DEV Community: Amir M

ChatGPT Sites vs the alternatives: where to host what your AI builds

Amir M — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:49:17 +0000

Every AI assistant can build a website now. The question that trips people up is the one after: where does it live? Where it lives decides the things you notice later: whether it's on your own domain, whether it's free, whether it can run a form or a login, and whether it survives when you stop paying for the tool that made it.

2026 changed the answer. ChatGPT got its own hosting (ChatGPT Sites, now in public beta), Claude can publish artifacts and push them to Netlify through a connector, and Gemini's Canvas hands out share links. So I went through every option I could find, using each vendor's own docs, and wrote down what each one actually gives you.

Upfront, so you can weigh it: I built DashPloy, one of the options below. I've tried hard to be fair to the others, including where they're the better choice. Everything was checked on 23 September 2026. These products change monthly, so check before you commit.

The short version

Where	Free?	Your own domain, free	Runs server code	Best for
ChatGPT Sites	No: Plus, Pro and workspace plans	No free plan (yes on paid)	Yes, with limits	Staying inside ChatGPT, outside Europe
Claude artifact publishing	Yes	No, it's a claude.ai link	No	Sharing one page fast
Gemini Canvas	Yes	No, it's a g.co link	No	Showing someone a small tool
Google AI Studio	Up to two apps	An ai.studio subdomain	Yes (Cloud Run)	Apps that call Gemini
Netlify Drop	Yes, with a monthly credit limit	Yes	Yes (functions)	Dragging in files you already have
GitHub Pages	Yes, public repo	Yes	No	Developers already on GitHub
Tiiny Host	One site, with a banner	No (from $13/mo, billed yearly)	PHP	Turning one file into a link
Lovable	Yes, on lovable.app	No (Pro plan)	Yes (Lovable Cloud)	Building and hosting inside Lovable
DashPloy	Yes, no expiry	Yes, one on the free plan	Yes (TypeScript)	Letting your AI do the publishing

Now the detail, including the catches.

ChatGPT Sites

ChatGPT can now build a site and host it without you leaving the chat. You describe what you want, it shows a private preview, and when you publish you get an address. OpenAI describes it as including hosting, access controls, storage and database support.

What it costs: during the public beta there's no separate price. Usage is included in your plan up to limits OpenAI sets per plan. Hit one and you may not be able to create a site, add storage, or keep a busy site public until usage drops.

The catches:

It's not on the Free or Go plans, and not in the EEA, Switzerland or the UK at launch.
Deleting a site is permanent. There's no restore.
Some frameworks, databases and background services aren't supported on its runtime, and sites can't connect to live data sources yet.
A custom domain works if you already own it and can edit its DNS. It isn't available in Enterprise workspaces at launch.

Choose it if you already pay for ChatGPT, live outside Europe, and want to build and host in one place. I wrote a longer breakdown of ChatGPT Sites' cost, limits and custom domains if you're deciding.

Claude

Claude gives you three different answers, and people mix them up:

Publishing an artifact gives you a public link on claude.ai. It's free on the Free, Pro and Max plans. It can't use your own domain, and an artifact can only be published once; after that you can only unpublish it.
The Netlify connector. Anthropic documents Claude taking an artifact's code and deploying it to Netlify as a live site. That's a real option if you want a Netlify account.
Claude Code runs on your machine and can deploy anywhere that has an API.

Choose the claude.ai link for a quick demo where the address doesn't matter. For anything on your own domain, it's option 2 or 3.

Gemini and Google AI Studio

Gemini's Canvas can share what it builds as a public g.co/gemini/share link. It's free if you're signed in. The link opens only on gemini.google.com, not in the mobile app, and there's no custom domain.

Google AI Studio can publish an app to Cloud Run. On the Starter Tier that's free for up to two apps, on a subdomain of ai.studio. More needs a paid Google Cloud account.

One thing to check: AI Studio apps often call the Gemini API. If that call happens in the browser, your API key is in the page source for anyone to read. Wherever you host it, move the call server-side and keep the key as a secret.

Netlify Drop

The classic "drag a folder, get a link". Netlify Drop takes a folder, a zip or a single HTML file and publishes it. No account is needed for plain files, and projects can stay on the free plan as long as you like. The free plan includes custom domains with HTTPS and functions, within a monthly credit limit. If you drop a framework project that needs a build, it asks you to sign up and then runs the build for you.

Choose it if you already have the files and want a public link in seconds, with room to grow into Netlify's builds, forms and functions. Honestly, for a lot of people this is the right answer.

GitHub Pages

Free, reliable, and works with your own domain. On GitHub Free the repository has to be public, so your source is public too. It serves static files only: sites up to 1 GB, with a soft limit of 100 GB of bandwidth a month. GitHub's docs also say it isn't meant as free hosting for an online business, an e-commerce site or SaaS.

