AI tools have made it possible to get a working app, customer portal or booking tool in a few weeks, built by a freelancer or by someone on your own team with a tool like Lovable, Bolt or Replit. Before real customers depend on it, there are five things we would check, and you can do most of them yourself in a few hours.
You can do all of this without reading code, and each check ends with something you can write down or hand to someone else.
Make sure the app and its accounts are in your name
Write down every service the app runs on, including the domain, the hosting, the database, the code repository, the email sender and any AI provider. Next to each one, note whose account it sits in and who can log in.
If the freelancer set everything up under their own email, ask them to move each account to a business address you control, or to add you as an owner. The account for the builder tool counts too, since the app may live inside it.
Then check who else still has access. Former staff, an old contractor and a shared login all count, and removing access you do not need is much easier now than after something goes wrong.
Follow one customer request from start to finish
Use the app the way a customer would. Send a test inquiry or make a test booking with your own details, then find where it lands, whether that is your inbox, your CRM, a spreadsheet or a dashboard that only the developer opens.
Check that the right person on your team hears about it, and that the record keeps the details you need to follow up.
Then run one more test if the app holds private information. Sign in as one test customer and try to open another customer’s record, for example by changing a number in the page address. You should see an error or your own data, and if you see someone else’s, get it fixed before launch. Our guide to what breaks in AI-built apps covers this check in more detail.
Find out what happens when it breaks
Ask the person who built it these questions, and write the answers down.
- Who finds out when the app stops working, and how?
- Where are the backups, and when was one last restored as a test?
- How long would it take to bring the app back if the hosting account were locked?
If the answer to the first question is “we would notice when a customer complains,” then setting up an alert that reaches a person is your first job, so a broken form gets noticed the same day.
Add up what it costs each month
An app built with AI can keep using AI after launch, to answer questions, write summaries or sort requests, and that usage is billed by the amount of text processed. Collect last month’s invoices for hosting, the database, email sending and each AI provider, and add a line for the time someone spends looking after it.
Then ask what happens to the bill if you have ten times the customers. Hosting can stay close to flat, while AI usage grows with every request, so set a spending limit with each provider and a monthly alert. Our article on the end of flat-rate AI pricing explains how that pricing works.
Check that someone else could take it over
If the person who built the app left tomorrow, someone else would need to keep it running. Ask for a one-page handover note that lists the accounts, how to publish a change, where the backups are and who to call when something breaks.
Then give that note to a second person and ask them to make one small change, like correcting a line of text, without help. Where they get stuck, the note needs another line. The website handover checklist works for apps as well as websites.
If you would like help
We can go through these checks with you and tell you what we would fix, then connect the app to your CRM and calendar and look after it month to month, with every account in your name.