Not a week seems to pass without at least one of the best website builder platforms adding a new AI feature to its toolkit, making it easier than ever for anyone to create, launch, and manage a website.
But now that building a website is as easy as writing a sentence and clicking a button, where does that leave the agencies that previously offered the highly technical skills needed to launch a site?
Earlier this week, I was invited to attend Duda’s customer summit in Amsterdam. Duda is a website building platform that has been purpose built with website professionals in mind, making it one of the best website builders for agencies on the market.
During the event, I had the chance to talk to everyone from agency owners to the Duda co-founders, giving me a unique perspective on how AI is really impacting website building professionals.
So, will AI end the website agency as we know it? Below you will find what Itai Sadan, CEO and Co-founder of Duda, had to say about the topic.
Itai Sadan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Duda, a professional website builder for agencies and SaaS Platforms. Under Itai’s leadership, Duda rapidly expanded its professional website builder product suite with an emphasis on empowering web professionals with cutting-edge tools to help them create beautiful conversion-driving websites at scale. To date, Duda hosts more than a million active websites that have been built by over 22,000 customers globally. Itai’s expertise in the online presence and web design space has been cited by USA Today, Forbes, Inc., HuffPost, TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, and more. He is a regular speaker at industry events hosted by such organizations as Localogy, CloudFest, and SIINDA. Itai has a BSc in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Ben Gurion in Israel.
As Editor (Website Builders), Owain leads on all website building content at TechRadar. Throughout his career, Owain has worked for and run his own successful website and marketing agencies. During his time with TechRadar, Owain has interviewed key executives from leading website builders including Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and Webflow.
In a recent press release, Duda claimed that agencies must evolve from service providers to strategic partners. What specific capabilities should agencies be focusing on in order to survive and thrive in the next 5 years?
The future isn’t about being a website factory; it’s about helping businesses grow smarter, faster, and more sustainably.
Agencies that want to survive and thrive over the next five years must shift from simply building websites to becoming true strategic partners for their clients. That means focusing on digital reputation management, enabling businesses with AI-driven tools, and embracing consultative services that look beyond the website to the entire business.
Agencies need to think holistically about growth, offering digital marketing strategies that directly drive SMB success, while also orchestrating the right mix of technologies—including AI—to increase productivity and deliver measurable outcomes. The future isn’t about being a website factory; it’s about helping businesses grow smarter, faster, and more sustainably.
With 50% of websites built on Duda now using AI, are traditional methods of website building becoming obsolete?
AI isn’t replacing the art of website building. If anything, it’s amplifying it.
At Duda, we’ve embedded multiple AI assistants into the website building process, from creating copy and optimizing SEO to automating workflows and gathering client content, so builders can work faster and smarter.
But the real magic happens when agencies infuse that efficiency with creativity and strategy. Without that human touch, 10,000 accountant websites generated by AI would all look the same. At the end of the day, websites need to stand out, be discovered, and build trust. In an era where E-E-A-T is more important than ever, it’s the human expertise guiding AI that ensures every site is not only functional, but truly unique and credible.
As AI makes it faster, easier, and cheaper to build websites, how can agencies continue to create value and drive profits in a world where making a website is as easy as typing a sentence and clicking a button?
Clients aren’t paying for the time it takes to build a site anymore; they’re paying for outcomes, strategy, and expertise.
AI is undoubtedly transforming how websites are built, making the process faster, easier, and more cost-efficient—but that doesn’t mean agency pricing will go down.
Clients aren’t paying for the time it takes to build a site anymore; they’re paying for outcomes, strategy, and expertise. As small businesses face increasing complexity across digital channels, the value of an agency that can simplify, strategize, and drive results becomes even more critical.
AI allows agencies to do more with less; streamlining operations, automating tasks, and focusing their human creativity where it matters most. Ironically, in a world where building a site is as easy as typing a sentence, agencies that embrace AI to deliver smarter, more comprehensive services may be in a position to deliver, and subsequently charge, more, not less.
With AI helping automate much of the work traditionally done by entry level employees, how do you see agencies nurturing junior talent in the coming years?
The reality is that it’s going to be harder for entry-level employees to break into the industry, because many of those traditional first jobs, like drafting and reviewing content, can now be done by AI.
The way forward is for aspiring talent to educate themselves on these tools and arrive not just ready to learn, but ready to add value. Agencies will be looking for people who can bring ingenuity, innovation, and fresh approaches to leveraging AI in ways that more seasoned professionals may not yet have embraced. The next crop of junior hires won’t be trained from scratch, rather, they’ll prove they can elevate the work from day one.
Your MCP server lets users manage sites through AI assistants like Claude. Are you worried that Duda could become a backend service whilst AI assistants become the primary interface? How do you plan on continuing to offer value to your customers in this case?
We’re not threatened by new interfaces. On the contrary, we embrace them.
We’re not threatened by new interfaces. On the contrary, we embrace them.
Whether it’s AI assistants like Claude, voice interfaces, our own UI, or direct API access, we want to empower users to work in the way that’s most natural and productive for them.
The value Duda delivers isn’t just in how users interact with the platform, but in the platform itself; where the sites live, scale, and succeed. Our mission is to support the creation of more websites, and our incentives are fully aligned with that goal, no matter what tool or assistant gets the job done.
What are the biggest opportunities agencies should be looking to take advantage of in the coming months?
As AI continues to reshape the way people search and discover information, agencies have a massive opportunity to step up and provide clarity to their clients navigating this new landscape.
Just like Zynga capitalized on early Facebook to scale rapidly, there’s a similar moment happening now with AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. These tools are the new gateways to customer discovery. Agencies that understand what people are asking these models and craft content that aligns with those questions have an opportunity to leap-frog their competition by becoming the default brand that these models recommend.
Are there other exciting updates to Duda you are currently working on that you can share with us?
One of the most exciting developments we’re working on is Copilot, our own native conversational assistant embedded directly within the Duda Editor.
Unlike external AI tools, Copilot is deeply integrated into the platform, blending the intuitive power of natural language with the precision of our drag-and-drop interface. It exists in context, understands the Duda ecosystem out of the box, and makes building beautiful, high-performing websites even faster and easier. We’re incredibly bullish on the value this will unlock for our power users.
Beyond Copilot, we’re doubling down on AI discoverability, investing in everything from LLMs.txt to schema optimization and ongoing research—all with the goal of maximizing how AI can elevate the performance and discoverability of every Duda site.