In the previous post I wrote about putting a prototype together in Lovable or Claude Code in a single afternoon. I recommend it in meetings, I say it on video, and I still stand by it — it's the cheapest way to see your idea on screen instead of imagining it.
The thing is, my recommendation ended roughly where the fun ends. You have a site, it clicks, it looks good. And then comes „right, so how do I get this onto my own domain?” — and that's the moment I was leaving people on their own.
One of them, a marketer with no technical background, spent several hours on it with his hosting provider's support chat and got nowhere. We sat down on a shared screen: forty minutes and it worked. Most of that went into hunting for the right panel, because the DNS change itself (those are the settings that tell the internet where to find your site) is two records.
So I'm making up for it. Below is the whole path we walked that day — including the places where we got stuck.
What to have at hand
Three things. Without them you'll get stuck halfway and — like the person I was helping — you won't know why.
- Access to your hosting admin panel. Not the customer panel, but the place where the DNS zone is actually edited. It's usually two floors deeper than you'd expect.
- A paid Lovable plan. Connecting a custom domain is a paid feature and there's no way around it — something else I failed to mention earlier.
- A quarter of an hour of calm. Sometimes everything comes up straight away, sometimes you have to wait and come back in an hour. Don't start this ten minutes before the meeting where you want to show the site.
Connecting the domain step by step
The order matters. Steps six and seven are the ones people skip, and then wait for something that is never going to happen.
- In Lovable open project settings → Domains → Manage domains and add your domain.
- Choose manual configuration / the „other provider” option. Polish registrars aren't on the automatic integration list, so there's no shortcut here.
- Lovable will show two records: an A record with an IP address (the number your site sits at) and a TXT record whose name starts with an underscore, e.g. _lovable-… (that one is just proof the domain is yours).
- Open your hosting DNS panel — the admin one, not the customer one.
- Add the A record: put @ in the name field and paste the IP from Lovable as the value. Don't leave the name blank — some panels simply won't save such a record, and won't tell you either.
- Add the TXT record: copy the name and value from Lovable character for character. No shortening, no appending your domain, no improving on it.
- Go back to Lovable and click verify. This is a separate step — the records can be perfect and the domain still won't come up, because Lovable hasn't looked at them yet.
- Enable the SSL certificate on the hosting side (that's the padlock next to the address) and force the redirect to HTTPS. Only then will the site open without a warning.
Five things we all trip over
Every one of these has cost someone at least half an hour — us included. None of them requires technical knowledge. It only requires knowing they exist.
- 1
Looking for DNS in the customer panel
The DNS zone lives in the hosting admin panel, not the one you log into every day. This is where most of the time goes. And it isn't the provider's fault — nobody simply says outright where to look.
- 2
The SSL certificate doesn't switch itself on
With correct DNS the site can still look broken, because the browser complains about an invalid certificate. Free Let's Encrypt is included, it's just that the panel puts „order a certificate” (paid) front and centre, while the free option hides under auto-renewal. You have to go looking for it.
- 3
An empty name field on the A record
It looks harmless: you leave the name blank because it's the root domain after all. Some panels reject such a record or save it with no effect. Type @ and be done with it.
- 4
The forgotten „verify” button in Lovable
A classic, and we walked right into it. The records are in, you sit there waiting for propagation, and Lovable hasn't even tried to check them. Waiting alone achieves nothing here.
- 5
Leftovers in the zone from earlier attempts
If you've poked around in there before, review the whole zone — old records can survive and shadow the new ones. Check from another network or from your phone on mobile data too. DNS likes to sit cached on your router and show you a stale state.
Three things I never mentioned when recommending Lovable
The guide answers „how”. Here are three „is it worth it” things I'd have wanted to hear at the start rather than six months in.
- 1
A Lovable subscription vs your own hosting
Connecting a domain requires a paid plan. For a single project, work out whether moving the site to your own hosting isn't cheaper. Across several, the subscription usually pays for itself. That's plain arithmetic, not ideology.
- 2
Lovable ranks poorly in search
For a landing page or a prototype it's excellent, which is why I recommend it. But if the site is meant to earn its keep on Google traffic, that's a limitation better known upfront than after six months of publishing into the void.
- 3
Subpages are a separate story
A single-screen site will work fine. But typing yourdomain.com/packages straight into the address bar can spit out „page not found”, because the server doesn't know it should hand back the app. It's fixable — you just have to know the problem exists at all.
When you get stuck
If you've been through the whole list and the site still doesn't work, check in this order: whether the A record is named @, whether the TXT was copied character for character, whether you clicked verify in Lovable, whether SSL is on, and whether old records are still sitting in the zone. Nine times out of ten it's one of those five.
And if it isn't — get in touch. This usually isn't a week-long project, just half an hour of clicking through the screen together. I'd rather do that than know someone is on their third evening in a support chat because of my recommendation, without knowing what to actually ask.
Guide
How to use Lovable or Claude Code for a prototype
Related
AI won't tell you what you should be asking
Mateusz Kozłowski
Founder of flowbiz · Process automation expert
I implement automations, integrations and AI in mid-sized companies across Pomerania and Kuyavia-Pomerania.
