Transcription
I'm done with base 44 and so are many other users. And in this video, I will explain to you why I'm done with them. Let's take a look at this.
So, there are many people on Reddit who are making those posts that they're done with Base 44. They can't believe that Wix as a company can get this thing going and running. And then there are some good comments that I think are really good like "off-system hostage is the biggest red flag by the way," which I agree on 100% as someone who's been building JavaScript applications for about 7 years and you know, tried no-code tools for the last 4 years about. So in this application, in this Base 44 thing, there are a couple of issues and I think it's not a technical issue as many people are saying. I think it's an issue in how the company operates and I want to talk you through some examples that I noticed, um, that are some red flags in my opinion.
So here's the biggest thing. I don't know if you remember it, but I made a video. Let me share that. So if we do a no-code pro-code and we'll look at my YouTube channel here. Look at that. We'll go to my YouTube channel. I made a video about Base 44. Let's look at that. Base 44. I made a video about B 44. I made many videos that are not good about it, but I made this video here, "The Issue with B 44," where I essentially walked you through how to fix it, not adding npm packages, and the workaround was using CDN and it worked perfectly because back then they supported CDN.
Now, for all of you not knowing what CDN is, um, there are beautiful things like JS Deliver here that essentially allow you to install packages and pre-built stuff that's open-source into your project through a link that you add into there. If you've ever added like an Intercom or a chatbot or a chat on a website, you know probably what this is. Those are going to be those snippets you add in the body or the header of the page. They had support for that. WordPress has support for that. Webflow has support for that. Wix has support for that. They had support for that as well. And overnight they decided that it would be a good idea to tell their AI model to refuse any commands that change the headers, change the body, or you know, refuse in general to load any third-party packages into it, even if you tell it to add one. This was a big issue because back then they didn't support npm. This was the only thing that many people relied on and used to get those packages in there. They removed the feature overnight. And the thing is, I'm fine if this was something that they were clear about initially. But you can't imagine how many applications they broke by doing that. What if you need to upload the script tag cuz there's a new version of the package that you're trying to do? Now you can't edit it. What if there's a critical vulnerability with the package that you're importing here? I think there was like this um polyfill issue a couple of months ago where a Chinese company bought the script tag and it was all of the sudden having some malware in it. You can't like, how would you remove it if they can't edit it, right? This is a big problem. They had this feature and then they decided, "Let's adjust the AI," and then you can't touch it anymore. You can't add new stuff. I don't know if you can't remove stuff. Maybe you can remove stuff, but it was generally unable to update or edit stuff of the header, the body of the page for CDN packages. I made a video because back then it worked. And you can take a look at the video. That's proof that it used to work and it was working flawlessly. And it never refused to do it. It just said, "Yeah, I I'll do it, right? I can edit the header for you. I can edit the body for you." They removed the support and then essentially by doing this, they removed millions of integrations that you could plug into for your Base 44 applications, such as EditorJS or Despia or all that kind of stuff.
Now, this was my first issue with them and I think I can live with that now because they added npm support. Now, even though there are many packages that are only available on CDN, they added npm, which I think is good because now you can add the Desk package or other stuff. We have npm.desp.com walking you through how you can use the npm package. So, you have those integrations. You can plug it to the npm ecosystem, which is great. They solved the problem in a different way. They still broke many sites by removing support for that or possibly broke or prevented them from doing certain changes to their site, which is a problem. Um, but this is when I noticed the first time that B 44 has a problem of keeping existing users happy because you can't just do big changes to a product that people rely on and just risk breaking old applications. If one application even breaks, that's too much in my opinion. Now, people tell me I have high-quality standards, but I think you have to have high-quality standards because there are people trusting you to host their website, to host their application, to host their business. That could be their livelihood. You can't you can't take this not seriously. Having someone's application be down could risk them losing their house. It could risk them losing everything. What if you can't import, you know, like the payment SDK that you need or update it? They can't take payments or like there's so many problems that this can create and you can't take those things lightly.
