How I Built a Fully SaaS Product in Just 25 Days and with €175 - and Why I Regret Building with Lovable

Can you really build a production-ready SaaS product in less than a month with pocket change? I decided to find out using Lovable, one of the hottest AI-powered development platforms. The results surprised me—both the incredible speed and the critical technical limitations I discovered too late.

Here's the complete story of building a SaaS product in 25 days with €175, why I initially loved Lovable, and why I now regret the choice. More importantly, I'll share what I'd do differently next time to align better with Vibe Coding principles of rapid iteration without sacrificing essential functionality.

The 25-Day SaaS Challenge: Budget and Timeline

Timeline: 25 days from concept to functional product Budget: €175 total investment Goal: Build a production-ready SaaS application with payment integration

When I started this project, I wanted to test whether modern AI development tools could genuinely accelerate the Vibe Coding workflow—building fast, gathering feedback, and iterating based on real-world usage. Lovable seemed like the perfect platform for this experiment.

Why I Initially Chose Lovable

Before diving into what went wrong, let's acknowledge what Lovable does extraordinarily well. These strengths initially convinced me it was the right choice for rapid SaaS development.

Mobile Development That Actually Works

Lovable's killer feature: I built 50% of my entire SaaS product on my mobile phone.

This wasn't just minor tweaks or content updates. I'm talking about building actual features, implementing logic, and designing UI components—all from my phone. The mobile interface works smoothly, and this flexibility is remarkable for rapid iteration.

Superior UI Design Quality

Compared to other AI development platforms I tested, Lovable consistently generated better-looking user interfaces. The AI understood modern design principles and created visually appealing, polished components.

Stripe Integration in 5 Minutes

Payment integration is typically one of the most time-consuming parts of SaaS development, often consuming days of work.

Lovable reduced this to approximately 5 minutes. The AI handled Stripe checkout, webhooks, and subscription logic instantly—a massive time saver.

The Critical Limitation: React Without Proper Server-Side Rendering

Despite all these advantages, I discovered a fundamental architectural limitation that made Lovable unsuitable for my SaaS product: Lovable apps are based on React without good server-side rendering capability.

This technical limitation has massive practical implications that only became apparent after launch.

Why Server-Side Rendering Matters

Server-side rendering (SSR) means your server generates complete HTML pages with content already in place before sending them to users' browsers. Client-side rendering (what Lovable uses) sends empty HTML shells and relies on JavaScript to fill in the content after the page loads.

This distinction seems minor until you understand how social media platforms, search engines, and link previews work.

The Open Graph Metadata Problem

When you share a link on WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Twitter, or any social platform, those platforms look for Open Graph meta tags in your page's HTML. These tags tell social platforms what title, description, and image to display in the link preview.

Here's the catch: Social media crawlers don't run JavaScript.

Lovable apps generate Open Graph meta tags dynamically using JavaScript after the page loads. When a social crawler visits your page, it sees an empty HTML shell without any meta tags. The result? Broken link previews with no title, no description, and no image.

For a SaaS product where user-generated content needs to be shareable—blog posts, user profiles, project pages, anything that benefits from social virality—this is a dealbreaker.

Real-World Impact

The Open Graph limitation manifested in several ways:

Failed social sharing: Users couldn't effectively share content from my product on social media. Links appeared as generic, unappealing previews that drastically reduced click-through rates.

SEO complications: While Google does run JavaScript for indexing, the process is slower and less reliable than traditional server-side rendered pages. My product's discoverability suffered.

Professional credibility concerns: Users noticed that shared links looked broken or incomplete. This subtle issue undermined the professional appearance I'd worked hard to create.

User acquisition bottleneck: Social sharing is one of the most powerful organic growth channels for SaaS products. This limitation effectively eliminated that entire channel.

For products where social sharing isn't central to the user experience, this limitation might be acceptable. For products where sharing drives growth, it's fatal.

Technical Lessons from the Comments

The LinkedIn post generated extensive technical discussion from developers and engineers, including feedback from a Lovable engineer. These conversations revealed important insights about working around Lovable's limitations and choosing better alternatives.

The Replit Workaround Suggestion

A Lovable engineer suggested using Replit for marketing pages while keeping the actual product on Lovable. This hybrid approach would let you create marketing sites with proper server-side rendering for SEO and social sharing, while the actual application remains on Lovable.

