Adalo 3.0 February Update

Info & Announcements
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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

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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Instead, your unpublished apps will go into ‘hibernation’ after 60 days of inactivity.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 :rocket:& 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!

  • 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)

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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!

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Very good news James … we are looking forward to the improvements, but something that I send a lot to support tickets is that they must improve the first impression of a user with an adalo app … the pwa take between 15/40 seconds between the user clicking on the web link and the app opening … even if they go to a page with one or 5 components … we lost many sales because the app keeps loading and the user does not understand that they should wait and leaves … it is a change that must be immediate … when entering the pwa it must load instantly … please we need that change because it is giving me many problems with clients and clients of my clients

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iOS new requirements:

ITMS-90725: SDK version issue - This app was built with the iOS 17.2 SDK. Starting April 24, 2025, all iOS and iPadOS apps must be built with the iOS 18 SDK or later, included in Xcode 16 or later, in order to be uploaded to App Store Connect or submitted for distribution. Apple Developer Relations

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@santiago please email me your app. We’re going to add your app to our initial indexing and it is going to improve drastically.

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@nvrjulian yes we are going to upgrade to Xcode 16. Part of business as usual in running apps.

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Hi James, these are really good updates! I’m really grateful for all the improvements and the hard work you put into the platform. But as Santiago said, loading time of PWAs is very frustrating and clients are not happy with that. While the native version opens instantly of course. Can we do something about it?

Best
Eugen

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Hi James, I agree with the comments from @santiago and @eugen.
The delays in PWAs are very high.
My clients also complain about this and it happens that the data is not recorded correctly during times of high demand.
Now I am also having problems with the customizable lists, on computers with Windows 11 they do not update in real time and it is necessary to force the browser (F5) to update the screen.
This thing about customizable lists is delaying the implementation of a solution and the client is hesitating to move forward with the project.
I hope that with Adalo 3.0 they include these improvements and solve the execution of PWAs on Windows 11.
Regards,

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Awesome James!
Contrary to what people wrote here, I actually feel the performance in pwa is many times better than the performance in native.

I would be happy for improvements in the native versions

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@agallardo @Eugen messaging you direct to get hold of your apps for our team to investigate. If you are experiencing that delay, I agree that’s a non-starter and we need to get it resolved! Feedback to date has been that PWAs are faster than native apps, so our focus has been native apps. However, we’re data driven, so keen to learn more about your cases!

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@Eugen @agallardo @james.crennan

Just wanted to throw in my Input just in case it could help.

My app runs solely on PWA. I haven’t pushed to mobile app stores yet. And while I’ve noticed a speed shift in my PWA (tremendous difference) I’ve noticed on older devices the PWA will run slow and struggle loading in some lists. Maybe check with your users and ask the age of their devices to see if maybe that is having an effect on performance. Because for me it was that after this last performance update we got.

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Ok I’ll send you, I’ve been with Kyle for a long time by email to see that, but that happens to me in all the apps… I even tried an app with nothing, that the home is a page with a counter but ready, without photos, without anything and surprise… between clicking on the link or writing it in Google until the app opens it takes like 15/40 seconds, I even sent him photos that many clients say APP NOT FOUND… we have already lost many ticket sales because customers leave!

I was on chatGPT looking for information, how to improve performance, and many things… this is what I got

PWAs created with Adalo are usually slower compared to other PWAs because Adalo is not a native framework, but a no-code development platform, which means that:

Middle layer: Adalo uses an internal structure that translates what you do in the app into queries to its database, which introduces an extra processing layer.
Adalo database: It is not optimized to handle large volumes of data quickly. Every time a query is made, Adalo retrieves more data than necessary.
Uncontrolled data loading: Adalo, by default, loads all related records without pagination or optimization.

Hopefully this can be fixed because it is very important for the user experience as it is the first contact they have with the app! I look forward to your responses!

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Congrats, Adalo team! :tada: Bringing back free forever plans is a huge win, and the new performance upgrades—especially the improved image compression—sound amazing. Excited to see what’s next with Adalo 3.0!

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Thank you so much @james.crennan for delivering these updates! Kudos to your leadership and to the entire Adalo team. I’m really excited about these performance upgrades and hoping to actually feel the difference.

By the way, I also experienced the slowdown, especially during the initial loading in the PWA, around 3 AM ET on Wednesday. The initial loading took around 20 seconds, but it only lasted that day. Now, it’s back to the normal speed I usually feel.

Also, the tricky part about feeling an app speed upgrade is that if it’s gradually introduced, you may not notice the improvement, even though the speed has actually taken a leap. kind of like body size changes, hehe If only there were a way to measure it, I wouldn’t have to rely on just my feel! that could also be helpful in diagnosing or identifying actual speed problems, since words might not accurately reflect the app’s actual speed

again congratulations to adalo!
and thank you for regularly visiting the forum.

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@Santiago–let’s move this to a message channel. You’ve got me on email and the team are working on it. We’ve been with Adalo for 6 months now, and I think achieve a huge amount in that time. Every day we’re peeling back layers of the technology and finding ways to optimize it. Jason, our CTO, is phenomenal and is having weekly breakthroughs on how to make the system and service better. We will get there!
In the meantime, I’d appreciate not posting lengthy replies about what ChatGPT says. We have pagination near release and the system DB was literally optimized today. ChatGPT also tends to scour websites and try to find consensus–it doesn’t have access to our code base and therefore every comment it is making is based on conjecture.

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That’s great, we see a lot of progress since they’ve been here and I tell my clients to be patient, as things are getting better week by week… we’re fully committed to Adalo and we appreciate the effort to keep Adalo moving forward! You’re the best! We trust you!

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Glad to see the performance upgrades, the elimination of app actions, the great service from CH Team, as well as all the effort you guys are putting into improving Adalo!

There are, however, certain things that are facing some challenges.

  • Some custom lists now don’t load at first, only when the page is refreshed, which is not a good UX.

  • In simple lists with a search bar, when the db reaches a certain number of records, if lazy loading is ON, some results aren’t showing when you type something - only when lazy loading is OFF, which increases the initial loading time (simple list of users with the filter “name contains input X”).

Excited for what’s coming and hoping to see these issues fixed soon. Congrats to the team!

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@afonso I’ve isolated the list not loading, except until page refresh, to the device age and speed. Newer devices have no problem older ones tend to struggle. I’ve been noticing this for a while. But overall am loving the speed upgrades!

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Hi @Jacob_Lange

Thanks for sharing!

In my case, it happens on my iPhone 14 Plus - in the case of my mobile apps - as well as most of my clients’ computers and my MacBook Pro 2018 - in the case of my desktop app…

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Great update James! The unlimited App Actions is superb! Really help startups like mine.
Looking forward for all the great features.
Keep up the great job!

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Anything regarding the Dropdown heights to finally fix the Android view-problem? :pray: