AI website builders – Do They Live Up to the Hype?
Seven years ago, a then-revolutionary startup known as The Grid became hugely popular and started a crowdfunding campaign for a one-of-a-kind website builder that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to build websites. Unfortunately, just a year later, when the tool began to roll out, it became clear that it had problems, bugs, lack of updates, and more. In a few years, the company seemingly doesn’t exist anymore.
But the good news is that the idea of having and using an AI website builder persisted and evolved, so today, there are several AI website builders which can be used for easily creating beautiful websites designed specifically for you via the built-in artificial intelligence design technology. They are quick, easy to use, and smart, and will make the process of building your website much faster and effortless.
Here are the best AI website builders for 2022.
Wix ADI
Wix ADI was introduced back in 2016. Today, Wix is among the most popular and innovative website builders in 2022, thanks to the artificial design intelligence algorithm and its excellent editor, and other features.
How quick is it?
You can set up a brand new website from scratch for just about 2 minutes with the Wix ADI algorithm. All you need to do is insert the type of site you want to set up and then answer several questions regarding the name, location, and other features you want your website to feature.
Wix will then suggest the most suitable designs and retrieve any existing information from your site or social media pages.
The Wix ADI supports various website types, including online stores, blogs, portfolios, and business sites.
It is one of the best website builders using artificial intelligence algorithms to choose if you need to set up a website as quickly and easily as possible.
How easy is it to use?
It is very easy to use thanks to the provided smart tips and step-by-step website creation feature of the builder. You can then customize the different elements of your pages via the popup editor pane, which appears when you click on a section.
How customizable is it?
The AI website builder is very customizable. You can drag and drop and add or remove all kinds of sections on the page and edit the page descriptions, titles, URLs, and others.
There is a Wix advanced editor, which is their regular (non-ADI editor), which you can use to customize each page to your liking further.
What is the quality of the designs?
The suggested designs by the Wix ADI are stylish, contemporary and mobile-ready, and responsive. You can choose among a wide variety of other available themes if you are not happy with the suggested ones. You can use stock photos or add your own images if you like.
If you want to know more about drag and drop builders, check our comprehensive review here.
How advanced is the AI?
The Wix ADI is pretty smart. The builder will import any logos, contact details, and other information from an existing site and will suggest the color pallet depending on the suggested theme.
The pricing
The Wix ADI algorithm is included in all of the paid plans offered by Wix and also in the Free Plan. The prices start from $18 per month. You can find out more about the Wix pricing here.
Related content: The Best Website Builders in 2023
Jimdo Dolphin
The easy-to-use website builder Jimdo introduced its AI algorithm Jimdo Dolphin in 2017, and it helped popularize the website builder even more.
How quick is it?
With the Jimdo Dolphin AI algorithm, you can set up a new website in just 3 minutes, so it is a very quick AI website builder. You need to answer several questions, and the builder will pull out all of the information, including your business name, contact information, images, logos, descriptions, and other info available on Google Places and social media or your other sites.
How easy is it to use?
The Jimdo dolphin website builder is among the easiest to use and allows users to enter text directly in the selected section without the need to open other windows or panels for editing.
How customizable is it?
You can customize your website to meet your taste and preferences by changing the themes, adding or removing sections and content blocks, switching different elements on or off, moving them around, and more. So, Jimdo Dolphin is highly customizable.
But the provided SEO customization options are limited to setting the homepage and other page titles.
What is the quality of the designs?
All designs are professional-level and mobile responsive and allow users to edit their styles, color themes, fonts, and add animations.
How advanced is the AI?
The Jimdo Dolphin AI is smart enough to pull in your existing information from Google Places and social media, including the high-quality images from there, as well as your business description from your social media site.
Unfortunately, the AI algorithm doesn’t offer a choice of different website types like Wix ADI does.
The pricing
There is a completely free plan offered, which you can use for 5 subpages. The paid plans start from $9 per month when billed annually for the Start plan for personal sites, the Grow plan for business sites is $15 per month, and the Unlimited plan costs $39 per month when billed annually.
Short on the budget? Check our guide for the best free website builders in 2023.
10Web AI Website Builder
The 10Web AI Website Builder is the builder to use if you want to migrate your existing website to WordPress in a few minutes and a few easy steps.
How quick is it?
It literally takes 1 minute to import an existing website and migrate it into WordPress with the 10Web AI Website Builder. You just need to paste its URL, and it will be imported. You can import up to 5 pages per time with all of the content and formatting.
