Tutorial Research

How to Put a Lovable Site on Your Own Domain (Lovable Hosting vs Your Own Host)

Anna · Designer & web developerUpdated 2026-11-06 · How we test

Connect a custom domain to a Lovable site, or move it to your own host. Plans, DNS records, GitHub sync and Hostinger deploys, as of November 2026.

There are two ways to get a Lovable site onto your own domain. The quick one: stay on Lovable hosting, upgrade to a paid plan (Pro starts at $25 a month) and connect the domain in Project → Settings → Domains. Lovable gives you an A record and a TXT record, you add them at your registrar, and SSL is issued for you.

The second way: sync the project to GitHub and run it on your own host. That makes sense when you want email on the same domain, several sites in one place, or you don't want to keep paying for a Lovable plan just to keep a finished site online. On Hostinger this means a Node.js web app connected to your GitHub repository, which redeploys on every push.

A quick note on how I wrote this. I'm Anna, a web designer and developer. I used Lovable in the past for client prototypes, but I haven't hosted a Lovable project on Hostinger, so this is a research guide based on Lovable's and Hostinger's official docs and independent tests. Figures are as of November 2026. Some links here are affiliate links.

Option 1: keep Lovable hosting and connect a domain

Every Lovable project can be published to a free address like your-project.lovable.app. You click Publish in the top right, and Lovable runs a short security scan before it goes live. Edits don't go live by themselves: you press Publish changes each time.

A custom domain needs a paid plan. On the Free plan you can keep a domain you connected earlier, but you can't connect a new one.

Pro and Business prices go up with the number of monthly credits you choose. Check Lovable's pricing page before you pay.

Steps to connect the domain

1. Open your project and go to Settings → Domains.
2. Click Connect domain and type it in, either the root (yoursite.com) or a subdomain (app.yoursite.com). For a root domain, the www redirect is on by default.
3. Add the DNS records Lovable shows you. Lovable can do this automatically through Entri for many registrars, or you add them by hand.
4. Wait until the domain shows Active, then publish. The domain won't serve anything until you do.

The records you'll add at your registrar:

• A record for the root domain, pointing to the IP address Lovable shows.
• AAAA record, only if Lovable lists one.
• TXT record with the host _lovable (or _lovable.app for a subdomain called app), value starting with lovable_verify=.

Delete any old A, AAAA or CNAME records from a previous host first, or some visitors will still land on the old site. Most changes go live within a few hours. Lovable says to allow up to 72 hours.

Things to know

• SSL is free and automatic. If your domain has CAA records, they must allow Lovable's certificate authority.
• You can buy a domain inside Lovable. Prices are in USD and auto-renew is on by default.
• Only one domain is primary. Other connected domains redirect to it with a 302, and 301 redirects aren't supported. That's a small SEO minus if you move an old domain.
• The lovable.app address stays alive. You can't delete it, only make your domain primary.

Option 2: host the Lovable project yourself

Lovable's own docs describe this path: sync to GitHub, build the project with npm run build, and serve it from any host that can run it. GitHub sync is available on all plans and works both ways. Edits in Lovable push to GitHub, and pushes to the active branch come back into Lovable. A one-off ZIP download is for paid plans only.

First, check which kind of project you have

This changed in 2026, and it decides which hosting you need.

• Projects created from May 13, 2026 use TanStack Start. They render pages on a server, so the host has to run Node.js. A plain file host won't work. You can tell by @tanstack/react-start in package.json.
• Older projects are React + Vite. npm run build produces a dist folder of static files that any host can serve, even the cheapest shared plan.

Open package.json in your GitHub repository and look before you buy anything.

Does the backend move with it?

If your site is a landing page or portfolio without logins or a database, you only move the frontend. That's the easy case.

If the project uses Lovable Cloud for sign-ins, a database or file storage, the docs say that moving off Lovable makes you responsible for that backend. You would set up your own Supabase project, apply the migrations from the repository, import the data export and re-upload files by hand. Connectors and AI calls that run through Lovable have to be replaced too. That's real developer work. For an app with users, staying on Lovable hosting is often the cheaper choice once you count your time.

Deploying a Lovable project on Hostinger

Hostinger has a support guide for Lovable and Bolt sites. There are two routes.

Route A: Node.js web app from GitHub

This works for both project types and is the one I'd pick, because every push from Lovable redeploys the site.

1. In Lovable, connect the project to GitHub. A repository is created with your code.
2. In Hostinger's hPanel, go to Websites → Create site → Web App.
3. Choose Import Git Repository and authorize Hostinger's GitHub app.
4. Pick the repository. Hostinger detects the framework and suggests the build command, Node version and output directory. For a Vite project that's npm run build and dist.
5. Click Deploy. The site goes live on a temporary subdomain.
6. Connect your domain to the web app in hPanel.

Hostinger's support guide says Node.js apps need the Business shared plan (now sold as Unlimited) with up to 5 apps, or Cloud hosting with up to 10. Premium doesn't include them.

Two notes from the docs. Vite and Nitro are on Hostinger's list of auto-detected frameworks. TanStack Start isn't named, but Lovable's TanStack projects package their server with Nitro. If detection fails, choose Other and use the settings from Lovable's docs: build with NITRO_PRESET=node-server npm run build and start with node .output/server/index.mjs. Node.js 22 is recommended.

Also, Node.js apps on Hostinger stop after a quiet period and wake on the next visit, so the first visitor waits a moment. For a portfolio that's fine.

Route B: upload the static dist folder

This only works for older React + Vite projects, and it runs on any plan, including Premium.

1. Clone the repository, run npm ci and npm run build on your computer.
2. Open File Manager in hPanel and upload the contents of dist into public_html.
3. Add a fallback so refreshing a page like /about doesn't return a 404. On Hostinger's LiteSpeed servers that's a .htaccess file that sends unknown paths to index.html.

The downside: every change in Lovable means building and uploading again by hand. For a site you rarely touch, that's acceptable.

Whichever route you pick, set the VITE_ environment variables on the host before building, and add the new domain to your sign-in redirect URLs if the site has logins. Lovable's Publish button only publishes to Lovable. If you no longer want the old address live, unpublish there.

Which Hostinger plan fits

Plans of 12 months or longer include a free domain for the first year, free SSL and email on your domain. There's a 30-day money-back guarantee. Prices change often, so check the checkout. Our Hostinger review covers the plans in more detail.

Lovable hosting vs your own host

Stay on Lovable if you're still building the site every week, if it has logins and a database, or if you just want it live today.

Move to your own host if the site is finished, mostly static, and you want email and other sites under one bill. The math is simple: a Pro plan costs $300 a year, while Hostinger Unlimited is $2.79 a month on the long term. The renewal is higher, so read our Hostinger coupon guide before choosing the term.

Common problems

• Domain stuck on "Verifying". The TXT record is missing or has a typo, or an old A record is still there. Check both at your registrar.
• 404 when you refresh a page on your own host. The SPA fallback is missing. Add the rewrite to index.html.
• Blank page after deploy. Usually missing VITE_ environment variables. Add them in hPanel and redeploy.
• Build fails on npm ci. The repository has only bun.lock. Generate a package-lock.json first, as Lovable's docs suggest.
• Login sends users to the old address. Update the site URL and redirect URLs in your auth settings.

If you built the site with another tool, our general guide on publishing a site you built with AI and the beginner's guide on how to host a website cover the same steps for Bolt, Claude and Cursor exports.