Get your Base44 app, its data, and its logic out of the platform
Base44 builds working internal tools and SaaS quickly, and the questions that follow are always about ownership: where the data lives, who can reach it, and what happens on the day the platform is no longer the right fit.
- Typical timeline
- 3–6 weeks depending on how much logic lives in the platform
- Pricing
- Fixed quote after a free scoping call
- Rollback
- Written, rehearsed, and executed by you before handover
What staying on Base44 actually costs
Not a list of features you are missing. These are the four things that reliably turn into an incident, an invoice, or a lost deal.
- 01
Export is four problems, and platforms solve one
Getting your data out means getting the schema, the records, the uploaded files, and the business rules out.
- 02
Permissions are right at the page and wrong at the record
Platform access control tends to be modelled on screens: this role sees this page.
- 03
You cannot debug what you cannot see
When something fails inside a platform there is frequently no trace, no structured log, and no way to reconstruct the sequence of events.
- 04
The platform-shaped schema gets expensive
Data models designed around a builder's conventions rather than your query patterns are fine at a few thousand records and painful at a few million.
The sentences we hear most, and what we do about each one
These are paraphrases of things founders have actually said on scoping calls. The left column is the experience; the right column is the work.
"I asked for an export and got a CSV"
A CSV of records is not a migration. It has no relations, no types beyond text, no files, and no logic.
How we helpWe build and test the full export path in phase one, before you commit to the migration: schema reconstructed with real types and foreign keys, records loaded and counted, files retrieved and verified, and a written inventory of every business rule that has to be rebuilt by hand.
"Some of the logic only exists as clicks"
The validations, the approval flow, the notification that fires on status change - these were configured in a UI.
How we helpWe walk the platform configuration screen by screen with someone who knows the business and write each rule down as a specification before implementing it.
"My customers cannot know we are moving"
Internal tools can take a maintenance window. Customer-facing apps often cannot, and the fear of a visible outage is what keeps a migration on the roadmap for a year.
How we helpThe new system runs in parallel against synchronised data and is verified before anything is switched.
"I do not know if this is worth it yet"
Migration is a cost with no new features at the end of it, which makes it a hard thing to justify while the platform is still working.
How we helpOften it is not worth it yet, and we say so.
Component by component, before and after
Every line is a decision we will walk you through, and every one of them is written down in the handover documentation.
| Today | becomes | After the migration | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform-managed tables | PostgreSQL with a schema modelled on your query patterns | Types, constraints, and foreign keys declared rather than implied. | |
| Configured workflows and validations | Application code with tests | Rebuilt from a written specification. This is the largest single line item in the project. | |
| Page-level roles | Record-level authorization enforced in the data layer | Checked at the query, not in the view, and covered by cross-tenant tests. | |
| Platform file storage | S3 or Spaces with signed URLs | Files retrieved, checksummed, and re-linked to their records. | |
| Platform hosting | Containers on your cloud with CI/CD | Deploy from git, preview environments, one-command rollback. | |
| No observability | Structured logs, tracing, error tracking, uptime alerts | A failure produces a trace id you can search, not a shrug. |
Four phases, each with something you can hold
Scope is fixed after phase one. Every phase ends in artefacts you keep, whether or not you continue to the next.
- 013–5 days
Prove the export path
Before anything is committed, we extract a full copy of schema, records, and files into a scratch environment and write down every business rule that has no export format.
You receive
- Reconstructed schema with types and relations
- Record counts reconciled against the platform
- File inventory with checksums
- Written specification of every rule to be rebuilt
- 022–4 weeks
Build the target
The application is rebuilt on your own stack against the specification, with authorization enforced at the data layer and tests around the rules that matter.
You receive
- Application running on your infrastructure
- Cross-tenant authorization test suite
- Migrations, seeds, and a repeatable import
- CI/CD with preview environments
- 033–5 days
Parallel run and reconcile
Both systems run against synchronised data and outputs are compared - record counts, key reports, and the flows your users touch most.
You receive
- Reconciliation report across every table
- Side-by-side verification of critical workflows
- Timed cutover runbook and rollback procedure
- 041 day, plus 30 days support
Cut over and hand off
Traffic moves, the old system is held as a rollback target for an agreed period, and you receive the documentation, the specification, and the runbook.
You receive
- Cutover with the platform retained as rollback
- Monitoring and alerting live
- Complete documentation and specification
- 30 days of post-launch support
What can go wrong, and what stops it
We would rather write these down than discover them together. Each one is a real failure mode from a real migration, with the control that prevents it.
A business rule discovered after cutover
The parallel run exercises the flows your users actually use, and the old system stays available as a reference.
Export limits or throttling on the platform side
Extraction is tested in phase one at full volume, so any rate limit is discovered while it is an inconvenience rather than a blocker.
Scope growing because the rebuild becomes a redesign
Phase two implements the written specification and nothing else. Improvements are captured and scheduled after cutover, deliberately, rather than absorbed silently.
Before you book the call
Partly, and this is the one migration on this page where that is honestly true.
Yes, and for a lot of clients that is the right call.
The plan is designed so they do not. The systems run in parallel, outputs are reconciled, and the cutover is a DNS change with the old platform held as a rollback target.
Related migrations
Lovable → your own cloud
Lovable produces a real React application against a real Postgres database, which makes this the most tractable migration on this page.
Read the planReplit → AWS
Replit is the fastest way to get from an idea to a running app, and a genuinely bad place to leave one once people depend on it.
Read the planBolt.new → production
Bolt gets a full-stack app running in an afternoon and it is genuinely good at that. The gap between "runs in the Bolt preview" and "runs in production for paying users" is remarkably consistent across projects, which is convenient: it means the work is known before we start.
Read the plan
Thinking about moving off Base44?
The scoping call is free, and it ends with a straight answer about whether it is worth doing yet.