@gilles, I’m also a huge fan of Bubble and think it provides great value as well.
I do want to add an alternative point of view to something you said though. We’re on a dedicated server as well and I’d say unless a person’s app is getting too much traffic for their server size then moving to a dedicated server makes no difference in terms of performance (there are other advantages as you’ve laid out though).
Here’s a bit more detail, especially for anyone trying to understand whether upgrading to a dedicated server will improve your site’s performance. I’d recommend thinking of servers like a pipe (and larger servers are simply larger pipes) while the traffic to your site is water in this analogy. So, if you have just a bit of traffic (i.e., water going through the pipe) then getting a bigger pipe isn’t going to make the water move faster. But, if you have more water trying to go through a tiny pipe than the pipe can handle, then a larger pipe will make a world of difference.
Also, @michaelm if you’re looking to make page transition times lightning fast then you probably want to build you app using a single page app concept. This makes it a bit slower to load the first page but much faster between pages - very similar to desktop or mobile app. And, sub 1-second times are common for transitions between “pages” when designed this way.
I’d also recommend you check out using Algolia for searches and loading data in repeating groups. It’s incredibly fast (loads huge RGs in ~10 milliseconds), and much much cheaper than building your entire app from scratch with custom code. (more details here - link updated).