Bubble's New Pricing Plan is Outrageous

eric10 · 2024-10-08T19:09:10.869Z

Last few months in inticipation for the new pricing plan I’ve been trying to optimize my app. I was on average hitting 300k-500k Workunits per month, and I knew I needed to get that down. Yesterday I hit over 1 million wu, and not sure why. It seems one workflow that I’ve had for a long time that often was high, but never this high ran up my wu’s 1,004,305 in a single day.

I’m also confused since on the top right it says Billing period is Sept 12- Oct. 12, but under workload it says “Oct 1 - Oct 31 - 23 days remining in the cycle”.

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JohnMark · 2024-10-08T19:19:22.497Z

You absolutely must activate the email alert at the desired level. This is essential when a workflow gets out of hand for no apparent reason. This was my case last week. Fortunately, I stopped all processes. Bubble will credit you if it’s a mistake on their part anyway. Don’t worry, though.

eric10 · 2024-10-08T19:26:36.815Z

I do have these alerts. I have additional alerts for if I got over 20k in a single day. The issue was I have a process that runs on Monday night, and it was never an issue before, but last night it ran and went over 1 million wu which it has never done in the past.

I’m looking in the scheduler to see if it’s looping, but I’m not seeing it in the list.

JohnMark · 2024-10-08T19:34:16.021Z

eric10:

if it’s looping

In my case, it’s a looping problem with Bubble on a hidden button that hasn’t been used for months. In short, it’s real time code corruption. I expect many are experiencing the same thing. Bubble only asked me if I used this button, and if it was connected to an endless loop. I didn’t know we can Loop a button.

eric10 · 2024-10-08T19:36:29.335Z

Mine is a workflow that deletes notifications that are older then 3 months. It should not be a big task, so not sure why it would be such a big hit. I run this every Monday night, so it’s not like we get a ton of notifications in a week.

JohnMark · 2024-10-08T19:42:19.356Z

This morning we experimented with another kind of endless loop… we had to use the two main buttons, since Cancel ALL wasn’t enough. No time to report to Bubble and document all processes.

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creatorbee · 2024-10-08T19:47:16.979Z

It is outrageous…and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

nocodeventure · 2024-10-08T21:12:44.271Z

Could you schedule the event to trigger three months after the creation date, at the exact time of creation?

This would eliminate the need for a search.

build.marshall · 2024-10-08T21:20:11.949Z

I feel like it’s easy to have this mindset, but really when you consider that Bubble allows you to build and launch powerful software products for less than $1k, it’s incredibly cheap.

The relative cost of building and launching a code based SaaS platform makes Bubbles pricing look like a steal, and the WU pricing is a pretty fair trade off for the overheads that come with classic dev teams. If anything it’s a good thing to push builders / founders to create more efficient systems with greater considerations of their business models and product integrity.

In terms of commercialising a software product it’s in line with post sale / COGS considerations - both critical to achieving strong gross margins, which is pretty much the name of the game in software.

From a lot of the posts I’ve seen on the forum it feels like very few people recognise that Bubble allowing you to attach a dollar figure to individual workflows based on WU (which you can access with ease) makes building a business model around any product very, very easy.

eric10 · 2024-10-08T21:32:52.897Z

For me this is for a non-profit, and I agreed to the $28/month, I was not expecting the cost to jump to $200/month(which is what my pricing now shows since I posted this). I feel like they should have grandfathered those who already agreed to one pricing plan. I get increases here and there, but to change the pricing model like this is unfair. I’ve invested so much time into building this app, and putting everything from my non-profit on to it that it would be impossible for me to change. Also, it’s not like my app is getting millions of user traffic. I have like 1,000 users, and daily users is probally 10-15. It’s not an active site.

ihsanzainal84 · 2024-10-08T22:59:07.858Z

I build for non profits too and when I found Bubble the first time (pre WU) i was initially taken by surprise by how cheap it was. Too good to be true. Like you I lavished the heavily subsidized joy of building on Bubble.

When WU was announced I was stressed out but I sat down with my partners, we agreed that the original pricing was nice while it lasted, worked to optimize and I switched to WU for all my apps a month or 2 after it became optional.

