I believe in Bubble but with the recent collapse of Builder.ai a few questions have come to mind. Mostly, what if this happens to Bubble? What happens to our apps? Are there any safeguards to protect the users from losing their work?
Builder.ai users not only lost their apps, but also their companies, and more. BOOM! Everything gone, without a warning.
To safeguard from this scenario, it would be great if Bubble would add the “download your code” feature. Also, it would be great if Bubble added some type of user agreement saying they would alert users of a pending collapse and would help migrate our work so we could salvage what has been created.
Totally valid concern, especially after what happened with Builder.ai. The idea of a “download your code” feature or even a standardized export/migration path would offer real peace of mind. Even with Bubble’s statement about open-sourcing if they ever shut down, having something more tangible in place ahead of time would definitely help users feel more secure. Curious to see what georgecollier comes up with.
You can’t just open source something and expect it to run on your own servers. It takes a lot of work to make software self-hostable (especially stuff like the Bubble editor). That could take months, and depending on how much technical debt Bubble has, it might not even be possible
Even if it did become self-hostable, most Bubble users wouldn’t be able to run it. Most don’t have the technical skills needed to set it up or keep it running
If Bubble shuts down, there probably won’t be anyone left to do the work
It’s worth keeping in mind that if Bubble goes away, your apps probably will too
Yeah, no doubt. But the business opportunity of making it self-hostable will be huge, so someone or some agency will no doubt create the tooling to do that.
Not saying Bubble will never close down, but what was happening in the background with Builder.ai was shady AF in the first place.
False advertising: Saying their AI made your apps when what they did was have project managers outsource the work.
Financial fraud: They falsified sales and revenue.
Bad financial management: Took large credit loans and then defaulted.
They had over half a billion in investments as a unicorn. Bubble bootstrapped for years before VCs came into the picture.
As someone who bootstrapped for 4 years (I’m bootstrapping new projects too) before securing my first grant, I appreciate the grind Bubble went through and have confidence in it’s future. Doesn’t mean i haven’t invested in contingencies though.
Huge opportunity…will make it so people build app on bubble for free (or cheap with just 2-3 months subscription payments), then export code, and do whatever else is needed to be done to host etc. This will hurt Bubble dramatically if Bubble is not doing it.
Don’t worry about it guys, I’m sure someone will create an export tool that will allow you to get up and running on Next.js with minimal configuration if that ever happens.
While we wait for the next tool or the ability to convert apps or self-host a Bubble instance, teams should regularly back up their data and export app files to ensure nothing is lost.
With entities like Bubble you have vendor lock in which has benefits and disadvantages. Open source statements are just that, statements and as other people said, you don’t just press a button and everything magically continues working.
When doing risk assessment, you have to assume your vendor could close its doors at any time with no advance notice. What incentive will they have to let people know and lose subscriptions when they are already cash strapped?
If a Software Provider is publicly listed, we at least get some idea of the health of the organization. Bubble is private equity, so we have to take their word that everything is going well. What we do know about Bubble is that they will never become a 10Cent but they do have a niche in the market. Yes AI will eat into their market but they are also creating new value like the mobile app so I do not think we need to be worried about Bubble for at least the next 2 years. (Personal assessment here)
Ultimately no one can make this decision for you. You have to decide how much risk you are willing to tolerate and if the benefits of the platform outweigh the risk.
Bubble still is incredible value for money. AI has made it easier to transition out of Bubble into your own codebase but there is still a significant cost, maybe not as much as even 3 years ago but still significant.
By my estimates I’m going to have to adjust my input costs by 3x to have the privilege of a fully self-hosted environment with source code I own and traditional (AI assisted) dev’s. Depending on your level of paranoia I’d say stay on Bubble and worry about other things until your PAT’s at least 500k-1Mil p.a.
yeah, I like that viewpoint! Cheers 