Transcript
Translated to English:
This is a sales dashboard that I built in Lovable, and this here is a sales dashboard that I built in another tool. In this video, I will compare both to tell you which one created the better version, which is safer, and which you should use for your business. To start, this one is from Lovable, and do you know what its problem is?
It makes a prototype that works very well, but the major problem I struggled with is the security aspect. You are never fully secure, there are always loopholes, especially when you are connecting your sales tools directly. This can expose not only your own data but also your clients' data.
To create it, I used a super simple prompt. Basically, the prompt says I want a simple sales dashboard for Stripe, without much mystery. It outlines what I want to do, the product, the data sources, the events I want to process, the sales metrics, and the charts.
It also details the metrics I want to create and, importantly, the authentication part, which is a big issue that we will see how to resolve. In Lovable, I created this entire structure, but it did not happen on the first try with just that initial prompt. There were several iterations to add the things I wanted, like creating status columns, sources, and dates.
I had to arrange it exactly as needed and add some extra menus to get it right. The big problem comes when you click publish and access the security session. Every time you publish, it recommends that you do a security review to ensure no data is leaking and no malicious person can access your sales.
The publishing process takes much longer because of this. After all, if I connected my Stripe accounts to get real-time sales data, the last thing I want is to expose that to others. I had to do this, but I wondered if there was a way to have this resolved automatically, without losing five to ten minutes every time doing a review process.
That is why I went looking for alternatives. That is how I arrived at Softr, which focuses on building business software with AI. Lovable is a more general vibe coding tool, whereas Softr took what they already did and transformed it with AI geared specifically towards business.
If you were to build external tools like a sales tracker or a CRM on Lovable, good luck setting everything up. You can configure all the screens, databases, authentication, and security, but it takes much longer.
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Note from Softr: When you want to build custom business software safely like the CRM discussed here, you can simply use the AI co-builder and prompt for what you want. It instantly generates functional apps with secure databases and authentication right out of the box, saving you from tedious manual setups. You can also explore our App templates specifically designed for business needs.
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Inside the tool, you have a few options ranging from starting from scratch to using an app template. In our case, what interests us is generating with AI. By clicking here, you enter the process, and you will see the difference immediately compared to Lovable.
I will just paste the prompt we used earlier and click send so you can see how it works. Lovable does this entirely via text, which is fine, but it makes it harder to get exactly what you want without visualizing it. Since Softr is tailored for business needs, it acts like a more structured tool.
It generates everything in a specific way that reflects a proven approach to how business applications should look and function. The minor trade-off is that the layout format is slightly less flexible initially, but not by much. The huge advantage is that instead of wasting time on details that do not matter for my objective, I go straight to what works.
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Note from Softr: While the standard UI provides robust structure quickly, you actually have limitless customizability. If a native block doesn't quite fit your vision, you can drop in a Vibe-Coding block to simply prompt for the exact custom component you want, and it will generate the frontend while connecting seamlessly to your backend data!
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The AI Co-Builder starts by asking questions, such as how you want to see the data on the dashboard, to which I will select just the aggregated view. It then asks what pages you want in the app, and I will choose separate pages. When it asks how to calculate the metrics, I will select current MRR, and it continues to understand my needs by asking relevant questions.
When it asks how you want to handle authentication, I remember doing this in Lovable where it took significantly more time. I did the same process here to create the exact same thing, and it took a fifth of the time. This just shows that for this specific business use case, it is much better and faster.
Lovable might be better for some general things, but for creating a robust business solution, this tool is exceptional. I will choose email authentication and specify that I want to invite my users manually for security reasons, rather than letting them sign up on their own. It asks about the sidebar layout and the type of design I prefer.
I will pick one as an example and click to create my app. The great thing is that as it begins the process, you can immediately see the development happening in real time. You can see that it instantly starts creating our database and filling a table with sample data to build out the structure.
Again, you can do this in Lovable, but it took longer because I had to give it instructions step by step, making it much less fluid. Here, you can watch it apply updates, build the necessary tables, and follow everything detail by detail until the app is fully ready.
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Note from Softr: When building with Softr, the AI automatically sets up Softr Databases in the backend. Softr Databases are the powerful, native way to manage your app's data for maximum performance, letting you avoid setting up an external spreadsheet for simple structured data storage.
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The end result looks something like this. It is a simple version, but the nice part is that it comes fully optimized for tablet and mobile out of the box. I can grab the link and access it right on my phone, while also reviewing all the mock tables and sample data it generated along the way.
The best part is the user authentication setup. If I am building something for users that deals with sales, I want it to be heavily restricted. I can easily define user groups to ensure that certain team members cannot access or modify specific parts of the app.
I can create everything from a read-only role up to a full admin role seamlessly. This makes life so much easier because it is ready right away to deliver the exact results I need. I can also add granular data restrictions to protect information.
Finally, a really cool feature here is the workflows. You can simply click to create and connect various triggers, or use a webhook to pass data to external tools like Make or n8n to do whatever you want. This simplifies things tremendously when connecting to your email, Google Sheets, or ClickUp.
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Note from Softr: While you can absolutely connect to external tools using webhooks, you can also leverage native Softr Workflows. This allows you to build custom automations and data routing straight from your web app, helping consolidate your tech stack and reducing your reliance on third-party automation software.
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Whenever a salesperson makes a sale and wants to update the system, you can pull that data directly in or create custom forms to handle the input. If you click back to the interface, you will see it comes with that structured layout I mentioned. It has a specific design language that is characteristic of the platform.
I can change it, but I prefer to leave it as is so I do not waste time, and honestly, it looks much better than what Lovable generated on its own without heavy prompting. If I want to edit anything else, I can easily tweak it manually. This is very satisfying because in Lovable the structure is mostly locked down.
Softr treats everything as modular blocks that I can drag, drop, duplicate, or reconfigure to pull different information from the database. I can accomplish an entire editing process in just a few clicks that would otherwise take much longer. If I do still want to edit via prompt, I just go to the top corner, hit Ask AI, and continue the process.
Everything it did to generate our app is right there, and I can just type my request to get it resolved instantly.
