Lovable – brilliant for creating impressive demo pages, terrible for e-commerce
Lovable.dev is an AI tool that generates working web pages from plain text descriptions. You write "make me a website for my bakery with an order form and about us page", and the model produces complete React code with a modern design in seconds. It's technically impressive – and that's exactly where the problem begins, because it looks a lot better than it is.
What the Lovable site generate is the frontend - the visible layer the user sees in the browser. Behind it there is nothing. No database you can open. No overview of customers. No order. No email sending. No login to an administration panel where you can see what is happening on your page.
When Lovable actually works well
Lovable is genuinely useful for one thing: getting something visually impressive up and running quickly. For a startup pitching an idea to investors, or a developer needing a prototype for a meeting tomorrow, it's a powerful tool. William Lindholm (20) from Norway used this very thing to get into the prestigious Founders Inc program in Silicon Valley - he built a front-end demo faster than his competitors could draw wireframes.
Lovable is suitable for:
Startups that need an MVP demo for investors
Developers who want to prototype an idea quickly
Simple presentation pages without purchase functionality
Technically experienced users who can connect to Supabase and Stripe themselves
When Lovable is the wrong tool
For a Norwegian company that will actually operate an online store, Lovable lacks almost everything that matters in practice:
No order handling. There is no built-in mechanism for viewing order status, marking something as shipped, or handling a return.
Ingen ordrehåndtering. Det finnes ingen innebygd mekanisme for å se ordrestatus, markere noe som sendt, eller håndtere en retur.
No Vipps. Vipps is used by over 93% of Norway's population and is almost mandatory for Norwegian e-commerce. In WordPress, you install an official plugin and you're up and running in 10 minutes. In Lovable, a developer has to build the entire integration from scratch via Vipps' REST API - and if something goes wrong, there is no support forum, no certified plugin and no Norwegian supplier to call.
No security storage. WordPress has Wordfence – a one-button firewall and malware scanner. Lovable does not run PHP and cannot install WordPress plugins whatsoever. Security is left to the hosting provider.
No backup solution. With UpdraftPlus in WordPress, set up automatic backup to Google Drive once and forget about it. Lovable has no automatic backup – the only option is manual sync to GitHub, which requires technical expertise and doesn't cover your database in the same way.
No automatic updates. WordPress allows you to check auto-update per plugin, and UpdraftPlus can take a backup automatically right before each update. In Lovable, this concept does not exist.
A concrete example of what is missing
A Norwegian shop owner selling sportswear would like to send an email to all customers who bought the shirts in green and give them a 15% discount on matching trousers. In WordPress with WooCommerce and the Mailchimp plugin, this is a task of less than 10 minutes – filter customers by product, create the promo code, send the email with the visual email editor.
A Norwegian shop owner selling sportswear would like to send an email to all customers who bought the shirts in green and give them a 15% discount on matching trousers. In WordPress with WooCommerce and the Mailchimp plugin, this is a task of less than 10 minutes – filter customers by product, create the promo code, send the email with the visual email editor.
Conclusion
Lovable is not a website solution for Norwegian companies – it is a prototype tool for technically experienced users who know exactly what they are missing and can fill the gaps themselves. The NRK story about William is inspiring, but what he built is a pretty front door with no back room: no storage, no cash register, no ring binder with customer cards.
For a Norwegian business that needs to accept Vipps payment, send order confirmations, have control over its customers and sleep well at night because backup runs automatically - WordPress with WooCommerce is still the obvious choice. It's boring to say, but it's true.
The most important question to ask is not "can AI create my website?" - but "what happens the day after it is made?"
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