Base44 vs Lovable, and what your app still needs after launch

Pick Base44 if you want the shortest path from an idea to a live app, with nothing to set up. The database, sign-in, hosting and analytics are there from the first prompt, and Base44 says its apps run on real production infrastructure, not a sandbox. Its agents can work with your app’s data, update records and, from Builder, run backend functions, and they connect to WhatsApp, Telegram and, in Japan, LINE. Your own domain comes with Starter, at $16 a month billed yearly, and every paid plan carries thousands of integration credits for what your live app does.

Pick Lovable if you want the code, and an easy handover to a developer later. Git sync keeps your project in your own GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket repository in both directions, on every plan, the free one included. Lovable Cloud is built on Supabase’s open-source foundation, and Lovable’s docs describe moving to your own Supabase later, by exporting your data and rebuilding the schema. Base44 apps are React apps too, with two-way GitHub sync from Builder, but your data model stays managed in Base44. Lovable’s unused plan credits roll over for at least a month, and Pro can buy a top-up when a busy week runs you dry.

Both are built for making the app. Looking after the people who use it is another job.

Once people start using your app, the same few questions come in again and again, and each one takes you away from building. Deacon answers them on your app in seconds, at any hour, from your own docs and in the visitor’s language, with no flows to build. When your docs don’t cover something, it says it doesn’t know rather than make an answer up, and asks for the visitor’s email. You’re emailed when they leave one or ask for a person, and your reply from Deacon’s dashboard lands in their chat if it’s still open.

Deacon answers from its own allowance, so it spends none of your Base44 or Lovable credits, and nothing is billed past a plan’s answers. Each answer you write makes it better. A question your docs missed gets an Answer this button, and what you write becomes part of what Deacon knows. Save & check shows you the reply Deacon now gives and how many other open questions your answer covers.

You also see what people need. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked, and Topics group the questions, count the people behind each one and label most of them, for example as a bug report, a feature ask or a how-to. The same script runs your website analytics, with visitors, sources, goals, funnels and the JavaScript errors people hit, and an all-time view. It reads utm_source on a link, which Lovable’s analytics doesn’t, and there’s no 7-day limit like Base44’s on Free.

It takes one script tag on either builder. On Base44, the tag goes in your app’s index.html, which Base44’s docs name as the place for third-party scripts. You edit it in the Code tab, and Base44 lists in-app code edits from its Starter plan. On Free, the AI chat edits your app’s files for you, so ask it to add the tag. On Lovable, paste the tag into the project chat and ask Lovable to place it, as Lovable’s guide to embeds says. Deacon and Base44 and Deacon and Lovable have every step.