📣 Community Update — June 2022

[KatelynCampbell]

Hey y’all

This is our June Okay, you caught us…. Mid-July Community Update. You can find last month’s update here. Our plan is to update you on what’s going on at Adalo each month. You can expect to learn what we’ve shipped, what we’ve fixed, who we’ve hired, and much more.

We Have A New Senior Growth Marketer

First off, we hired a Senior Growth Marketer, Logan Harper. Logan is coming to us with loads of experience in the Agency world where he helped grow some amazing start-ups. With all this knowledge, we’re hoping that he can help spread the Adalo tool far & wide! Don’t be surprised if you come into contact with him as he’ll definitely want to engage with y’all.

Performance

If you missed the announcement, performance got a major upgrade! There are major improvements to both the speed and experience of how data loads in Adalo apps. A quick overview of everything that launched:

1. Dramatically faster initial list loading times
2. Instant navigation
3. Improved loading experiences
4. Improved create record speed

Performance upgrades aren’t stopping here. Just last week we launched a major update to our Editor experience so your apps load, zoom, and pan super snappy! This is HUGE for all the large apps out there (think hundreds of screens). Your computers are likely sighing in relief!

For an in depth look, including video examples, check out our performance page.

Pricing

Our CEO, David, spoke on some upcoming changes to pricing here and here. The goal of our new pricing structure is for it to be fairly tied to value, easy to understand, and beneficial for everyone’s long term success. There are five elements that determine the different pricing plans: Number of apps, total storage, monthly app activity, features, and collaborators. We also just released a brand new dashboard that has a breakdown of which apps are accruing app actions.

We think these elements allow us to find the perfect balance. To learn more, read David’s article here. Our next steps will be to continue talking to our makers and analyzing apps to see what plans and limits make sense.

David has also opened up his calendar to meet with some of you. If you have any questions or thoughts, book something here.

Upcoming Changes

I wanted to provide some reassurance — while we’re sad that Jesse is no longer the Community Manager, we’re taking this time to re-evaluate how we interact with you! We know you have been asking for more involvement in the forum from the entire Adalo team & that’s exactly our plan. We love the Community Updates, the quarterly Town Halls, & getting to hear all your feedback — those aren’t going anywhere.

Our team will be in the forum daily helping identify known bugs, pointing to existing resources, and in general, being listening ears for all your feedback. Not to mention, more ‘update’ posts as Adalo continues to grow & evolve!

The rules for our forum still apply — Please do not tag team members & instead utilize our AMAZING makers & the community leaders for your “how-to” questions — they really are fantastic resources. If you’re unsure of our Community Rules, check out this post.

Quick Highlight

Here’s a quick highlight from our changelog. We made it so you can view and download your past invoices. From the account Settings modal, navigate to the Usage & Billing tab. From there, click the View Invoices button to see and download all your past invoices.

Cheers,

Katelyn Campbell

[Adalotaco]

I’m checking the forum because my app editor isn’t loading.
These performance announcements are feeling a bit empty on results side here.

But it’s great you hired a marketer. Congrats.

[KatelynCampbell]

Hi @Adalotaco

This definitely sounds like something that should be submitted as a support ticket here: Submit a Support Ticket

Make sure to give the time you were experiencing issues with editor loading so we’re able to best diagnose what was going on!

I did check our support queues this morning and did not notice that this was a widespread issue, so the more information you can provide in your ticket, the better, to help us get down to the root cause of what you were experiencing.

Thanks!

[Adalotaco]

I appreciate that you’re attempting to manage a forum that’s struggling with some of the worst complaints / morale.
And you’re keeping it professional, positive, and doing your best to engage.
I also appreciate that when run correctly, a support ticket system is great at getting resolutions for customers and clients.

However, please note that telling people to submit a support ticket when this is an every day (evening) issue - your users have come to expect that there is no solution to this problem, that this is how the service works.

If you check the forums at the same time each evening, it explodes with complaints. And those coincide with people that have given up contacting support or submitting support tickets.

Waiting for a support ticket to be submitted individually to gauge your issues while ignoring the activity on the forum - is lazy. Sorry, but it really is. Most users don’t submit support tickets. Support tickets are where complaints go to die in silence and the dark.

Complaints on forums explode when customers don’t think submitting a support ticket will matter.
This community, from what I can see, is on life support.

[Bobby]

This is true, there is a very noticeable performance drop every evening / afternoon PST time zone.

