You Can Now Build a Website With No Code — But Should You?

You've probably heard someone say it recently: "I just built my website using AI — took me a weekend."

And honestly? That's not a lie. A wave of new tools — Cursor, Bolt, v0, ChatGPT — now let people describe what they want in plain English and get a working website back in minutes. No coding required. The internet has a name for it: vibe coding. You set the vibe, the AI writes the code.

It sounds almost too good. So what's the catch?

What "Vibe Coding" Actually Means

Think of it like this. Imagine you could walk into a kitchen, describe the dish you want, and a robot chef would cook it instantly. You didn't learn to cook. You didn't even touch a pan. But there's a meal on the table.

That's vibe coding. You type something like "build me a homepage for my yoga studio with a booking section and a warm colour palette" — and the AI spits out a real, functional website. Tools like v0 (made by the team behind Vercel) or Bolt let you do this entirely in your browser. No downloads, no technical setup.

For many people, that's genuinely exciting. And they're right to be excited.

Where It Actually Works Well

Let's be fair: vibe coding is a real breakthrough for certain situations.

If you're testing a business idea and just need something live quickly, it's brilliant. A founder I know used Bolt to build a landing page for a new service in one afternoon, ran some ads, and validated whether people were even interested — before spending a penny on a proper build. That's smart.

It's also great for internal tools. Something your team uses to track orders or log information doesn't need to be pretty or bulletproof — it just needs to work. AI tools can knock those out fast.

For a quick prototype — a rough draft you're showing to investors or testing with a handful of users — vibe coding is genuinely good enough.

Where It Quietly Falls Apart

Here's where the restaurant analogy gets useful again. The robot chef can put a meal on the table. But is it safe to eat? Is it consistent every time? Will it hold up if 200 people order at once?

That's the problem with AI-generated websites for real businesses.

Security is the big one. A website that takes payments, handles customer data, or has a login page needs to be built with security in mind — not just bolted on as an afterthought. AI tools don't think about that. They produce code that works, but they often leave doors unlocked that a professional developer would never leave open. A data breach isn't just embarrassing — in Europe, it can mean serious fines under GDPR.

SEO is another quiet killer. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — basically, how easily Google can find and understand your site. AI-generated sites often have messy structures underneath the surface that make it harder for Google to rank you. You might have a beautiful homepage that almost nobody can find.

Performance matters more than people realise. Studies consistently show that if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, most visitors leave. AI-built sites often load slowly because the code isn't optimised — it's functional, but it's a bit like a car engine that runs but guzzles fuel.

And then there's maintenance. When something breaks six months from now — and something always does — who fixes it? If you've built on a vibe-coded base, even a developer you bring in later may struggle to understand or clean up what the AI produced. It can be faster to start over than to fix it.

So When Does It Make Sense to Hire Someone?

A good rule of thumb: if the website is your business, or is central to how customers find and trust you, it's worth doing properly.

A restaurant that takes reservations online. A boutique with an e-commerce shop. A service business where the website is often the first impression a potential client gets. These aren't places to cut corners.

Think of it the way you'd think about your shop front. You could paint it yourself on a Saturday — and maybe it would look fine. But if you're on a busy street and competing for attention, you'd probably call someone who does this every day.

Vibe coding is a fantastic tool. It's just not the right tool for every job.

If you'd like a second opinion on your project, I'm easy to reach — get in touch here.