SITE123 review

SITE123 is a website builder that now makes your site with AI. You tell its chat what you want, and the AI builds the pages and changes them for you. If you are thinking about SITE123 for your business website, you probably want to know how well the AI works and what the site will cost you.

To find out, I built a website for a made-up pet-sitting service on the free plan. SITE123's AI made the first version from a two-sentence description. Through the chat, I then added online booking for a free first visit and a small shop with a gift card and a dog leash. I published the site and tested it like a customer, with a booking and three test orders.

The first version looked good after 33 seconds, and online booking worked on the free plan. But the AI also made things up, like insurance and background checks that I never mentioned. In the shop, the stock never went down after an order. And two fixes that the AI reported as done did not work on the live site.

The short answer

SITE123 suits you if you run a small service business and want a good-looking site with online booking quickly. You also need to be fine with making most changes by chatting with an AI and checking each one on the live site.

Look elsewhere if you want to set the design yourself or need a shop you can rely on. Free sites also show an ad for SITE123 at the bottom of the screen.

The shop: The AI built a cart and checkout on the free plan, and my test orders went through. Customers paid offline, by bank transfer or cash. In my test, the stock never went down, and taxes only appeared on the last page of the checkout.

Price: You can build and publish a site for free on an address like 6adbee4c9021f.site123.me. After you sign up, SITE123 shows six paid plans. The cheapest, Basic, costs €11.87 a month on a 12-month plan, paid up front. Professional, the cheapest plan with card payments, costs €36.45 a month on the same terms.

Tested: I tested SITE123 on October 24, 2026 on the free plan and checked the prices the same day. I didn't buy a plan, so I didn't test card payments or your own domain. SITE123 did not pay for this review, and there are no affiliate links.

What I liked:

• The first version looked professional on a computer and on a phone.
• Most changes took one chat message. A new FAQ page was ready in 24 seconds.
• Online booking worked on the free plan. A booked time can't be booked again, and the customer gets a confirmation email.
• Each change is saved as a version, and you can go back to an older one.
• The free account came with 30 AI credits. Building and testing the whole site used about 11 of them.

What bothered me:

• The AI wrote that my sitters were insured and background-checked. I had never said so.
• My prices showed in euros until I changed a store setting and asked the chat a third time.
• The stock never went down after an order, even after the AI said it had fixed that.
• Taxes only showed up on the last page of the checkout. The cart had no line for them.
• The AI said it had hidden the site from search engines. The live pages had no tag that hides them.
• Publishing used 8 credits for stock photos, without a warning.
• On the free plan, the email about a new booking doesn't include the booking. You have to log in to read it.
• You can't download your site.

The site I built

Thimblebrook Pet Sitting is a made-up pet-sitting service, and its footer says so. SITE123's AI made one long home page with the services and a contact form. Through the chat, I added an FAQ page and a booking page. The shop came with its own cart page.

Most photos come from SITE123's stock photo library. One photo was made by its AI image tool.

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Open the demo site. It is a demo, so please do not send personal information through its forms.

Signing up and the first version

Signing up takes three short steps, and SITE123 asks for no credit card. First it asks what kind of site you want. I picked Website from four choices.

Then it asks for the kind of business and a name. When I typed "pet sit", it suggested Pet Sitter. A button writes the description for you. Its text was friendly but vague ("trusted, compassionate in-home care"), so I wrote two sentences about my services instead. The last step creates the account with an email address and a password.

SITE123 then built the site with AI right away. While it worked, a short tour showed the parts of the editor. The first version was ready after 33 seconds. I didn't have to confirm my email address first.

The first version was one long page that ended with a form for booking requests. The design fit a pet sitter, with soft green colors and large photos of dogs and cats.

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The editor is a chat

SITE123's editor has a chat on the left and the site on the right. You describe a change, and the AI writes it into the site. A menu next to the chat box offers nine AI models, and its Auto option picks one for you. Under the chat, an Advisor suggests what to add next, like prices or an FAQ section.

You can also click a single part of the page. A small window then lets you ask the AI about that part or edit it directly. Direct editing worked for photos and their descriptions. For formatted text, SITE123 said that direct editing was not available and sent me back to the AI.

I found no design panel with colors and fonts. Design changes also go through the chat.

Each change is saved as a version with a short description. A Restore button brings an older version back. SITE123 says that saved data, like bookings, stays when you restore.

