RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Vibe coding lets you create everything from one-page websites to complex applications simply by explaining what you want in plain English. This relatively new technology is an undeniable game-changer, tearing down barriers, helping small businesses and entrepreneurs build tools that just would not have been accessible before. But is vibe coding really all it is made out to be? I caught up with Nikita Obukhov, Founder and CEO of website-building platform Tilda, to get his thoughts on how vibe coding is, and isn't, going to change how we approach website building. We also dive into some of the risks associated with vibe coding and hear some advice on where it can be best applied to help you grow your business.
How is vibe coding challenging the more established drag-and-drop website builder space?
The rate of progress in neural networks is insane. Everything is moving very fast: new top-tier models arrive every six months, and what looked impossible a year ago is now generated at really good, really stable quality. Naturally, for us — and for every website builder out there — that's stressful, a zone of discomfort.
Tilda made building a website accessible to a non-professional. Before that, you had to deploy WordPress or some CMS, and if you weren't a technical specialist, you couldn't really do it properly on your own.
Now building a site has been democratised and is as accessible as editing an ordinary Google Doc. The whole concept of the modern website builder is exactly that: letting anyone create a site without technical skills. Now, what AI generates simplifies the process even further.
For site builders, this is a moment of discomfort and stress. And it sets off a search: where can site builders still be useful? It strongly affects the overall product roadmap.
I can't say that the search is finished. We're in the middle of working it out, of finding the point: why not just go to the neural network — why go to a site builder as well? It's a process of transformation, and we hope we'll come through it and stay useful to the user.
How does vibe coding a website differ from using an AI website builder?
Vibe coding brings in editing by voice: you tell the agent in text or out loud what you want, and the agent generates it. It's genuinely new.
The term "vibe coding" is itself very blurry. You can call it vibe coding when you simply ask a chat interface to generate code and get plain HTML back; then there's vibe coding where an agent builds you a full site out of several files, spins up a virtual environment on localhost so you can test, and lets you connect databases if you need more than a static site.
Site builders brought visual editing — making editing simpler without touching code. Vibe coding brings in editing by voice: you tell the agent in text or out loud what you want, and the agent generates it. It's genuinely new.
Vibe coding lets you work in your own infrastructure. Most often you either pick a service to host your generated code and deploy, or you go the classic route: take a virtual server and set up deployment there.
With an AI website builder , all the interaction happens on the platform itself. Even though the neural network underneath is effectively the same in both cases (both vibe coding and the builder are usually running some top-tier model under the hood), that's exactly where the fundamental difference lies: either you work entirely in your own — or rather, rented — environment, or you work inside the website builder's ecosystem.
Both have their pros and cons. Pure vibe coding gives you the most control. You're no longer limited by the site builder's platform, but it adds complexity. You need to think about things most people don't anticipate when they start.
Take image loading. You need to know the current best practice: images should ideally sit on a CDN. So now you also have to work out how to deploy your images to a CDN. With a website builder, all the code and everything else lives on the builder's infrastructure, so you never think about it.
Second, protection from DDoS attacks. If your business has any visibility at all, taking down a site on an ordinary VPS is very easy. So you have to think about how to protect it. Fortunately, Cloudflare has a nominally free tier, but it's still something to think about, because DDoS attacks are fairly common.
Ultimately, with vibe coding, you write everything yourself via an agent that simplifies a lot for you; you barely touch the code. With a builder, you work inside the site builder's ecosystem, using the interface — and, naturally, using prompting to create the design as well.
Will vibe coding eventually replace drag-and-drop website builders?
Realistically, I think we'll end up with both. Vibe coding still has a difficult entry point; it's slower and harder. Site builders are integrating vibe coding themselves, Tilda included: we've released a vibe coding tool called Vibe Block, where you generate blocks or entire pages from a prompt in exactly the same way.
But site builders go further. I don't believe they'll disappear entirely. It's a whole platform; site builders take hosting off your hands completely and give you a convenient tool for controlling things not only by voice but graphically.
On top of that, AI may not fully understand you, may not quite do what you need if you want your own high-quality, distinctive solution. Take Zero Block, for instance: it's a Photoshop or Figma equivalent, a fully graphical interface where designers work and produce exactly what the client needs. That's hard to achieve through vibe coding.
For ordinary users, a website builder is simply faster. It absorbs a huge amount of what you'd otherwise have to do yourself. An ordinary entrepreneur running a small organisation has no need to get into server hosting or how to issue a certificate. They have other things to do. So they'll go to a site builder regardless.
Greater control isn’t always a good thing. Ho...
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