V0.Dev Review: Build your Website With No Code

With AI-powered tools seeping into software development, it was only a matter of time before these tools could start building entire functional websites with the help of a few prompts. Enter v0 by Vercel, an AI tool that will help you build a website from scratch, even if you have no coding knowledge whatsoever. 

The concept of this tool is very simple. All you need to do is define what you want in clear language, and the Vercel AI tool will take care of the rest for you. It’s browser-friendly and is easy to use. It lets you focus on building a design while the tool takes care of the functional code. 

Key Takeaways

• V0.dev is a versatile tool that can help individuals build websites with no code at all. 
• This AI assistant operates on vibe coding and creates designs for websites based on your natural language inputs. 
• It supports multiple popular tool integrations and works with different frontend languages like React and Tailwind CSS. 

What is v0.dev?

V0.dev is an AI-powered website development tool, which is mainly aimed at front-end developers, designers, and project managers. With this tool, the overall time required to create an entire website, from start to finish, is cut down drastically. Developed by the team behind Next.jsDashboard of V.0 app , this Vercel app is basically a generative AI tool that transforms your words into usable UI code. 

Since this is an AI coding assistant, aimed at frontend development, it supports major technologies like React, Tailwind CSS, and more. Through these technologies, you can create some interesting interfaces for different websites, effortlessly. Additionally, once you’ve created your design, you can use this to further refine the design by changing individual components through simple prompts. 

What Is V0.dev Used For?

V0.dev, in a nutshell, is best classified as a vibe coding tool or an AI-powered coding assistant, which is also a part of the Vercel app repertoire. With this AI coding assistant, you can easily create any UI from scratch, without typing out a single line of code. All you need to do is use natural language to tell the Vercel AI tool what you want, and the tool will do the rest on its own. However, it’s important to note that v0.dev is not sufficient by itself to build a production-grade backend and manage additional databases, especially for complex use cases.

Writing code for UI is a tedious task, especially with the different lines of syntax involved. With this vibe coding AI assistant, you don’t need to worry about the syntax. What’s more is that the code can be copied and pasted wherever you want, which lets you work across multiple repositories without having to link them or create separate branches. If you don’t feel like giving prompts, you can always upload a Figma design, and the tool will generate the code for you. 

The agent itself is quite intelligent and can identify key points without much hassle. Vercel’s v0 AI tool uses agentic AI, which is a smart system that researches and builds alongside you. With this, the results are more accurate and precise. 

Since Vercel is a platform where you can easily host your Next.js and React projects, you can connect different APIs and multiple third-party tools with your repo here. The same functionality extends to the v0.dev tool as well. This enables you to perform different tasks and test the frontend that you’ve built, without having to shift it to an external domain. 

Testing v0: Hands-On Experience

While trying out Vercel’s AI coding assistant, we ran it through two different instances. In the first, we asked it to build us a simple landing page, and in the other, we asked it to create a functional website for us. 

Basic Test

For the basic test, we kept the prompts fairly generic but clear enough to paint a picture of what we had in mind. The only thing that you need to keep in mind here is that you should give very clear instructions for optimal results. The assistant takes into account whatever you’ve shared and then clearly outlines the steps that it’s taking before coming up with a basic design that you can then refine. 

Here, we tried creating a landing page for a furniture store for a fictional brand called StreamLine. Within a few iterations, our landing page was finally ready, the result of which you can check here. 

Advanced Test

For this test, we decided to throw a curveball at the v0.dev app and asked it to build a functional website for us. The idea behind this task was to create a website that highlights viral posts from various social media platforms. It took a little longer than the basic test, primarily because this was a more complex experiment. However, the results that we got in return were better than what we expected. Yes, it does need some refinement, and it came up with a functional product, which is why v0.dev is one of the best vibe coding AI-powered tools that we’ve come across so far. 

Key v0.dev Features Worth Exploring

When working with the AI coding assistant built by the Vercel app, here are some really amazing features that you’ll get to explore: 

• From the Community: You get an exclusive look into some of the most popular projects that the community is working on. These instances, more often than not, can serve as fine inspirations for ongoing projects. 
• Custom Design Changes: Normally, the prompts work on the entire page, and if you wish to change a specific element, you get a ‘Design’ button with an arrow icon from which you can select the smallest section and make various changes. 
• Code Downloads: Certain AI agents, despite helping you code, won’t let you download the code to use at your own discretion. That isn’t the case with v0.dev. This coding assistant by Vercel will let you download your code, irrespective of the revisions you make to it. 
• Freemium Experience: Most of the features that you get for the v0.dev AI tools are free. There are paid tiers, too, yes, but you don’t necessarily have to purchase it. If you do, however, you’ll get some more credits to tinker around with, and you’ll have an easier time deploying your projects. 
• Free Application Integration: Whenever you build a project, you can integrate other tools into it without much hassle. Most of these tools can help you streamline your product, making this a very handy feature. 

Pros and Cons

Despite being a powerful tool, even v0.dev comes with a few cons that everyone needs to be wary about before using it to build their projects: 

Pros: 

• Since it generates UI components quickly, you can use it to create prototypes very fast. 
• The code that you get from this AI assistant is clean and production-grade, which you can easily plug into proper projects. 
• It’s very user-friendly, so you don’t need a deep knowledge of programming to use it. 
• The designs are responsive and are optimized for different screen sizes. 

Cons: 

• If you’re an advanced user, you might find the level of customization a bit restrictive and limited. 
• At the end of the day, the Vercel v0.dev app is an AI assistant, so if you’re engaging in long conversations, there will be a loss of context. This could cause the tool to hallucinate and create weird exceptions and designs. 
• If you want to use this to create complex tasks that require intricate logic, you might have to manually sift through the generated code to remove redundancies. 
• There’s always a high chance that most designs look similar, because it’s more of a template-based generation model.  

Pricing & Plan

The v0.dev app pricing plan comes in three specific tiers, namely Free, Premium, and Team. There’s a fourth tier called Enterprise, that’s for big companies, and the features may vary depending on their needs. Here’s what the three different tiers have to offer: 

Conclusion

Overall, as a vibe coding assistant, the v0.dev app by Vercel is a very versatile product. Not only can it help you with quick prototyping, but it can also help you build products without deep coding knowledge. 

However, if you’re looking to build production-grade apps with this, you’ll need a lot of manual intervention to polish the code. Deploying to the Vercel platform is as easy as pie, and you can integrate it with your GitHub, too, so you don’t need to worry too much about not being able to save your projects. To sum it up, it’s an AI coding tool that everyone, including a non-coder, can use. However, if you’re looking to make some money out of these projects, make sure you have some coding knowledge and experience to begin with.