I asked the chat for an FAQ page and gave it my five answers. The page was ready after 24 seconds, with my answers word for word. The AI linked it in the menu and the footer.

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Fixing what the AI made up

The first version said that my sitters were insured and background-checked. It also promised photo updates after every visit. I had never said any of that. The footer had a made-up email address and phone number.

I asked the chat to remove every mention of insurance and background checks and to use my contact details. It did both in 10 seconds.

Other promises stayed, like the photo updates and replies within one day. If you use SITE123, read each line of the site before you publish it.

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Adding prices

The first version had no prices. I gave the chat my own prices in US dollars. A 30-minute walk costs $20, and a night costs $75.

The site showed them in euros. I asked the chat to show dollars. It explained that it uses the store's currency and can't change that. The store had been set to euros when I signed up from Germany. The chat offered a button to the payment settings.

I switched the store to US dollars and saved. The preview still showed euros, even after a reload. The prices switched to dollars after I told the chat about the change in a third message.

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Photos and the AI image tool

When you click a photo, you can upload your own or pick one from SITE123's library. A third option makes a new image with AI.

The library has stock photos from Getty Images. I searched for dog walkers and swapped the photo at the top of the home page. The swap itself cost nothing. But when I published the site, SITE123 took 1 credit for each library photo on the site, 8 credits in total. Its credits page says that premium library images cost credits. I saw no warning about it in the editor or the publish dialog.

The AI image tool made a photo of a sitter playing with a cat in about 10 seconds. It cost 0.67 credits and looks like a stock photo. A note under the tool says that you take full responsibility for any issues with its use and rights.

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Online booking

A pet sitter depends on bookings. I asked the chat for online booking of a free meet and greet. I wanted visitors to pick a date and a 30-minute time between 9 am and 5 pm. A time that is already booked should not be bookable again.

After 71 seconds there was a new booking page. It shows the free times for the date you pick and a short form for your details. The bookings are saved in a new table in the Data section of the editor.

On the published site, I booked next Monday at 10:00. The page confirmed it right away. When I picked the same day again, 10:00 was greyed out.

The confirmation email reached the visitor after 25 seconds. It came from "Thimblebrook Pet Sitting" and listed the booking details. This email used 0.01 credits.

The email to me as the owner came from SITE123 after 36 seconds. On the free plan, it only says that there is a new message. To read the booking, I had to log in. It waited under Messages, where I could also reply.

I saw no calendar view of the bookings.

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The online shop

SITE123's AI can also build a shop. I asked for a gift card for dog walks in three amounts and a reflective dog leash for $18. The leash came in three sizes, with 10 in stock per size. I wanted customers to choose between delivery for a flat $5 and free pickup, and to pay by bank transfer or cash.

After 2 minutes and 15 seconds there was a shop page and a cart page. Each amount and each size became its own product in a table in the Data section. Each product there is one row with a price and a stock count. There are no fields for weight or taxes.

Payment runs through SITE123's own order system. I switched on two of its offline methods, bank transfer and cash at pickup, and wrote a short text for each. When I chose Stripe for card payments, SITE123 asked me to upgrade to Professional. According to its plan table, online payment providers like PayPal also start at Professional. The same table lists the store itself only from Professional, but my AI-built shop took orders on the free plan.

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A test order

On the live site, I put a leash in size M and a $20 gift card in the cart. The cart added $5 for delivery or nothing for pickup. The checkout asked for my contact details and a country.

The Place Order button led to a payment page from SITE123, where the customer picks bank transfer or cash. After that, a thank-you page showed my text asking customers to use the order number as the payment reference.

I got an email with the full order after 35 seconds. The customer's order confirmation came after 45 seconds, without the payment text. In the dashboard, the order showed up as unpaid. I marked it as paid in cash, and the customer got a second order confirmation.

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Stock and taxes

After the order, the leash in size M still had 10 in stock, on the shop page and in the product table. The AI had told me that a size sells out when its stock reaches zero.

The order emails showed taxes of $0.00. On the tax settings page, I added a region for the United States with 8 percent. The live site only used the new rate after I published again. On a third order with a US address, the cart still showed no taxes. The payment page then added $4.00, and the total went from $50 to $54 at the last step.

For a few gift cards with payment by bank transfer, the free shop works. I would not rely on it for stock or taxes.

