If you have been trying to figure out how GoDaddy Airo actually works in practice, we cover the complete process from the first prompt to a published, live site.
I built a full website for an interior design studio called Mara & Co. using Airo AI Builder and documented every screen, every timing, and every decision along the way.
For background on what GoDaddy Airo is and how its three products differ, see my What Is GoDaddy Airo guide.
What You Need Before You Start
Airo AI Builder has a free tier that requires no credit card, so you can follow this guide without paying anything upfront. What you do need:
- A GoDaddy account (free to create)
- A clear idea of your business name, location, and the services you offer
- Around 15 to 20 minutes for the initial build
The free plan allows one published site with 50 AI credits per month. Credits are consumed during building and editing, and detailed prompts use them more efficiently than vague ones.
If you plan to build multiple pages or make significant refinements, a paid plan may be worth considering before you start. For a full breakdown of plan costs, see the GoDaddy Airo pricing guide
With that set, here is how to use GoDaddy Airo from start to finish.
Step 1: Write Your Business Prompt
Go to the Airo AI Builder page, and you will see a single large text field under the heading “Describe your idea. We do the rest in minutes.” This is where everything begins.
Write a prompt that covers your business name, location, what you do, and who you serve. The more specific you are here, the more the AI has to work with. For Mara & Co., I wrote:
I run a boutique interior design studio called Mara & Co. based in Austin, Texas. We specialize in residential spaces, with a focus on blending contemporary design with warm, natural materials. Services include full-room redesigns, furniture sourcing, and virtual consultations.
That level of detail made a measurable difference in the output. The business name, city, service types, and design philosophy all appeared in the generated site copy and structure. Once you are satisfied with your description, click “Start Building for Free.”
Step 2: Answer the Two Follow-Up Questions
After you click the button, the builder opens in a split-screen layout: a conversation panel on the left and a live canvas on the right. The canvas shows “Planning your project” with an estimated time of around five minutes. In the left panel, Airo asks two follow-up questions before building anything.
Both questions are specific to your business name, not generic dropdowns. For Mara & Co., they were:
Question 1: What visual style fits Mara & Co.?
- Sun-warmed desert modernism: terracotta, raw linen, sculptural forms
- Organic luxury: creamy neutrals, travertine textures, soft layered light
- Refined Texan warmth: warm whites, aged brass, natural wood grain
- Other (free text) / Skip
Question 2: What tone should Mara & Co.’s messaging have?
- Elevated and editorial: confident, aspirational, design-forward
- Warm and personal: like a trusted friend who happens to have impeccable taste
- Calm and considered: thoughtful, unhurried, every word intentional
- Other (free text) / Skip
I selected Organic luxury for style and Calm and considered for tone. These choices directly influenced the color palette, font selection, and copy that followed.
Both questions have a Skip option. Using it means the AI will decide these things on its own based on your prompt. That is fine for a quick prototype, but choosing deliberately gives you more control over the direction before the AI commits to anything.
Step 3: Watch the AI Plan Your Site
Once you answer the questions, Airo makes its planning visible in the left panel before building a single page. This is one of the most useful things it does. I watched it decide:
- Site structure: Five pages, named and listed: Homepage, Portfolio/Work, Services, About, and Contact
- Color palette: “Organic Luxury Warm Ivory” with specific swatches derived from my style choice
- Font pairing: Cormorant Garamond for display text, Jost for body text
- Media: Interior design stock images sourced and shown as thumbnails before any building began
This transparency matters. If the AI is heading in a direction you dislike, you can see it before it spends credits building. At this stage, you cannot change the choices without restarting, but knowing what is coming removes the uncertainty.
The planning phase also tells you how many words it has processed from your prompt and responses. For Mara & Co., it showed “Planning… 141 words.”
Step 4: Wait for the Homepage Build
After planning completes, Airo builds your homepage. The left panel shows each action as it happens: logo generation, header and footer construction, content creation, code validation. The canvas updates in real time as sections appear.
For Mara & Co., the build ran from 5:24 pm to 5:32 pm, a total of eight minutes. The estimated time shown on the planning screen was five minutes. In practice, expect the homepage to take between six and ten minutes depending on your plan and the complexity of the site.
I clicked Homepage, and the build resumed immediately without losing any progress. If you see the same error, do not close the window. Click the page name and continue.
When the homepage is ready, Airo asks: “Is this what you imagined?” with three options: Looks great, Close but needs some work, or Not what I expected. Selecting the first option proceeds normally. Selecting the second or third opens the conversation panel to refine the output through follow-up prompts.
Step 5: Review and Edit Your Homepage
Once you are satisfied with the initial build direction, click the Edit button in the bottom toolbar. The canvas enters Edit mode, indicated by an “Edit mode” label in the top right corner.
Section-Level Editing
Clicking any section activates a toolbar at the bottom of the canvas with the following controls:
- Navigation arrows (previous and next section)
- Move Up and Move Down to reorder sections
- Zoom in and out for a closer look at content
- Done to confirm changes
- X to exit without saving
Element-Level Editing
Clicking a specific element within a section, such as a text block or image, activates a secondary toolbar with five options:
- Replace: Swap the element with a different version
- Modify: Edit the content directly
- Reposition: Move the element within its section
- Delete: Remove the element
- AI sparkle button: Let Airo suggest changes to the selected element
Text Editing
Clicking any text element makes it directly editable on the canvas. A floating toolbar appears above with Bold, Italic, color picker, bookmark, and an “Edit with Airo” button.
