GoDaddy launches a suite of AI tools for small businesses

GoDaddy on Monday announced a new suite of AI-powered online marketing tools called Airo, making it the latest company to offer an all-in-one, AI-enhanced platform for busy small businesses.

As soon as business owners arrive at the Airo site, they’re invited to enter a description of their product and service, from which GoDaddy’s AI generates a list of suggested, available domain names to register. After purchasing one, they gain access to a set of AI tools, including a logo generator that can quickly suggest a variety of potential business logos in assorted styles, ready to use or further customize. 

For users who want to host their websites with GoDaddy, there’s also the ability to generate either a quick coming-soon website or a more sophisticated offering, complete with suggested layout, AI-drafted copy, and stock images chosen by the AI system. Laka Sriram, VP of product at GoDaddy and lead on the company’s generative AI experts, says there’s enough material in GoDaddy’s stock image library that customers are unlikely to notice the same photos repeated across generated sites. 

And, he says, the AI models are fine-tuned and explicitly instructed to ensure business sites are optimized for search engine performance.

“We actually have in our prompts and our models, the content that gets produced is for the best possible SEO results,” he says. “It’s a long, detailed, multistep prompt.”

Other AI tools within the Airo suite can help set up business email addresses (which require a paid plan after a free trial period), choose social media handles, draft and schedule social media copy for everyday posts or holiday celebrations, set up email marketing campaigns, and place ads on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Businesses who build online stores with GoDaddy can also take and upload pictures of physical products, allowing the AI system to draft product descriptions they can use as-is or edit. The system is designed so that GoDaddy can use a variety of different AI providers on the backend, depending on which ones give the best results for particular tasks.

The set of tools and AI assistants can help small business owners spend less time building and maintaining an online and social media presence and more time focused on what their business actually does. Of course, Airo also ensures GoDaddy customers have less reason to go elsewhere for any of their online business needs and can help drive customers who may have just set up a domain name with GoDaddy to use other paid services like email and premium web hosting. And Sriram says he’s optimistic the offering will bring in new customers as well. 

It’s part of a trend of small business marketing platforms increasingly operating as one-stop shops for website building, email marketing, social media outreach, and, with the rise of generative AI, even automated graphic design and copywriting. In the past year, Intuit-owned Mailchimp—which itself offers a range of small business marketing tools including websites and social media management—has launched AI tools for crafting email copy, Squarespace unveiled AI content generation tools and a system for accepting payments through its platform, and Wix released an AI website builder and other tools it says are helping add and retain customers.

“AI removes the friction from the users—from generating creative text and images to setting up a website with the correct business solutions and improving SEO more efficiently,” says Hila Gat, head of data science at Wix, in an email to Fast Company.

The majority of Wix’s new users are now utilizing at least one AI tool, cofounder and CEO Avishai Abrahami said in an earnings call on Wednesday.

“This has resulted in reduced friction and enhanced the creation experience for our users, as well as increased conversion and improved monetization,” he said. “We expect our AI technology to be a significant driver of growth in 2024 and beyond.”

There are also more specialized services, like Looka, which focuses on creating logos and branded materials like business cards, invoices, and marketing swag; AI website builder Hocoos; and Owner, a one-stop platform that focuses on marketing and online ordering for mom-and-pop restaurants.

For business owners, these multifaceted services can mean less time pivoting between website tabs, learning new interfaces, and paying bills to multiple software vendors. And when they’re augmented with AI assistants, they can also eliminate the need for business owners to bring in outside consultants.

“Enabling users to access the [AI] from within Wix’s platforms, allows for a streamlined content creation workflow, reducing the cost and time spent hiring copywriters, photographers or SEO experts,” says Gat.

These services are also likely a relief for business owners who were never thrilled at moonlighting as their own creative directors.

“The writer’s block, I’m sure, is there for these small and micro business owners that are trying to look at establishing an online presence,” says GoDaddy’s Sriram.