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Search settings

In the dashboard, the SEO Audit page under Advisor lists each page's search title and description. The AI had already written them. A scan took 42 seconds and gave the site 82 percent. On the home page, three tests failed. Two wanted a main keyword in the text and in the title or description. The third wanted a custom domain, which the free plan doesn't have. An Auto Fix button sends the fixes to the chat.

The live pages told search engines their language and their main address. The sitemap for search engines listed all five pages. The Advisor also has a page for 301 redirects, which I didn't test.

I found no setting to hide a site from search engines. When I asked the chat, it said it had added a robots.txt file for that. The live robots.txt file was empty.

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Publishing and the free address

The Publish button asks you to confirm, and the site was live a few seconds later. The dialog then shows the address and right away offers a domain with the line "Secure your unique domain name before it is too late!"

A free site gets a random address like 6adbee4c9021f.site123.me. I found no way to change it. The Change domain option only offers your own domain, which needs a paid plan.

Free sites also show a dark bar at the bottom of the screen. It says "I built my app for free using SITE123" and has a button to create your own. Visitors can close it, and the paid plans remove it.

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Testing the live site

The published pages worked on a computer and on a phone. On a phone, the menu opens as a list with icons. No page scrolled sideways.

The contact form stopped an empty message in the browser. A test message showed "Thank you! We will reply within one day." The email about it only said that there was a new message, like the one for bookings.

Asking the AI to fix two problems

I asked the chat to hide the site from search engines and to fix the stock count. For search engines, it said it had added a noindex tag to the code that every page shares. That tag keeps a page out of search results. The preview had the tag. After publishing, the live pages still didn't.

For the stock, it wrote a server function and said the leash in size M would now drop from 10 to 9. After I published again and placed a second order, the stock still said 10. The credits log shows that the function ran.

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Speed

I ran the published home page through Google's PageSpeed Insights once. On a simulated phone it scored 69 out of 100, and the largest element took 5.4 seconds to appear. On desktop it scored 92, and the largest element appeared after 1.6 seconds. The report blamed unused JavaScript and images without set sizes.

Accessibility scored 96, and the only problem listed was low color contrast.

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AI credits

The AI's work is paid with credits. The free account came with 30, and building and testing this site used about 11 of them.

The chat itself was cheap. My twelve requests, including the first build, cost 2.17 credits together, between 0.01 and 0.68 each. The AI photo cost 0.67. The stock photos at publishing cost more than everything else together.

More credits cost €0.268 each with automatic top-up, or come with a monthly credit plan. The smallest gives you 100 credits a month for $15.

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Statistics

On the free plan, the statistics page shows a blurred chart and an upgrade button. According to the plan table, website statistics start with Professional. The dashboard still shows simple counts, like visitors and orders.

What SITE123 costs

I checked SITE123's prices on October 24, 2026. The public pricing page shows Free and one paid plan called Premium at $12.80 a month, and that plan lists a store. Its FAQ mentions four paid packages and a price "as low as $10.8 per month".

In the dashboard, I saw six paid plans, priced in euros for me in Germany. A currency menu on the same page shows them in US dollars, converted at about 1.12. You pay up front for a term between 3 months and 10 years. That page didn't mention VAT. In its table, the store starts with Professional.

The longer the term, the lower the monthly price.

After I opened the plan page for the first time, a 40 percent offer with a 72-hour countdown appeared in the editor. It covers Advanced and the higher plans on terms of 12 months or more. With it, Advanced cost about the same as Basic. The tables show the regular prices.

For Thimblebrook, the free plan could take the bookings, with the SITE123 bar and the random address. Basic removes the bar and connects your own domain for €142.40 for 12 months. To take card payments in the shop, Professional costs €437.40 for 12 months, or €262.44 with the offer.

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Leaving SITE123

SITE123 hosts your site, and you can't download it. Its pricing FAQ answers "May I download my website?" with "No. SITE123 is a proprietary web service." In the editor I found no export. If you leave, you copy your texts and rebuild the site somewhere else.

Who should use SITE123

SITE123 fits a small service business that wants a good-looking site quickly and is fine with working through a chat. For Thimblebrook, the AI made a usable site from two sentences, once I had removed a few made-up claims. Online booking for a free first visit worked on the free plan.

It fits less well if you want to sell products. The free shop took my orders, but it didn't count stock and showed taxes only at the last step. Card payments start at Professional. It also fits less well if you want to set the design by hand.

If you try it, read each line the AI writes and test the published site like a customer. In my test, the chat reported two fixes as done that never worked on the live site.

What I'm building

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