We hear this in meetings more and more often, and there is an awkward thing about it: it is largely true. An afternoon really does produce a site that looks better than most company websites did in 2019. There is no point pretending otherwise, because the reader will try it and find out we were lying.
The more interesting question is a different one. Not whether something appears, but what exactly appears, what is still missing, and what the missing part will cost you. This article is about that gap. It is written to be useful even to somebody who decides to build the site themselves, because for some companies that is the right answer.
Short answer
- Design and layout are now the cheapest part of a website. A tool will produce in an afternoon what used to be two thirds of the price, and leave you the third that decides whether enquiries arrive.
- What is left: text that is true about your company, your own photos, a form that actually delivers, the required legal pages, measurement, speed and somebody to fix it in a year.
- The usual catch is not quality but being locked in. With some tools you cannot take anything out but the text and the images.
- Google does not penalise text for having been generated. It penalises content with no value, however it was made.
- For a one off event, testing an idea or a personal profile it is a sensible choice, and it is fair to say so.
- For a site that has to bring in enquiries and convince somebody about a job worth hundreds of thousands, it is not enough on its own.
What is true about that afternoon
Let us start with what these tools do well, because the list is longer than you expect and without it the rest of the article would be unfair.
- The look. Typography, spacing, colour and section layout are usually better than an average template manages. This is the biggest jump compared with a few years ago.
- The structure of an ordinary company page. The tool knows there should be a header, a section on benefits, references and contact details, because it has seen millions of sites.
- Responsiveness. It rarely falls apart on a phone, which is more than can be said for hand built templates.
- A first draft of the text. Grammatically correct, readable and usable as a starting point you can discuss.
- Speed of change. Moving sections around and trying variants takes minutes rather than days. A normal process with a supplier is slower here and will stay slower.
If a website ended there, the answer would be simple and this article would not be needed.
What is not in it yet
The awkward part of this list for an owner is that almost none of it gets done without your work. Not by a supplier, not by a tool.
Where the time on a company website goes
Composition in hours
- Design and layout13%5 h
- Text that is about your company35%14 h
- Photos and source material20%8 h
- Form, delivery, required pages10%4 h
- Measurement, search, speed13%5 h
- Fixes after the first month live10%4 h
Total 40 h
| Label | Value |
|---|---|
| Design and layout | 5 h |
| Text that is about your company | 14 h |
| Photos and source material | 8 h |
| Form, delivery, required pages | 4 h |
| Measurement, search, speed | 5 h |
| Fixes after the first month live | 4 h |
It is not that a tool could not do these things. It is that it has nowhere to get the input from. It does not know what your installation work costs, why a customer stayed with you for ten years, what your service engineer is called, or what your people actually think of the competition. Those are exactly the sentences that make somebody get in touch, and they are the only ones that cannot be generated, because only your company knows them.
The practical consequence: a site built in an afternoon looks great and reads like everybody else's site in the trade. It looks good on a monitor and does nothing in an enquiry.
We offer comprehensive solutions tailored to your needs. Our team of experts with years of experience will help you take your business to the next level.
We install ventilation systems in production halls. The smallest job that makes sense for us is around 200,000 CZK. We get to an inspection within two working days, because we have two engineers in Zlin and one in Brno.
Three kinds of tool and the one question that separates them
The question is: what do you take with you if you decide to leave. The answer splits these tools into three groups that otherwise look much the same.
| Kind of tool | What you get | What you take when you leave |
|---|---|---|
| All in one hosted site builder | Site, hosting, domain and editing in one, on a monthly fee | Text and images. The site itself cannot be moved, because it runs on their technology |
| Design tool with its own hosting | A higher standard of visuals and animation, still as a service | It varies: some allow a code export, others only the content |
| Code generator | A real project you can download and deploy anywhere | Everything, along with responsibility for hosting, updates and security |
When it is a good choice
Here is the list of cases where we would tell you to build it yourself and save the money. That is not politeness, it is experience: a hundred thousand crown website for a project that turns out to be a dead end within six months is a worse outcome for both sides.
- A one off event. A conference, recruitment for a single role, a seasonal campaign. The page lives three months and disappears.
- Testing an idea. You want to find out whether anybody wants the service before you put money into it. Speed matters more than anything else here.
- A personal profile or portfolio. One person, one page, no integrations.
- An internal tool that ten people in the company will see and nobody outside.
- Something to hold the place until the proper site exists. A temporary page with contact details beats an empty space and costs an afternoon.
They have one thing in common: nobody decides on a contract because of them and none of them pushes data into another system.
When it is not enough
The boundary is not the number of pages or the budget. It is whether the site does something or merely shows something.
- When the site has to talk to another system. Stock, attendance, accounting, prices by customer type, availability checks. Here hosted builders are at the end of what they can do and code generators are at the start of the work, not the end of it.
- When the site matters commercially. If somebody decides on a job worth hundreds of thousands based on the site, the gap between “looks good” and “convinces a buyer” is the entire difference.
- When there is a lot of content. Fifty products or twenty services need structure, management and search. An afternoon covers five pages, not fifty.
- When the site carries obligations. Accessibility, data protection and mandatory business information apply whatever the site was built with. The tool will not ask you about them.
- When somebody has to look after it. In a year a change will be needed that you will not make, because by then you are busy with something else. Who fixes it matters as much for a self build as for a supplier.
What search makes of it
There is more nonsense written about this than about anything else, so here is the substance. Google does not penalise text for having been generated. Its spam policies describe the problem as content produced at scale to manipulate rankings without adding value for readers, however it was created. Usefulness decides, not the method.
