AI App Builder Custom Domain Support (2026): The Three Gates

Quick Answer

All eight AI app builders in this comparison support custom domains in 2026. A yes-or-no column is therefore worthless, and asking "does it support custom domains" gets you an answer that is true of everything and tells you nothing.

Three things actually decide the outcome, and they are independent of each other:

1. The plan gate. On Lovable, Bolt.new, Base44, Bubble and Webflow a custom domain requires a paid plan, and the free tier gives you a vendor subdomain only. Softr documents one custom domain on every plan. Replit is different in kind: its docs price the custom domain as "pay your domain provider" with no Replit-side plan gate, and gate it on having a successful deployment instead.
2. Where the domain terminates. Seven of the eight point your DNS at the builder's own managed hosting. v0 is structurally different: its docs hand the entire flow to the Vercel console, so the domain lands on a general-purpose hosting account you already control.
3. What happens when you stop paying. Lovable and Bolt both document the same asymmetry, and neither markets it: domains you have already connected keep serving your app after a downgrade, but you cannot connect a new one or republish to it until you upgrade again. Grandfathered, then frozen.

The trap is that the first axis is the one every comparison covers and the third is the one that actually costs you money. If you are weighing a downgrade, the question is not whether your domain keeps working. It is whether you will ever need to attach another one.

The practical rule: budget a paid plan on six of the eight before you buy a domain at all. If keeping the domain independent of the builder matters more than convenience, v0 is the only option here that puts it on hosting you already own. And on Replit, write down where the verification record lives, because that one is a permanent obligation rather than a setup step.

The column that answers nothing

Custom domain support is not one of the eight criteria in our AI app builder comparison matrix, and after reading every vendor's documentation the reason is clear enough: as a column it would read Yes eight times. That is a flat column, and a flat column is not a comparison.

What is not flat is everything underneath. The plan tier that unlocks it, the DNS record type you need at the apex, whether www comes along for free, who issues the certificate, how many domains you may attach, whether the builder will also sell you the domain, and what it takes to get the domain back out again. Those vary enormously, and several of them are only documented in a troubleshooting note or an FAQ accordion three levels deep.

This is the same shape as the vendor lock-in problem generally. A custom domain feels like the moment your app becomes yours. On seven of these eight builders it is also the moment your DNS starts pointing at infrastructure you do not control, and that is a commitment worth understanding before you make it rather than after.

Axis 1: the plan gate

The free tier on every one of these builders gives you a working public address. It is just never your address.

Lovable states plainly that custom domains are available on paid plans. The project keeps its lovable.app URL regardless, and notably that URL cannot be removed at all: the documented workaround is to connect a custom domain and set it as primary so visitors see the branded address instead.

Bolt.new publishes every project to a free bolt.host address on publish, and the docs are explicit that custom domains are only available on paid plans, so you need to upgrade from Free to any paid tier.

Base44 gives every app a free myapp.base44.app URL from the moment it is created, and lets you rename that subdomain any time with no DNS setup and no payment. Custom domains require the Starter plan or above. Worth noting separately: 301 redirects are also gated to Starter and above on Base44, the same tier as custom domains, which is an unusual thing to find behind a paywall.

Bubble is unambiguous in its own FAQ: custom domains are available on paid plans, and the free plan uses the default bubbleapps.io subdomain only.

Webflow splits it across plan types rather than tiers. The free Starter plan gets a webflow.io domain; a custom domain arrives with the Basic Site plan, and Webflow's pricing page frames it as needing a paid Site plan to publish and host at all.

Softr is the outlier in the generous direction. Its documentation states that all plans come with one custom domain included, with additional domains available as paid add-ons and the number of extra slots depending on the subscription. It also hands out unlimited subdomains on the Softr-owned softr.app domain.

Replit is the outlier in the interesting direction. Its custom-domain documentation contains a comparison table whose Price row reads "Free" for a Replit subdomain and "Pay your domain provider" for a custom domain. There is no Replit plan tier named as a gate. What gates it instead is deployment: the Domains tab only becomes available once your app has a successful deployment, so you have to publish before you can connect anything.

v0 does not really have a plan gate of its own on this axis, because it does not own the surface. Every deployment gets a vercel.app URL, you can claim an available .vercel.app name for free and instantly with HTTPS configured automatically, and attaching a domain you own means going to the Vercel console.

Axis 2: where the domain actually terminates

This is the axis nobody publishes and it is the one that matters in a year.

On Lovable, Bolt.new, Replit, Base44, Bubble, Webflow and Softr, a custom domain is a pointer at the builder's managed hosting. You add records the vendor gives you, the vendor issues a certificate, and the vendor serves the traffic. That arrangement is genuinely convenient and it is also the definition of a dependency: if you leave, the domain does not move with your app, because there is no app to move it to until you have stood up new hosting and repointed DNS.

