Automattic Launches Spacefast to Host Apps Built by AI Coding Agents

Automattic launched a hosting service on Monday for websites and apps built with AI coding agents, with paid plans starting at $1 per month. The service, called Spacefast, is a new company inside the group that owns WordPress.com. It targets a specific gap: people who build a site by prompting a chatbot and then have nowhere simple to publish it.

Spacefast does not ship its own builder. Instead, it hands the user's existing agent the building instructions and a database, then publishes the result to a private link a team can comment on. That is a deliberate split from rivals. Automattic lists ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Bot, Meta's Muse, OpenClaw and Hermes among supported tools. Spacefast is an official plugin in Claude, ChatGPT and Grok Bot. Other agents connect through an API, a command-line tool or an MCP server, and users can also link a Git repository. The service supports Vite, TanStack Start, Next.js and Astro projects.

What does it cost?

The pricing ladder is aggressive by any hosting standard:

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

Hosting, custom domains and a database are included now. Built-in app sign-in, transactional email and shared team knowledge are due in the next few weeks — a promise, not a shipped feature. Users can restrict what an agent can touch, with approval checks for sensitive actions, and can download their files and export app data. Spacefast runs on WordPress.com infrastructure, which Automattic says serves more than 15 billion page views a month.

Why is Automattic pitching it against Lovable?

The competitive target is clear. Automattic positions Spacefast against Lovable and Emergent, which bundle the building interface with the infrastructure. Spacefast's bet is the reverse: let users pick their own agent and host the result.

The service is led by Batuhan İçöz, who joined Automattic through its acquisition of the messaging app Texts and built the first version during an internal sprint called Radical Speed Month. He told TechCrunch the project started when non-technical friends kept sending him Vercel links to things they had "vibe coded." His stated edge over Lovable is agent choice, though he concedes some people will prefer having those choices made for them.

Automattic soft-launched the service in September. Early users built internal mockups, slideshows and promotional sites — modest outputs, not production systems. For companies, İçöz pitches Spacefast as a fix for "IT sprawl," as marketing teams spin up landing pages on services like Lovable. Spacefast also says it can draw on Automattic's own products to add analytics, WordPress integration and WooCommerce shops.

Is this an admission about WordPress itself?

İçöz's own framing is blunt. He said people now build websites in ChatGPT or Claude instead of WordPress, and that many new sites will not need a content management system. That is a notable concession from an executive inside the company whose flagship product is exactly such a system.

The launch also follows a turbulent stretch at Automattic. The board forced out CEO Matt Mullenweg before he regained control within days, and the company began layoffs across several properties in October. A new subsidiary launched in that context carries the burden of proving it is strategy rather than distraction.

The claim of 15 billion monthly page views gives Spacefast credible infrastructure. What remains unproven is whether builders want hosting separated from their agent, or whether bundled rivals will simply add the same flexibility at comparable prices.