After 10 years and 553 posts, it's time to say goodbye

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After 10 years and 553 posts, it’s time to say goodbye

I’m sitting here looking at my profile stats and honestly getting a bit emotional writing this.

1,100 days visited. 24,600 posts read. 140 topics created. 553 posts written. 9 anniversary badges in a row. My first topic was about realtime updates back in June 2016. I still remember that feeling - the excitement of discovering that I, someone with no coding background, could actually build something real.

That’s what Bubble gave me. Not just a tool. A beginning.

I want to say thank you. Genuinely. To every single person who ever replied to one of my 140 topics. To the people who gave me those 262 hearts over the years - every one of them meant something. To the ones who were in the trenches with me when Bubble went down (you know the threads - we all lived through those together). To the people who shared tips, workarounds, and had the patience to explain things to someone who was just figuring it all out.

This community raised me as a builder. I came in knowing nothing, and you all made me feel like I belonged here anyway. That’s rare. That’s special. And I will never forget it.

But I have to be honest with you, because after 10 years, I think you deserve honesty more than a quiet disappearance.

Over the past couple of years, AI has changed everything for me. The same guy who needed a visual builder to create anything can now write real code and build full applications. And here’s the part that still surprises me when I say it out loud: for the first time in my life, I deployed something real outside of Bubble. Actual code. Actual infrastructure. My own stack. No platform underneath me. In all my years of building, Bubble was the only way I could get a working product out the door. It was my only path from idea to reality. And now, suddenly, it isn’t anymore.

I’m not leaving because Bubble failed me. It didn’t. It carried me for a decade. I’m leaving because I grew, and a big part of that growth happened right here, with all of you. The builder mindset I learned in this community is the exact same mindset that let me make this jump.

So this isn’t really goodbye to what Bubble gave me. That stays with me. This is goodbye to the daily visits, the forum scrolling, the posting. And it’s harder than I thought it would be.

Thank you for 10 incredible years. Thank you for 262 hearts. Thank you for making a non-developer feel like he could build anything.

I could. And now I still can - just differently.

Take care of each other. This community is something special, and I hope you all know that.

– Claudiu (cm1)

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Hello!

Very nice words and I wish you all luck in the field.

And following your post, I’ve been using Bubble for my own projects since 2023, and now I’m considering going to market. With so many vibe-coding tools and new approaches to building digital products, is Bubble still relevant?

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For me is not anymore. But Bubble has contributed a lot to what i know now. A lot :slight_smile:

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Thanks for taking the time to write this post @cm1 ! Wish you all the best !

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I would actually recommend people to learn and work with bubble even if the ai does right now most of the work. Bubble teaches your brain to be extremely creating while ai cannot do that

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Thank you for the post @cm1 , good luck and I hope that you can stop by from time to time to say hello

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Yeah, sure! I agree.
But for “make-some-money” speaking, I still seeing value.

I would like to hear from the people here…

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Thank you for the thoughtful post @cm1 - wishing you the best in your next adventure and glad to hear Bubble played a meaningful role in your journey :heart:

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Thanks for the post, without knocking Bubble :grinning_face:

It is sad to see experienced Bubblers leave because they take a lot of experience with them.

The conclusion I came to with Bubble is that a lot of it comes down to whether to keep an app on Bubble, go hybrid, or go full stack…

really depends on a couple of factors.

The biggest one is whether users are charged to use the app.

I did a lot of calculating, haha…

so just thinking out loud after some hard core data statistics…

my Property Management app stays in the $32 monthly range. Even if 500 tenants use it. Users don’t pay for it.

The med app I just built, even with 1000 customers at 2.99 a month, would still bring in over 2000 dollars a month in profit…even if some users went feral :sweat_smile:

The shopping app, which doesn’t charge users, just merchants…once I got to about 2000 users, I would have to go hybrid to make a profit. And, once it got to 10,000 users, it would have to go full-stack to even be profitable. Not because more users would slow it down, but doing calculations, the profit just wouldn’t be there compared to a full stack.

So, I think there is money to be made, but it depends on how your app operates.

Bubble does get expensive at the high end of users if you’re not charging them and only charging, say, merchants.

Lots of dynamics to consider and decide what is best for your case.

I wish you the best in your journey with your apps

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there are lots of things to consider, its much more difficult and risky to just have your azure replica and manage that. it cheap, incomparable with the cost here but that comes with a risk as @emmanuel mentioned in a video. You are the the only one in charge and things can go nasty but in bubble you have most of the security build in. so its a lot to consider but at some point, it might be interesting to just fly :slight_smile:

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Yes, I agree.