The concrete record values make the dependency visible:

• Lovable external domains use an A record pointing at the fixed IP 185.158.133.1, plus a TXT record for ownership verification. Subdomains use a CNAME that Lovable supplies.
• Bolt.new uses a CNAME for www pointing at site-dns.bolt.host, and for the root domain an ALIAS, ANAME or flattened CNAME pointing at the same host.
• Base44 recommends an ANAME or ALIAS at the root pointing at base44.onrender.com, and its docs give the honest reason: that form lets the root domain follow Base44 if Base44 changes its underlying infrastructure, instead of being pinned to a fixed IP. If your DNS provider has no ANAME or ALIAS support, the fallback is an A record to 216.24.57.1 plus a CNAME on www.
• Bubble uses A records at Bubble's IPs, fronted by Cloudflare. The tell is in Bubble's own troubleshooting guidance: if you inspect the certificate and it has the form ssl123456.cloudflare.net, your records are pointing to the right place and Cloudflare has simply not validated yet.
• Softr uses an A record on @ plus a CNAME on www.

Two patterns are worth separating there. An A record to a fixed vendor IP pins your apex to one address the vendor may need to change. An ALIAS, ANAME or flattened CNAME delegates that to the vendor's own DNS and survives an infrastructure change. Base44 documents the trade-off explicitly and recommends the resilient form, which is more transparency than this criterion usually gets.

v0 sits outside this pattern entirely. Its custom-domain documentation walks you as far as the Domains menu and then hands off: click Inspect on Vercel, follow the instructions in the Vercel dashboard, configure DNS with your registrar, and see Vercel's own documentation on adding domains. The practical consequence is that the domain is attached to a Vercel project in an account you hold. Vercel is general-purpose hosting that runs plenty of applications never generated by v0, so if you stop using v0 tomorrow the deployment and the domain both stay exactly where they are. That is a materially different relationship from the other seven, and it is the single strongest argument on this criterion.

Axis 3: downgrade, redirects, and getting back out

The grandfather-then-freeze rule

Lovable and Bolt independently document the same behaviour in almost the same words.

Lovable: connected domains keep serving your published app, downgrading or cancelling does not disconnect them or unpublish the project, and you can still disconnect them on any plan. But connecting a new domain requires a paid plan, and after a downgrade to Free you cannot buy domains or connect domains to projects, including domains already sitting in your workspace, until you upgrade again.

Bolt: if you downgrade to a free plan you also downgrade to free hosting and can no longer publish to a custom domain. Domains you already own stay in your account and sites already published to them stay online, but you cannot republish or reconnect a custom domain while on the free plan.

So the failure mode is not a dead site. It is a site you can no longer change without paying, which is a far more awkward position to be in and considerably harder to discover in advance.

Lovable does not do permanent redirects

This one is a genuine and unadvertised SEO cost. Lovable's documentation states that Lovable hosting does not support 301 permanent redirects between connected project domains, and that it uses temporary redirects instead. The stated reason is coherent: the primary domain is a reversible project setting, you can change it later or unset it, so a permanent redirect would be the wrong signal.

Coherent, and it still means that if you connect several domains and nominate one as primary, the others forward with a temporary redirect. Google treats 301 and 302 differently for consolidating ranking signals, so anyone consolidating an old address onto a new one on Lovable hosting should know that the permanent form is not on the menu.

Base44 goes the other way and supports 301 redirects, but as noted above puts them behind the Starter plan.

Bubble has a related default worth catching. Once your app has a domain it is reachable at both appname.bubbleapps.io and your own domain, and consolidating the two is an opt-in checkbox called "redirect all requests to the domain". Until you tick it, both hosts serve the app.

Webflow: not a registrar, and leaving has an order of operations

Webflow states directly that it is not a domain registrar and does not sell domains, so you cannot transfer a custom domain to Webflow. You either buy one from IONOS through Webflow, or you connect a domain you already own by setting DNS records at your current registrar.

Its migration guidance is more useful than most, in both directions. Coming in from a platform that runs on Cloudflare infrastructure, you have to remove the domain from that platform first or Webflow may be unable to verify it even with correct records. And going out, the same constraint applies in reverse: remove your domain from Site settings, Publishing, Production at least five minutes before verifying it with a new Cloudflare-fronted provider. A documented five-minute ordering requirement on the way out is a small thing, and it is exactly the kind of small thing that turns a planned migration into an outage.

Who will sell you the domain

A quieter difference. Lovable operates as a registrar in its own right, with in-product purchase, transfer in, transfer out via EPP authorisation code, WHOIS privacy toggling, and the ICANN-mandated 60-day transfer lock on newly registered domains that Lovable notes it cannot override. Bolt and Replit both sell domains inside the product. Base44 brokers registration through GoDaddy, or through Wix if your plan is billed by Wix, or through IONOS. Webflow brokers IONOS only. Bubble, Softr and v0 document no purchase flow in their custom-domain pages, so you bring your own.

Buying the domain inside the builder is the fastest path and it also concentrates one more thing in one place. Lovable at least handles this cleanly: domains bought through Lovable are billed separately from the subscription, so a plan change does not affect their registration or renewal.

The comparison table

The details that decide whether it works at all

Six findings that are individually small, buried in vendor troubleshooting notes, and each capable of costing you a working site.

