A website built by AI: what you get and when you need a developer

In 2026, building a website with AI became almost as easy as writing a message. You describe what you need, and a few minutes later you get a page with a design, buttons and text. Yandex launched the Vibecraft service for this, Bitrix24 has its own Vibecode, and the approach got a name: vibe coding.

Which leads to a fair question from a business owner: why pay a developer if AI builds a website for free?

I build websites, and most of my colleagues use AI today: according to the Stack Overflow survey, 84% of developers already work with it or plan to. So I will answer honestly. For some tasks AI is enough, and for others you get a nice-looking shop window that brings no requests. Let us see where the line runs.

Vibe coding in plain words

You do not write code. You explain to the AI in ordinary words what you want, look at the result and ask for changes. The term was coined in early 2025 by Andrej Karpathy, one of the founders of OpenAI, and a year later it became a mass phenomenon. In September 2026 the Higher School of Economics hosted the first international vibe coding conference in Russia: more than 450 participants from 19 countries.

A Bitrix24 survey showed who does it: for 81% of vibe coders programming is not their main job, 44% are entrepreneurs, and 73% say that thanks to AI they were able to stop using developers. At the same time only 11% check the security of the result by hand. Keep in mind that the survey was run by a company that sells vibe coding itself.

What AI does well

A prototype. Quickly show an idea, test the structure, discuss it with a partner. According to Yandex, Vibecraft builds the first version in about 10 minutes on average.
A website from a ready layout. The founder of a development studio described on vc.ru how she tried different approaches to her studio's website. The breakthrough came when she gave the AI a ready layout: with a clear structure it stopped guessing and quickly put the base together.
A simple business-card website. The CTO of an IT company built his company's HR website with AI and described it on Habr: about three days of pure work, two weeks including approvals. He called a one-page coffee shop website with a menu and an address the ideal case for this approach.

If that is the kind of page you need, AI will do the job.

Where the problems start

The difficulties are usually not in what you see on the screen but in what is hidden underneath.

1. Copy

AI happily writes "innovative solutions for business": phrases that fit any company and tell the customer nothing. The author of the HR website on Habr ended up rewriting all the copy himself, and not a single AI-written line remained in the final version. The studio founder on vc.ru also rewrote the copy by hand.

2. Requests

A nice form may send requests nowhere. In the same Habr example the contact form looked finished but was not connected to anything: that needs a server side, and in the end the author simply left contact details. So the first question for any website is: where does a request go? To email, to a CRM, to a manager's messenger, and is it saved somewhere if something breaks?

3. Search engines

Many popular AI website tools, especially foreign ones, build the page right in the visitor's browser. On its first visit a search robot gets an almost empty page without text or headings. Google can finish building such pages, but it does so later, and a new website may wait a long time to be indexed. AI crawlers such as ChatGPT's do not build such pages at all: for them the website is empty.

Checking is simple: turn off JavaScript in the browser and reload the page. If the headings and text disappear, a search engine may not see them either.

For comparison: my website is built on Astro, and pages are delivered ready-made. A search engine does not need to build anything. I wrote more about this in the article on technical SEO.

4. Security

This is the most unpleasant part. In 2026 researchers checked 200 published applications built by AI and found at least one vulnerability in 91% of them, with two thirds of the findings rated serious. Most often these are access errors: one user can see someone else's data.

And this is not just theory:

in spring 2026, for 48 days the popular Lovable service let anyone with a free account read other projects' code and the passwords to their databases;
in summer 2025 an AI agent of the Replit service deleted a project's production database, even though it had been explicitly told not to touch it during a code freeze. The database was eventually restored with a rollback, even though the agent itself insisted that recovery was impossible.

If the website only has a menu and an address, the risk is small. If it accepts requests or payments or stores customer data, a mistake is expensive.

