From Prompt to Website: How AI Website Builders Are Reshaping Web Development

Imagine Jane, a graphic designer with no coding background, sitting down full of ideas. With an AI website builder, she can now create a great-looking, fully functional website in less than an hour. What used to feel impossible is now a creative process. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Mistral are changing work in many fields. Developers get quick answers, and content creators can launch projects or draft blogs in seconds. These uses show AI is quickly becoming essential for speeding up and broadening content creation.

As these tools become more common, we’re seeing AI make an even bigger difference by removing barriers in creative web development. While some people think of AI as just a text generator, today’s tools help users turn their ideas into real things like music, designs, or websites. Still, AI works best with simple tasks and basic code. It can have trouble with bigger or more detailed projects unless people step in to help. Sometimes, it struggles to keep a consistent style or understand the full context. In this blog, we’ll look at how these tools make web development easier for everyone, even without technical skills.

No-code tools breaking the barrier

A lot of creative people get stuck because they don’t have the technical skills to build their ideas. AI website builders help by letting anyone turn ideas into websites quickly, without spending a lot of time, money, or needing special skills. This fast way of going from idea to website is sparking more digital creativity and making it easier for new people to get started.

To these tools, English, Dutch, HTML, and CSS are all just text. They let people build websites without needing much technical knowledge. The results might not be perfect, but they’re a solid starting point, and sometimes that’s all you need. Some people call this ‘vibe-coding, getting a first version out quickly, then making it better later. This approach helps designers and developers move fast from idea to working site. As AI improves, the websites it helps create will also improve.

Even with all these improvements, AI website builders definitely have limits. You might run into problems when trying to add advanced features or keep your brand looking unique. However, there are ways to personalize your site. For instance, adding custom CSS can help tailor the look and feel of your website to align with your brand. Incorporating third-party plugins or applications can also expand functionality, providing features that go beyond the basic offerings of an AI website builder. Experimenting with different design templates and adjusting them to meet your needs can foster a unique appearance. By knowing what AI can and can’t do, you can set realistic goals and find the right mix of AI assistance and your own creative touch.

Looking ahead, the future of web development will likely involve even more AI, with smarter tools capable of anticipating user needs and handling complex tasks automatically. This next wave will blend the roles of designer, developer, and user, making collaboration and idea generation easier than ever. To understand these shifts, it's important to look at the larger industry trends driving adoption.

Tracking Industry Trends

To see how AI website builders are changing things, we need to look at bigger industry trends. By studying lots of data and watching how quickly people start using different platforms, we can see how AI is shaping web development. These trends help both users and developers understand where things are going.

With data from over 360 million websites spanning 4 years, we quickly spot trends in web development. From WordPress to Shopify, each platform leaves its mark on the site code. Our data shows a notable rise in AI website creation tools, as the chart below reveals.

Framer

We can observe a significant increase in Framer websites over a three-year timespan. Framer managed to reach a valuation of $2 billion while raising $100 million in its latest funding round. It is loved by the design community because of its flexibility and its interface resemblance to Figma. Beyond its design-first approach, Framer stands out for allowing designers to seamlessly transition from static mockups to fully functional websites without the need for complex code. This accessibility has positioned it as a tool of choice for startups, agencies, and creators who value both speed and creative freedom.

Wix

As things move forward, big platforms like WIX are adding their own AI tools to keep up, leading to competition over which tool will power the most websites worldwide. When we look at WIX’s growth, it’s clear that AI-based tools such as Framer and Durable are growing fast. Still, even though Wix has a huge user base, it’s hard to say if all their growth comes from using AI tools, as it is well within the boundaries of normal growth.

The interest of WIX in AI developments is evident in the recent acquisition of Base44 for a staggering $80 million in June 2025. Base44 is a no-code platform that helps with creating applications based on input prompts. Zooming in on the adoption of Base44, we can see the justification for WIX acquiring them, given their solid growth within one year.

Durable

Durable leverages the power of generative AI to allow entrepreneurs, freelancers, or small businesses to create a complete website. Unlike traditional website builders, Durable positions itself as an end-to-end growth platform by offering integrated tools such as CRM, invoicing, and marketing automation directly within its ecosystem. Durable began gaining traction alongside the 2023 AI wave and rapidly established itself as a go-to solution for businesses seeking speed and simplicity. In the chart below, we can observe that since the launch of its AI-driven platform,​ growth has been significant ever since. Note: Since Durable was launched in 2023, we can see that the detection start date is later than that of other charts.

Vercel​

Another notable showcase for adoption is the widely recognized company Vercel, the creator of Next.js. Vercel provides frameworks and cloud infrastructure that enable developers to quickly create production-ready products. Vercel was already widely known before the extreme growth in the AI market, but they also heavily focus on AI products, creating services such as v0 and their own AI SDK. v0 is a “prompt-to-production” AI tool that allows developers and non-developers to quickly create products. In the chart below, we can see that since the inception of v0 in 2023, Vercel's online growth has been significant and accelerating, indicating that the proper implementation of AI into design applications has caused an acceleration in user growth.

To sum up, AI website builders are more than just tech tools. They open up new ideas and make web development possible for more people. As AI improves with the increase in computing power, tweaks to a model or improvements in training data remove obstacles, giving creators more opportunities. If you want to see what’s possible, try an AI website builder this week. You might be surprised at how easily you can turn your ideas into reality.