WordPress's owner launches a place to publish sites built with AI

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, launched Spacefast on Monday. It is a service for putting websites and apps online when you built them by prompting an AI coding agent, which is a chatbot that writes software for you. It targets people who made something with AI and have no simple place to publish it.

What it does

Spacefast has no builder of its own. It gives the AI tool you already use building instructions and a database, then publishes the result to a private link your team can comment on. Hosting, custom domains and a database are included now. Built-in sign-in for app users, email sending and shared team knowledge are due in the next few weeks.

You can limit what the agent can touch, with approval checks for sensitive actions. You can also download your files and export your app data. Spacefast runs on WordPress.com's systems, which Automattic says serve more than 15 billion page views a month.

Which AI tools work

Automattic lists ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Bot, Meta's Muse, OpenClaw and Hermes. Spacefast is an official plugin in Claude, ChatGPT and Grok Bot. Other agents can connect through an API, a command-line tool or an MCP server, and you can link a Git repository. It supports Vite, TanStack Start, Next.js and Astro projects, which are common toolkits for building websites.

What it costs

• Free: $0, a starter tier.
• Personal: $1 a month of usage included, with custom domains and a built-in database.
• Go: $5 a month, with unlimited spaces and more usage.
• Pro: $15 per member per month, with team features and early access.
• Enterprise: custom pricing.

Who is behind it

Spacefast is led by Batuhan İçöz, who joined Automattic when it acquired the messaging app Texts. He built the first version during an internal sprint called Radical Speed Month. He told TechCrunch the idea began when non-technical friends kept sending him Vercel links to things they had vibe coded, meaning built by prompting AI.

He says his edge over rival Lovable is that users pick their own agent, though some people will prefer having those choices made for them. Automattic soft-launched the service in September. Early users have built internal mockups, slideshows and promotional sites. For companies, İçöz pitches it as a fix for "IT sprawl" as marketing teams spin up landing pages on services like Lovable.

Worth knowing

The launch comes after a turbulent stretch at Automattic. Its board forced out CEO Matt Mullenweg before he regained control within days, and the company began layoffs across several properties in October. İçöz also said many new sites will not need a content management system, the kind of tool WordPress is known for.