Now, I'm going to stop ranting about it because they fixed it somehow by adding npm support. But also, if you take a look at this, here's the best thing. Base 44 npm. If you look at their new npm stuff, um, adding npm packages, you will see that this only applies to new apps. So, as you can see here, "Important npm packages are only available for apps using our new infrastructure." So, again, Base 44 has a track record in abandoning old users, abandoning old applications for the sake of acquiring new customers, which is something you need to know and you need to keep in the back of your mind. This is how the company operates. Their goal is getting more users, as every company is, but I saw multiple times with the CDN stuff and how they're now implementing the npm packages. It is always a little bit at the cost of old users. Keep in mind that that's how the company operates.
So now let's close this and this is going to finish the first part of my rant. The second part of my rant is: 6 days ago I made a video that you can now build mobile apps in B 44 because now they support npm packages and they allow everybody, at least that's what they were claiming, to build integrations for it and you can build an internal integration and share it with people. That's what I did. I built an integration for B 44 that the few desperate users who use B 44 can build their application with it easier. Now, even without the integration, I want to mention that even without the integration, you can build applications with B 44 and Despia. But I want to show you something that they did that you should probably reconsider if you want to use B 44 for a future application and if you really want to depend an application that could be your livelihood, that could be your business on that platform. Let's talk about it.
Okay, so I built this integration here and it's only used by two users, thank God. But two users are enough for me to get concerned about this. If there's only one person out there in the world whose application is broken, what if their business is dependent on it? What if, you know, they rely on that app to provide for their family? What if that's the only business they have? What if the application is running their business, is running their HR, it's running their operations? What if it's important? You can't disregard two people, one person even. This is not this is not how you operate a hosting company. If you're a hosting company, if you're a software company, you have a liability and you have a reliability that people need to depend on you. And this is something that is not, you shouldn't take lightly. That's my opinion about it. I do have high standards. I know that my team is telling me I have too high standards, but I want to talk about the standards that Base 44 will give you and then you can figure out what aligns more with you as a user.
Now, we have this integration here. I wanted to edit the integration. I wanted to improve it. I wanted to make the integration better. You see, it's in "Pending Review," but back then you could share links and this is fine. Okay. Now, I want to edit my integration here in B 44. I click on it. They removed my integration. I built an integration Base 44 as a paying user. You can say the payment didn't go through, that's why they blocked it. I can show you this bill in here. Look at this. I'm paying a hundred bucks for that thing. And um, I'm on a paid plan. I can show you my Where do they have the invoices? Manage payments, right? No, I'm not trying to upgrade to this thing. Um, I I don't know where I I don't know where I find that. I think it's under settings here where you have your plan and billing. You can see my billing history. All invoices are paid. So there's no reason why they would have removed the integration. But the fact is I built an integration Base 44. Two people are using it. It's too much for me to like, two people concerns me. If there are two people that like they they rely on a feature and you just remove the feature, one person is enough. That's my opinion. I have high standards. I'm aware of that. But you know, look at this for yourself. I can edit the integration to maintain users. Users, if they click on the video I made about the integration to install the integration, cannot install the integration anymore.
So here's the problem that you're having. The problem is I built something. I trusted their platform to build this integration. I can't edit the integration myself. I can't even look at my integration that I built besides taking a look at the icon of the integration here. Right. For me, I have and they completely blocked me from my own integration and I tested it. You can't install the integration anymore. It's like wiped out out of existence. And then if you take a look at their promise here, their promise is "Automate your workflow or build for the community. Create powerful integrations." If I go and create integrations, look at this. Earn um, create a public integration. You can do public and internal ones and public integrations. You can make a private one and then share it with the community and all that kind of stuff. No more says that we're going to remove your integration if you don't follow certain rules. There are no rules that we violated in building our integration. But apparently they can just remove my access from our own integration and they can prevent new people from using our integration. It's not a dangerous integration. It's not so dangerous. I shouldn't be able to take a look at it, but that's what they're doing. So again, I thought everybody can build integrations. And now there are two people out there who are using this integration who possibly will have a hard time now adding features.
