Started logging hours per client site this year and the repeat work is brutal. Same site three times, once for a rebrand, twice because the template or the dev handoff boxed me in, and the rebuilds cost more than the original build. Where does your repeat work come from, templates you outgrow or edits nobody can make without you?
Print and brand designer here, been at it since 2014. Packaging, identity systems, the occasional book cover. I can design a website all day. Layout, type, hierarchy, motion, none of that scares me.
The wall is always the same thing which is the actual build. The second a client says "ok now make it live" I am out of my depth. Code, breakpoints, the dev handoff that comes back looking 70 percent like what I designed and 100 percent not mine to fix. I have lost three brand projects this year to "do you also do the website" and I had to say not really.
So I tried the AI generators everyone keeps yelling about. Won't name names. The output was fine if you squint, but the second I wanted to nudge the spacing or fix a type pairing I was either prompting a slot machine or staring at code I can't read. It is the handoff problem again except now the dev is a robot that doesn't listen.
What I actually want is dumb and specific. A canvas. I move things, I control every pixel, it looks like I made it because I did. But the responsive math and the hosting plumbing just gets handled in the background so I'm not begging a developer or a chatbot.
Does that exist or am I describing a fantasy. genuinely asking, not trying to start the AI fight in the comments.
Okay so this is a little embarrassing, but I currently run a small landscaping and yard cleanup business, with 2 trucks, its mostly just me and my brother in law. Our website was built by a friend's kid back in 2021 and we have not touched it since.
Last week I found out that the website still has my OLD cell number on it 🤦♂️I switched my numbers over a year ago, so who knows how many people called that and just gave up. It also lists prices from 2021 which are a joke now, and my wife pulled it up on her phone and half of it runs off the side of the screen, this is mortifying!!!!
I don't have agency money. A web guy quoted me $1,800 to redo it and then it sounds like I'd have to call him again every time a price changes, which, no just not going to work.
I tried one of those AI website builder things everyone keeps talking about, I mean it spit out something that looked fine I guess, but I couldn't actually change anything myself. It was all locked up, and when I asked it to fix one line it redid the whole page and broke other stuff. I don't want to keep typing at a robot. I just want to click the phone number and type the new one.
So what do you all use?
I run like 4 side projects and I'm basically always spinning up a new landing page for one of them, but lately I just throw it at an AI builder to speed up the process.
Two problems I am finding:
The first one, I find that every page comes out looking like the EXACT SAME startup template. It has the same hero image, the same three feature cards, and the same gradient.
The second one, I want to nudge something (move a section, fix the spacing, swap a colour to match the actual brand) but I always end up back to prompting it over and over again and praying it doesn't break the rest of the layout, it's never just a "click the thing and edit it."
I tried bolt and v0 and a bit of Claude Code, they are all fast, all kind of a black box once the page exists.
What I actually want is to spin up a page quick, have it look like MY project and not generic AI slop, then hand-edit it like a normal design file, and ideally not be paying four separate subscriptions across four projects.
Am I asking for too much here or does this exist yet?
I always wondered if animals could talk which ones would be sassy or which one will be friendly and have a friendly tone. I think its kind of obvious that dogs would be on the friendly list!