Hi Everybody, hope y’all doing well!
We want to make sure every partnership on the platform is set up for success, so we’ve officially documented the best practices for both sides of the coin to ensure smooth builds and happy launches! 
Founders/Clients: Working with an Adalo Freelancer
Freelancers/Experts: Working with Customers as an Adalo Freelancer
Credits to the CH team! 
(Mainly Jessi!)
Check them out and let us know what you think! 
Thank you and have a great day!
Hi @Dilon
This is a fantastic guide for both parties. I appreciate reading everything mentioned. However, I’d like to add a point.
What if a client hires an expert and pays only 50% or even not at all before removing them from the app? What actions can be taken in that situation? This is a security question that needs addressing as we encounter many clients in this area. An expert building the app should have complete control until the project is finished.
Looking forward to your/community suggestions.
perspective:
As a potential hirer, I believe that liability should be between expert, and client.
OR,
Though, I am a huge supporter of free markets, I think it would be better if:
Adalo resold expert services, and components.
In that way, on such a niche platform, incentives are aligned; quality, and compatibility are upheld. — And you get paid 
…More centralized, like Apple
You’re very welcome, Shantanu!
You meant that, you did the work but not received any % of the agreed cost? You didn’t took an advance payment or not got signed a contract document with the client? After few failed situations in the past when I was a freelancer, I followed the phases/milestones process as it was well organized on my end. So I put the tasks into phases (phase 1,phase 2,..) and also mention the cost for each phase which then the client pays the phase cost first > I deliver the work and take a look at client’s feedback > start the next phase if all good on the previous phase work from the client’s side, which is the same process.
What’s in your mind, that’s is the solution and should be implemented by Adalo? Would it be something like, needs freelancer’s approval for get him/her removed from the client’s team? (when client inviting the freelancer, client would choose as freelancer from a dropdown and this approval procces valid for that role only)
Thank you and have a great day!
Hi @Dilon
Thanks for your response. By the way, I’m also taking the agreed cost in multiple phases from the start. However, let’s assume you’ve built an application and want to integrate a custom action. As we know, custom actions aren’t clonable, so we need to transfer the app from my account to the client’s. Once the transfer is complete and the custom action is done, I send it for review. After giving 50% of the quoted amount, the client stopped replying and removed me after a few days or weeks. This doesn’t happen every time but has happened a few times in the past. Perhaps the solution is that whenever we transfer the app from our account to the client’s, we have full control until the delivery mark is complete. This way, if the client tries to do something like this, we can remove the app. Even if they remove us from the app, we still have control over it. I’ve thought about this but wanted more suggestions.
Thank you for the quick reply, Shantanu!
Setting up custom actions is not another phase or did I read it incorrectly?
Wouldn’t this be a security issue if we look from client’s side? @Victor, do you have any thoughts?
Thank you and have a great day!
In my opinion, this is a business problem which doesn’t have a technical solution.
Let’s look on this from the client side. Say, the client processes the final stage payment in full in advance and expects the developer to finish the work. But “bad” developer can still hold the app and demand more payment, saying smth like “I spent more time, give me more money or I will revoke the app from your account”.
Some 3rd party can hold the money and act as an intermediary/arbitrer between developer and client - we’ve just invented Fiverr 
Without a 3rd party, it will always be a challenge to ensure 100% protection against risks for both sides. One of possible risk mitigations is to avoid 50/50 payment, but split the project into more stages (say, 25/25/25/25). In this case the max lost amount is a quarter of the deal size.
Also, having a contract could be nice (as mentioned in the best practices), but in my personal opinion, this is more related to putting deliverables and stages in writing so both parties agree on what needs to be done. Realistically it won’t provide much help in case of non-payments. Imagine the case - small project, say, $6K worth, with final payment of $2K not paid by the customer. What a developer can do? Go to court? and if the customer is on the other side of the planet? It may make sense if we’re talking about $10K+, but even with that amount lawyers’ cost take a significant amount, and courts are usually not very fast.
Just my 2 cents.
Best,
Victor.
Thanks for your replies and suggestions. I wanted to add one thing here, as I mentioned earlier, I also take payments in phases. However, I had an experience with a client where I received the upfront amount and then another phase amount with custom actions left, which was only two-thirds. Since custom actions can’t be cloned, I transferred the app to the client’s account. However, when I cloned the custom action and integrated it, the client said they couldn’t pay the remaining amount, which was the last phase. After a few days, I noticed that the client had removed me from their app, and after a week, I saw that the same app was listed on both stores.
I invested a lot of time in making the app good, and after all that effort, I only received half of the quoted amount. This might be a business issue, but I believe Adalo should give “makers” more control, not just for the lifetime of the app, but for specific cases like this. In my opinion, it’s not a business issue we often face clients like this, and it should be a win-win situation for both freelancers and clients.
I recently found a workaround for this problem, but it’s not ideal (they can still remove). It would be better if we had control over the app until it’s delivered.