With so many people saying AI site builders are going to eat WordPress’ lunch, I had to share my take.
A lot of people are excited about using AI for website creation. If you’re in that camp, some part of you must buy into the idea that:
- “Legacy tools” are a bottleneck to a creator’s success.
- Shortening the time it takes to launch is a game-changing differentiator.
That view assumes something I don’t think is true.
It assumes creators are sitting on massively brilliant business ideas and the only thing holding them back is tooling and time.
The real problem is much more depressing: most creators are not sitting on brilliant business ideas. They are sitting on ideas that are … meh.
Launching faster cannot fix a weak offer. A new way to build online will not rescue something no one actually wants.
The people I work with are not blocked by access to tools. They already have more tools than they know what to do with.
They are blocked because they are in their own heads about what they are creating. Or because they are trying to build something far too big for v1. Or because they skipped the unglamorous work of validating whether the thing should exist at all.
AI can absolutely help shape and frame an offer. It can be incredibly helpful for people with zero experience launching things. It can lower the barrier to getting started, especially when the only thing most creators feel comfortable spending is their own time, not their dollars.
But AI does not raise the quality of your idea.
I think 2026 will see an explosion in things that get launched. But it will not bring the same explosion in things that succeed.
The people who build meaningful online businesses were never bound by tooling choices. Not before AI, not now. They find a way through iteration and adaptation. By cutting what is not working and doubling down on what is. And they keep doing that long after the novelty of a fast launch wears off.
