AI website builder or a studio? What Belgium requires

For a small Belgian business, an AI website builder is often enough. You describe your business, and a few minutes later you have pages, text and photos that look professional, usually on a monthly subscription. What the builder will not do is make the site meet Belgian rules for you: your company details, a cookie banner the data protection authority would accept, accessibility if consumers can buy online, and a domain registered in your own name. You can do all of that yourself on a builder. You just have to know it is your job.

What an AI builder does well

A builder gives you a layout, draft text and hosting in one place, and you can change things yourself without waiting for anyone. For a sole trader who needs a page with services, opening hours and a phone number, that is a reasonable result, and paying a studio to produce the same thing would be hard to justify.

The draft text is a starting point, though. The builder does not know your enterprise number, your prices or what you actually promise clients. Read every sentence it wrote as if a customer will hold you to it, because they can.

What stays your job under Belgian rules

Company details

Every business with a website must give visitors easy, direct and permanent access to its name, geographic address, contact details including an e-mail address, and its enterprise number (Code of Economic Law, art. XII.6). A company (BV, NV and other legal persons) must also show its legal form, registered office and the letters RPR or RPM with the court of its registered office, for example "RPR Antwerpen" (Companies and Associations Code, art. 2:20). If you are VAT-registered, add the VAT number. The FPS Economy says you need at least two ways to reach you, and if you sell online, those are an e-mail address and a phone number (FPS Economy, in Dutch; the code itself is on Justel).

The builder gives you a footer, but it does not know what goes in it. Under art. 2:22 of the Companies and Associations Code, a person who takes part in issuing a company website without these details can, depending on the circumstances, be held personally liable for commitments the company made through it.

A cookie banner the GBA/APD would accept

If the site runs analytics, an advertising pixel, or an embedded video or map that sets its own cookies, visitors must consent before anything non-essential is stored or read. The Belgian Data Protection Authority's cookie checklist (October 2023, in Dutch; French edition) asks for:

• a "Reject all" button on the first layer, at the same level as "Accept all";
• no colour or design that nudges people towards accepting;
• nothing non-essential loaded before consent, including visitor statistics;
• a visible way to withdraw consent in one click.

If your builder offers a cookie banner, whether it is switched on, and whether it blocks analytics until someone clicks, is your setting. Open your site in a private window and check. You still need a privacy policy too.

Accessibility, if consumers can buy online

The Law of 5 November 2023 applies to sites where a consumer concludes a contract online: buying, ordering, booking with payment. A site that only presents your services and has a contact form is outside it. A micro-enterprise (fewer than 10 employees and turnover or balance sheet of no more than 2 million euros) is outside the whole law until 28 June 2030, as the FPS Economy's guidelines (section 6.2.1, in Dutch) state. That is a transition period, not a permanent exemption.

If the law does apply to you, a template does not make the site accessible by itself: images need text alternatives, contrast has to be sufficient and the checkout has to work with a keyboard.

Your domain and your exit

Check who the domain is registered to. For a .be name, the DNS Belgium WHOIS shows it: the "organisation" field should carry your company's name. DNS Belgium advises using your own e-mail address, not someone else's, because the transfer code you need to move the domain goes only to the holder's e-mail. If you register the domain through the builder, find out in whose name it goes, and how you would move it out.

Ask the same about the site. Can you export the pages and text, or do they exist only inside the platform? If you stop paying, what happens to the site and to the enquiries it collected? Platforms differ here, and it is easier to know before you build than after.

Dutch and French

Many Belgian businesses need the site in Dutch and French. Each language works best as its own set of pages with its own address, which is also what Google recommends for search. A widget that machine-translates the page in the visitor's browser does not give you that. Have someone who speaks the language read the text before it goes live.

A chatbot

If you add an AI chatbot to the site, the AI Act requires that people are told they are talking to an AI system unless that is obvious. Article 50 has applied since 2 August 2026; the details are in our post on chatbots and the AI Act.

Builder or studio: a quick test

A builder is likely enough if:

• the site presents your services and takes enquiries, nothing more;
• you will fill in the company details and set up the cookie banner yourself, using the lists above;
• you need one language, or you have someone to write the second one;
• you are comfortable editing pages yourself.

A studio is worth paying for if:

• consumers will pay or book with payment on the site, and you are not a micro-enterprise;
• you need two or more languages as separate, indexable pages;
• the site has to connect to a booking system, a CRM or your accounting software;
• you want the code, the design files and the domain in your company's name, with a written transfer of rights.

What we offer

Our Starter website costs €1,400 excluding VAT: up to three pages, template-based design, a lead form, analytics, EU hosting setup, a GDPR baseline (privacy page and cookie note), launch, one language and an hour of training, in 5 working days from the day we have your content. Legal texts are not in the price: we place your privacy policy and terms, and your lawyer writes them. After launch, the optional Care plan is €69 per month for a minimum of 12 months, with EU hosting, SSL, backups, updates, uptime monitoring and one hour of content edits a month. Everything else, including what is excluded, is on the pricing page and the website development page.