Editor: Porcia Akua Holmes
Freelance web development work is thinning out fast, and the businesses that once hired those developers are not mourning the loss. A survey commissioned by Bluehost found that 53% of 201 American entrepreneurs used AI website builders instead of paying a professional, and most say they would do it again.
A Shrinking Market for Routine Web Work
The Freelancer.com data points to a category under real strain. Website design advertisements fell 59% across the period, and PHP openings matched that decline exactly. WordPress assignments slipped 58%, while HTML programming vacancies dropped 55%.
Those reductions outpaced several other freelance categories. Graphic design ads fell 43%, and data entry opportunities actually rose 16%, even though that work is widely seen as vulnerable to automation.
The concentration of losses in web coding suggests something more specific than a broad slowdown. Employers appear to be replacing repeatable build tasks with tools that generate pages from a prompt.
What Business Owners Actually Saved
Cost and time savings explain much of the adoption. Respondents reported average savings of $850 and roughly 32 working hours compared with hiring developers or agencies for equivalent projects.
Before AI tools entered the picture, 34% of respondents said insufficient time blocked them from launching a website. Another 28% cited gaps in their own technical knowledge.
Satisfaction levels run high. Among adopters, 72% expressed strong approval and 97% reported at least moderate satisfaction with the results.
$850
Average reported savings
32
Working hours saved
53%
Used AI website builders
Humans Still Hold the Editing Pen
Adoption does not mean owners simply publish whatever the machine produces. Only 9% pushed their sites live without changing the initial AI output.
Most stayed hands-on. Content revisions were made by 61% of respondents, and 60% adjusted visual elements before going live.
Control remains a sticking point. Some 54% preferred to review every proposed change, while 30% were comfortable letting AI act without approval.
Disclosure is another hesitation. Just 50% said they would tell customers that AI built their website, even as most praised the outcome.
Why This Matters
The freelancers most exposed are those whose income depends on templated builds, plugin configuration and static page assembly. Those tasks map almost perfectly onto what AI website generators now handle, which means the pressure on entry-level web work is likely to persist rather than ease.
Developers with deeper skills face a different path. Custom integrations, performance tuning and complex application logic remain harder to automate, and demand for that expertise could hold steadier.
Small businesses gain leverage either way. Owners who once waited weeks and paid agency rates can now launch quickly, then spend the difference on marketing or inventory.
Platforms such as WordPress and ecosystems built around PHP face a subtler risk. If fewer newcomers learn those tools through paid client work, the pipeline of future specialists narrows over time.
Caveats Behind the Headlines
The evidence comes with limits. The Bluehost survey covered just 201 entrepreneurs, leaving adoption estimates with roughly 6.9 percentage points of uncertainty at 95% confidence.
The recruitment figures trace a single marketplace, Freelancer.com, so they cannot prove that AI tools caused the drop in advertised coding jobs. Other explanations, including shifting platform fees or broader economic conditions, remain possible.
What the data does show is a clear directional shift. Even among business owners who had avoided AI website generators, 71% said they would consider the technology for future projects.
That willingness matters more than any single statistic. It signals that the next wave of adoption has not yet arrived, and the freelance market for routine web development may still have further to fall.
