Introducing TheirLabel: domain name white-labeling for Bubble

I am new to bubble. I didnt see support for saas like subdomain support. I looked at the plugins and saw there are two.

How does this plugin compair to:

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Hey, great question lotte! So, PowerLabel is very new - just came out last week. I’ve spoken to the creator of it (Ab Advany) and he’s given me access to test it. I haven’t had the chance to completely set it up / go through it yet, but if it works, it’s supposed to effectively do what this plugin does but without iFrames. As a result, it should result in a white label experience that plays better with search crawlers (so better SEO) and should eliminate problems with Safari blocking cookies. However, from what I’ve been told, his approach breaks some native bubble functionality (such as uploads) since that implementation relies on setting up a reverse proxy using a service called Netlify (funny enough, my plugin also requires Netlify). I’m am told there are workarounds implemented to patch those issues up but I am still working to verify this myself.

If you would like to get Ab’s perspective on it, do feel free to reply to his post :slight_smile:

@zelus_pudding , I have 2 questions:

  1. I have a Saas app and I want each of my customers to have their own subdomain like customer23.saas.com . Can I achieve it with your plugin?
  2. Do I have to pay for a Netlify subscription? What is the relevant price per month then? Is there any other additional costs?
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Hey Vova, welcome to the discussion thread :slight_smile:

The answers to your questions are:

  1. Yes, TheirLable was built specifically for the use case of providing your customers with their own subdomain. You can even test drive this functionality right here before downloading the plugin yourself (scroll down to where it says “Test Drive”).
  2. As you know, a companion Netlify account is needed for this plugin to work. The base account needed is currently 100% free. Netlify, of course, offers additional features for a price, but none of these are required to get my plugin working.

Please do let me know if you have any other questions. All best!

Hi @zelus_pudding - this is great! Thanks for your contribution.

Can you or someone else explain to me simply (I’m not a developer) why both your plugin and @gaimed (PowerLabel / SaasAlias) make use of Netlify?

I’ve tried looking at Netlify.com but to a non-developer, I just don’t understand how it fits in here. What does it do that Bubble doesn’t do? I use Namecheap to buy my domains and manage DNS, is it an alternative to that?

Thanks!

Hey Alex, that’s a great question. Netlify is a service for launching websites using the JAMstack design methodology. That’s kind of a strange word that stands for relying on Javascript, APIs and Markup. What that boils down to is a way of making webpages that are actually completely pre-rendered (static) rather than rendered at the time that a user makes a request to your site (known as dynamically generated sites, which is how Bubble and last gen apps work). It really has nothing to do with Bubble.

However, being the great service that it is, Netlify has a REST API for deploying new websites which means that developers who use it can, and this is key, programmatically bind their applications to any domain name they want. I saw this as a pathway for Bubble users - who do not have programmatic domain name registration capabilities - to obtain exactly that (the output of this is what you would enter into your Namecheap console). My understanding is that Gaimed stumbled upon what I did and decided to try to improve it.

My plugin leverages Netlify’s REST API to essentially iframe your Bubble application into a Netlify application. Gaimed’s approach is to leverage Netlify’s REST API to write URL rerouting rules to achieve the same thing but without iframes. In theory his approach is better since it renders a full website rather than one nested in an iframe (which has SEO and accessibility implications). And I do believe people have found his version to be useful. However, like my plugin, his has its drawbacks as detailed by the numerous bug reports/concerns on this thread.

As I mention in my docs, I introduced this plugin as an imperfect solution to the “I want to serve multiple domains from one Bubble App” problem. This is functionality I’ve wanted for about 3 years now and, seeing that others really want it too, I’m glad that Gaimed and I have been able to provide something that at least partially serves the community. In the end, I think the preferable long term solution is that @Bubble will rejig Bubble to accommodate this without our Netlify hack. Perhap’s our solutions will inspire an easier fix to what they’ve said is a hard problem. But until then, here we shall be :slight_smile:

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@zelus_pudding sorry - I didn’t see a notification of your reply and I just wanted to say thank you and ask you a follow up:

Do you have an example of a live domain that’s actually using your plugin or SaaSAlias?

I’m curious to understand if this is essentially exporting an app or page out of Bubble and onto another host? Is it still using Bubble markup (when you inspect the page) or is it different? Because right now, there’s no way to migrate away from Bubble like there is with Webflow (you can export code and host elsewhere on a paid plan).

