I’ve been with Adalo since the very beginning, and my app was originally built on the platform. It was successful for a long time, but ever since the switch to the 2.0 builder, legacy apps haven’t received much support. Ironically, those older apps actually run faster with little to no lag, while the newer 2.0+ apps are noticeably laggy.
The biggest issue is that this performance directly impacts my users. Any creator knows that poor performance leads to a drop in user retention, fewer sign-ups, and frustrated customers and unfortunately, Adalo’s backend issues are being carried straight into my app.
On top of that, the third-party components I’ve paid for have been a nightmare. Many of them no longer work, and when they break, you’re left waiting months for a fix (if one ever comes). It raises the question: what happens to all the money we’ve invested in these components when they’re no longer supported? I believe there should be refunds or accountability from creators who don’t maintain what we paid for.
To be fair, Adalo’s new CEO has made a lot of great changes. But at this point, Adalo needs to give customers with high-scale apps an option to buy more bandwidth or scaling power. I keep being told my app has “too many items on one page” but if I broke everything down into multiple screens, my users would never use the app. Other platforms, especially those that are fully coded and backed by investors, let users get to their data with fewer clicks and far better performance.
I also encourage Adalo to invest heavily in AI and continue improving overall performance. AI could streamline design, optimize app behavior, and make the platform much more scalable for creators who are building complex apps.
Recently, I found an alternative platform similar to Adalo: Base 44. It costs about the same ($50/month), but it runs much faster, gives you full access to your code and files, and even leverages AI to handle the design (while still letting you customize if you want).
