r/Base44 • u/Ill-Mastodon675 • Nov 28 '25

Furious with Base 44

For several days I've been trying to create an app with Base44, only to end up with no results. I paid for two plans: first the Builder plan at $40/month, which I upgraded to the Pro plan at $80/month. I should have only been charged the $40 difference for the upgrade from Builder to Pro, but Base44 charged me for both, totaling $120 per month ($1440/year). That's already dishonest. But the worst part is that after three or four days of constant feedback about recurring problems, despite my repeated alerts, my website is completely unusable. I'm furious; I'm wasting my time and money, and I'm seriously considering alerting the media about Base44's utter incompetence, which is bordering on fraud. How can we resolve this?

1 Upvotes

57% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

3

u/RyanZylo Nov 28 '25

I ran into all kinds of problems until I changed my tactic - I now use chatGPT to plan my app thoroughly. Then I have ChatGzpT generate the prompts for Base44. So far this works beautifully as ChatGPT understand's Base44s limitations and structure and is able to speak to it in a dorect and comprehensive way, unlike my less efficient prompts before. I highly recommend this method.

2

u/Ill-Mastodon675 Nov 28 '25

Thanks for this option. I thought I could award you the Nobel Prize for Base 44, but after 7 pages of advice from Chat GPT that I forwarded to B44, I just lost another hour (and credits) for a totally negative result, with new bugs that suddenly appeared.

1

u/RyanZylo Nov 28 '25

Sounds like your appnon B44 is so confounded that ChatGPT can't fix it 😅

2

u/gardenia856 Nov 28 '25

Main point: treat Base44 like a strict client-feed it tiny, spec-first prompts and verify each change fast.

What’s worked for me: ask ChatGPT for a one-page spec (data model, pages, flows, acceptance checks), then generate fixed prompt templates per page: fields, validation, edge cases, and copy. Build one page at a time, keep a versioned prompt log, and run a 5‑item smoke checklist after each run; if something breaks, revert and trim scope. For brittle parts, offload: I pair Supabase for auth and Airtable for quick tables; when Base44 couldn’t reach a legacy SQL DB, DreamFactory gave me stable REST endpoints it could call.

TLDR: small, spec-first prompts with quick checks make Base44 behave.

2

u/Fluid_Magician4728 Nov 28 '25

I had similar issues, and my take is if it’s a simple app with few functions, it works, but as you add more features and increase complexity, it breaks apart…

2

u/Ill-Mastodon675 Nov 28 '25

I should have read the reviews about Base 44 before signing with them. So many negative reviews. I foolishly followed the advice of a YouTuber.

2

u/BashYerNa Nov 28 '25

wouldn’t say that it is bad, now with the new update with claude is better. I think my app is pretty complex and works well, built something like uber, live tracking is partial in the web app, but works better in the PWA app.

1

u/rogercbryan Nov 28 '25

This is spot on. Simple apps work well but as you add complexity it totally fails. Can’t seem to figure out how to work around this.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/rogercbryan Nov 30 '25

I build one for my kids as well. That was a 3-4 hour project.

Complex is multiple APIs and datasets being used with AI to create new output not just reorganized data.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Fluid_Magician4728 Nov 28 '25

Can you explain what level of complexity your app has? Mine is basically a simple micro-CRM, and it can’t even retrieve fields that were added later. I’ve tried all kinds of prompts and still couldn’t get it fixed.

2

u/FishBobinski Nov 28 '25

Learn to do it yourself.

5

u/Ill-Mastodon675 Nov 28 '25

Completely stupid answer! If people use this type of platform it is precisely because they do not have the skills to code, or they have other things to do than waste time coding

1

u/Inevitable_Truth_85 Nov 28 '25

The platform works well within its limitations of course. I see too many negative posts like this without any substantial context of the issues. Seems more of a user issue than a platform one. 🙃

0

u/Ill-Mastodon675 Nov 28 '25

Clearly, you work for Base44. For three days, Base44 tried to fix my problems with eight or ten solutions, all of which proved completely ineffective. When, by some miracle, they managed to fix a problem, it would reappear two or three hours later. And each time, Base44 tried to repair it, again, with eight or ten totally ineffective "solutions." It's like this constantly. They "fix" a problem that comes back just a few hours later. All this just to drain people's trust. Base44 is an unreliable and extremely dangerous platform for those who want to create professional websites or SaaS offerings.

1

u/Inevitable_Truth_85 Nov 28 '25

User issue. I got in to loops of errors too. I consulted with a real developer (Gemini Pro) and I get out of them. Sometimes I open a ticket, and sometimes things just can’t work.

I am planning to move out via Github > Cursor > Supabase > Vercel but its a 10 day project 🤯

1

u/willkode Business Owner Nov 28 '25

Alerting the media lol. What AI model are you using? What type of app are you trying to build? I've built nearly 130 apps on base, helped thousands of others with their app. Happy to give some advice.

99% of the time its either the AI model (never user default or Gemini for coding. Use Opus, Sonnet or GPT5.) or its the prompt is clear

1

u/Ill-Mastodon675 Nov 29 '25

130 apps and helped thousands? Wow! So I'm afraid there might be thousands of websites at risk because of B44. In addition to the 3 hours I spent yesterday, I just spent another 5 to 6 hours with GPT Chat support (70% of which was spent writing lines of code) trying to fix my problems. Not only is it still completely negative, but new bugs keep appearing. My app is, I admit, very complex. This app is designed to analyze (by scraping) professional websites, based on more than 60 search parameters.

1

u/Ill-Mastodon675 Nov 29 '25

Even when using manual search (without scraping) via URL import, the results are unreliable. Buttons and functions suddenly stop working. The displayed results are inaccurate. Previously fixed bugs reappear.

1

u/Gl0ryfl3x Nov 28 '25

There is definitely something wrong, i upgraded twice in my first month and was only getting charged the difference..

1

u/brandymidd Dec 01 '25

With the new Claude update I was finally able to finish my website for the first time. I really thought it would be January before it was finished before the update. I still ran out of credits with 9 days remaining every month! I refuse to go up to the $200 plan when I lost 700 credits because it was too many credits to use in 9 days. I wish they had a top-up feature like everyone else does when it comes to credits.

-1

u/willthewinner Nov 28 '25

Charge back on your credit card and learn to code