HOW WE BUILD
Full disclosure — we use AI. Here's why, and what it means for you.
Every Brambla website is custom-built on a modern stack. We use AI tools as part of the workflow — including Anthropic's Claude — the same way any modern developer uses auto-complete: as acceleration, not substitution. Every decision, every design, and every line is still directed and reviewed by a human.
This page explains exactly what we use AI for, what we don't, and why it means you pay less without losing craft.
Why we use AI
Brambla is a small team doing agency-level work. We maintain 200+ pages across the live site, ship weekly to clients, and serve businesses from sole traders to growing brands. Modern AI tools are how we make that economically viable without compromising the craft.
Every hour saved on boilerplate is an hour spent on your actual problem — your brand, your customers, your structure, your conversion path. Every hour we don't spend on repetitive code is an hour of human attention focused where it matters.
This isn't cost-cutting. It's refusing to charge you for corners that modern tools can already handle.
It's what lets us offer:
- A free LIVE30 build with £30/mo hosting — £0 at build time, only possible because tool-accelerated development makes the economics work.
- A 7 Day Website at £1,200 — a price most agencies would laugh at for the quality we deliver, because their workflow hasn't caught up.
- 70+ blog posts, each human-edited — published at a pace a traditional in-house copywriter couldn't match.
Who this is for — the SMB mission
The web-design industry has been structured around a gap for two decades:
- Large companies can afford £50k+ agency retainers with dedicated strategy, creative, development, and account management teams.
- Everyone else — sole traders, new businesses, growing SMEs, independent practices — gets told to “just use Wix” or pay £5k–£15k for a freelancer-built site that may or may not rank, convert, or still be supported in a year.
We built Brambla to close that gap.
We hear some version of this regularly from clients. One recent client told us they tried Wix or Squarespace first: “It was confusing — I couldn't even work out how to point my domain.” Technical gatekeeping — DNS, SSL, hosting configuration, email MX records, plugin security, backups — shouldn't be what stops someone running a good business from having a professional online presence.
We handle the technical so owners can run their businesses. No client has ever been asked to configure DNS, set up email MX records, install an SSL, manage plugins, or remember their hosting login. That's not a favour — that's the service.
Who we're for, and which tier fits:
- Sole traders or new businesses without a website yet → LIVE30. Free build, £30/mo hosting, we handle everything including your domain.
- Established small businesses that tried Wix or Squarespace and hit the wall → 7 Day Website from £1,200. Professional site, managed hosting, nobody asking you to configure anything.
- Small-medium businesses ready to compete harder → SEO Care, content marketing, custom builds, brand systems. Delivered the way bigger agencies do it, priced the way they don't.
- Medium and larger businesses that want real partnership → Custom Website from £2,500 and retained service. Still well below what a traditional agency charges for comparable work.
AI-accelerated development is how we make serving the first two tiers economically viable at all. Without it, a free LIVE30 build loses us money. With it, we can genuinely be the alternative to being priced out or templated out.
What we don't do
Clarifying scope, because “we use AI” means very different things in different hands.
- We don't drop a prompt into an AI site builder and ship the result. If you've seen a “tell us about your business, we'll generate a website” tool and shaped a site in five minutes — that's not us. The generator does the work; the owner gets something generic.
- We don't use Wix AI, Durable, 10Web, or any generator-tier tool as a build mechanism.
- We don't use WordPress, Squarespace, or any template-based CMS for our builds.
- We don't publish AI-drafted blog posts without human editorial review. First drafts are tools; published pieces are work.
- We don't call AI output finished. Everything goes through a human check before it reaches you.
If what you want is a £10/mo generator-built site, we're not the right choice. That category exists for a reason and some businesses are well-served by it. We're a different product at a different price point.
Our own system
Brambla websites run on a custom 113-component design system we built ourselves. Every component — hero layouts, feature grids, pricing tables, testimonial blocks, case-study cards, FAQ accordions — was designed, coded, and refined in-house. It's not a Figma template, not a Tailwind UI kit, not a bought theme.
Every new project composes our components to taste. The Brambla look isn't one template repeated — it's a design language used fluently across 200+ pages, each one considered.
The underlying stack:
- TypeScript for type-safe code
- Next.js 14 (App Router) for performance and SEO
- Tailwind CSS for design system consistency
- Supabase for database and auth
- Vercel for managed hosting and edge delivery
- Stripe for payments and subscriptions
Everything custom-coded. Nothing templated.
