The honest answer: you can design a simple website with AI for free in minutes on platforms such as Canva and others, which suits a personal page, an event or testing an idea. But a free site lives on the platform's sub-domain with its branding, and your control of SEO and speed is limited, so it does not suit a business that wants customers from Google.
What you get for free
- A page or small site designed from a written description or a template.
- Publishing on the platform's sub-domain.
- Suggested text and images you edit yourself.
Limits of a free site
Item | On a free plan, usually |
|---|---|
Domain | A platform sub-domain; your own domain needs a paid plan |
Platform branding | Usually shown and cannot be removed |
SEO | Limited control of titles, structured data and speed |
Arabic | Right-to-left support varies by platform |
Bookings and payments | Limited or on paid plans |
Ownership | The site is tied to the platform and hard to move |
When a free site is enough
- A personal page or CV.
- A page for an event or a short campaign.
- Testing an idea before investing in it.
When you need a professional site
- You want customers from Google search in Egypt or the Gulf.
- You need Arabic and English.
- You need bookings, payments, a dashboard or a link to your systems.
- Mobile speed and your company image matter.
Common mistakes with free sites
- Printing the sub-domain link on cards and ads, then changing it later and losing every link.
- Publishing AI-written text without review, with wrong prices or services.
- Skipping the Arabic version, or keeping the page English-only for customers who search in Arabic.
- Heavy images that slow the site on mobile.
From a free site to a professional one without losing anything
- Register a domain in your company name from day one, even while the site is free.
- Keep your text and images outside the platform.
- When you move, have the developer redirect the old links to the new pages.
- Add the new site to Google Search Console.
In between: use AI to prepare your professional site
Even if you choose a professional site, AI saves you time: drafting page text, outlining sections and writing FAQs. Hand those to the developer and both time and cost go down.
To see what a professional site costs read the website cost guide for Egypt and the website cost guide for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, or try the website cost calculator. You can also contact me directly.