Itai, you’ve led Duda through multiple waves of innovation in web design and automation. What originally motivated you to create a platform for agencies and SaaS partners, and how has that vision evolved with the rise of AI?
When my co-founder Amir Glatt and I started Duda back in 2009, our goal was to serve everyone who needed a website, but we quickly realized that approach would be unsustainable. Trying to build for both small business owners and professional agencies pulled our product in too many directions. Over time, from looking at our data, we saw that agencies and SaaS companies were adopting Duda faster, needed more sophisticated tools, and were largely underserved in the market.
That’s when we made the decision to focus entirely on web professionals; first shifting our focus to digital agencies building client websites at scale, and then eventually moving on to SaaS platforms. Focusing on agencies gave us clarity that crystalized the direction of our roadmap, messaging, and user experience, ultimately enabling us to create a better, more purpose-built platform for agencies’ unique needs.
With the emergence of AI, our vision has only become clearer and more focused. Agencies today are expected to deliver more, faster, and at a lower cost than ever before. AI helps them do that by improving productivity, removing bottlenecks, and allowing them to scale with precision.
Duda’s recent survey reveals a significant gap between how small businesses perceive ‘AI’ versus ‘automation.’ What do you think is driving this disconnect in terminology and perception?
There’s still a lingering skepticism around AI, some of which stems from overhype and product launches that weren’t ready. Generative AI tools were rolled out in ways that didn’t always meet expectations, or felt premature.
People expect AI to work flawlessly, and when it doesn’t, it reinforces their doubts in the technology’s ability to help them achieve their goals in a reliable and predictable way. The term automation, on the other hand, feels more established, familiar, and reliable to SMBs, even though the underlying technologies and capabilities can be similar.
Despite the negative sentiment toward AI among a portion of SMBs, Duda has successfully embedded AI into its platform. What’s been the key to introducing these features without triggering resistance?
At Duda, we’ve been very intentional about not over-promising when it comes to AI and our AI product roadmap reflects that. We committed to introducing AI features only where we felt the technology was mature enough to deliver real value, starting with content writing and SEO tools.
Over time, as the technology has improved, we’ve introduced more assistants and then began connecting them together in ways that would be meaningful and deliver real value for our customers. We’ve always asked ourselves: Is this genuinely helpful? Will it save users time and increase efficiency?
That framing—AI for productivity—has made our features much more digestible and embraced by our users. We also give users granular control. It’s not just automation for the sake of it. It’s about helping them work faster while still staying in control of their creative and operational decisions.
With tools like File-to-Site and AI-generated widgets, you’re transforming the website creation process. How are agencies responding to this shift, and what’s the real impact on their day-to-day workflows?
Our approach has always been to support, not disrupt, agency workflows. Based on our research, 30% of agency-built websites start from a file, so with File-to-Site, we’re just accelerating what agencies are already doing. Instead of copy-pasting content from the file into their client’s new site, agencies can now turn that file into a site structure instantly. It’s all about saving time.
With AI-generated widgets, we took a powerful but somewhat technically demanding feature—our widget builder—and made it far more accessible for anyone in an agency to use, regardless of their coding abilities.
For experienced developers, this tool gives them a helpful starting point, speeding up the process of building new widgets and helping new-to-Duda users shorten the learning curve. Meanwhile, agency staff with more limited coding experience are now empowered to build advanced components for their client sites.
In short, the AI widget builder lowers the bar to entry for building widgets, speeds up development for tech-savvy users, and unlocks new capabilities for those without a development background. The response to this release has been overwhelmingly positive, helping agencies eliminate bottlenecks and do more with their existing teams and skillsets.
The Model Context Protocol Server sounds like a significant leap forward in enabling AI assistants to perform real actions. How do you see this influencing how teams build and manage sites at scale?
The Model Context Protocol Server is a game-changer for efficiency. It allows AI assistants to understand the full context of what a user is doing and execute complex workflows across tools, all with just a few prompts in natural language.
So imagine an agency team member being able to create a website, update its content, and sync it with project management tools like Jira—all through a few sentences. It reduces dependency across teams and empowers individuals to accomplish more.
This impacts every role within an agency—from builders and designers to account managers. It shortens turnaround times, increases throughput, and ultimately improves service delivery to SMB clients.
Nearly half of the websites on Duda now use AI to some extent. What are some of the most surprising or creative use cases you’ve seen from your users?