5. Russian law

AI does not know the Russian requirements for websites. It may add a "Sign in with Google" button, English labels such as "Contact us", a single consent checkbox for everything and Google Analytics. In 2026 all of this can lead to fines. I cover it in detail in the article Website fines in Russia in 2026.

"But hasn't vibe coding replaced developers?"

It is not that simple. In 2025 the research organisation METR ran an experiment: experienced developers solved real tasks with and without AI. With AI they worked 19% slower, although they themselves were sure they had become 20% faster. A follow-up study in 2026 did not give a clear answer either.

According to the Stack Overflow survey, 46% of developers do not trust the accuracy of AI answers. The main complaint of 66% is solutions that are "almost right, but not quite", and 45% say that debugging such code takes a long time.

AI is neither the developer's enemy nor a replacement, but a tool. The question is who checks the result and is responsible for it.

Three paths and what they cost

1. Build it yourself with AI or an AI website builder. Free or a few hundred rubles a month, plus your time. Suitable for a business-card website, testing an idea or an event page.

2. A website builder plus a specialist. According to studio estimates, a landing page on a builder costs RUB 30,000-80,000. Suitable when you need a neat standard website without complex logic.

3. A turnkey website. With me a landing page starts at RUB 30,000 and a multi-page website at RUB 60,000. According to studio estimates, a corporate website on the market costs from RUB 100,000 to 800,000 depending on complexity. Suitable when the website has to bring customers from search, pass requests to a CRM and comply with the law.

There is also a sensible middle path: build a prototype with AI and then hand it to a developer to make it work properly. Vibecraft, for example, lets you take the project's code and pass it on to developers. The Bitrix24 journal describes exactly such a case: an entrepreneur built a website with bookings and payments in a week, tested it on the first customers and only then hired developers to refine the details.

How to check an AI-built website in 10 minutes

Text without JavaScript. Turn off JavaScript in the browser and reload the page. Can you see the headings and text?
A request. Send a request through the form. Did it arrive, and where?
Indexing. In Yandex Webmaster and Google Search Console, see how many pages of the website are indexed.
Consent. Does the form have a separate consent checkbox and a link to the privacy policy?
Buttons and language. Is there a "Sign in with Google" button or English text without translation?
Phone. Open the website on a smartphone: does it load quickly, are the buttons easy to tap?
A copy. Do you have a copy of the code and all requests outside the service where the website was built?

If the answer to at least two points is "no" or "I don't know", it is worth showing the website to a developer before investing in advertising.

Frequently asked questions

Can I build a website with AI for free?

A business-card website, yes. But the domain, the hosting and, above all, your time still cost something, and a website that has to bring requests usually needs further work.

Which service should I choose in Russia?

Among Russian options: Vibecraft from Yandex, Vibecode in Bitrix24, and AI assistants in the Tilda and Craftum builders. Many foreign services, such as Cursor, v0 and Bolt, do not accept Russian bank cards.

Why can't search engines find my AI-built website?

Most often for three reasons: the page is built in the browser and the robot sees it empty, the pages have little useful text, and there is no sitemap. And any new website needs time before search engines get to know it.

Is it safe to accept payments on such a website?

Only through a proven payment service and after a specialist has checked it. The website should not store card data at all.

My website was already built with AI. Should I redo it?

Not necessarily. First check it with the list above. Often it is enough to connect the forms to a CRM, fix how pages are delivered to search engines and put the consents in order. That is cheaper than starting from scratch.

Summary

AI does a good job with the visible part of a website. Requests come from the invisible part: pages that search engines can see, forms that reach the CRM, legal compliance and data protection. For a coffee shop's business-card website AI is enough. For a website your flow of customers depends on, you need a person who checks the result and makes it work properly.

A check of an AI-built website: whether search engines can see it, whether requests arrive and whether it complies with the law. Send the website address. Refinement and ongoing support are described in website support and development. If you would rather start from scratch, there is a turnkey landing page with technical SEO and requests passed to a CRM, from RUB 30,000. Contacts are on the page Roman Mikhailov, developer.