Have you tried getting in touch with Bubble support to see if they have special pricing for non profits?

net-tt · 2024-10-09T12:14:41.062Z

You may want to find out why it is taking so much WU and optimize it.

rafaelfernandes · 2024-10-11T18:15:45.173Z

hi @eric10
I believe that Bubble try to do its best, actually. But, often, this best is not enough, or is directed to what is not urgent.

But, as you may know, in the absence of an appropriate pricing policy for each market (country), keep in mind that this cost you mention:

For us Brazilians is paid 5x more (yes, that’s right, we pay exactly 5 times more due to the currency conversion).

This moves our business into a critical budget.
Further, the price needs to be very high or the margin is tight so as not to generate financial health for the business.

So, if someone think this pay may be bad, (and I agree), try to pay 5x more.
Of course, as other USA or EMEA or LATAM companies do, there is always a way to predict excesses in commercial relations. So they create prices into each market, in their currency. Why Bubble not? Here is the question and wishes for a better future.

georgecollier · 2024-10-11T21:13:21.875Z

rafaelfernandes:

Why Bubble not?

Bubble has US costs. And I’d never compare Bubble to costs of hosting a site on Wordpress/Squarespace or whatever. Compare it to the cost of employing a tradcode developer to build your project.

rafaelfernandes · 2024-10-15T17:36:49.895Z

Hi Geroge, thanks for your contribution.
You are right in this focused view, but I am talking about another issue.

In this case, we believe that we are comparing operations of a large company, on a multinational scale, where “costs” can be local depending on the position of the business and infrastructure. All of this can be manipulated, as is the case in other sectors. So, I shouldn’t compare it to what Bubble is “today”, but about what Bubble can become at a corporate governance level.

International trade = Inter-countries operations

GH5T · 2024-10-15T17:38:47.386Z

georgecollier:

Compare it to the cost of employing a tradcode developer to build your project.

I can concur with this.

My rates and labor are much higher with traditional code than Bubble itself.

eric10 · 2024-10-28T17:57:49.148Z

Ohh how I love the new pricing plan. I was paying $28/month when I started. Now I’m sitting at $225. They said they would waive the overages from the looping error that happened, but the month is almost over. I need to know if I need to increase my add-ons to see if I can reduce this.

I’m hoping I don’t have to deal with this every month, and I’m still angry we got forced into changing to the new price plan now that I’ve invested so much time and energy into this app I’m at the point of no return. I will never again recommend Bubble to anyone. I used to tell everyone about it, now I tell them to avoid it.

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georgecollier · 2024-10-28T18:07:32.113Z

Out of interest, did you not optimise it in the 18 month grace period with all of the notifications they sent out? If you’re only getting 10 daily users, your app shouldn’t be doing 1.5 million WU per month.

I’m not a fan of the new pricing system but if you leave everything to the last minute then there’s not much we can say.

eric10 · 2024-10-28T18:32:24.966Z

No I was working on optimizing it, and also worked directly with Bubble to help. I had a workflow that was running without issue for over a year, but for some reason when it switched to the new pricing plan it started to loop. That’s why they are refunding me for that. Still the thing that is causing it to be high is the emails it sends out. I would not think emails would take that much work units, but I guess it does. It only sends to like 500 people, but it might do that a few times a week. I have a newsletter that goes out every Monday, and event notifications. Again, this never was an issue since it was a flat rate, but now with the new pricing it gets expensive to do the same thing I’ve been doing. It’s disappointing.

ihsanzainal84 · 2024-10-29T01:13:00.309Z

Unfortunately now certain features are just too expensive to run natively on Bubble. Case in point, your emailing WF. On the flip side, it does encourage learning how to stack other tech and cheaper services with Bubble.

For example, I do my mass emails with Postmark. I’m also in the midst of upgrading my Bubble apps’ backend using Cloudflare workers. They’ll run functions that will cost more to run in Bubble’s backend.

It really is a bummer since we work with teams and orgs that can’t afford expensive SAASs but the drive to keep costs low has really driven me to explore and learn more about dev work. I believe that the investment of my time will pay out dividends far and beyond my capital.