Choose it if you're a developer already on GitHub, or it's an open-source project page.

Tiiny Host

Tiiny Host is the quickest way to turn one file into a link, including PDFs and PHP. The free plan gives you one active site, 3 MB uploads and 5,000 visits a month, with a Tiiny Host banner. Free links stay up as long as you log in at least once every three months. Custom domains start on the Solo plan, $13 a month billed yearly.

Choose it if you need to share a single file quickly and don't need your own domain.

Lovable

If you built the app in Lovable, its hosting is the path of least resistance. The free plan publishes to up to five lovable.app addresses, and running a small app is usually covered by the included grant. A custom domain and removing the Lovable badge both start on the Pro plan.

Choose it if you're going to keep building inside Lovable. If you want the same project on your own domain without a paid builder plan, take the code out and host its production build on Netlify, GitHub Pages or DashPloy instead.

DashPloy (mine)

DashPloy is built around a different idea: your AI assistant does the publishing, not you. You paste one line into Claude Code, Cursor, Antigravity or ChatGPT with Codex, or add the MCP server to a chat app, and the assistant deploys the site and gets back a live HTTPS URL.

The part I care most about: when a deploy fails, the error comes back as structured JSON with a hint written for the model, so the assistant fixes it and redeploys instead of pasting a stack trace at you.

Free plan: two websites, 100 MB, 100,000 requests a month, and one custom domain. No card, no expiry.
Server code: small TypeScript/JavaScript apps on every plan, the free one included, with a curated set of packages (no npm install on the server).
Every version kept, restorable in one step.
Paid: Starter $4.99/mo ($49/yr), Pro $14.99/mo ($149/yr), for more sites, storage, traffic and domains.

Where it's worse: it's not a builder, so you need an AI that can make HTTP requests (a browser chat tab usually can't, unless you add the connector). Server apps run in V8 isolates, not Node, so native packages and long-running servers are out. For those, Render, Railway or Fly are better choices.

Which one should you pick?

You pay for ChatGPT, live outside Europe, and want one tool: ChatGPT Sites.
You just need to show someone a page: a Claude or Gemini share link.
You have the files and want a link now: Netlify Drop.
You're a developer and the repo can be public: GitHub Pages.
One file, one link, no domain: Tiiny Host.
You're still building in Lovable: Lovable.
You want your own domain free, and your AI to publish every change: DashPloy.
You need a full Node backend with Postgres and workers: none of the above. Use Render, Railway or Fly.

The row people skip: your own domain

The question that decides most of this later is whether your own domain is on the free plan. It's the difference between a link that looks like a draft and an address you can put on a business card.

From the list above, the free plans that let a domain you own point at your site are Netlify, GitHub Pages (public repo) and DashPloy. Tiiny Host and Lovable need a paid plan for it, ChatGPT Sites has no free plan at all, and the Claude and Gemini share links can't use one.

I keep a host-by-host table of free hosting with a custom domain, each row dated and linked to the vendor's page, because this changes more often than you'd think.

Before you publish anything AI-built

A few things that bite regardless of host:

Never put API keys in the page. Anything in HTML or client JavaScript is public. Keep keys on a server, as secrets.
Check the index file. Most hosts need index.html at the root. It's the most common reason an AI-built site "deploys" and then 404s.
Frameworks need a build. For React, Vue, Svelte or Astro, most hosts want the build output (dist/, build/ or out/), not the source.
Know how to undo. Some hosts keep every version; ChatGPT Sites deletes permanently. Know which one you're on before you let an AI press publish.

I'll keep the live comparison updated as these products change. If something here is already out of date, tell me in the comments and I'll fix it. And if you've found a host that belongs on this list, I'd like to hear about it.

Your AI built your website. Now just ask it to put it online.

Amir M — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:38:50 +0000

Building a website with AI takes minutes now. You describe what you want, and your assistant writes the pages, the styling, even the contact form.

Then comes the part nobody enjoys: getting it online.

Pick a host. Create an account. Choose a plan. Work out whether it wants a build command, an output folder or a particular Node version. Sort out HTTPS. Log in to your domain registrar and hunt for the DNS settings. The site that took ten minutes to build takes an evening to publish, and plenty of them never get published at all.

I built DashPloy to remove that part completely.

The idea

You're already building with AI, so deploying should happen in the same place, in the same conversation, in plain words.

With DashPloy, you tell your AI to deploy the site and it does. The site goes live straight away at its own address, https://your-site.dashploy.app, with HTTPS already working. If you have your own domain, the AI connects that too.

There's no hosting dashboard to learn and no server to configure. You don't touch build settings or FTP, and you never renew a certificate.

