AI Website Building: Separating Hype from Reality

I built my business site on WordPress and often recommend it — along with tools like Jetpack and the new AI website builder — to people in my network.

I’m an experienced website designer, but I’m not a software developer. 

Vibe coding has been a fun, seemingly magical way to turn ideas into working mini-apps, but that “magic” comes with limits. The tools I’ve created work well for my internal team, yet I don’t understand the backend deeply enough to share them publicly or monetize them safely.

After building dozens of prototypes, I’ve learned that AI prototyping tools are great for fast experimentation — but some fall short in powering the backend of long-term business websites.

In this article, I’ll break down what AI site generators can do, where their limitations show up, and why WordPress.com’s AI website builder takes a very different approach.

What are AI website builders?

The term “AI site builder” refers to the use of AI tools and plain-language prompts to generate a website.

There are two major categories of these tools:

• Lightweight AI builders: Similar to Lovable and Framer, which are also referred to as AI prototyping tools. They’re great for simple landing pages or MVPs, but their limitations show quickly when you need security, SEO, integrations, or room to grow. This is what people refer to when talking about “vibe coding.”
• Full-featured AI builders: Similar to WordPress.com’s AI website builder. They package prompt-based website generation backed by the stability and proven track record of managed platforms like WordPress.

The reality is: If you want something more than an MVP or single landing page, vibe coding alone isn’t enough. 

You need a platform that can support performance, reliability, security, and growth.

The limitations of AI prototyping tools

AI prototyping tools are great for quick ideas — but not for lasting websites.

They deliver instant results: Describe what you want, and a site appears.

That speed makes them perfect for brainstorming, testing concepts, or validating ideas without friction.

Unfortunately, that’s also their limitation.

These tools hide much of the complexity behind building a dependable site for your business, making it hard to spot problems until something breaks. 

When you add new features or generate a site, you often end up troubleshooting issues you didn’t even know existed.

For example:

• You can’t see or control the underlying systems.
• Integrations break without clear reasons.
• Downtime is difficult to diagnose.
• Security isn’t guaranteed or built in.

Your website represents your brand — and you shouldn’t rely on something you can’t fully understand or maintain.

What makes WordPress.com’s AI website builder different

WordPress.com’s AI website builder gives you the “type a prompt, get a site” experience on a platform that actually scales.

What makes it special?

Your site is built on WordPress — the CMS powering 43% of the web — and hosted on WordPress.com’s fully managed infrastructure.

In other words, you get fast generation plus the customization, plugins, performance, and security needed to actually run and grow a real website.

Security

Many AI-generated sites are rife with security issues precisely because they simplify everything so heavily.

You can accidentally expose API keys, break authentication, mishandle user data, or leave vulnerabilities without knowing.

For any site hosted on WordPress.com, security and infrastructure are managed by a 20-plus-year ecosystem and a dedicated team that continually hardens code, patches vulnerabilities, and maintains platform standards.

With vetted plugins, managed WordPress hosting, and standardized best practices, most of the security risk is taken off your plate.

Performance

SEO isn’t something you can just bolt on later. Many vibe coding tool brands are realizing they need to offer SEO features, but WordPress has been building toward this for decades.

WordPress has long been considered an SEO-friendly platform because of its clean baseline code, fast rendering, and structured content. 

WordPress.com also includes managed hosting and performance-focused infrastructure across its paid plans: high-frequency CPUs, a global CDN/edge cache, unmetered traffic, and automated burst-scaling.

In other words, you’re not just getting features — you’re getting faster, more resilient hosting by default.

Extensibility

Speaking from experience, vibe coding and using external APIs or third-party services is harder than it looks, even for semi-technical users. 

Access to WordPress.com’s plugins means your site can grow with you instead of boxing you in.

You don’t have to build everything manually or worry that your integrations will silently fail.

Hosting

When using vibe coding tools, the web hosting layer is often hidden from you, so you have little visibility or control.

With these tools, if your site goes down or integrations fail, you’re the one responsible for troubleshooting, often without the tools or access needed to fix the issue.

Moreover, if you don’t know what you’re dealing with, it’s also likely that you don’t know how to get assistance at a reasonable price — costs spiral quickly.

With WordPress.com, hosting is managed for you in a way that’s optimized, secure, and monitored. If something goes wrong, you’re not left guessing — you have the peace of mind that comes with access to 24/7 support from the human Happiness Engineers.

Design

Vibe-coding tools feel instantly creative, but that freedom usually comes without structure — and if you’re not a designer, it can get overwhelming fast.

WordPress.com’s AI website builder is different. 

It lets you create websites using AI prompts, but with a real block-based WordPress foundation behind it. 

You can edit every section cleanly with blocks (alongside the AI chat), keep your layout consistent, and avoid the chaos of loose, AI-generated code.

Costs

No AI site builder stays completely “free” once you move past the free trial.

If you want to publish, update your site regularly, or add essential features, you’ll need a paid plan with any platform.

However, vibe coding (especially for a non-technical user) can obscure hidden costs like dealing with:

• Downtime
• Broken integrations
• Manual debugging
• Data exposure

A managed platform like WordPress.com reduces the likelihood of costly failures and handles maintenance for you. Once you’re happy with your AI site, you can simply pick a plan and publish it.

How to use WordPress.com’s AI builder

You start with a simple prompt: describe your idea, your tone, your brand, and your purpose.

As an homage to a blog I created after graduating college, which solidified my love for writing and SEO, I went with this prompt:

“Create a lifestyle blog called ‘ChiTown on a Dime’ for young professionals in Chicago living large on a budget. It will feature affordable restaurant reviews, budget-friendly events, insider local guides, and personal reflections on city life. Design pages for Home, Eats & Drinks, Things to Do, Living in Chicago, About, and Contact. Use a modern, minimalistic layout with vibrant photos and easy navigation. Tone should be energetic, stylish, and relatable.”

The result? 

A full block-based website that would’ve taken hours to create from scratch — not loose code you can’t maintain. 

The builder definitely understood the assignment, creating the following site with a photo of Chicago deep-dish pizza, front and center:

With the foundation in place, you can refine the site using conversational language with the AI copilot:

• “Adjust the layout.”
• “Change these colors.”
• “Rewrite this section.”
• “Suggest improvements.”

Here’s what it suggested when I prompted the assistant to show me new fonts for my site, and what it looked like to apply changes from chat:

Here’s the helpful advice it shared for making my new creation more SEO-friendly when I asked it for tips:

The AI builder gives you a full trial to create and refine your site without paying up front. 

When it’s time to launch publicly and rely on managed hosting, security, and performance, you can move to a paid plan.

Can your site grow with you?

These are the questions you should ask before choosing your ideal AI website building solution:

• Can this site evolve?
• Can it scale?
• Can it handle more pages, products, languages, or additional features?

WordPress.com’s AI website builder blends the speed of modern AI with the maturity of a platform that has supported millions of websites for 20 years. 

Your site can grow indefinitely with plugins, SEO tools, plugins like WooCommerce, and reliable hosting.

Try WordPress.com’s AI website builder for free, then publish it for the world to see with a paid plan.

Original Post https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/12/08/ai-website-building-hype-vs-reality/