You are partially right, but keep in mind that the apps I built 10 to 15 years ago are still working without issues. The best part is, I can move them to another platform just by copying and pasting the code. With Glide, you don’t own the code, you can’t move it elsewhere, and nearly every 3 to 6 months something gets sunset, forcing you to come back and fix it. So your comparison isn’t entirely fair, though I appreciate the effort.
I think I’m being misunderstood. I’m not here to complain — I moved on a long time ago. I’m here to ask for advice on how to approach my customers from Glide’s perspective. But I guess Glide is just doing what they always do.
We would recommend having your clients try the migration tool because we have found that most customers have had an easy time migrating with it. If you can get their feedback, that’d be helpful
The apps I built for my customers are extremely complex and rely heavily on custom CSS. They will not transition smoothly to the new Glide Apps. I would need to redo more than 50% of the layouts and spend a significant amount of time testing. No one is going to pay for that, and it’s beyond my clients’ skill level to do it themselves.
I’m not speaking for Glide. As far I understand Glide’s approach regarding Classic Apps:
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Deprecation of Classic Apps begins Monday, June 30th. This was announced with 3 months notice. The discontinued support of Classic Apps was announced in March 2023 (2 years and 3 months notice).
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Glide offers a migration tool that helps with migrating apps from the old platform to the new one.
Since the apps you built for your clients are complex and difficult to migrate, it seems it’s a good time for you to have earnest talks with your clients. You could explain the following:
- When we built your apps, we used Glide’s now old platform. Glide discontinued support for this platform over 2 years ago, and apps that still run on the platform will be deprecated Monday, June 30th as announced late March with 3 months notice.
- Your app had an amazing run, but as is it will soon not run anymore. This is how it is.
- You now have a few options: decide you don’t need the app anymore and find an alternative process, rebuild the app on Glide (by yourself, with me HTML or by hiring a Glide expert), or rebuild the app outside of Glide (other nocode platform or with code). Either option will likely be inconvenient, and the two latter options will cost you either time or money. How do you feel about these options and would you like us to discuss these?
That’s it really. You’re probably going to have a few uncomfortable conversations, but it’s not your fault and that’s the world of business: there’s a subject to be discussed, you discuss and address it (or not), and move on.
You probably already are familiar with the Glide Experts directory, but just in case:
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Just one thing I would add.
The use of Custom CSS was never officially supported in Classic Apps, and in fact Glide consistently warned against it and actively discouraged the use of it. Lots of us used it anyway (I did), but that was always with the understanding that we were using it at our risk and it could break at anytime without warning.
As it turned out, we got plenty of warning.
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I did warn them not to build anything complex or critical on Glide. I offered to create a custom-coded app hosted on my own server instead. I genuinely feel bad for them, and I hope they’ll now consider moving to full-code apps, which are much easier to build today than they used to be. Thanks guys!
I definitely need help with that.
I have a lot of classic apps deployed with custom domains.
These Classic Apps all end with .glideapp.io
Apps are .glide.page
How can I keep the same URL?
Since you have custom domains for your apps, the Glide based url shouldn’t matter. You would be using the custom domain instead of the glideapp.io or glide.page domains. Your users should be using the custom domain, so when you move the domain to the new app, it should be transparent to them. There might be a little bit of downtime while you are reconfiguring the custom domain to the new app, but probably no more than a couple of hours.
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Jeff is correct!
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So, if I understand my-name.glideapp.io isn’t a custom domain name? I can’t keep the same URL while migrating my app / or creating a new one to replace it?
No, it’s not, and no you can’t. The domain glideapp.io is owned by Glide, and it only works with Classic Apps.
A custom domain is one that you own and manage. An example might be lvaurie.com.
When using your own custom domain with a Glide App, it will work for both Classic and new Glide Apps. So if you assigned a custom URL to your Classic App, you could transfer that URL to your migrated App and the change would be mostly transparent to your users.
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Oh crap… 
Thanks for the clear answer!
This is another reason we advocate for custom domains on production apps. 
Clone an app, make a bunch of changes, then point the domain to the latest version.
Handy for when you’re making significant changes.
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