Where AI fits in our pipeline
Concrete breakdown of what AI does and doesn't touch:
Websites
AI accelerates repetitive code, generates boilerplate layouts from sketches, suggests SEO improvements, and helps research competitor patterns. Humans make every creative and structural decision. Every line is reviewed before commit.
Content (blog posts, guides, location pages)
AI drafts research outlines and first passes based on the topic brief, keyword targets, and tone. Humans edit every piece — structure, voice, examples, claims, facts — before publication. No piece ships unread.
Dashboards and internal tooling
We've built our own admin dashboard, CRM, Stripe billing integration, journey analytics, SEO intelligence module, and blog CMS. AI-accelerated — months of work delivered in weeks — but every screen is designed and directed by a human who uses it.
A concrete example: our internal admin dashboard is 24 distinct features across 5 phases, covering authentication, analytics, journey scoring, CRM, Stripe billing, SEO intelligence, a blog CMS, and a client-submission inbox. A mid-sized agency would quote that scope as a 6–9 month engagement. Ours shipped in weeks, not months — the same tooling advantage that means a 7 Day Website is delivered in 7 days, and a Custom Website in weeks rather than quarters.
Reporting and integrations
We use AI to turn messy data from Google Analytics, Search Console, Stripe, Supabase, and our first-party funnel tracking into readable reports for ourselves and our clients. Direction comes from us. AI handles the grind.
Client admin
Automated invoicing, onboarding emails, follow-ups — efficient and fast. Everything reviewed before it goes to you.
The human side
- Every Brambla project is human-directed — the strategy, structure, and design decisions come from a person who has spoken to you.
- Every piece of work is human-reviewed before it ships.
- The person you speak to is the person doing the work. No account managers. No junior handoffs. No outsourced contractors.
The team is us: Harriet and Sam. Both of us work hands-on on every project — design, development, strategy, client communication are all shared. Harriet has the sharper design eye and leans into UI, UX, and strategic direction. Sam leans into infrastructure, DNS, and deeper configuration work. Neither of us specialises narrowly; both of us ship. The AI tools we use are exactly that — tools — like a designer's Figma or a developer's IDE.
Where we sit in the market
Two things we're not.
Not agencies that claim to be “AI-free”. Most agencies charging traditional rates use the same tools we do — Copilot, Cursor, ChatGPT, Claude, auto-complete IDEs, design-to-code converters. The industry quietly adopted all of it. They just don't tell you. In our view, an agency in 2026 claiming zero AI involvement is either overstating it, or charging you for work modern tools already handle. We'd rather disclose and price honestly.
Not AI website generators. We're a different product than Wix AI, Durable, or 10Web. Those generators produce templated output at £10–30/mo — fine for a hobby project or a micro-business with low web-dependency, but a different category from what we do. We use AI as a tool inside an agency workflow, not as the agency itself.
The difference you'll see against a generator:
- Generators produce a site. We build a project — brand, copy, structure, conversion path, SEO, performance, long-term support.
- Generators output in minutes. We work over days (7 for a 7 Day Website, longer for custom) — because design judgement can't be generated.
- Generators hand you a kit and wish you luck. We host it, maintain it, and support it every month you're a client.
The pricing implication
The AI question isn't an abstract philosophy debate — it's why you pay what you pay.
- LIVE30 is genuinely free at build time. That's only possible because tool-accelerated development makes the build profitable at £30/mo recurring. A traditional agency, hand-building every line, could never offer it.
- The 7 Day Website is £1,200 — including design, build, copy direction, responsive layouts, on-page SEO, hosting setup, domain connection, SSL. In 2020 this would have been a £3,500 project. Tooling is why it's £1,200 now.
- SiteCare starts at £65/mo. Ongoing hosting, security, backups, minor updates. Accessible because the underlying infrastructure is automation-heavy.
- SEO Care starts at £95/mo. Monthly SEO management at a price that would have been impossible without modern analytics tooling.
Our tooling choices pass savings to you, not to our bottom line. A medium-sized agency with the same stack would charge 2–3× what we do and pocket the difference. We'd rather grow by doing more work at honest prices.
Frequently asked questions
Want to work with us?
If this approach matches how you want a partner to work — honest, fast, cost-effective, human-led — we'd love to hear from you.
Last reviewed: April 2026 — we update this page as our stack and workflow evolve. If anything here is out of date when you read it, email hello@brambla.co.uk and we'll fix it.