Adding Features to Your Cursor App
What Cursor can't build for you and how to add it. From payments to email to real-time features, a guide for founders.
What Cursor can't do well
Cursor can build most features but struggles with complex multi-step workflows, real-time features (WebSockets, Server-Sent Events), background job processing, and third-party integrations that require OAuth flows or webhooks. It also tends to generate incomplete Stripe integrations — checkout works but webhook handling and subscription lifecycle management are missing
Features you probably need
Common features customers need added to Cursor projects: Stripe subscription management with webhook handling, email notifications with Resend or SendGrid, file uploads to S3 or Cloudflare R2, admin dashboards with role-based access, real-time notifications or chat, and multi-tenant architecture for SaaS apps
Payments (Stripe)
Almost every SaaS app needs payment processing. Stripe is the standard — it handles credit cards, subscriptions, invoices, and payouts. The key pieces: a checkout flow for collecting payment, webhooks to update your database when payments succeed or fail, and a customer portal for managing subscriptions. Cursor might generate a basic checkout page, but the webhook handling and subscription lifecycle management usually need to be built by hand.
Authentication
Your app needs user accounts with secure login. The easiest options: NextAuth (for Next.js), Supabase Auth, or Clerk. These handle email/password login, social login (Google, GitHub), password resets, and session management. Don't build auth from scratch — the security implications are too complex for a first implementation.
Email notifications
Transactional emails — welcome emails, password resets, order confirmations — require an email service provider. Resend is the simplest to set up, SendGrid is the most established, and Amazon SES is the cheapest at scale. You'll need email templates, a sending service, and proper DNS configuration (SPF, DKIM) so your emails don't land in spam.
When to hire help
If a feature requires deep technical expertise (payment compliance, data privacy, real-time systems), it's faster and safer to get professional help than to iterate with AI tools. Our team adds features like these to Cursor apps every week — we know the patterns and the pitfalls.
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Related guides
How to Deploy Your Cursor-Built App
Step-by-step guide to deploying your Cursor app to production.
Common Bugs in Cursor-Generated Code
The most common bugs we find in Cursor apps and how to fix them.
Security Issues in Cursor Code
Critical security vulnerabilities commonly found in Cursor-generated apps.
Optimizing Cursor-Generated Code for Performance
How to make your Cursor app faster.
Related technologies
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