Flying can be good…

but it also gives you a ton more headaches; most don’t realize until they do it.

Have spent the last 10 years building apps in the code world and have seen a lot of those headaches.

So yes, I think there are a lot of factors to consider, like how you charge for the app, etc…

do you have enough users to justify full stack…

just a lot of ifs and decisions that need to be carefully weighed

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What is the factor that causes profitability to disappear as the user base scales? What is the charge from bubble that eats into profit?

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Lack of Data Jedi, I would imagine.

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Pretty much a case of users not having to pay to use the app…and only merchants listing on the app would pay. So 10,000 free users, and the merchants footing the bill. I also have a referral program with leaderboard, and the ability for merchants to create digital loyalty cards which are all automatically updated without any babysitting.

But if I were to charge users, the user count would dramatically drop, which would have an effect on the number of merchants that were interested in advertising. A chicken and the egg type thing. If the users grew, I could charge merchants more, but then that could get into the area of not being competitive.

I could do something like an uber/airbnb and only charge when a transaction occurred…but that also has different dynamics.

Anyway, statistically speaking, and in real app talk, 90% of apps never reach 1000 users. Less than 10% ever reach 10k to 100k users…and less than 1% or somewhere around there ever get to the big million users mark. Then of course over 50% of apps are internal for companies…and I think the statistic is that those have an average use of about 200 active users. This is ACTIVE users, not registrations.

So anyway, a lot of users is a good problem to have.

I would say 99.99% of apps are good on Bubble. Maybe with your plugin mine would be safe too.

A shopping app like I’m setting up…I need to look at how I have it set income wise right now. Also, maybe, probably, possibly, I’m overthinking things.

I’ll take a serious look into your plugin later this week when I get more time and let you know the results. Not in this thread though. I’ll message you probably with the results, or post them in a seperate thread.

Updated wording

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I wasn’t asking to highlight a plugin or data structure approach to save WUs…was really curious about what actions or things the non-paying user is doing in the app that causes the profitability to fall.

Sounds like something that may lead to ways to boost monetization through possible offerings of getting displayed higher on certain category types the merchant wants to rank higher for, something that they need to pay to take advantage of. An interesting approach I’ve seen with Hostel booking sites, was for a silent auction for each month of the year, to be a promoted hostel at the top of the search results (not in results, just sitting at the top above the actual list of results).

Most sites I’ve seen that drive traffic to merchants of different types, allow merchants to pay higher commissions for higher rankings as well. But that does of course require a charge for a transaction…could always implement it, and have another tier for merchants that gets 0% commission charges for higher monthly fee.

But from sounds of things, it seems like the issue around profitability is mainly the costs associated with displaying the merchants to more users as the user base grows, without any income derived from an increase in displays or transactions driven by the app.

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Was just envisioning thousands of people creating accounts and having a profile, and browsing etc. for free.

Sometimes I overthink things haha…I call it planning for the future. Could be a touch of OCD.

Maybe there won’t be thousands of people? But right now, with early feedback it’s looking pretty good?

Anyway, I’ll see what happens and then decide if I need to change anything

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Re the op , nice post :+1:t2: I think that is a really reasonable and totally natural thing to happen tbh and is not a failing of bubble in anyway, and happens in any business when a person’s skills and knowledge increases.

Bubble bridges the journey from something like Wix, or Shopify to full blown full stack code expert. No one starts off an expert - Bubble is a fantastic tool for learning how to get good at making well designed apps and workflows. It’s teaches us how to think logically and almost guides us invisibly to becoming experts over time. It is the perfect “intermediate” platform and should be proud of that.

I’m in the music business and it’s no different to a producer starting on GarageBand, then moving to Logic, or Ableton as their needs and understanding grow. GarageBand doesn’t suddenly become bad - it did its job perfectly at the time. Same thing in video: people might start on CapCut, then graduate to DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro. Etc etc

Beginner tools remove friction and advanced tools expose power…and most people need both at different points in their journey. Bubble is a perfect bridge/balance between the two ends of the spectrum.

Good luck with the next stage of your evolution CM1! :sun::folded_hands:t2::heart:

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That’s sad…you just joined the forums like an hour ago.

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Bubble has seemingly been stuck in MUD for a couple of years now…part of it is them not focusing on what users want, and making silly UI changes that causes them to break previously working functionality (new property editor). But AI is not going to be improving much over the next years as the money is drying up and the costs to improve are so great…LLMs are likely going to be what they are from here on out.