Why I Rebuilt My Squarespace Website with AI

It’s 2026, and AI is now part of my everyday work.

You can use it to ask random questions, find ideas or work out how many legs a butterfly has. But what interests me most is using it practically to make my job easier.

As a PPC freelancer, I use AI to help with different parts of my work. I don’t trust it enough to leave everything running automatically, but it helps me get things done quicker.

Recently, I took that a step further. I moved my website from Squarespace to a custom website built with AI.

The whole process took roughly a week. There was plenty of back and forth, and getting it live was more complicated than I expected. However, now it’s running, it’s saving me time and should reduce my annual website costs considerably.

Here’s why I did it, what I used and what I’ve found so far.

Why I wanted to move away from Squarespace

My previous website was built on Squarespace, and I still recommend it if you want a relatively straightforward way to build and manage a website.

That was why I chose it in the first place. I found it simple to use, and it gave me plenty of options without needing to build everything myself.

However, as I started using AI more throughout my work, the manual parts of managing my website became more noticeable.

For example, I could dictate a blog post in my own words and use AI to organise it into an article. But I still had to take that content and manually put it onto the website.

There were also changes I wanted to make that either weren’t possible within my setup or involved more manual work than I wanted.

I’m always looking for ways to streamline things. Having AI prepare the work, then spending time copying it across myself, felt like a process I could improve.

At the time, I couldn’t find a suitable Squarespace connection for the AI workflow I wanted to use. That helped push me towards building something I could control more directly.

The yearly cost was another reason

My annual Squarespace invoice was £244.80.

That isn’t necessarily unreasonable for a platform that gives you the website builder, hosting and other features together. But when you run a business, it makes sense to look at whether you’re still getting enough value from what you pay for.

I already had a ChatGPT Plus subscription that I used throughout my work. So I decided to see whether I could use it to build my website as well.

What I used to build the new website

Around August 2026, I decided to give it a go.

There were three main tools involved, plus the company I used for my domain:

• ChatGPT and Codex: I used these to help write and change the website code.
• GitHub: This stored the website’s code and files, along with a history of changes. GitHub explains repositories here.
• Cloudflare: I used this to get the website online. It provides services for deploying and hosting websites. Cloudflare’s documentation covers its website services.
• Porkbun: This is where I purchased my domain. I’ve been happy using it for that.

If you’ve heard the term “vibe coding”, this is broadly what I mean: describing what I want to an AI coding tool, letting it produce the code, then working through changes until the result does what I need.

It sounds straightforward when you describe it like that. Getting everything working together took more effort.

Having an existing website gave me a starting point

One advantage I had was that my website already existed.

I wasn’t starting with a blank screen and asking AI to invent everything. I already had a layout, content and pages that I could use as a reference.

I asked it to recreate the layout of my existing website, which gave me a rough first version.

It wasn’t perfect. The blog formatting was a bit strange, and there were things that needed changing. But it gave me something recognisable to work from.

If you’re starting from scratch, you have more decisions to make. You need to know what pages you want, what they should say and how the website should work. Asking AI to “build me a website” doesn’t give it all that information.

Keeping the existing URLs mattered

Because I also work in SEO, I wanted to be careful about the move.

One of my priorities was keeping the existing page URLs wherever possible. I didn’t want the new website to look right while leaving the old links pointing to pages that no longer existed.

Recreating the design was only part of the job. I also needed to think about how the existing website would carry over to the new one.

How long did it take?

Roughly a week.

There was a lot of back and forth: asking for changes, checking the result and explaining what still needed fixing.

I also ran into usage limits while working with the AI tools, which slowed things down at times. The work was covered by the subscription I already had, so I didn’t pay extra specifically for the build.

The most difficult part was getting the website live.

I was used to managing a website through a platform. Learning my way around GitHub and Cloudflare was a different experience, and even the AI guidance didn’t always make it straightforward.

If you’re considering doing something similar, that’s the part I would be prepared to spend time on. Producing a first version of the website and getting it working properly online were very different stages for me.

What has improved since the move?

Now the website is live, the benefits have outweighed the difficulties for me.

My expected website costs are much lower

Compared with my £244.80 annual Squarespace invoice, I currently expect the direct running costs of the new website to be around £20 a year.

Here’s the rough comparison for my own setup:

The £244.80 is an actual invoice; the £20 is my estimate for the new setup, rather than a confirmed full year of bills. This compares the old platform invoice with my expected new website running costs. Domain renewals and any paid extras need accounting for in your own comparison.

OpenAI lists ChatGPT Plus at US$20 per month, which works out at US$240 over 12 monthly payments. That is its published dollar price, rather than a statement of my UK bill; local pricing and applicable taxes can affect what you pay.

I already used Plus for work before rebuilding the website, so that subscription exists on both sides of my comparison. I haven’t counted it as a new website expense.

If you were buying an AI subscription specifically to build and maintain a website, you would need to include it in your total. There’s also the time spent building it, which was around a week in my case.

I have more control over changes

With a website builder, what you can change depends partly on the platform and how your website is set up.

Having access to the code gives me more flexibility over the layout and functionality.

That doesn’t mean every idea will be easy to build. But I now have more scope to ask for a change and work towards it.

Adding content involves less manual work

This is one of the biggest improvements for me.

I can explain a blog topic in my own words, have AI help organise the copy and then have that content added to the website’s files.

That removes much of the copying, pasting and formatting I previously had to do.

I still need to check the content and the finished page. But the process of getting from my initial thoughts to an article on the website is much quicker.

Technical fixes are easier to work through

I use Ahrefs for my SEO work, including identifying issues on my own website.

Previously, fixing something could mean working out how to make the change within Squarespace and then doing it manually.

Now I can use AI to help investigate the issue and make the relevant code changes.

The changes still need checking, but it’s made that work easier to manage.

What were the downsides?

The setup was the main one.

Getting the website built, connected and live could be an absolute hassle at times. There were technical parts I hadn’t dealt with before, and it wasn’t always obvious what needed doing next.

Learning GitHub and Cloudflare also took time. I wasn’t familiar with either, so I had to get comfortable with them while trying to finish the website.

That won’t suit everyone.

If you want to log in, edit a page and let a platform handle most of the technical side, I can still see why you would choose Squarespace.

I’m also only about a month into using the new website. So far, I haven’t found another major downside, but that could change as I spend more time maintaining it.

Was rebuilding my website with AI worth it?

For me, yes.

The initial setup took more effort than I expected, but I now have a website that fits better with how I work. Adding content is quicker, making changes is more flexible and my expected annual running costs are lower.

I already used AI throughout my business, so this felt like a practical next step.

I wouldn’t say everyone needs to replace their website builder. Squarespace worked well for me for a long time. But once the manual work and limitations started getting in the way, building something custom made sense.

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