Right, Webflow is pretty different in that regard.

My plugin leverages Netlify’s REST API to essentially iframe your Bubble application into a Netlify application. Gaimed’s approach is to leverage Netlify’s REST API to write URL rerouting rules to achieve the same thing but without iframes.

So neither solution is exporting the Bubble app like Webflow does. As for your usage question, surprisingly, the Bubble marketplace makes it so that plugin developers don’t know who buys them. So not even I know who is using my plugin. Best I can say is it has been installed 25 times. Wish I knew more!

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Hi @zelus_pudding ,
I am working through the cost benefits of giving each of my clients a custom domain versus a vanity /URL and was wondering what the SEO impact of using your plugin would be. There is going to be real active links between each members site and the mother ship so I am hopeful that this will not be deemed to be some sort of link farm by Google. Assuming that it does not fall into that trap, has your experience with current customers been that it gives them an SEO bump?
Thanks,
K

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Hi @zelus_pudding ,
One more thing. I have noticed on SaaSALias has had some issues with generating and managing SSL certificates. Is that a feature your plugin offers or that the approach it takes makes easier to manage?
Thanks,
K

Dear @zelus_pudding ,

I’m looking or a white-label solution similar to that. Just saw that the production plan of Bubble offers sub apps where we can have custom domains too. What is the difference between that and your solution?

Best,
Flurin

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Hey Flurin, that’s a great question! I summarize the differences:

  • Tenant isolation: The main difference is that Theirlabel is for setting up a custom URL to point to a single SaaS app for each of your customers. In this model, all of your users exist in the same database… which makes certain app management aspects easier. The Sub-App approach does the same but where each of your customers exists in their own database (because they’re application is hosted in a distinct sub app).
  • Cost: Bubble’s sub-app functionality starts at $475 per month + $25 per month per sub app. TheirLabel makes it possible to give different customers unique URLs to your app for a one time charge of $48 or $9 monthly.
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@zelus_pudding , makes sense, will check it out. Thank you.

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Hi @zelus_pudding, I’ve gotten the plugin to create the subdomains however I’m not able to figure out how to get it to show data for that specific subdomain on a page. All I get is the subdomain.domain.co/null. I do have it set to Allow all iFrames. Can you please point me to a resource that would show me how to do that? Thank you!

Mike - I do apologize for the delay here. My hope is to follow up with you this evening but no later than tomorrow morning. Typically I would point you to the bubble editor for the TheirLabel demo which shows how to do this (specifically this page), but I notice that there is currently an issue with the whitelabel. I think this is related to some housekeeping I did in Netlify last week where I may have accidentally deleted whitelabels. So I need to fix that this evening to clearly and easily show you what you may need to do. Thank you for your patience.

Thank you and no worries.

I’ve gotten further. I’ve been looking at the features request page and set up my page the same way but it wasn’t until I delved further into the URL that helped me get further.

Do you mind a suggestion on expanding the instructions?

In the provision section item 1.

  1. The Bubble URL to be white-labeled. The URL must contain the following; the domain, the page you want them to be directed to - even if it is the index page, and the unique ID of the customer or item you want them to see.

I still have some things to set up but I have noticed the Page Title says White Label at the moment instead of what I set it to.

Overall it was pretty easy to get to work. With some more tweaks to the instructions, I think it will be faster for others to get working.

Thank you for your time and effort. I appreciate all the time you must’ve invested.

Hi Andrew @zelus_pudding ,
I noticed that the Page Title now works. I also figured out that the favicon has to be hosted on Bubble’s s3. I was trying it with a Dropbox link. I was excited to see this working however now my trick for getting the white-label domain to go to a page doesn’t work. The iframe source now says https://subdomain.domain.co/?undefined. Can you please let me know how I’m supposed to input the URL of the Bubble app?
Thank you!

@zelus_pudding Any update on this?

hmm. Guess I shouldn’t have bought this.

Mike,
As a token of my sincerest apology, I would be happy to personally give you a full refund on your purchase of theirlabel if you like (the Bubble platform does not natively allow this but I can send you money via paypall or similar). Alternatively, I can hop on call with you for about 20 minutes for a one on one going through your questions. My intention with this plugin is to be able to provide free support as I can but lately my paid engagements have required the best of me. Please let me know and I apologize again.

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