The practical conclusion is uncomfortable, though. Text that says nothing specific about your company has no value, however impeccable the grammar. It will not rise in search and, more importantly, no AI assistant has anything to quote, because there is not one verifiable fact in it. A site full of general statements is now invisible twice over.
If you build it yourself, at least do this
Eight steps that decide whether you rebuild from scratch in a year or keep building on what you have. None of them needs a supplier.
- 1Buy the domain yourself and in your company's name. Not through the tool, not through a friend. It is the one part of a website you can lose for good, and it costs a few hundred crowns a year.
- 2Rewrite the text yourself. Keep the structure, throw out the adjectives and add numbers: how much, by when, where, at what price. That one hour decides more about enquiries than everything else put together.
- 3Use your own photos, even the worse ones. A phone photo of your workshop sells better than a perfect stock shot of somebody else's office, because it is visibly you.
- 4Send yourself the form from your own phone and check the email really arrived, including the spam folder. An undelivered form is the most expensive fault on the internet and nobody can see it.
- 5Add the mandatory details: company identification, registration number, contact address and information about how you handle personal data. The tool will not add them for you and a form needs them.
- 6Turn on Search Console. It is free, it verifies through the domain and it is the only place that tells you what people found you for.
- 7Measure the mobile score on PageSpeed Insights and above all remove what drags it down: huge photos, three typefaces and a background video. That one is on the author, not the tool.
- 8Put the domain expiry date in your calendar, along with a date to look at the site again, ideally in three months. Sites built in an afternoon do not die of technical failure, they die because nobody ever came back to them.
A tool saves you the part of the work anybody could do. It leaves you the part only you can do.
How we handle it
When somebody tells us they are thinking of building the site themselves, we do not try to talk them out of it. We ask three questions and the answer usually falls out of them.
- Does the site have to talk to anything? If it only shows things, plenty of tools will do. If it has to pull prices or availability, or pass enquiries onward, we are at the start of development, not the end.
- How big is the job the site decides? On ten thousand crown jobs a difference in website quality disappears. On hundred thousand crown jobs it is the whole difference.
- Who will maintain it in a year? If a company has no answer to that, a site from us ends up the same as a site built in an afternoon.
When the answer is that you should build it yourself, we say so. A company that outgrows its site within a year comes back on its own. That is a better deal than a website somebody orders out of inertia and then never uses.
And what we do differently when we take the job on: we start with content and numbers, not with the design. Design is now the cheapest part, and it would be odd to pretend otherwise.
Frequently asked questions
Can you build a company website with AI in an afternoon?
The design and layout yes, and they are often better than an average template. What does not appear in an afternoon is what decides whether enquiries arrive: text that is true about your company, your own photos, a form proven to deliver, mandatory details, measurement and speed. On an ordinary company website the design is roughly a tenth of the total time, not half of it.
Does Google penalise websites made with AI?
Not for how they were made. Google's spam policies describe the problem as content produced at scale to manipulate rankings without value for readers, and state explicitly that what matters is the value to users rather than how the content was created. In practice, though, text with no specific facts about your company has no value and will succeed neither in search nor in the answers AI assistants give.
Can I move a site out of such a tool later?
It depends on the kind of tool. With hosted builders such as Wix you cannot; their help centre says the site runs on their infrastructure and cannot be exported, so you take only text and images. Design tools vary, and code generators give you a real project you can download. This is the question to ask at the start, not after two years.
When is building the site yourself worth it?
For a one off event, for testing an idea, for a personal profile, for an internal tool, and as a temporary page until a proper site exists. What they have in common is that nobody decides on a large contract because of them and they do not push data into other systems.
Where is the line beyond which it stops being enough?
Where the site stops showing and starts doing: integration with stock or accounting, prices by customer type, dozens of products or services, more than one language, enquiries passed onward. And where business depends on it: between “looks good” and “convinces a buyer” lies the whole difference.
Do any legal obligations apply to a site I built myself?
Yes, and they are the same as for a site from a supplier. Company identification, information about how personal data from forms is handled, and depending on the size of the company the accessibility requirements as well. The tool will not ask you about them and responsibility sits with whoever runs the site, not whoever built it.
What do I do with a self built site I have outgrown?
First find out what can be taken out of it. With a hosted builder, expect to take the text and images and rebuild the rest. Rescue the list of addresses people arrive at from search so they can be redirected, and only then start thinking about how the new site should look.
Summary
- An afternoon really does produce a site that looks good. That is not marketing, that is where things stand.
- But the design is the smallest part of the work. Text, photos, delivery, measurement and upkeep stay with you.
- A tool has nowhere to get the one thing that sells: specific facts about your company.
- The most important question is not quality but what you take with you if you want to leave.
- Google does not penalise how text was made. It penalises text with no value, and that text gets into no AI answers either.
- For an event, an idea or a personal profile, building it yourself makes sense. For a site meant to win jobs worth hundreds of thousands, it does not.
- If you do build it yourself, at least do those eight steps. They decide whether you start again from zero in a year.
Not sure which group you are in
Tell us what the site has to do and how big the work is that depends on it. We will tell you whether an afternoon covers it or whether it needs somebody who answers for the result. If an afternoon covers it, we will say so and send you the eight steps.
Sources
Checked in August 2026. Tool terms change quickly, so check them again for the tool you pick.
- Wix help centre: exporting or embedding your site elsewhere
- Google search spam policies, the section on scaled content abuse
- Act No. 424/2023 Coll. on accessibility requirements, covered in our article on accessibility
Splitting the tools into three groups is ours rather than official, and it exists to help you decide. Individual tools move between the groups as they add features.