How easy is it to use?
Once the website is imported, you can use the Elementor website builder to customize it and fix any formatting problems.
How customizable is it?
It is a drag-and-drop and click-to-edit editor, which does require some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it will provide you with more customization options and flexibility than most of the others.
What is the quality of the designs?
Unlike the other AI website builders on this list, 10Web AI uses your own pre-existing design rather than creating a brand new design. The replication of a site in WordPress is very good, with minimal formatting needed.
Still, if you want to create a brand new site, there are some templates available on 10Web Builder but without the assistance of the AI algorithm.
How advanced is the AI?
The 10Web AI is quite smart and will import and migrate an existing website to WordPress in just a minute, replicating it almost perfectly and thus requiring little editing from your side.
The pricing
There is a 14-day free trial. The prices start at $10 per month billed annually for the Personal plan. The Premium plan is $24 per month, and the Agency plan is $60 per month.
Constant Contact
While you may probably know Constant Contact as a leading e-mail marketing platform, it does have an AI-powered site builder.
How quick is it?
Setting up a website using the AI-powered Constant Contact website builder is as fast and easy as with the other top picks on this list. You will be asked to choose a website category, and you will get the best suggestions for your website. This happens for seconds. Then you need to customize the name, logo, fonts, background, color scheme, choose your navigation style, and add your contacts. And you are done!
How easy is it to use?
It is a very simple and straightforward process, as described above, with minimal effort on your side.
How customizable is it?
When the site has been set up, you will be redirected to the Constant Contact website builder editor and can customize it. You can add pages (such as a menu, about us, contacts, and others), you can choose different prebuilt sections and features like booking, online store, or blogs. Each page can be customized easily as well.
What is the quality of the designs?
The designs are simpler and less impressive than those offered by many other website builders. They are well made but are not stunning.
How advanced is the AI?
It is smart enough to offer suitable layouts, pull in suitable images, and add relevant pages to the website depending on the type of website you specified to create.
However, unexpected and disappointing is the lack of integration between the Constant Contact AI website builder and its more popular e-mail marketing tool.
The pricing
The price for using the Constant Contact AI website builder is $10 per month. But if you want it as part of the e-mail marketing plans offered by the company, then the prices start from $20 per month for 500 contacts and the website builder. The E-mail Plus plan costs $45 per month.
Bookmark
Bookmark is a website builder which uses its AI assistant for building all of the websites. It is named the Artificial Intelligence Design Assistant (AiDA). It is fast, easy to use, and suitable for people who don’t want to spend too much time and effort creating their website.
How quick is it?
The company promises its users to help them build their website in just 2 minutes, and it delivers.
It works by asking several questions regarding the website you want, and what style and layout you prefer, and others, and then comes up with a suggested design for your website.
How easy is it to use?
The editor is not as easy and intuitive to use as those of our other top choices for the leading AI website builders for 2022. The reason is that the available customization and editing options are so many that they are slightly overwhelming.
There is a tooltip window that some users feel makes things even more complicated rather than help make the editing process easier.
And you will need to save all changes manually every time you move from one page to another.
So, Bookmark is not the easiest website builder to use when it comes to editing.
How customizable is it?
The Bookmark builder offers endless possibilities for customization of your website. You can drag and drop selected text, videos, images, and other content onto the page. You can also add other features such as event registration forms, online stores, third-party components, and more.
With the free plan, you can only edit the SEO settings on a website level, while with a paid plan, you can edit the individual pages of your website for SEO optimization.
What is the quality of the designs?
The designs are not as impressive as those provided by the Wix and Jimdo AI website builders. This means that you will most likely need to edit and make changes to the suggested design of your website. The good news is that you can ask the Bookmark AI assistant to make new suggestions for the design without having to re-enter all of the inputted information from the start of the process.
How advanced is the AI?
It doesn’t seem as smart as some of the AI assistants, as it asks a lot of questions but does not import and pull in your information from a pre-existing site, social media, or other sources. Instead, you will need to add your business name and contact information and other texts and images separately and manually.
So, if you are looking for the smartest AI website builder, you should probably opt for some of our top selections on this list.
The pricing
Bookmark offers a free plan that includes AI assistance for building a site, up to 500MB of storage, a subdomain at bookmark.com, and ads displayed on each website page.
The paid plans start from $11.99 per month for the Professional plan and $24.99 per month for the Business plan.