The Edit with Airo option rewrites the selected text using AI. You can click it multiple times to get different versions.
Image Editing and Replacement
Clicking any image activates a left panel with three tabs: Adjust (for framing and zoom), Finetune (brightness, contrast, saturation), and Filters.
Below those tools, you can Crop or Rotate the image.
To replace an image entirely, click Replace in the element toolbar. A media library opens on the left with four sources: your Recent Uploads, Site Files, Logos, and a Stock Medias section powered by Getty Images.
The Getty Images stock photos are included at no extra cost. You can search by keyword, and the results are relevant to your search term.
Mobile Preview
The bottom toolbar includes a device switch button. Clicking it shifts the canvas from desktop view to a mobile layout, letting you check how your site looks on a phone before publishing.
Step 6: Make Changes Through Follow-Up Prompts
One of the most practical ways to edit in Airo AI Builder is through follow-up prompts in the chat panel rather than manual editing.
To test this, I sent the following prompt after the homepage was built:
Add a testimonials section to the homepage with three sample client reviews. Also change the main CTA button text to “Book a Free Consultation.”
The result: Both changes completed in two minutes. Airo made them in parallel, updating the content file and the homepage code simultaneously.
The testimonials section appeared with a “Kind Words / What our clients say” heading and three named reviews with attributed client names and project locations. The CTA button updated exactly as requested.
This is the fastest way to make structural or copy changes once your site is built. Rather than navigating Edit mode to find and manually update each element, you describe what you want, and Airo locates and updates the relevant files.
For simple changes involving one or two elements, follow-up prompts are faster than manual editing every time.
Step 7: Build Your Remaining Pages
After the homepage, the remaining pages exist as planned placeholders in the navigation. The left panel shows a “Continue building” counter that tracks your progress, for example 1/5 after the homepage is done.
To build a page, click its name in the “Continue building” list. The build process for each subsequent page works the same way as the homepage. Airo selects media, generates content, builds the layout, and validates the code.
For the Portfolio/Work page, which I built next, the process took four minutes from start to finish.
The result was a filterable gallery with six projects organized across five room categories: Living Room, Bedroom, Kitchen, Dining Room, and Home Office. Each project included an image, category label, year, and project name. A CTA section was added automatically at the bottom of the page.
Step 8: Connect a Domain
When your pages are ready, click the Domain tab in the top navigation bar.
This tab has two sections:
Custom Domain: Two options appear here. You can purchase a new domain directly through GoDaddy using the “Buy a New Domain” button, or enter a domain you already own in the text field below to connect it to your project. The text field shows a placeholder: “e.g. mydomain.com.”
Project Domain: Below the custom domain section, your free project URL is shown with a green “READY” badge. For Mara & Co., this was m50wrin6kt.c35.airoapp.ai. This URL is active immediately and publicly accessible even before you connect a custom domain.
If you are not ready to buy or connect a domain, the free URL works for sharing previews or testing. You can connect a custom domain at any time after publishing.
Step 9: Publish Your Site
When you are ready to go live, click the Publish button in the top right corner. A dropdown appears with three elements:
- Domain Portfolio: A search field where you can find and add a new domain at the point of publishing
- Use a domain I own elsewhere: A link for connecting an external domain
- Free Project URL: Your airoapp.ai subdomain, pre-selected by default
Select your preferred URL option and click the purple Publish button. A note in the dropdown informs you that publishing triggers an automatic background security check on your site.
Depending on your account security settings, publishing may prompt a verification step. I was asked to enter a six-digit code from Microsoft Authenticator before the publish could proceed.
Once verified, the button changes to “Publishing…” with a loading indicator. After a short wait, a confirmation modal appears with confetti animation: “It’s published! Live visitors coming your way.” Your project URL is displayed in the modal with a copy button.
The modal also prompts you to connect a custom domain if you have not done so already. You can dismiss this and do it later from the Domain tab.
Tips for Getting Better Results from GoDaddy Airo
- Write a detailed initial prompt that includes your business name, location, specific services, and any design preferences. This single step has more influence on your output than anything else.
- Use the two style and tone questions deliberately rather than skipping them. The color palette and font selection flow directly from your answers, and getting these right upfront avoids corrective prompts later.
- If the planning phase shows a direction you dislike, restart before the build rather than fixing it afterward. Corrections before the build cost nothing. Corrections after cost credits.
- Build the homepage first and review it fully before building other pages. Changes to global elements like the header and footer are easier to make before the rest of the site exists.
- Use the “Is this what you imagined?” feedback prompt to flag structural issues immediately after the homepage builds. Addressing them at this stage is faster than correcting page by page later.
- Use follow-up prompts for structural changes such as adding sections, updating CTAs, or changing copy across multiple elements. Use Edit mode for precise, element-level adjustments to individual text or images.
- When replacing images, check the built-in Getty Images stock library before uploading your own. The library is free to use, searches by keyword, and already contains images relevant to your business category. For Mara & Co., the “contemporary bedroom” search returned professional-quality interior images instantly.
- Build your highest-priority pages first. If you approach your credit limit, you want the most important pages complete rather than having credits used on lower-priority pages.
- Check mobile view before publishing. The device switch button in the bottom toolbar takes seconds, and it is easier to spot layout issues before the site is live.
- You can ask Airo to connect a custom domain through the chat panel, in addition to using the Domain tab. Type something like “connect my domain [yourdomain.com]” and Airo will walk you through the steps.
- If you encounter the “Something went wrong” error mid-build, do not close the window. Click the page name in the “Continue building” list to resume. No progress is lost.