Replit: the verification record is permanent, not scaffolding. This is the sharpest item on the page. Replit issues and renews the TLS certificate for each custom domain through DNS validation against the replit-verify TXT record you add during setup. The documentation is emphatic that this record is not a one-time setup artefact and must stay in DNS for the full lifetime of the domain. Remove it, edit it or replace it after verification and the next renewal fails silently; the existing certificate eventually expires, visitors get a browser security warning, and the app becomes unreachable. Replit even names the diagnostic: if older domains on your account suddenly show certificate errors while newer ones work, a missing or modified TXT record is the most likely cause. Anyone who tidies up DNS records annually should read that twice.

Replit: linking the apex does not bring www with it. Subdomains including www are not automatically resolvable when you link an apex domain. Each subdomain has to be linked separately and each gets its own TXT record, separate from the apex's. Replit's docs also suggest configuring the apex-to-www redirect, or the reverse, at your DNS provider.

Lovable: www is only automatic if you bought the domain there. For domains purchased through Lovable, both the root and the www subdomain are set up automatically and listed separately. For domains purchased anywhere else, www is not included and you have to add it yourself as a separate connection.

Base44: wildcards are out, and one family of domains is permanently broken on www. Base44 issues a certificate for each subdomain you connect and does not support wildcard subdomains, so every subdomain you intend to use has to be listed. Separately, and more sharply: when you connect a root domain ending in uk.com, gb.com, eu.com, us.com, uk.net, gb.net or similar, the www version is not set up automatically and visiting it returns an SSL error. Base44 documents this as a permanent limitation of those domain types rather than a temporary issue, and tells you to share the address without www. Ordinary domains including example.co.uk and example.com.au are unaffected.

Softr: subdomains consume domain slots. If you already own a domain you can create as many subdomains as you like at your registrar for free. Softr's documentation notes that each custom subdomain still counts toward your custom-domain plan limit in Softr. So the free-at-the-registrar part is true and the capacity you are actually spending is Softr's.

Everyone: turn the orange cloud off. Four of these vendors independently document Cloudflare proxying as a cause of failure. Lovable attributes Cloudflare errors 1001 and 1003 to proxied records and says to set them to DNS only. Replit cannot renew certificates for Cloudflare-proxied records and names the grey cloud explicitly. Base44 says to keep its records as DNS only if your provider offers proxying. Bubble has a whole troubleshooting path for Cloudflare 1001 errors. Base44 and Replit also both tell you to remove AAAA records on the same hostname, because an IPv6 record left behind will block certificate issuance, and Base44 adds CAA records to that list since a stale CAA can refuse the certificate authority the vendor uses.

Certificates themselves are a non-issue everywhere. All eight vendors issue and renew TLS automatically at no extra charge. Lovable additionally enforces a TLS 1.2 minimum that you cannot change, and notes it satisfies common compliance requirements such as PCI DSS. Bubble applies TLS to every hosted app and does not let you turn it off.

Verdict, August 2026

• If you want the domain to stay independent of the builder: v0 is the only real answer here, and it wins on structure rather than features. The domain attaches to a Vercel account you control, so leaving v0 does not touch it. Everyone else asks you to point DNS at their own hosting.
• If you want the least amount of DNS work: buy the domain inside the builder. Lovable, Bolt.new and Replit all sell domains in product, and Lovable's implementation is the most complete of the three, with nameserver-level DNS record management, transfer out via EPP, and billing kept separate from the subscription.
• If you need many domains or many subdomains: Base44, comfortably. A documented ceiling of 150 domains and subdomains per app and 350 across the account is far above anything else here, with the caveats that there is no wildcard support and every subdomain needs its own certificate. Softr is the opposite end: one domain on the plan, and subdomains eat the same allowance.
• If you are on a free tier and evaluating: assume you will pay. Five of the eight require a paid plan outright and Webflow requires a paid Site plan to publish at all. Only Softr documents a custom domain on every plan, and Replit lets you connect one without a plan gate once you have a deployment running.
• If a downgrade is plausible: Lovable and Bolt.new are the two that tell you what happens, and what happens is that you keep what you connected and lose the ability to connect more. That is worth knowing before you need it, and the other six do not address it in their domain documentation at all.
• Where each one loses. Lovable cannot issue a permanent redirect between its own domains, and cannot remove its own project URL. Bolt freezes custom-domain publishing the moment you drop to free. Replit hides a permanent DNS obligation inside what reads like a setup step, and makes you link www by hand. v0 has the thinnest documentation of the eight, because it defers the whole topic to Vercel. Base44 paywalls 301 redirects and permanently cannot serve www on an entire family of domains. Bubble serves your app on two hostnames until you find the checkbox. Webflow will not let you bring the domain in-house at all. Softr charges subdomains against a domain allowance.

The honest summary of this criterion is that the feature is universal and the terms are not. Every builder here will let you put your brand on the address bar. Only one of them leaves the address pointing somewhere you would still control if you stopped paying, and that is the distinction the yes-or-no column erases.