What it looks like

A typical exchange:

You: Put this site online with DashPloy.

AI: The name bikefix is available, so your site would be at https://bikefix.dashploy.app. Want me to use it?

You: Yes.

AI: Done. It's live at https://bikefix.dashploy.app.

The AI checks the name with you before using it. That's deliberate: the address is something you'll share, and changing it later breaks every link you've sent.

After that, updates are just requests: "change the opening hours and publish it again". The new version goes live at the same address.

Setting it up

There are two ways to connect your AI, and you only need one.

Paste one line. Sign in at dashploy.com with Google. Your dashboard shows a ready-made prompt with your personal code already in it, next to a copy button. Paste it into your AI tool. It starts like this:

Deploy my website with DashPloy.

Read https://dashploy.com/llms.txt first — it explains how to publish, how to
check what my plan allows before you build, and what to do if I do not have an
account yet.

That link is a set of instructions written for the AI: how to publish, how to check your plan's limits before building, and what to tell you if something needs your attention. You never have to read it.

Or add DashPloy as a connector. If your AI app supports connectors (MCP), add https://dashploy.com/mcp and sign in when it asks. There's nothing to paste and nothing to install, and the chat you're already using can publish.

Your own domain

Every site gets its own dashploy.app address for free. When you want your own name on it, there are two cases.

You already own a domain. Ask your AI to connect it. It gives you the exact DNS records to add at your registrar, covering both yourname.com and www.yourname.com, and tells you when they're working. The HTTPS certificate is issued and renewed automatically.

You don't have one yet. Ask your AI to find one. It can search for available names and buy the one you choose, and it tells you the renewal price next to the first-year price before you agree. A domain bought this way is set up for you, with no records to add, and goes live within a few minutes.

One custom domain is included on the free plan.

When something breaks, the AI fixes it

Deploying without worrying only works if failures don't land on you. AI-written code often does things a hosting platform can't run, like saving files to a disk that won't exist on the next request. Usually that ends with a wall of logs you paste back into the chat, hoping the AI works out what went wrong.

DashPloy answers with an error written for the AI: what went wrong, where, and exactly what to do instead.

{
  "phase": "bundle",
  "code": "UNSUPPORTED_RUNTIME_API",
  "message": "This project writes to the filesystem expecting the data to persist.",
  "retryable": true,
  "hint": "… Use env.STORAGE for files …",
  "location": { "file": "src/index.ts", "line": 8 }
}

The AI reads the hint, fixes that line and deploys again, often without you noticing anything happened. retryable tells it whether a fix will work, or whether it should stop and ask you.

Nothing gets lost

Every version you publish is kept. If a change goes wrong, say "put back yesterday's version" and the old one is live again in one step.

A site that's already live is also protected from being overwritten by accident. A new deploy is refused unless the AI says explicitly that it means to replace it, so a second assistant can't quietly publish over your work.

Which AI tools can deploy

This one catches people out. To deploy, the AI has to send your site somewhere, and not every AI app can do that.

AI agents on your computer can: Antigravity (free), Cursor, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, Codex and Claude Code. Some of them need a paid plan.
Chat apps with DashPloy added as a connector can, with nothing to install.
A plain chat in a browser tab usually can't. It will build the site and then tell you it can't send it. That isn't DashPloy failing. The chat is being honest about what it can do. Ask it for the files, then finish in one of the tools above.

There's a full list, with where to get each tool.

Websites and apps

It isn't only for static pages. DashPloy works out what you've built on its own:

Websites: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images and fonts.
Server-side apps in JavaScript or TypeScript, such as a contact form that saves messages, a login or a small API. Apps can store files and uploads too.

Some limits to know up front: no Python, no npm install (apps use a curated set of popular packages), and no built-in database, so you connect one over HTTP, such as Neon or Supabase.

Pricing

The free plan doesn't expire and doesn't need a card:

	Free	Starter	Pro
Price	$0	$4.99/mo	$14.99/mo
Websites	2	5	10
Requests / month	100,000	1,000,000	10,000,000
Custom domains	1	2	5
Storage	100 MB	1 GB	5 GB
Server-side apps	✅	✅	✅

Paying gets you more room, not more features. Apps and a custom domain are included on the free plan.

The allowance is counted in requests, not page views. A request is the page itself or any single image, font or script on it, so one page view is usually several requests.

Try it

Sign in at dashploy.com with Google.
Copy the prompt from your dashboard into your AI tool, or add the connector.
Tell it what you want: "Make a one-page site for my bike repair shop with opening hours and a contact form, and put it online."

What's the most annoying part of hosting you've had to deal with? I'd love to hear what DashPloy should take off your plate next.