[KatelynCampbell]

@Adalotaco Thank you for your feedback — I certainly hear your frustration and it will be taken into consideration as we’re working on what forum management & our support process looks like as we grow and evolve.

Our forum is a place for community members to interact with and help each other out. The support ticket process is for identifying bugs, service interruptions, & solving technical issues like the one that you are describing!

We receive hundreds, upon hundreds of support tickets each month that are responded to within our stated support time frames and oftentimes much quicker than that. We’re very thankful for the work that our support team does & for when & how the community alerts us to any problems that they are aware of. As someone that works with the support team daily, I can tell you there is nothing but empathy and heart for each of our makers & they work tirelessly to provide the support that they themselves would like to receive from a company.

Again, thanks for your feedback & candor, we will continue to make changes that the community can rely on to improve the forum & our support process, and right now that includes handling service interruptions through our ticketing system.

Thanks!

Katelyn

[Bobby]

@KatelynCampbell

Do we know when we will have any real information on the new pricing structure?

Some of us build apps for clients that obviously need to be hosted on Adalo, it’s hard to do business when you can’t tell your client how much their hosting fees will cost.

Thanks!

[KatelynCampbell]

Great question, Bobby!

We’re hoping to have more concrete information about each tier out next week!

For anyone who is on a current plan, they are able to stay on that plan for 12 months without a change to their pricing (for example, $50 a month for 12 months). For the clients that you know you have, I would definitely recommend signing them up to enjoy our current pricing so there isn’t a guessing game on charges in the future

[Adalotaco]

Wanted to stop by and say that I took your comment to heart about forum vs support tickets.

I submitted a support ticket for a major bug - a thing that is not working at all. Not ‘has an issue’, but does not work.

I was told that I should find a work around - by using a different method, instead.

and submit a ‘feature request’ for the bug to get fixed. (Zapier update doesnt work because you can’t search any records, you have to already know the record id but have no way to look it up)

No ‘we will add it to our bug fix list’ - they view it as fine the way it is.
My impression is they have no intention of fixing that issue.

There was also an implied ‘maybe you should take your business elsewhere’ response at the end of that support ticket response by the support agent, which I won’t take personally but I definitely took note of.

If everyone switches to a different service, those support ticket response times are going to be stellar.

Good times.
Forgive me if I don’t waste my time submitting support tickets in the future.

[KatelynCampbell]

Hi @Adalotaco,

Thanks for taking my comment to heart! & thank you for submitting a bug ticket.

I have not yet looked into the conversation that happened between you & one of our support staff — but rest assured that I will be doing so. We should be providing pleasant & helpful responses, even when our answer is that we don’t categorize something as a bug. If there is a time where you believe you have received inadequate support please email me directly at katelyn @ adalo.com. I certainly want to look at where we can improve our support processes.

Without looking at the ticket exchange, one thing I will note is how we define a bug, of course with an understanding that there are nuances to this definition:

A bug that will be reviewed by our team & cataloged to be fixed is something that has previously worked inside an Adalo app or integration that now does not work - OR - where the functionality exists in a component or feature that is analogous to component or feature that does not work in the same way.

In the case of Zapier, if I am not mistaken — we have never exposed record IDs. Therefore, we would need to implement new functionality & we would classify this as a feature request and not a bug. This is certainly a feature request that we hear of frequently & I hope that it will be prioritized in the future.

This is just my quick pass at the information provided here & again, I will be looking at the conversation that happened in the ticket directly. If I have misunderstood the functionality you were looking for from this forum exchange, the fault is purely because of my own assumptions from what I read in the comment.

Again, I will be looking into this further because it does not sound like you received the level of support response that we strive for and I would like to make changes to our process, especially if this is a process failure

Thank you for your feedback,

Katelyn

[Adalotaco]

I’ve already given too much time to this. I genuinely commented as a courtesy. What happens does not matter because it has been made clear that there is no solution or resolution that I can expect.

That said - Please know that the ‘corporate speak’ of ‘technicalities’ that continue to be pushed as acceptable both from staff in support and on this forum speaks exactly to my earliest points about the systemic issues with Adalo.

It boils down to this:

Adalo sales material stresses the amazing zapier integrations you can build.

Expectation: Zapier integration to allow you to create and update records.
Reality: You can create a record. You cannot update a record unless it’s the record you just created.

I don’t appreciate this sort of corporate ‘other’ speak where ‘technically…’ this that and the other thing.

