Base44: A Brutally Simple Alternative to Lovable

Full-stack apps in minutes with zero technical skills. All-in-one: Google authentication, database and permissions without leaving the app.

Hey, welcome to the free archived edition of The Product Compass newsletter.

Every week, I share actionable tips, resources, and insights for PMs.

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1. I Copied the Multi-Agent Research System by Anthropic. No Coding!

2. What is an AI Agent, How to Build an AI Agent

3. The Ultimate AI PM Learning Roadmap

4. AI Agent Architectures: The Ultimate Guide With n8n Examples

5. Introduction to AI Product Management

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Since Jan 2025, I’ve been promoting Lovable as the best no-code solution for building real, full-stack apps. In that time, the company has grown about 10 times from $6M to $60M ARR, becoming Europe’s fastest-growing AI startup.

But I’ve also emphasized one thing:
While working with Lovable doesn’t require coding, it does require basic technical knowledge.

As explained in best practices, a Lovable user should:

• Review components Lovable creates,

• Look at the database structure,

• Understand Supabase RLS (row-level security) policies,

• Know how to integrate Lovable with GitHub, Supabase, or Netlify.

Turned out, it was a problem for some readers.

Recently, someone in our community recommended Base44. I was skeptical. But I decided to test it.

Base44 turned out to be the simplest all-in-one solution for those who want to build prototypes, small full-stack apps, or even minimal products.

So, in today’s issue:

1. Demo: Building a RAG Chatbot With Base44

2. Base44 vs. Lovable: Feature Comparison

3. Conclusion

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This post was not sponsored. The only sponsors that appeared here on Substack in 2025:

• AI PM Certification by Miqdad Jaffer (Product Lead at OpenAI). I recently joined Miqdaq as AI Labs Build Leader.

• AI Evals for Engineers and PMs by Hamel Husain (ML Engineer, 25 years of experience) and Shreya Shankar.

Those courses are currently the #1 and #2 ranked on Maven.

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1. Demo: Building a RAG Chatbot With Base44

In 18 minutes, I built a RAG chatbot and recorded the entire process.

Base44 demo built in 18 minutes

A full recording with everything I did step-by-step: