Wix Harmony vs. Lovable: The AI Showdown for Website Creation

Comparison of Tools

In an experiment aimed at comparing the capabilities of Wix Harmony and Lovable, two AI tools for website creation, the goal was to see if Wix's 20 years of experience in this field gave it a significant advantage. While Lovable produced a cleaner final result, Wix had certain advantages worth highlighting.

The Impact of AI on Website Creation

Website creation has become more accessible thanks to AI. Tools like Lovable and Claude Code from Anthropic allow users to transform a simple draft into a functional website with minimal human intervention. However, established players like Wix, which enable site creation without coding skills, still require users to make decisions about design and layout.

To remain competitive against emerging rivals like Lovable, Wix has integrated AI and vibe coding. Last June, Wix announced the acquisition of Base44, a startup specializing in vibe coding, for $80 million. In January, Wix launched Wix Harmony, an "AI website builder" that combines human and artificial intelligence. This initiative comes amid industry fears of a "SaaSpocalypse," a situation where AI threatens the business models of companies like Workday, Salesforce, and Asana. Since the beginning of the year, Wix's stock price has dropped by about 23%, partly due to these concerns.

Experience with Lovable

When creating a website with Lovable, the result was nearly perfect from the first prompt. Having previously used Lovable to create a photo coach for a virtual press room, the user knew the process would be straightforward. The site was to include a photo and a biography on the homepage, as well as five sections dedicated to news, careers, tech and AI, cultural trends, and retail, to publish stories.

The site generated by Lovable matched expectations almost exactly. The homepage featured a photo, the title "Jane Doe: Journalist, Reporter, Writer," and a temporary biography. The five sections were well-defined, each containing three article cards with fictional stories.

However, a problem arose: how to edit the text? The user expected an interface similar to Canva, but Lovable did not operate that way. When asking the chatbot how to proceed, the response was to edit the code or paste the changes into the chat for them to be applied. Lacking coding skills, the user provided a 700-word prompt, detailing all the titles, subtitles, and links for the 15 stories to highlight in the portfolio. Lovable processed this request without issue.

Next, it was noted that the article cards were missing thumbnails. The user asked if they could be extracted from articles on Business Insider with the correct dimensions. This posed no problem. All that was left was to add the LinkedIn biography on the homepage, retrieve the photo from the author page, and update the contact information. Just as the final adjustment was made, the daily free credits ran out. The site was completed in about 20 minutes, providing a very usable digital portfolio. The user was impressed.

Experience with Wix Harmony

The experience with Wix Harmony was less impressive. The user had high hopes for this tool, having previously used Wix to create a digital photo repository for the high school photography club. However, the site created by Wix Harmony with the same prompt elicited a sigh of disappointment.

The design seemed pulled from a basic PowerPoint template, with no consideration for text alignment. An image of a feather was generated as the site logo, which felt a bit too obvious. The photo was an AI-generated image of a South Asian woman.

The major issue was that Wix did not create five distinct sections for the types of stories. Instead, all the story cards were grouped on the homepage, with two unnecessary sections "Blog" and "Portfolio Page" mistakenly added. When asking Wix to correct this, a list of five steps was provided to restructure the site and align the content correctly.

As a last resort, the user asked Wix to regenerate the site, thinking it would be easier to start over than to fix all the issues. This helped: the redesign was much better. The five sections were properly separated, and the text was aligned. However, unlike Lovable, Wix could not correctly populate the story cards with the information from the 15 provided stories; they were filled with fictional stories, such as "The Rise of the Fractional Leader," a story the user never wrote.

What was appreciated about Wix was the ability to edit text directly in the preview, a more intuitive feature than that of Lovable. Perhaps working with Wix's existing design templates would have yielded better results. This certainly required more human intervention than Lovable.

Final Thoughts

For impulsive individuals who enjoy seeing their ideas come to life quickly without fine-tuning details, Lovable might be the better option. Chishtie from Lovable stated that traditional website builders "constrain people's visions, even if they seem to offer a lot of choices."

"They tend to steer users toward templates and ask them to use prefab blocks to create a site," he said. "This also means that customization comes with a steep learning curve, as making more precise changes actually requires a lot of technical knowledge."

On the other hand, Wix seems to cater to those who are more dedicated to the art of design, who care about the appearance of every element and want more control over the flow of the website. It was not purely vibe coding: it was an AI-assisted website construction, with the user firmly at the wheel. Asaf from Wix told Business Insider that Wix Harmony allows users to easily switch from AI to manual editing.

"This makes vibe coding not only a way to build websites quickly but a complete and professional method for creating real business websites," she said. She added that all actions taken by the AI tools were fully reversible and could be easily adjusted, giving users "total control over the outcome at every step."

Overall, the experience provided insight into the fears behind the "SaaSpocalypse." If Wix's AI capabilities fail to keep pace with others like Lovable or Claude, it risks losing users like the author, who are not overly concerned with design and want a usable site in minutes.