Custom Domain Adoption Among 299 Published Sites

Only about one published site in nine had its own domain. Of 299 sites published on We.Inc, 33 (11.0%) set a custom domain and 25 (8.4%) had it fully connected at the time of measurement. Among those 33 domains, 25 ended in .com.

Custom domains on published We.Inc sites (n = 299)
Measure	Count	Share
Published sites	299	100%
Custom domain set	33	11.0%
Custom domain connected and active	25	8.4%
.com among custom domains	25 of 33	76%

Updated October 28, 2026

Every published We.Inc site gets a free address on our own domain, so a custom domain is an optional step. That makes it a useful signal of how many people treat their first AI-built site as their real business address.

Domain status of published sites

Published We.Inc sites by domain status (n = 299)
	Value
Free We.Inc address only	266 (89.0%)
Custom domain active	25 (8.4%)
Custom domain set, not yet active	8 (2.7%)

Method and date range

We queried the live database once, read-only, on October 28, 2026, for published projects whose creation date falls from March 26 to October 27, 2026.

Sample: 299 published sites. Domain fields are read as they stood on the query date, so a domain removed earlier is not counted.

Company, internal and test accounts plus bot sign-ups were excluded in SQL. Domain endings were grouped by pattern and only counts were returned; endings with fewer than 20 domains are reported only as a combined remainder.

Limitations

Small sample: 33 custom domains is enough for a headline share but not for detailed splits.
Some people point a domain at the free address from their registrar instead of connecting it here; those are not counted.
The window includes sites published only days before measurement, which have had little time to add a domain.

Cite this study

We.Inc, "Custom Domain Adoption Among 299 Published Sites", October 28, 2026, https://we.inc/research/custom-domain-adoption-ai-built-sites.

Why the share is low

Many sites here are first drafts, side projects or test launches where a free address is enough. Others belong to people who already own a domain pointed elsewhere and have not moved it yet.

The gap between set and active matters more for a business. A domain that is entered but never verified leaves visitors on an error page, so the last step of checking DNS is worth the few minutes it takes.

How it works

Took every project with a recorded publish time, created March 26 to October 27, 2026, after removing team and test accounts.
Counted projects with a custom domain field set, and those whose domain status was active.
Classified domain endings by pattern inside the database; no domain names were exported.
Measured days from project creation to the first domain record for the projects that had one.

Tips

Most people launched first on the free address. Publishing before buying a domain is common and fine.
Eight of the 33 domains were set but not yet active, usually because DNS records were still pending. Check the records after adding a domain.
Nearly all custom domains were entered with www in front, which is the form to test after connecting.

Frequently asked questions

What share of AI-built sites use their own domain?

In our data, 11.0% of published sites set a custom domain and 8.4% had one active when we measured on October 28, 2026.

Which domain ending is most common?

.com, with 25 of the 33 custom domains. Country endings such as .ca or .co.uk and other endings made up the remaining 8; each is too small to report separately.

How soon do people add a domain?

For the 39 projects with a domain record, the median gap between creating the project and adding the domain was about 2 days.

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