New site using Lovable AI

When I first started my no code (vibing) journey I was very very sceptical.

Now, after a few months.  I am a convert.  Some might say with the amount I go on about the blog in the office, that I am an evangelist now (or at least a pain in the arse)....

The journey was quite simple, research and choose a tool.  There are dozens to try Replit, Lovable, Emergent, Bolt, Base44 and Bubble to name a few, not to mention the more code based alternatives like Claude Code, Codex and Cursor (now owned by Elon).

If you looked at all of these tools, you'd still not really scratch the surface with what is out there.  As I embark on the journey of discovery, my mind is blown every single day and the opportunities appear endless.

I ended up choosing lovable as YouTube reviews were largely positive, it allowed custom domain and has an integration stack that allowed GitHub, hence you aren't 100% tied into their ecosystem and have full access to the code.

Once I had launched the site I then went back and worked out how much, time and money is cost me to refactor.  The graph below (directly from the portal in lovable) shows my usage spike.

You'll notice that to begin with I was using the free tier credits.  You get five credits to use over a maximum of six days in any given month.  This is more than enough to get something up and running.  For example, the OG prompt of 'refactor this the old site' was completed on the first day.

This chart shows my usage and you will clearly see the day I decided to sign up to a paid tier and unlock more credits.

I could have completed the entire project on the free plan and had it hosted on a lovable domain and this post would have been another few months away or into 2027.  There are NO features on the site that are not 100% supported by the free tier.

This second chart shows the free credits that I used.  The paid plan does give 5 free credits per day and a chosen monthly allowance.  I went with 100 credits pm for 22 quid.

In total you will see that at launch the site had required 330 credits of which 137 were free tier or the daily allowance.  This is smart IMHO, A small edit should't feel like you are being charged every time.

You will see that some days where I had more spare time I ramped up my usage to several hours per day.

Summary

Actual cost = 52.00 pounds.

Time and Effort (I reckon about 5 working days including study (videos).

If you had asked me could if I redevelop an entire site including a CMS management backend (see next post) for 52.00 nicker I would have said you were insane.  Add to this, the fact that the tool also allowed me to express creative side with the 5250 look 'n feel.  I would have laughed you out of the room.  Not any more, you have my ear!

What do you think?

Thanks for reading the 

Synon 2E and Plex Emporium by Lee Dare (A developer blog). 

Lee.