Pros of this approach:

• Solves the Open Graph problem for marketing content
• Keeps Lovable's rapid development for the actual product
• Allows proper SEO for blog posts and landing pages

Cons of this approach:

• Adds complexity by managing two separate codebases
• Creates inconsistent user experience moving between platforms
• Doesn't solve Open Graph issues for user-generated content within the product

This workaround makes sense for products where only marketing pages need sharing capabilities. For products with shareable user-generated content, it's insufficient.

The NextJS Alternative

Multiple developers recommended moving to NextJS with a separate backend for coding. NextJS provides excellent server-side rendering, supports both static and dynamic content efficiently, and gives you full control over meta tags and SEO.

Why NextJS aligns better with Vibe Coding:

• Supports rapid iteration while maintaining production-ready architecture
• Handles server-side rendering natively
• Provides flexibility to evolve as product requirements change
• Large ecosystem of tools and integrations
• Proper support for social sharing and SEO from day one

The tradeoff is that NextJS requires more manual coding compared to Lovable's AI-driven approach. However, this manual control prevents architectural limitations from blocking critical features later.

Other Technical Insights from Comments

The discussion also surfaced several other useful technical points:

ChatGPT for UI Mockups: Several commenters highlighted ChatGPT's ability to create UI mockups before diving into code, which can help validate designs before implementation.

System Instructions: When using AI development tools, creating system instructions for recurring issues can save significant debugging time and prevent known problems from repeating.

What I'd Do Differently: The Vibe Coding Tech Stack

If I were starting this 25-day SaaS challenge today, I'd choose a different technology stack that maintains rapid development speed while avoiding the architectural limitations I encountered with Lovable.

NextJS with Supabase

Frontend: NextJS for server-side rendering and excellent developer experience Backend: Supabase for rapid backend development with PostgreSQL, authentication, and real-time capabilities Styling: Tailwind CSS for rapid UI development Payments: Stripe (this choice remains unchanged)

This stack maintains the rapid iteration speed central to Vibe Coding while providing proper server-side rendering, complete control over SEO and Open Graph tags, and flexibility to evolve as product requirements change. Supabase offers a complete backend-as-a-service with PostgreSQL database, built-in authentication, Row Level Security, and real-time subscriptions—all essential features for modern SaaS products.

The Broader Lesson: Speed vs. Foundation

The central tension in this experience was speed versus foundation. Lovable offered incredible speed—25 days from concept to functional product with payment integration. But the architectural foundation limited what the product could become.

Vibe Coding emphasizes rapid iteration and real-world feedback. However, "rapid" doesn't mean "reckless." The foundation you choose must support iteration without creating fundamental blockers.

Conclusion: Choose Your Foundation Wisely

Building a fully functional SaaS product in 25 days with €175 taught me that rapid development tools can deliver incredible speed, but that speed is worthless if the architectural foundation limits what your product can become.

Lovable excels at rapid prototyping, mobile development, and creating visually appealing interfaces. For certain use cases—internal tools, prototypes, products where social sharing isn't important—it's an excellent choice.

For products where social sharing drives growth, SEO matters for acquisition, or you need architectural flexibility, NextJS with Supabase provides a better foundation that still supports rapid Vibe Coding iteration.

The lesson isn't that Lovable is bad or that AI development tools are overhyped. The lesson is that choosing the right tool for your specific requirements matters more than choosing the fastest tool.

Speed is valuable. But speed in the wrong direction wastes more time than moving deliberately in the right direction.

What's Next?

I'm currently rebuilding the product using NextJS and Supabase, applying all the lessons learned from the Lovable experience. This gives me an opportunity to compare development speed between AI-driven platforms and traditional frameworks with proper architectural foundations.

The real question: How much development speed do you sacrifice by choosing a more flexible architecture? I'll share the results once the rebuild is complete.

Have you built products using AI development platforms? What technical limitations did you encounter? I'd love to hear about your experience—connect with me on LinkedIn.

---

Want to learn more about Vibe Coding methodology and building products that balance speed with sustainable architecture? Check out my other articles on rapid prototyping, user acquisition strategies, and choosing the right tech stack for your project.