I’ve been building websites since I was 14, back on GeoCities (remember that?), so I’ve watched this industry panic before. Quite a few times actually.
Drag-and-drop builders were going to kill us.
Then WordPress was going to kill us.
Then the page builders.
Then Figma. (Scrolling X long enough will have you thinking everything is the end for us )
And every single time, the opposite has happened. The only ones who lost out were the ones who misread the shift.
I’ll admit, this one does feel much bigger. Your clients are getting access to tools like Claude, Lovable, and Base44, and they can make websites themselves instantly.
So yeah, the worry is real. A survey of 500 US web designers this year (nice work by the team at 20i) put numbers on it:
- 76% named AI as their single biggest worry about the future of the work.
- 75% said the competitive pressure is already showing up in their business.
But read the rest of that same survey, because the panic is lying to you. The exact same designers who are worried also still feel paid:
- 78.6% feel properly paid for their work.
- 37% are clearing over six figures a year.
- And 9 out of 10 say their clients underestimate what web work actually costs.
- Agencies leaning into AI are growing by 58%
That is NOT a profession in collapse. It’s a profession splitting in two: the work a machine can do on its own, and the work it can’t. And the DIY corner of the web, the part everyone’s terrified of, is tiny & always has been.
Around 95% of the world’s websites are still built and run as a professional service. Feel better yet??
It took me a while to come around on this too because eventually I saw the shift.
Everyone’s staring at these instant websites like that’s the battlefield. But it’s the wrong place to look.
Like I said, building was never the hard part. Be honest with yourself for a second. What actually took you years to learn? It wasn’t dragging a hero section into place. It was learning to run, the SOPs, the pricing, the client management, the stuff that separates a freelancer from an actual business.
I used to pay a specialist $800 for a proper speed pass, and a couple grand for the SEO groundwork. Like a lot of people, I learned it all the slow expensive way.
All that hard-won knowledge? It’s a workflow now. It runs on day one for someone who walked into this industry last month.
From five years down to one hour. That’s the shift. And it means the workflows themselves can’t be your edge anymore, because everyone starts with them now.
Which brings me to the uncomfortable bit, and the reason some agencies make it through this and some don’t.
AI is making two kinds of agency right now: the reactive agency & the proactive agency.
To the reactive agency, the monthly retainer feels like insurance. “I’m here if it breaks. I’ve got the tooling set up. I jump in when it matters.” To the client, that exact same retainer feels like a tax. “I’m paying a hundred bucks a month for a guy I haven’t heard from since March and I don’t know why.”
And when an AI tool shows up offering to do it now, for less, that client was already half out the door before the AI ever knocked on the door.
The reactive agency is the yes-man. Waits to be asked, then scrambles, then bills for the time.
The proactive agency moves first. Sends the report before anyone asks for it. Flags the broken contact form before the client notices they’re bleeding mobile leads. Bills for outcomes, not hours.
Being proactive used to be a luxury. Updating 40 client sites every Friday ate most of a day, so even the best of us saved it for the top few. Now it costs almost nothing, so you can do it for everyone.
And that’s exactly what we’ve released with V5.
The infrastructure that lets you deliver at AI speed without giving up the craft, the strategy, or the relationship. Let the machine have the commodity work, so you can climb the level and be the guardrails.
Practically, that means around 200 workflows live on day one. The same SOPs that took me four years and a lot of money to learn, now running across your clients’ sites under your brand. The Monday report that goes out before anyone asks for it. The speed pass I used to pay a specialist eight hundred dollars for, every single time. And you still in the chair on anything that needs your taste.
Would love to know what you’re seeing in the design space, or what your take is on all of this. 🤘
