I am the founder of a niche social network that I created ad-hoc (with real code) for my professional community. In the process I found a client interested in the solution, and we’re doing our own paid pilot which is great.
This got me thinking about going the SAAS route about a possible revenue stream.
But, the code base I am on right is kinda decaying and I had quite a lot of bad lucks with my previous developers. (bad quality, changed them many times, deadline etc…)
Structure wise its so bad my actual dev don’t want to work with it anymore and wants to re-write it all. (Not even refactoring as too much hassle)
Challenge: This would cost a lot of money (I don’t have now) and take many months.
It leaves me with 2 options:
Trying to sell many licenses in the meantime and finance it all.
or try the no-code route (with custom dev modification on Bubbles or Webflow for ex) to rebuild the app, get more traction on Saas and when I have more recurring revenue and visibility re-invest to build it with code for better stability.
Question, is this possible to do a social network kind of app and then distribute it as Saas (Whitelabel type) for specific clients ?
May be this too complex already and not worth it. Would love some opinion from people having gone on the No-code journey.
What pitfalls to think when building this type of app on no-code ?
You’ve given no insight as to what your app is other than social network for professionals. Based on that, sure you can do it in Bubble. However, Bubble sites are generally not ideal for mobile as they’re quite slow, which is important for a social network.
Hi George, thanks for answering. you’re right I did not enter on the technicalities and features etc… because I think that’s early for that discussion but your answer told me what I had felt when browsing some bubble app. Speed.
If speed is a bottleneck, then it’s not worth it to invest as a solution.
Thanks
Well, to be blunt, your previous efforts with a traditional codebase have failed, so Bubble might be a decent way to at least get a functioning app that can look good and run scale-ably. Even if not blazing fast, it’s still fast enough.
What’s failed is the process of having a well structured codebase and where we can ship and improve things.
The app performs what it needs, it’s working, and it looks good. We could hold things as they are, but these are not my plans as I want to improve.
The issue is just to invest efforts into something worth it and reduce headaches.
If I solve the tech stack issue, but at the cost of users perception of speed and efficiency - that’s a fear.
