Big month!
Contents:
1. App Actions - now UNLIMITED for EVERYONE!
2. Free forever plans are BACK!
3. New releases (all speed related)
4. Bug fixes
5. What’s around the corner for Adalo 3.0
6. Beyond Adalo 3.0
1) Adalo Unlimited
Following universal feedback about App Actions usage limits, we got rid of the limits altogether. We were going to wait until our new pricing is ready, but decided everyone had waited long enough.
Now every plan has UNLIMITED App Actions. You will never pay for excess App Actions again, nor will you need to plan if your wallet can handle your app going viral. We are still updating the billing dashboards, so in the meantime ignore anything you see there regarding overages.
2. Free forever plans are BACK!
We previously advised that our Free plan resulted in Adalo reaching an unworkable situation whereby millions of databases from millions of free apps created instability and poor latency. Our engineers, however, have found a way to preserve everyone’s apps, AND ensure the stability of our infrastructure.
This means that there will not be any free database deletion event that occurs as I had previously warned. Your apps will remain safe in Adalo.
Instead, your unpublished apps will go into ‘hibernation’ after 60 days of inactivity. Should you wish to use this app again by logging in, it will ‘wake up’ for you within 30 seconds.
We will be giving a complete refund to anyone who took out a Maintenance Mode plan. As a bonus, we’re also going to send those of you that took out Maintenance Mode a little something to say thank you for sticking with us! This will happen over the next few days, as we ensure your plan transitions correctly back to the Free plan with no data interruptions.
3. New releases & infrastructure upgrades
- Better image compression via Imgix
Adalo uses IMGIX for app image optimization. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve performance we reviewed how the Adalo app builder interacts with the IMGIX service and realized we could further improve compression by adjusting some of the configuration settings. This was a pretty straightforward change but comes with outsized results. Our internal tests showed a 33% improvement in compression!
- Pagination
Adalo makers have long had to use infinite scrolling or rely on third-party components as navigational aids for long lists of data. We’re happy to announce that as of the time of writing we are just days away from publishing a native pagination component which you’ll be able to easily integrate into your lists! Be sure to monitor the Adalo forum and our blog for an announcement once pagination has been deployed to production
- Documentation
We’ve identified components and processes that SLOW DOWN your apps, and are constantly updating our guidance to show how we should be building to get the most out of performance. You can see our up-to-date guidance here: Adalo performance documentation
- Paid database isolation & dedicated servers
Our paid plans now provide databases by default in a tenant-limited environment, monitored for stability and uptime, with versioned backups available.
We also have apps running on dedicated servers for those seeking real scale and governance needs. On premise deployments are also being looked at for behind-the-firewall deployments for enterprise clients.
We can currently host your data in the US, Europe and Japan to meet governance and compliance requirements. However, our software has not yet been fully duplicated to run in a European or Japanese environment. This means that while data residency and governance needs can be met, there will currently be no improvement in latency.
- Migration of backend services 98% complete
We have upgraded and migrated 110 out of 114 of Adalo’s services, some of which have been responsible for most of Adalo’s historical downtime issues. Some of our more recent downtime occurred because Adalo’s microservice architecture made it difficult to know how all of the dependencies inter-relate. We’re pleased to announce that we’ve made great inroads towards simplifying both the infrastructure and architecture as part of this migration!
The good news is that with most of this done (and documented). Adalo is now on the right foundations to move forward and become the #1 no code app builder in the world.
4. Bug fixes!
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Firewall calibration
- Fixed an application firewall rule that was interfering with some Makers on certain connections–generating a yellow ‘cannot connect to servers’ banner.
- Also added versioning to this banner to help isolate causes for any future server issues (such as apps open in multiple tabs–leading to lost data)
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Adalo builder fixes
- We have made dozens of improvements to the builder, removing every third-party JavaScript library (such as Hubspot, etc) that was not materially contributing to user experience and adding tooltips with links to documentation.
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Issues with iOS 18.3+ and Safari
- The release of Safari 18.3 caused some unexpected issues regarding how Adalo renders images in certain situations. We’re pleased to announce this was fixed on February 21.
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Experts page fix
- We received extensive complaints that the Adalo Experts page was in dire need of an overhaul. With the help of Alex and the team at Ozonebuilds, who are one of the best expert teams we have, a number of fixes have been implemented–including removal of inactive experts and the soon-to-be-released implementation of a way to rank by Maker reviews.
5) Around the corner for Adalo 3.0
- Improved indexes for the Adalo system database (a speed boost for everyone). This will happen during our maintenance window coming up this weekend.
- Improved and automated indexing of your Adalo app databases - which has shown a huge improvement in our maker alpha testing. We have 10 customer apps receiving this upgrade as a beta test right now, with results that should be very, very exciting for everyone.
- Release of new native list types to help with replacement of custom lists–starting with social media lists
- A React Native upgrade will also contribute to native app speed, and bring a host of other benefits.
- New pricing plans enabling a core subscription with add-on pricing. Current subscribers will not be forced to change subscriptions.
6. Beyond Adalo 3.0
- Deep linking,
- ‘Import-any-dataset-from-anything’ (DreamFactory) roll out,
- Security upgrades to ensure we’re best-in-class,
- And we’ve some pretty inspired AI pushes we’re looking at as well, which all of our infrastructure heavy lifting has helped us get ready for.
Apologies for the lengthy time between updates. In the future we will endeavour to provide monthly updates & newsletters. We are also using a great new tool called Changebot to ensure our code pushes are shared on our Canny changelog, giving you all more transparency about what we’re doing.
As always, we welcome feedback and have our door open. Anyone wishing to speak to me personally can contact me at james.crennan@adalo.com, or book a call with me. Much of our immediate roadmap is drawn from the feedback from our initial Maker calls.
Thanks from everyone at Adalo. We look forward to helping you build the next big thing in 2025!