessary: every site starts on the free plan, you buy AI credits only when you want work done, and Pro is there when you want your own domain or forms.
Can you keep your own domain?
You may already own a name for your site. Connecting one comes with Pro, at no extra charge. The name itself stays with your registrar, and so does its yearly renewal.
Is it built for websites or for software?
If people sign in, pay on the site or keep data in it, you are building software and want a tool made for that. If people read it, find you and get in touch, you want a website builder, and a smaller dashboard is a feature.
Pick the tool by the job
Match the tool to what the site has to do.
A general app builder fits when
- People sign in and there are accounts to keep.
- Customer information lives in a database.
- Money is taken on the site itself.
- It is something people use rather than read.
MightyBuilder fits when
- The site says who you are, what you do and how to reach you.
- You want to change it by asking, for years, without a developer.
- It has to load fast on a phone and be easy for search engines to read.
- You would rather not maintain plugins, themes or a dashboard of settings.