Confused by Lovable, Replit, Cursor, Vercel, Next.js? Here's how to choose the right foundation for SEO, control, long-term speed, and easy migrations later.
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By Enzo Sison, Founder of Prism
"Vibe coding" is the most fun the internet has had building websites in a long time.
You can go from "blank screen" to a beautiful, working site (opens in a new tab) in an afternoon. Sometimes in an hour. Sometimes in a weekend.
But there's a catch.
The platform you choose early becomes the foundation you build everything on. And switching foundations later is one of those things that's technically possible... but still expensive, still annoying, and (depending on your growth channel) can be painful for SEO.
I've spent the last few years building sites for clients, rebuilding our own Prism stack, experimenting with the shiny new tools (Replit (opens in a new tab), Lovable, Cursor, Claude Code (opens in a new tab), Codex CLI... all of it), and learning the hard way which "puzzle pieces" stack nicely together -- and which ones fight each other.
This post is the "I wish I knew this a year ago" resource.
It's not a hype piece. It's a trade-off piece.
Because the truth is: there isn't one perfect platform. There's a perfect platform for what you're building and how you plan to grow.
Most people pick a vibe coding platform for the same reason they pick a gym:
And honestly? That's not wrong.
The problem is what happens 3--6 months later when you start caring about:
At that point, the "easy platform" can become a cage.
Even with AI agents (opens in a new tab) getting insanely good at migrations, moving platforms still costs:
So yes: migrations are easier than ever.
But no: you still don't want to do them often.
A lot of confusion comes from mixing tools that live at different layers.
Here's the simplest mental model I've found:
Layer 1: how you build (the "agent")
These are the tools that actually help you write and change code.
Layer 2: what you're building with (the framework)
Other frameworks exist, but these two are the "fork in the road" that matters most for most teams.
Layer 3: where it runs (hosting + edge)
Others exist, but this combo is hard to beat when you care about distribution.
Layer 4: who can edit it (non-technical workflows)
When people say "should I build on Lovable or Replit?" they're usually asking a bigger question:
Should my website behave like a web app... or like a marketing asset?
That single question changes everything.
Here's the "aha" that took me way too long to fully internalize:
Some stacks are optimized for:
Other stacks are optimized for:
Both are valid.
But they win in different arenas.
Traditional Google SEO still rewards what it always rewarded:
If your site behaves like a JavaScript-heavy single-page app, it can still work... but you're increasing risk:
That doesn't mean "Vite is bad." It means client-side-rendered marketing sites are usually a bad bet if SEO is your primary growth channel.
I'll be blunt: I fell for the hype.
When ChatGPT-5 dropped, there was a moment where building with Lovable felt like the future arrived overnight. It was fast, it was pretty, it felt like cheating.
I rebuilt a client site in a weekend. The design looked incredible.
But later, when we started asking "why isn't this performing like our Vercel/Next.js sites in search?"... I didn't have a good answer.
For a long time, I thought it was:
But the real answer was more architectural:
We had built something that humans loved... and robots struggled to understand.
And once you're deep in a platform ecosystem, you're not just changing design. You're changing:
That's when you realize:
Small SEO tools can't see big architectural trade-offs.
If your site is a marketing website and you care about SEO in 2026 and 2027, here's the default bet I'm making:
the "prism default" marketing stack
Why this is the sweet spot:
This is the "have your cake and eat it too" setup:
I'm not here to dunk on Lovable or Replit.
They're awesome.
They just shine in different scenarios.
Use Lovable / Replit when:
In other words: if you're building something closer to a tool than a brochure.
The move that avoids regret:
If you do use Lovable/Replit, set yourself up from day one to escape later:
Because the regret isn't "using Lovable."
The regret is getting locked in without a plan.
Here's a real-world example:
You notice weird traffic spikes -- hundreds of visits from countries you don't serve.
You try to fix it with SEO tools and Search Console tweaks.
But what you actually need is:
Some platforms just don't give you that level of control because they were never designed for it.
Vercel + Cloudflare is designed for it.
That's the difference between:
Here's the rule I wish someone told me early:
If your website is a growth asset, build like a growth asset.
Ask yourself:
Is this primarily a marketing site or a product?
Is search a primary channel?
Do you need serious control?
Do non-technical people need to edit the site?
If I'm starting from scratch in 2026 and I want the highest chance of winning long-term:
For marketing sites:
Next.js + Vercel + Cloudflare + Codex/Claude + v0 (optional)
For app prototypes:
Use Lovable/Replit to get to a working product fast... but keep the code portable, and don't pretend v1 is the final architecture.
For teams that want "easy edits" forever:
Build the foundation right (Next/Vercel), then layer usability on top (v0/CMS).
That's the real unlock:
architecture first, convenience second.
For a while, we were fragmented:
That's normal in an experimentation season.
But the season we're in now is different:
What do we actually need to do world-class work -- and what's just extra noise?
For us, the answer is clear:
Less chaos. More compounding.
If you're a founder or local business and you want:
Prism does this every week.
We'll help you choose the right foundation, build it fast with AI, and make sure it's ready for both Google search and the new AI-driven discovery layer.
