Update 12/12: Homepage notifications are now live!
Update 12/7 6pm: We’re holding off on making changes to the homepage because we caught some issues in testing and we want to be sure that it’s stable before we deploy it. Changes in the editor are live!
Hi all, my name is Henry and I’m a Product Manager here at Bubble.
Starting soon, you may notice that some of your plugins show a warning in the plugins tab stating that they need an update. Others may be marked as “deprecated” (out-of-date) and could lose some functionality in 2024. Here’s a bit more about what’s going on and what you’ll need to do.
As you may know, Bubble has a robust ecosystem of plugin developers. We allow plugin developers to create, own, and market their tools to help you build out even more functionality and integrations with our platform.
On a technical level, plugin developers use code that interacts with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create no-code solutions for various functions.
Starting in 2024, AWS plans to remove a specific function that some Bubble plugin authors use for specific server-side actions. About 10% of plugins are affected. We’ve given these plugins’ authors eight months of warning and lead time to update their plugins’ code syntax by January 2024.
Once a plugin is updated by the author, you’ll have until March 12, 2024 to update it on your end before it may begin to behave unexpectedly. So if you see a plugin with an “Update” label, it means you should press the update button to ensure that it continues functioning. If you see a “Deprecated” label, this means that the plugin author has not yet updated their plugin to a new version and it might behave unexpectedly after March 12.
TLDR: What should I do?
- Go into the plugins tab of your app.
- For any plugins marked as “needs update”, change the plugin’s currently installed version to the latest version in the “currently installed version” dropdown. If there are plugins that are marked as “deprecated”, see below for next steps.
- Test out your app’s functionality with your newly updated plugins to make sure everything still works as intended. You can use the app search tool to find places in your app where you use affected plugins.
If you have “deprecated” plugins, your options include:
- Find a different plugin in the marketplace for your needs; while we can’t recommend direct replacements for every use case, you can browse newer, actively maintained plugins in our marketplace.
- Check back later; your plugin author may be updating the plugin in the next few weeks.
- Help us contact the plugin author directly. Plugin authors’ contact information is often listed on the plugin’s page.
FAQs
- Will updating my plugins cause unexpected changes in functionality?
- We don’t expect the changes for this migration to affect plugin functionality, but if you are using an old version of a plugin, its maintainer may have made other updates since you first installed it, so be sure to test out your plugins once you’ve updated them.
- As always, we recommend that you check the plugin change notes in the “plugin version dropdown” in the Plugins tab to make sure that you are aware of any changes to the plugin’s functionality with each update.
- Why can’t Bubble just fix the plugins?
- We are assisting plugin authors to help maintain plugin functionality, but we respect a plugin author’s intellectual property. As part of our marketplace policies, we won’t change plugin authors’ code.
- What if the plugin I’m using is paid and deprecated? Am I going to have to pay for a broken plugin?
- No. We’ve notified all plugin authors that their plugin subscription revenue could be paused if they break. That said, your plugin will still work from now until March 12 2024 even if it is not updated yet. If an update is not available from the plugin author in the next month or two, we recommend uninstalling the plugin/cancelling your subscription and finding alternatives in our marketplace.
- What happens if I don’t update my plugins?
- Depending on how you are using these plugins, your app may experience some functionality issues.
- Will more of my plugins be deprecated in the future?
- Unlikely. While platform updates are inevitable, we believe that only the current plugins marked as Deprecated or “Update” are at risk for this particular issue. We still encourage you to keep your plugins upgraded to the latest version whenever possible (marked as “Can Upgrade”).
If you have any further questions, contact our support team who are happy to help.
