Alternatives
AI App Builder, or Have It Built for You?
Lovable, Bolt, Replit and Base44 removed the hardest part of starting: the blank screen. What none of them removed is the part where a working demo has to become something a stranger can sign up to, pay for, and trust with their data.
Free 15-minute fit check · no equity · no retainer
Short answer
Use an AI app builder when you want to explore the idea yourself and you have evenings to spend on it. Buy a fixed-price build when you need a specific product live on a date, in your own accounts, and your time is worth more than the difference.
01
The honest comparison
| AI app builder | Fixed-price studio | |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | A tool, and your own time | A defined product, built for you |
| Visible cost | $20–$50/month plus credits | $2,490 total, agreed up front |
| Hidden cost | Your evenings, for weeks | None — the scope is written before you pay |
| Time to something real | Hours to a demo, weeks to a product | 10 working days to a production deployment |
| Who fixes it when it breaks | You, by re-prompting | The studio, against the blueprint |
| Where it runs | The vendor's hosting | Your own accounts, transferred at handoff |
| Best for | Technical and semi-technical founders | Founders with no time and no engineer |
02
Where builds actually stall
Almost nobody gets stuck on the first screen any more — that problem is solved. The stall happens later, and it is nearly always the same short list of things, because they are invisible until a real user hits them.
- Making sure user A cannot read user B's data — the single most common and most expensive flaw in fast MVPs
- Payments that keep working when a card is declined, a subscription lapses, or someone asks for a refund
- Accounts, password resets and roles, which look trivial and are not
- A deployment that survives you closing the laptop, with backups you could actually restore from
- Knowing which of the twenty changes you prompted last night is the one that broke checkout
A demo proves the idea can look right. A product proves it stays right when someone you have never met is using it at 2am.
03
When the builder is clearly the right answer
We would rather say this plainly than pretend otherwise: for a large number of people reading this, the tool is the better purchase and paying us would be a waste of money.
- You want to learn how the thing is built, not just have it
- The idea is still moving and you need to try five versions of it this month
- You are technical enough to read what it generates and spot when it is wrong
- You need something internal, for a handful of colleagues, where a rough edge costs nothing
- Your budget genuinely is a few hundred dollars — in that case start there, and come back when it is earning
04
When buying the outcome is cheaper than it looks
- You have already spent six weeks of evenings and it is still not launchable
- You need a date you can plan a launch, a pitch or a pilot around
- Real customers will put real data in it, so isolation and backups are not optional
- You want the code and the hosting in your own name, not the vendor's
- The idea is validated enough that the bottleneck is execution, not exploration
05
What we do differently, in plain numbers
A written blueprint that fixes the scope before anything is built, for $150. Ten working days to a production deployment. $2,490 total, agreed before we start and unchanged afterwards. The complete source code and the running deployment transferred into your own accounts at handoff, with our access removed.
You see it working on day five and tell us what to change. If you decide not to keep it, you pay nothing beyond the blueprint, and the blueprint is yours either way.
And if the fit check tells us a tool would serve you better than we would, we say that instead of taking the money.
Questions
Straight answers.
Is Lovable a good way to build an MVP?
For getting something on screen in an afternoon, it is genuinely very good, and if you are technical enough to review what it generates you may need nothing else. The difficulty is not the first screen — it is the twentieth change, when the app has grown past what you can hold in your head and you cannot tell whether a fix broke something else.
What does an AI app builder actually cost?
The subscription is typically $20 to $50 a month, but the real cost is credits and time. Founders regularly report spending several hundred dollars in credits and four to eight weeks of evenings before deciding whether what they have is shippable. Compare the total, not the monthly price.
Can I start in Lovable and hand it to you later?
Yes, and it is a common and sensible starting point. Bring what you have to the fit check. If the foundation is sound we build on it; if rebuilding is genuinely faster we say so and explain why, before you pay anything.
What is the difference in what you end up owning?
With a builder you own whatever it generated, running on the vendor's hosting, for as long as you keep paying. With us the source code and the deployment move into your own accounts at handoff, and the studio's access is removed. Both are ownership; only one of them still works if the vendor changes their pricing.
Why would I pay $2,490 for something a tool can do for $25 a month?
Because they are not the same purchase. $25 a month buys you a tool and your own evenings. $2,490 buys a written scope, ten working days of someone else's full attention, a production deployment, and the code in your accounts. If your evenings are free and you enjoy the work, the tool is the better deal, and we will tell you so.
Next step
Find out if your idea fits in 10 working days.
Tell us what you want to build. We reply within one business day with a straight yes, no, or here is what we would cut.