Building on previous work by Lambert, Plagne and the third author, we study various aspects of the behavior of additive bases in infinite abelian groups and semigroups. We show that, for every infinite abelian group $T$, the number of essential subsets of any additive basis is finite, and also that the number of essential subsets of cardinality $k$ contained in an additive basis of order at most $h$ can be bounded in terms of $h$ and $k$ alone. These results extend the reach of two theorems, one due to Deschamps and Farhi and the other to Hegarty, bearing upon $\mathbf{N}$. Also, using invariant means, we address a classical problem, initiated by Erdős and Graham and then generalized by Nash and Nathanson both in the case of $\mathbf{N}$, of estimating the maximal order $X_T(h,k)$ that a basis of cocardinality $k$ contained in an additive basis of order at most $h$ can have. Among other results, we prove that $X_T(h,k)=O(h^{2k+1})$ for every integer $k \ge 1$. This result is new even in the case where $k=1$. Besides the maximal order $X_T(h,k)$, the typical order $S_T(h,k)$ is also studied. Our methods actually apply to a wider class of infinite abelian semigroups, thus unifying in a single axiomatic frame the theory of additive bases in $\mathbf{N}$ and in abelian groups.