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Build a web app with accounts, data and payments

A Creai app is real code running in a sandbox: customer portals, booking tools, order trackers, internal tools. It comes with accounts for the people who use it, a database that keeps each person’s records to themselves, private file uploads and payments into your own Stripe account. You describe it, test it in the preview like a customer would, and publish it.

  1. 01

    Start a new app and describe it

    Press New above the chat and choose New app. Say what it does and who uses it: what people sign in for, what they save, what they upload and what they pay for. Creai answers with a plan; press Build this plan.

    • Accounts: sign-up, sign-in and password reset by emailed code, for your app’s users only. They are not Creai accounts.
    • Records with four kinds of access: anyone, any signed-in person, only the person who created it, or only you.
    • Private uploads of photos and PDFs, up to 12 MB each, under the same rules.
    • Payments into your own Stripe account, and an assistant inside the app whose instructions stay on the server.
  2. 02

    Let Creai write and check it

    Creai writes the screens, the data rules and the styles as files, then checks the app for errors and on a phone before it replies. The chat lists every file it wrote and what its check found, and the app runs in the preview beside the chat.

    Creai after building a dog-grooming booking app: the chat lists “wrote app.js, app.json, design.md, screens/book.js…” and “checked the app · all clear”, and the preview shows the app’s welcome screen, “Book your dog’s next groom”, with services, prices and a Create account form.
  3. 03

    Try it like a customer

    The preview is the working app. Create an account in it, fill in its forms and save records, the way your customers will. If something doesn’t behave, say so in the chat, or point at it, and Creai fixes it.

    • If the app reports an error, the status above the preview changes and a Fix it button sends the error to Creai.
    Inside the app preview, signed in as a customer: a “Book a groom” form with size, service, date, time and a vaccination record upload, and “Your visits” listing two bookings for a dog called Biscuit, each marked Deposit due with a “Pay $20 deposit” button.
  4. 04

    Check it on a phone

    Open the same creation on your phone to try the app at phone size, the way most of your customers will use it. Creai also checks the layout on a phone every time it changes the app.

    The booking app in Creai on a phone: the Brindle & Bath bar with a Sign out button, a Book this time button and a “Your visits” list with two bookings and Pay $20 deposit buttons.
  5. 05

    Connect Stripe to take payments

    Open Own it, then Payments, and press Connect Stripe. You can create a Stripe account on the way through. Customers then pay you directly, into your own account, with your name on their statement. Until you connect, a payment button in your app says that payments aren’t set up yet.

    • Creai takes 2% of each payment, and Stripe takes its own fee separately. Creai never holds the money.
    The Payments page, “Take payments”: “Your customers pay you directly, into your own Stripe account.”, marked Not connected yet, with a Connect Stripe button.
  6. 06

    Publish it

    Press Publish app in the bar above the preview. Your app goes live on a free Creai address that you can share. Later changes stay in the preview until you press Publish changes.

    • Creai won’t publish while the app has reported an error since its last change. Fix it first, then publish.
    The bar above the app preview reading “Live at app.creai.dev/a/brindle-bath-0af0ad” with a Publish changes button, above the running booking app.

Good to know

  • Say who can see what: “customers only see their own bookings, staff see all of them” is the kind of rule Creai turns into the app’s data rules.
  • Developers can download the app’s source from Projects, or work on it in their own editor with Creai Code.
  • Reimagine works on apps too: a new design, the same screens and data.

What it doesn’t do yet

  • An app can’t call another company’s API yet.
  • Creai builds web apps that run in the browser. It doesn’t submit apps to the App Store or Google Play.
  • Building an app runs on Creai’s best model, so it needs credits or a paid plan.

Questions

Do my app’s users need a Creai account?

No. Accounts belong to your app alone. Your customers sign up inside your app.

Can one customer see another’s records?

Only if the app allows it. Records can be public, shared with signed-in people, private to the person who made them, or yours alone, and the server enforces it.

Where does the money go?

Into your own Stripe account. Creai takes 2% of each payment and never holds the money.

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Updated 2026-10-31.