Asking an AI for a website works now. Owners show us surprisingly decent sites they made in an evening — and then the same question, every time: "…so how do I put it on the internet?" The tutorials say "push to GitHub and deploy", the terminal makes an appearance, and the project dies in a folder on a laptop.
Here's the honest map. There are three doors, and which one is yours depends on how you built the site.
Door 1: You built it inside an AI website builder
If you used a tool like Lovable, Bolt, v0, or Replit, you don't have a deployment problem — you have a Publish button. Click it, and the tool hosts the site for you at a link you can share. Connecting your own domain happens inside the same tool, in its settings.
One habit worth keeping: after you publish, open the link on your phone, not just your laptop. That's how most of your customers will see it, and it's where AI-built layouts most often need one more round of "make this work on mobile".
Door 2: You built it with a chatbot and the files are on your computer
This is the "the tutorial told me to learn git" situation, and the good news is: you don't need git, and you don't need a terminal. The major hosting platforms have drag-and-drop deployment — Netlify Drop and Vercel Drop are the two to know. The entire process:
- Put your website files in one folder (if the AI gave you a single HTML file, that file is the folder).
- Open the drop page in your browser.
- Drag the folder in.
That's it — you get a live link on the spot, on a free plan, with no credit card. If you can attach a file to an email, you can deploy a website.
Updating works the same way: change the files, drag the folder again, the site is replaced. Which gives you exactly one rule to follow: keep one master folder. All edits happen there, and that folder is always what's live. The moment you have website-final, website-final2, and website-REAL-final on your desktop, you will eventually publish the wrong one.
Door 3: You realise what you actually need is a site you can edit
Here's an unfashionable truth: for a lot of businesses, a website builder like Wix, Squarespace, or even Google Sites is the right answer, not the defeated one. The reason has nothing to do with technology — it's about next month. A builder lets you fix your opening hours from your phone in thirty seconds. An AI-built site requires re-opening the project, asking the AI to make the change, and re-publishing. If that sounds like something you'll never do, the builder wins — an out-of-date website quietly tells customers nobody's home.
The part nobody explains: your domain
Deployment scares people, but the actual scary step is the domain — buying yourbusiness.com and connecting it. Demystified:
Buying: a domain is rented yearly from a registrar. A .com runs around US$10–20 a year; local domains like .sg and .com.sg cost more and are worth it if your customers are local.
Connecting: "connecting a domain" just means telling the domain where your website lives. Every host from Door 1 and 2 has an "add custom domain" wizard that shows you exactly what to change, step by step. Follow it literally, and know one thing in advance: the change can take from minutes up to a day to work everywhere. Nothing is broken — it's just slow plumbing. Don't redo the steps at hour two; wait.
The rule that actually matters: register the domain yourself, in your own account, with your own email — even if someone else builds and manages the site. Whoever controls the domain account controls your business's address on the internet. Vendors disappear, freelancers stop replying, and we've met owners locked out of their own domain. The website is replaceable in a weekend. The domain is not.
The question that matters more than deployment
Before you publish anything, answer this: who changes the opening hours next month? Deployment happens once; updates happen forever. If the answer is "nobody, realistically" — use Door 3. If the answer is "me, and I don't mind asking the AI" — keep your master folder, and write down your own three-step update routine (edit → check on phone → drag to publish) somewhere you'll find it. The sites that die aren't the ones that were hard to deploy. They're the ones nobody could update.
Where the free ride ends
Everything above covers a brochure — pages people read. The moment your site needs to do something — a contact form that reliably reaches you, bookings landing in a calendar, payments — you've crossed from pages into systems. Forms and bookings can still be handled with off-the-shelf services the wizards will offer you. But when the website becomes the front door for enquiries and appointments — the thing answering customers while you sleep — that's a different kind of decision, about workflow rather than webpages. That's the point where it's worth thinking before building.
Publish the brochure this week, though. It's genuinely a one-evening job now — and done is better than perfect, especially at a free price.