From idea to online store in under an hour: inside Hostinger's AI builder

Building a website used to mean hiring a developer, learning design tools, or wrestling with templates that never quite fit. On August 6, 2026, YourStory partnered with Hostinger for a live webinar that set out to change that equation, using artificial intelligence to turn a business idea into a working website in under an hour.

The session featured Dalia Melnikiene, a product designer who has spent over three years building Hostinger’s AI builder. The webinar was aimed at founders, freelancers, creators, and small business owners looking to establish an online presence without technical expertise.

Watching a website come together in real time

Melnikiene began with a live demonstration, taking a business idea suggested by the audience, a consulting website called Strategic Strokes, and building it from scratch using the AI Builder. She showed how a short prompt describing the business could generate a full template, then customized it by changing colors, images, and text.

She also demonstrated how to add a new section using AI, generate a blog page and its content, and explained why this matters for visibility: "It's in general very beneficial to have a blog page on your site because it helps Google to rank your site better." From there, she added WhatsApp integration for customer communication and set up a store with physical products, along with options for services, appointments, and gift cards.

Describing how much the AI handles versus the user, Melnikiene said, "You are the manager. AI is your worker, so give work for the AI."

Getting the business ready to go live

Using a test payment method, Melnikiene walked through the full purchase flow before adding manual payments and Razorpay for the Indian market. She then set up a custom domain and a professional business email and introduced Kodee, Hostinger's AI agent, which can audit a website, flag areas for improvement, and generate copy on request.

She closed the demonstration by adding a subscription form and connecting it to Hostinger's email marketing tool, showing how form submissions and new contacts flow directly into campaign setup.

A poll during the session found that 84% of attendees had tried building a website before, and 53% had given up partway through. Melnikiene pointed to that gap as the reason the AI Builder exists, noting, "It's really very quick, up to an hour, and I hope you will never, never give up again."

Audience questions covered migration, SEO, and the limits of the AI

The session closed with a lively Q&A, with questions coming in from the moment the demonstration began. Attendees who already had websites on platforms like WordPress wanted to know if they could move to Hostinger, and Melnikiene confirmed migration is straightforward, pointing to Hostinger's managed WordPress environment, which includes an AI assistant that can handle routine tasks like updating prices or applying discount codes automatically.

Several questions came in around scale and functionality. For businesses expecting their catalog to grow into hundreds or thousands of product pages, Melnikiene suggested WordPress with WooCommerce may be a better fit than the drag-and-drop AI Builder, since it was built to handle that kind of volume, and recommended asking Kodee for advice tailored to a specific business. On dynamic functionality, she demonstrated adding elements like running text and image galleries, along with animation options for individual sections, showing that the builder isn't limited to static pages.

SEO came up repeatedly. Melnikiene was clear that publishing a website does not automatically guarantee a spot on Google. Search engines need to crawl and index a site first, and rankings after that depend on factors like site speed, mobile usability, backlinks, and competition. She walked attendees back through the built-in SEO settings, which flag recommended keywords for each page and can generate content through the AI assistant.

On how much control users have over the AI, she explained that the standard builder works from business context and a prompt but is not fully agentic, while a more advanced, agentic version is available for deeper customization at an additional cost. She also confirmed that the platform can generate images but not videos, and that a JavaScript-based website could be hosted on Hostinger's web and cloud hosting plans, though she deferred the finer technical details to Hostinger's developer team.

Melnikiene left attendees with a final note: Hostinger's AI assistant remains available anytime to answer questions, recommend a plan, or help pick up where the demonstration left off.