How I Rebuilt My Entire Website with AI (and Saved €300 Along the Way)

A few weeks ago, I was hit with what I like to call subscription anxiety — that quiet dread you feel when you know an invoice is about to drop into your inbox. This time, it was from Webflow. My website’s annual renewal: €300.

Now, I love Webflow. It’s clean, flexible, and perfect for building without code. But I also spend half my life experimenting with AI. So naturally, a thought crossed my mind:

“Could I get ChatGPT to rebuild my entire website for me?”

That curiosity turned into a full-blown experiment — one that ended with me saving money, gaining creative control, and proving just how far AI-driven development has come.

The Experiment: “Let’s See What Happens”

My website wasn’t overly complex — a few static pages, a blog section, and a small chat widget I’d built earlier (with Claude’s help). Still, I wasn’t sure how well an AI would handle a full export and rebuild.

I opened ChatGPT’s Agents feature, pointed it at my website, and said:

“Analyze everything and give me the full source code — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, all of it.”

Thirty minutes later, ChatGPT delivered a ZIP file containing the entire structure of my website.

It wasn’t flawless. The styling was off, a few blog posts were slightly distorted, and the overall layout didn’t fully match my original Webflow design. But the foundations were there — clean, editable code generated from a single AI request.

Refining the Design

Instead of giving up, I decided to see how far I could take it. Using ChatGPT with code editing capabilities, I went through a few iterations:

• Adjusted spacing, typography, and layout styling
• Fixed broken references and formatting
• Polished the responsive behavior

Within a couple of hours, it started to look really close to my original design. Then I thought — why stop there?

Teaching AI My Style

My blog section needed consistency. So, I asked ChatGPT to:

1. Create a reusable blog post template in HTML and CSS.
2. Extract and standardize the tone, structure, and formatting from my existing articles.
3. Generate a custom prompt I could use for new blog posts to match the same writing style.

The result? Every future article I publish automatically keeps the same structure, flow, and branding — no manual formatting needed.

Even better, during the process, ChatGPT “hallucinated” a more interactive Q&A layout for my FAQ section. This time, the hallucination was a gift — it actually made the site better.

Goodbye Webflow, Hello Autonomy

Once I was confident in the result, I decided to make it official: I canceled my Webflow subscription.

Not an easy task, by the way — subscription cancellations are an art form of their own.

I already had my domain registered with Combell, so I:

• Set up custom hosting with Combell
• Linked my domain
• Uploaded all my files manually
• Added version tracking to maintain changelogs

And just like that, the site was live again — but now fully AI-built, self-hosted, and independent.

The Numbers: What I Actually Saved

So that’s €225 saved immediately, and €400+ in future flexibility — since I can now host multiple Lucido-related projects (yes, more are coming).

Why This Matters

This isn’t about saving money (though that’s nice). It’s about creative independence.

I went from a subscription platform to a fully self-hosted setup — powered by AI, customized by hand, and completely mine to shape.

• AI isn’t just a productivity tool; it’s becoming a creative collaborator.
• Even small experiments can lead to real financial and operational impact.
• The line between developer and non-developer is getting thinner every day.

Want to See It in Action?

You can explore the result at 👉 lucido.be

It’s the same brand, same design language — but rebuilt entirely with AI. A little faster, a little smarter, and definitely cheaper.

Final Thought

AI didn’t just help me rebuild a website. It helped me rethink how we build things in the first place.

“Wait… do I really need to keep paying for this?”