We’re seeing customers get really creative with our newly launched AI Widget Builder. They’re using AI to generate custom code and build unique widgets for their sites. Some are adding advanced design functionality, while others are creating engaging tools that help agencies and their clients better sell their products—like pricing calculators, knowledge engagement tools, and more.
We’re also seeing customers leverage our MCP server and AI site generation capabilities to extend their offerings and automate workflows that support both expansion and retention.
For some, this means offering new services they didn’t have time to provide before. For others, it’s about reaching new segments by launching lower-touch, entry-level websites. It’s exciting to see how our users are combining our built-in AI with external assistants to unlock new business opportunities and scale in ways that weren’t previously possible.
You’ve talked about simplifying complexity for users. How do you strike the right balance between building powerful AI capabilities and maintaining intuitive user experiences?
I actually don’t believe there’s a tradeoff between powerful AI and intuitive user experience. Truly powerful AI should feel intuitive if it’s making users work harder, we’ve missed the point. That said, what “intuitive” means can shift when we’re dealing with AI. One of those areas is the importance of context.
At Duda, we focus on providing the right context behind the scenes so users get high-quality results with minimal effort. When that’s not possible, we guide them to provide the input needed without overwhelming them. This is just one example of factors that come into play. Other factors include building trust and transparency with the users to help them feel the entire experience is seamless and reliable even if it’s not fully under their control.
Additionally, there is a great opportunity to leverage AI to simplify user experiences through personalization and flexible workflows, enabling us to tailor experiences for the user versus the more fixed flows of the past.
There’s still hesitation from many SMBs who feel AI is either unreliable or overpromised. How can agencies play a stronger role in helping clients trust and adopt AI responsibly?
Our survey shows that SMBs look to agencies as their trusted experts for AI implementation, education, and guidance. The reality is most SMB owners don’t have time to evaluate or experiment with AI tools for business on their own.
This creates a huge opportunity for agencies to bridge the gap and help their clients understand what’s possible, set realistic expectations, and deploy AI tools in ways that are genuinely useful and deliver real value for the business.
With the Duda Copilot offering personalized support directly within the platform, what kind of feedback are you receiving about its impact on productivity and client outcomes?
Copilot hasn’t been opened to customers yet, but we expect it to be a significant boost, especially for our power users. Copilot is designed to surface personalized, context-aware assistance that helps users get more done with fewer clicks and less searching. We’re really excited about what’s coming here.
Looking ahead, how do you envision AI continuing to reshape the web design and digital agency space in the next 12 to 18 months—and where is Duda heading next on that front?
We’re incredibly optimistic. AI is a massive tailwind for agencies. As the tech continues to mature, we expect big leaps in areas like image generation, which today still struggles with things like producing realistic hands or faces.
But very soon, it will be reliable enough to create high-quality visuals that match the brand, look realistic, and elevate website design, especially when businesses don’t have strong imagery to start with.
We’re also keeping an eye on the best models for different tasks: Google for image generation, OpenAI for text, Anthropic for code. We’re open to switching models as newer and better ones emerge.
Long term, we’re especially focused on AI-powered discoverability. AI isn’t just changing how people build websites; it’s also transforming how those websites are found in both traditional search engines like Google, and in the fast-growing realm of AI searches. For example, Duda is the first website builder to implement LLMS.txt (essentially robots.txt, but for AI) for all sites built on our platform, making it easier for AI search engines to discover and surface them to their target audiences.
Duda is committed to helping agencies build sites that not only look great, but also perform better: driving traffic, conversions, and growth for their clients.
- A quote or advice from the author
Talk to people, get inspired, get new ideas, learn from their successes and failures, but remember that every company is different and what worked in one place will not necessarily work for your business. There is no template that everyone should follow. There are a lot of paths to success and you need to choose your own.
For more expert articles and industry updates, follow Martech News
Itai Sadan, Chief Executive Officer, Duda.co
Itai Sadan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Duda, a professional website builder for agencies and SaaS Platforms. Under Itai’s leadership, Duda rapidly expanded its professional website builder product suite with an emphasis on empowering web professionals with cutting-edge tools to help them create beautiful conversion-driving websites at scale. To date, Duda hosts more than a million active websites that have been built by over 22,000 customers globally. Itai’s expertise in the online presence and web design space has been cited by USA Today, Forbes, Inc., HuffPost, TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, and more. He is a regular speaker at industry events hosted by such organizations as Localogy, CloudFest, and SIINDA. Itai has a BSc in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Ben Gurion in Israel.
LinkedIn .