It either does the thing or it doesnt. And you’re saying it does on your sales pages, but it doesn’t.

And if it’s MY fault for not understanding - and clearly others have had the same misunderstanding and you’re aware of it, then not correcting your sales material means you’re intentionally keeping those misunderstandings in your sales material.

Because no one sees the functionality of only being able to create new records.
And not update records.

And turning it into this idea that I’m somehow demanding more or expecting additional features - and should request that feature and cross my fingers it’s selected and built out to function - when it’s an expectation that has been already promised - is insulting.

I wish Adalo could rise to the promises on their sales pages.

[Wammen]

Hi,

Is there a possibility, that The Price will go down? I dont have that many active apps, But I do enjoy custom actions etc., so I pay for The business plan monthly. But if the pay goes up in all circumstances, I will consider upgrading to an annual plan before the new price model Is introduced.

[axme]

I can vouch for this. Even though Adalo doesn’t solve all issues right away (which is totally understandable since these are tech issues), they do reply almost always within 24h with a status update.

[KatelynCampbell]

Yes, there is a possibility that the price will go down!

I will say that if you are planning on utilizing custom actions & some of those premium features, I would either stay put in your current plan (and decide if it makes sense to move over to a new plan) or move to annual. I will tell you that the current annual plan will likely be the biggest bang for your buck!

[KatelynCampbell]

Hi @Adalotaco,

Thanks for this additional clarity! It sounds like there is an overall problem with our sales & marketing or help documentation that is making this unclear.

I will look into that to determine where we can provide more clarity & make the necessary updates so we’re not adding to confusion.

Cheers,

Katelyn

[Adalotaco]

I woke up to find any zapier integrations I had running ‘new record’ as trigger were no longer working. The error Zapier gives me when Adalo connections attempt to be made (even after reauthenticating my adalo zapier connection) is ‘Signal Killed’.

I’m not entirely sure what to even say at this point.

[preptogether]

It’s been 8 days since this was posted and 27 days since the last thing I saw that somewhat addressed the new pricing structure without actually providing needed details to make a decision whether to stay out or go elsewhere.

And I’m assuming the town hall/Q&A is on the back burner as well? It’s been 23 days since it was stated that was coming soon. I’ve started noticing a trend with the word “soon” being used loosely to define “sometime within the next “x” number of years. (ex: roadmap requests dating back to 2020 for core feature and system upgrades that elicited a “soon” response).

The lack of clear cut communication from Adalo, aside from some standard customer service fanfare, is increasingly becoming an issue (and I believe I can speak for more than just myself).

Even if Adalo isn’t ready to make any concrete announcements regarding the issues we’re all seeking answers to, a simple out-reach from Adalo leadership to its customer base on a personal level with a “hey, we hear you. We know there are issues. We’ve got some internal problems happening that we’re ironing out, but we haven’t forgotten about you,” would instill a slightly more stable level of confidence, though it shouldn’t serve as an avenue for Adalo to go silent for another 30 days.

At this stage in the game, daily updates, even if it’s a simple check-in, from Adalo’s higher ups would at least show they care; but as it stands, it seems that Adalo has passed the torch to forum users to resolve other users issues by implementing unnecessary workarounds to bypass issues that Adalo, for reasons unexplained, is not resolving.

I was moderately hopeful in the recent “performance” upgrades to the editor, as my latest app development was running somewhat smoothly…until yesterday when it started lagging out again, and I haven’t even topped ten pages, while also following advice to reduce linking pages during development, keeping browser tabs at a minimum, and reducing the number of lists on single pages.

Adalo is starting to feel more like a great place to build an app to showcase apps built elsewhere, but not a whole lot more than that.

To sum up, we need answers, and more importantly, confidence that Adalo has a tangible and well-designed plan for making this system work at a level that can actually facilitate real-world use. Your roadmap’s “planned: coming back soon” section is counter to everything I’ve just stated.

[preptogether]

I think it’s worth sharing that this Adalo employee(?), whose title is “customer experience” hasn’t been seen on this forum (where your customer’s are) in over a year. And that’s a fairly consistent trend with most of the individuals who carry the Adalo badge here.

[CH_Team]

Hi @preptogether. Ashley moved on from Adalo about a year ago and hence is not seen on the platform. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, we will create a process to mark accounts as such.

We completely understand that communication can be made a lot more frequent with our makers and we’re continuing to experiment with different channels. We appreciate the feedback and your patience.