Now, if this is you, I'm talking to those two people here in this video. If you're facing this issue where you use the integration and it doesn't work, I want to give you a workaround. I want to show you how you can fix it because B 44 clearly is not doing that. They have a track record, as I mentioned and I showed clearly in this video, of doing a promise, going back on that promise, and then also breaking stuff for existing users, such as not supporting npm. You need to rebuild your application. If you're in that position, I'd rebuild it in Lovable just to show them that the way that they are operating needs to be more reliable. If you are building an application, you should trust the company to handle this accordingly.
Now, there are many problems with Lovable and not trying to downplay that. I know of two people who were using Despia who reached out to us for help who built their application in Lovable and I don't know what happened, but they said out of nowhere their applications were deleted from Lovable. One person didn't have the GitHub integration, so it was wiped out. Months of work were gone. Another one had a GitHub integration and the team helped him recover his application. So I know of one who completely wiped out his app. This is a very, very edge, edge, edge, edge, edge case. There is one in a million who has this problem with Lavable with Base 44. They did collateral damage here, right, by doing this. There are two people again. One is too much, and I I think you should always do integrations with GitHub with Lovable to sync it. So should the worst happen for some reason, you have a backup. I want to be transparent that Lovable is not perfect. No tool is perfect. Disper now, we never lost someone's application, but it's also not perfect. I can find stuff that's not perfect about it. But as long as people are dependent on your application, you have to do your best to support existing users and don't do this kinds of stuff. That's not how a professional company who is rich should behave. I can understand if this happens with a startup run by three people in Denmark, but startups run by three people in Denmark are more reliable than this. Right?
So, let's go back here and this is what's happening. Now, I want to show you how you can go around that. If you're trying to build an application with B 44 and Despia, which if you ever want to do that, here's what you do. You go to the project that you have. I have this example project here. There you go. We'll just wait till this opens. This will take a little bit. Their application is very heavy. The entire dashboard. It seems like it's bad coded almost. And it's still loading. I'm not fully a fan of their platform, but that's a different video. You see how slow my camera just got by opening Base 44. Um, I apologize for that, but their application is very heavy. Um, I do suppose or assume that they have memory leaks somewhere in there. But now, let's go on npm.py.com. You see how fast and beautiful my camera is moving on the desk page. We don't have memory leaks over there.
But now let's go here on master prompt. We will copy this master prompt. We will go into Base 44. There you go. We will go on the three uh on the setting wheel down here on the chat. We go to AI controls on the custom instructions. We'll paste this in here. We'll save the changes. There you go. And now I can say, "Add Despia haptic haptic feedback." Add Despia. Oh, I got to type that. I got to fix that. Go back. Apologize. Haptic feedback. You see how slow my cameras are getting on their application. I do assume they have memory leaks there. Engineers probably should look into that. And if they have time, maybe they got other stuff to fix about their platform because there's lots of stuff they should fix in my opinion. Um, but now, as you can see, it will be able to implement those things. See? So, it's now editing the files. Add Despia haptic feedback. It will now add it. It will work. It will be able to implement those things. So, as you could see now, it made the changes and all that kind of stuff. So we can take a look at the code to confirm that what it did was correct. As you can see, it's now importing Despia and it's doing haptic feedback in here, as you can see. And this is going to be correct. There you go. And then we have some other stuff here. Error haptic. And so it's using it correctly and beautifully. There you go.
