AI Builders Save Small Businesses $850 as Web Dev Gigs Fall 59%

The numbers behind the shift

The headline figure comes from a survey of 201 US entrepreneurs commissioned by Bluehost. It is a small sample — roughly 6.9 percentage points of margin at 95% confidence — so treat the exact 53% as a direction, not a census.

Even with that caveat, the direction is hard to argue with. More than half of the business owners surveyed said they had built their site with an AI website builder rather than a developer or agency. Among those who did, 85% said their site would have turned out differently without the tool — which is a polite way of saying they would have paid someone else to make it.

The savings are the part that will get repeated: $850 and about 32 working hours per project on average. For a one-person shop, that is not a rounding error. It is a used van, a month of ad spend, or simply the difference between having a website this quarter and not having one at all.

The Freelancer.com data lines up almost too neatly. Website design postings fell 59% between Q2 2024 and Q3 2026. PHP dropped 59%, WordPress 58%, HTML 55%. Graphic design fell 43%, while data entry actually rose 16% — a useful reminder that automation does not hit every category at the same rate.

Business owners still do the editing

The most interesting finding is not that AI builds the site. It is how much human work remains after the first draft.

Only 9% of respondents published the AI output untouched. Sixty-one percent revised the content, and 60% changed the visuals before going live. That is not a hands-off workflow; it is a faster first draft with the owner acting as editor, copywriter and art director.

They also stay in the loop afterwards. Ninety-four percent kept using AI for other business tasks after launch, but 54% wanted to review every proposed site change, versus 30% comfortable letting the tool act alone. And just half were willing to tell customers their site was AI-built — a gap between private enthusiasm and public disclosure that the industry has not really addressed.

Satisfaction, at least, is high: 97% reported being at least moderately satisfied, with 72% strongly positive. Thirty-four percent said traffic rose and 31% reported better sales or revenue, though self-reported numbers like these deserve a raised eyebrow.

What this means for freelance developers

The survey does not prove AI caused the drop in gigs, and the Freelancer.com figures cover one marketplace. But the categories hit hardest — template-driven WordPress, PHP, static HTML — are precisely the work an AI builder handles competently.

That is the uncomfortable part for anyone who built a career on five-page brochure sites. The bottom of the market is thinning, and it is thinning fastest where the work was most standardized. The developers least exposed are the ones doing custom integrations, performance work, accessibility, e-commerce logic and maintenance — the jobs where a generated draft is a starting point, not a deliverable.

There is also a quieter opportunity here. Hosting and domain setup were among the tasks business owners least wanted to hand to AI, with 21% naming them as unlikely to be outsourced. Someone who sells setup, security, backups and ongoing care — rather than page-building — is selling exactly what the AI-first owner still wants to buy.

The broader pattern matches what we are seeing elsewhere: AI adoption is racing ahead at small firms while the labor-market effects land unevenly. UK small businesses are now paying for AI at a rate that would have seemed implausible two years ago, and the same forces squeezing freelance web work are showing up in enterprise budgets too, as Accenture's Claude spending cap illustrates.

Availability and pricing

AI website builders from Bluehost, Wix, Squarespace, Hostinger and GoDaddy are available now in the US, UK and EU, typically bundled with hosting at roughly $10–$30 per month depending on the plan. The $850 average saving in the survey is a comparison against agency or freelancer quotes, not a listed price, and it will vary widely by project.

The AI website builder is not replacing the web developer wholesale. It is replacing the first draft, the template install and the five-page brochure site — and charging $850 less for the privilege. Developers who move up the stack will be fine. Those who don't should probably start learning what their clients actually can't do without them.