Sacha by Firedrop.ai
Sacha is different from the other AI website builders on our list. It is a Design Personality Engine focused on the development of a landing page that is still in a beta version. It is designed for people and businesses which need a small and simple website in a matter of seconds. Plus, it works with a chatbot, unlike the others.
How quick is it?
Since this beta AI webpage builder works via a chatbot feature, it may require more time than the others because you can answer with free-text responses to the chatbot. Still, it is a relatively quick process, which will help you end up with a ready landing page in minutes.
How easy is it to use?
The editor is simple and straightforward. There is a window with the page displayed, and when you select a section, you can choose the edit option, and a popup editor will appear. It is not as easy as some of the others, but it is still in a beta version, so we will have to wait and see how it evolves.
How customizable is it?
If you want to customize something, you will need to do so via the chatbot. This is pretty revolutionary as a concept, and the chatbot works pretty well, understanding most commands. Using the AI chatbot, you can add new sections, change fonts and colors, find suitable images, and more.
Unfortunately, the SEO options are very limited, and there are few options for optimizing the content on your new page with Sacha.
What is the quality of the designs?
The design is dependent on the design personality which you pick. But overall, they seem pretty simplistic and can have some inconsistencies. Hopefully, this will be resolved when the official AI web page builder is officially released.
How advanced is the AI?
Sacha does not pull in existing info from another site or social media like most other AI-powered website builders do. Instead, it uses a chatbot to create a page from scratch.
One of the smarter features of Sacha is the ability to search for related images directly via the chatbot.
While the idea of having a chatbot assisting you when building and customizing a website is quite smart, there is still some room for improvement.
Plus, the builder is only for a single page rather than a website, which is not a suitable solution for every need.
The pricing
The Sacha by Firedrop AI Driven Guidance offers a free starter plan, including a firedrop.me subdomain and branding.
The Pro plan costs $6.49 per month, and the Plus plan costs $20 per month and can be used for creating an unlimited number of web pages.
Perfect if you are looking for a free, easy, and fast way to create a single landing page from scratch.
Impress.ly
While Impress.ly, which is focused on mobile site and app-building, does not advertise itself as featuring an AI-powered website builder, it does promote its unique native intelligence and automagical design algorithm. The fact is that its AI feature is smarter than most of the others we have tested, but as a whole, the builder is best for mobile sites and not so good for desktop sites.
How quick is it?
Setting up a website with Imrpess.ly is easy and fast. Without even having to sign up, all you need to do is answer several questions about your site, and the builder will import the data from an existing site or your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Places pages. It will then suggest the most suitable mobile designs and add your name, logo, images, and other information.
How easy is it to use?
The editor interface is intuitive and clean. You can add, remove and edit text, images, and media items, or other content. While it does not use the popular drag-and-drop editing, Impress.ly is still very easy to use, even for beginners.
How customizable is it?
It is quite customizable. You can choose different layouts, backgrounds, and other style features, colors, and fonts. You can add maps, forms, blogs, and an online store.
What is the quality of the designs?
Since this builder is dedicated to creating mobile pages and sites, its designs resemble mobile apps with subtle animations and large buttons. The end result looks great on a mobile screen bugt not so impressive on a computer screen.
How advanced is the AI?
It is more advanced than most others. The builder will pull the information about your business or you from different social media and sources online and come up with a ready design suggestion that includes your logo, images, brand colors, information contact info, and social media feeds.
The pricing
Setting up a website is free, but you will need to choose a paid plan if you want to publish it. The prices start from $9 per month for the Starter plan, and the Business plan is $14 per month.
You can test Impress.ly and build a new site from scratch for free.
Final words
While some of these AI algorithms and features used by these website builders are quite smart and can make the website building process faster and easier, they are still not as advanced as we would like them to be.
But still, some of these tools are great options for building specific websites, such as creating mobile sites, building a landing site, or importing and migrating a site to WordPress, or simply to get you started when you are starting from scratch and have no idea of a design in mind at all.
They are affordable and easy to use but keep in mind that the AI website builder will most probably not complete the entire website for you. You will likely need to edit, customize and play around with it, just like you would with a regular website builder.
Then again, most of these AI assistants can help you get started when building your new website.
Depending on your specific needs, you may want to choose an AI website builder that offers more control over particular aspects of the website, including SEO, if you want to have the best results, improve your search engine position rankings, and increase your traffic once your site is published.
Out top-recommended AI website builder in 2022 is the Wix ADI, which is fully integrated with the regular editor offered by Wix, and which is one of the best website builder editors on the market.