GoDaddy on Monday announced a new suite of AI-powered online marketing tools called Airo, making it the latest company to offer an all-in-one, AI-enhanced platform for busy small businesses.

As soon as business owners arrive at the Airo site, they’re invited to enter a description of their product and service, from which GoDaddy’s AI generates a list of suggested, available domain names to register. After purchasing one, they gain access to a set of AI tools, including a logo generator that can quickly suggest a variety of potential business logos in assorted styles, ready to use or further customize. 

For users who want to host their websites with GoDaddy, there’s also the ability to generate either a quick coming-soon website or a more sophisticated offering, complete with suggested layout, AI-drafted copy, and stock images chosen by the AI system. Laka Sriram, VP of product at GoDaddy and lead on the company’s generative AI experts, says there’s enough material in GoDaddy’s stock image library that customers are unlikely to notice the same photos repeated across generated sites. 

And, he says, the AI models are fine-tuned and explicitly instructed to ensure business sites are optimized for search engine performance.

“We actually have in our prompts and our models, the content that gets produced is for the best possible SEO results,” he says. “It’s a long, detailed, multistep prompt.”

Other AI tools within the Airo suite can help set up business email addresses (which require a paid plan after a free trial period), choose social media handles, draft and schedule social media copy for everyday posts or holiday celebrations, set up email marketing campaigns, and place ads on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Businesses who build online stores with GoDaddy can also take and upload pictures of physical products, allowing the AI system to draft product descriptions they can use as-is or edit. The system is designed so that GoDaddy can use a variety of different AI providers on the backend, depending on which ones give the best results for particular tasks.

The set of tools and AI assistants can help small business owners spend less time building and maintaining an online and social media presence and more time focused on what their business actually does. Of course, Airo also ensures GoDaddy customers have less reason to go elsewhere for any of their online business needs and can help drive customers who may have just set up a domain name with GoDaddy to use other paid services like email and premium web hosting. And Sriram says he’s optimistic the offering will bring in new customers as well. 

It’s part of a trend of small business marketing platforms increasingly operating as one-stop shops for website building, email marketing, social media outreach, and, with the rise of generative AI, even automated graphic design and copywriting. In the past year, Intuit-owned Mailchimp—which itself offers a range of small business marketing tools including websites and social media management—has launched AI tools for crafting email copy, Squarespace unveiled AI content generation tools and a system for accepting payments through its platform, and Wix released an AI website builder and other tools it says are helping add and retain customers.

“AI removes the friction from the users—from generating creative text and images to setting up a website with the correct business solutions and improving SEO more efficiently,” says Hila Gat, head of data science at Wix, in an email to Fast Company.

The majority of Wix’s new users are now utilizing at least one AI tool, cofounder and CEO Avishai Abrahami said in an earnings call on Wednesday.

“This has resulted in reduced friction and enhanced the creation experience for our users, as well as increased conversion and improved monetization,” he said. “We expect our AI technology to be a significant driver of growth in 2024 and beyond.”

There are also more specialized services, like Looka, which focuses on creating logos and branded materials like business cards, invoices, and marketing swag; AI website builder Hocoos; and Owner, a one-stop platform that focuses on marketing and online ordering for mom-and-pop restaurants.

For business owners, these multifaceted services can mean less time pivoting between website tabs, learning new interfaces, and paying bills to multiple software vendors. And when they’re augmented with AI assistants, they can also eliminate the need for business owners to bring in outside consultants.

“Enabling users to access the [AI] from within Wix’s platforms, allows for a streamlined content creation workflow, reducing the cost and time spent hiring copywriters, photographers or SEO experts,” says Gat.

These services are also likely a relief for business owners who were never thrilled at moonlighting as their own creative directors.

“The writer’s block, I’m sure, is there for these small and micro business owners that are trying to look at establishing an online presence,” says GoDaddy’s Sriram.