My journey with “AirDeals,” my flight deal tracker app, began with the exciting promise of vibe coding on the Lovable platform. It was a fantastic experience for rapidly prototyping and building a feature-rich frontend. Lovable allowed me to translate my ideas into a functional application with incredible speed, and I was thrilled with the initial results. The backend, powered by Supabase, provided a robust and scalable foundation for all my data needs.

The Custom Domain Conundrum: Why I Had to Look Beyond Lovable’s Free Tier

As “AirDeals” began to take shape, I naturally wanted to give it a professional touch with a custom subdomain: test.airdeals.techbytepulse.com. This is where I hit a snag. While Lovable’s free tier is incredibly generous for development and initial deployment, I discovered that maintaining a custom domain required upgrading to their paid “Pro” subscription.

For a personal project like “AirDeals,” still in its testing and refinement phase, committing to a recurring subscription just for a custom domain felt like an unnecessary overhead. I loved the vibe-coding experience, but this limitation prompted me to explore alternatives for hosting my frontend.

Validating the Free Path: A Chat with Gemini

I already had a positive experience using Netlify to host my main blog, techbytepulse.com, completely free of charge. This made me wonder: could Netlify also be the answer for “AirDeals”?

I turned to my trusted AI assistant, Gemini, for validation. I explained my situation: “I’m already using Netlify for my blog, techbytepulse.com, for free. Can I use Netlify for my AirDeals app’s frontend as well, even though its backend is on Supabase?”

Gemini’s response was clear and encouraging. It confirmed that Netlify is an excellent choice for hosting static sites and single-page applications (SPAs) like my AirDeals frontend, and it integrates seamlessly with external APIs and backends like Supabase. This validation gave me the confidence to proceed with the migration.

The Migration Process: A Seamless Transition

The migration itself was surprisingly straightforward, thanks to Netlify’s intuitive platform and the decoupled nature of my frontend and backend.

  1. Frontend Deployment to Netlify: I took the static files generated by Lovable for my AirDeals frontend and deployed them directly to Netlify. Netlify’s continuous deployment from Git repositories made this a breeze. Every push to my frontend repository now automatically triggers a new deployment on Netlify.

  2. Supabase Backend Remains Untouched: The beauty of this setup is that my Supabase backend remained completely untouched. All my data, authentication, and serverless functions continued to operate as before. Netlify simply serves the frontend, which then communicates with the Supabase API.

  3. Custom Domain Setup: The CNAME Magic: This was the crucial step to get my desired subdomain working for free.

    • I accessed my domain registrar’s DNS settings for techbytepulse.com.
    • I created a new CNAME record for test.airdeals.techbytepulse.com.
    • I pointed this CNAME record to the Netlify deployment URL provided for my AirDeals frontend (e.g., your-netlify-app-name.netlify.app).

    Within minutes, after DNS propagation, https://test.airdeals.techbytepulse.com was serving my AirDeals frontend, seamlessly connected to its Supabase backend.

The Freedom of Flexibility

This migration has been a game-changer for “AirDeals.” I now have the flexibility to host my frontend on a platform that aligns with my project’s needs and budget, without being tied to a specific tier for custom domain support. It’s a testament to the power of modern web development practices, where you can mix and match services to build robust applications tailored to your exact requirements.

My AirDeals app is now not only functional but also deployed in a way that offers both cost-effectiveness and the freedom to evolve.