So now this is how you go around those issues. But again, I want to keep in mind that this company, the way they operate is not really how most companies should aim to operate. They're going to be flaws in not just their technology, but also how they operate. I do have an understanding that they were just acquired by Wix for, I think, $90 million, which I think the person who built it probably is laughing about that um compared to what they got for those $90 million. But uh, that's my opinion. I I am entitled to my opinion, but I'm also entitled to shut my mouth, which I will do now. But I think there's a deeper problem in how they operate. They got, they just acquired this product. So I assume there are going to be lots of changes made. There are going to be lots of old stuff that's going to be ripped out. It may be the best one in a year. As of today, it's far from being good in my personal opinion. And you should always use the technology that is the best today. You can always move the the cost of moving tech stack. The cost of moving platforms, the cost of rebuilding an application in the age of AI is incredibly low now. It went down like 99%. It's incredibly easy, fast to move away from platforms. And you can be unlovable today. I think for most people, it's the simplest one and the best one today. The best one is Cursor, but you always have to take a look at the person. I think Lovable is the best tool for the big masses, the ones that are new to this, because it will help you understand. It will help you learn. It will help you get started. You're paying me a premium for it. I'm not trying to put that under the carpet, but I think it is the best one to help you learn and get started. Now, it's the best one today in my personal opinion. I've been doing this for many years. Um, and this is just my opinion. It could be right, it could be wrong. I think that's the best one. I think if you're building an application that's somewhat serious, you should consider Lovable. I don't think there's any reason why you should be using B 44 with all of those things that I mentioned.
Again, this is my opinion. It's my perspective, and I highly invite everybody who has a different opinion about Bass 44 to please let me know about that in the comments, and let's have a discussion about it. I understand that Wix just acquired them recently. I do have an understanding that they're going to improve. But here's the thing. We can't judge a company today by what's going to happen in the next one year or in the next month. We have to take a look at what's the best solution to build an application today, right now, right this moment. And I can tell you Base 44 is far from that. I wish them all the best. I hope that they get all their ducks in a row and that they become the best one out there. I sincerely wish them the best. But we have to talk about the facts and not the feelings about a tool or a company. And in my opinion, those are the facts. Thank you so much for watching. I apologize to the two people who will have an issue with this. You can always reach out to me personally. If you have an issue with the Despia Base 44 integration, we will personally help you resolve that issue. You can send me an email at education@despia.com. I'm head of the education and the CEO and customer support and then we have 50 other people who do the framework part because that's the most important thing, but I'm head of education and I keep everything together at Despia. And my promise to you is that if you have any issue with B 44 in Despia, we will personally, even if needed, go on a Zoom meeting with you, help you set things up correctly, considering you have a, you know, an application that's too far into it. If you have a Desk license, we'll we'll take the extra steps to make sure that we will help you fix certain things. We'll help you get the system prompt in there. We'll help you get it into a point where we work around the limitations. We work around the problems of B 44. And if I have to do it personally, I'll do it personally. If you have any issues with our integrations, I know it affects two people because I can see that two people are using it based on the Base 44 dashboard. Any of those two people, please email me education@despia.com. I'll promise you, we'll find a solution for you. We'll get it working. If you are right now not of the two people who installed it yet, it will still work. You can go to npm.py.com, copy the master prompt, paste it in there, you're good. But I don't know the consequences that are happening to the people who use the integration initially and what's now happening to their project. And please, if you face any issues with that, contact me education@despia.com. We will take a look at that together and I will do the best of my ability personally to make sure that it works. It's fixed as good as it can. I can only do so and so much, but I will give my best to make sure that we will find a solution for you because I understand that you can't leave, you can't have, you can't leave a single person behind. You have to worry about all users and this is what's important to me. I want to share that with you. So if that's also important to you, reconsider your choice of base 44 here and I will promise you, everybody using Despia and B 44, we will help you go around some of the limitations to make sure that you get your application out there at least as an MVP. And if you then still have issues with that, please consider using something else. And you can always go into days 44, tell it to create a full PRD, paste that into Lovable, and migrate everything in a day. It shouldn't be that complicated. Again, if you have further questions with that and you're a Desperate customer, please go to the Destia customer support. We're here to help you. If you have urgent issues, email me at education@despia.com and I'll promise you, we'll get this figured out and we'll get a solution to you. Because I understand, as mentioned before, and I can't emphasize this enough, you can't leave a single user behind. And I think this is also a philosophy that Base 44 should be working under. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate that and I wish you a blessed day. Thank you so much for watching.