Is bubble pricing mode making bubble unsustainable?
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I donāt think so. It just makes you build more efficiently. Like this client that we helped reduce their workload usage. 
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Very annoying when you have to constantly monitor WU, offload work to a SQL DB and schedule āoptimization timeā for your devs to remain within WU budget. My lowcode / nocode developers are now SQL expertsā¦ Oh the ironyā¦ For us, having built an ERP, the model still makes financial sense but less so as the organization and users continue to grow.
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Thatās a very nice graph @J805
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To me it depends on the perception of the person coming into Bubble.
If someone comes in thinking they can get away with paying for a Starter Plan and the smallest WU package while planning to scale to hundreds of users than itās definitely unsustainable.
If they come in with a sustainable business plan and realistic expectations (scale = increased costs), then Bubbleās a good place to be. Up to today I have not seen anyone put up a valid argument that Bubbleās full stack solution is not value for money.
IMO, a lot of complaints about Bubble being expensive comes from either:
- Bad optimization blowing up their costs
- Not understanding the true expense of running a full stack web service (for some reason everyone avoids talking about the manpower costs)
- Bad pricing models
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The answer depends on how profitable your business model if youāre using bubble for an official production application. My clients are mostly hiring me to make MVP applications to test ideas for a lower price, and often involve custom code implementations (are prototypes of more technical ideas). For my clients, they are often not dealing with a large amount of users - mostly corporate users testing out the idea. For these kinds of use cases, bubble pricing isnāt getting in the way at all
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I donāt think the pricing will make it āunsustainableā.
I do think it throws the door wide open for the competitionā¦and in the current times when AI is moving at a rapid pace, I think itās a bad move. Then again, thatās my opinion and I donāt work for Bubble.
It doesnāt seem they have any plans to make the pricing more understandable.
Iāve been building my first app on Bubble for over a year now. I wanted to have it out by the holidays but that isnāt going to happen. Although itās mostly done now Iām going to wait till January to launch itā¦
as far as how much it will cost me monthly is still a mystery to me because I need to take the time to get a degree in molecular science to completely understand the pricing structure 
The hard part for me to figure out is like the one ad from Bubbleās competitor says: āEverytime a user logs in the meter is runningāā¦and itās hard to always know or guess how long theyāll keep the meter running by doing whatever.
My second app is more of a personal thing and Iām finding out while working on it that it seems Iāve forgotten everything I thought I knew about Bubble.
Anyway, I think Bubble is still the best platform out there right now for no code/low code. Only time will tell how the pricing structure goes over in the long term.
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When I started building things with Bubble I always wondered if everyone was using best practices to not overload the server where my projects were. This has always been a concern. I always found myself imagining someone inexperienced programming an endless loop of actions that could crash or freeze the server.
Unfortunately, I have seen countless projects that used servers in a completely unnecessary way, with actions running every second. In a collective environment (in this case, shared servers) it is essential that everyone develops in a respectful manner. The problem is that ādeveloping respectfullyā is a concept that involves understanding technical details and most nocode/lowcode developers do not have this knowledge and, in some cases, because they donāt have any extra costs for it, they simply donāt careā¦
In shortā¦ charging based on how much the server is being used seems fair to me. And as @J805 said, it forces us to develop in a conscious way (since 99% of Bubble projects run on shared servers).
The problem for me is that this change was implemented without much documentation, there was a lack of transparency and to this day it is a cause for distrust, as monitoring this consumption is still a pain in the a**.
But honestly, I see Bubble working hard to improve this issue day after day. I think itās just a matter of time until things get sorted out.
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For me, there are 3 issues with Bubbleās pricingā¦
Firstly, itās objectively expensive compared to alternatives. Especially in regard to data processing and backend processing. That doesnāt mean itās too expensive (that depends entirely on your business model), nor that itās not worth the money (I believe in most cases it is) - itās just objectively more costly than many alternatives (and significantly so).
Secondly, itās overly complicated (and not clearly/correctly documented) - whilst thereās absolutely no problem with a pricing model based on usage, making the model too complicated for anyone to fully understand shifts the focus of many developers away from actually developing, and onto worrying about the costs of the platform (which ultimately will turn many people away).
When the new pricing model first came into play, I spent a HUGE amount of time testing and researching it to try to figure it out, and understand the most WU effect way to do things.
But after a few months of that I pretty much gave up - partly because there was so much inconsistency in my findings, partly because my findings totally contradicted what the manual said (and also what my discussions with Bubble support told me) - but mostly because I just decided itās not a valid use of my time (nor any developerās time).
Developers should be able to focus on building good apps - not trying to work out the monetary cost of adding an additional custom event to a backend workflow, or whether using the number 0 can multiply your WU cost by 11 etcā¦ If the actual pricing itself wasnāt so high it wouldnāt be such an issue - but the combination of high cost, and complicated (and inconsistent) calculations means itās hard to ignore these things
But now I donāt really bother with trying to predict WU cost - Just build as efficiently as you can and just accept the costs of Bubble for what they are (or donāt, and use something else).
And lastly, the biggest issue with the pricing model I see is this:
Bubble has always been intended as a platform for non-technical users to be able to create applications.
And, itās clear from their recent focus and roadmap, that thatās the direction theyāre focussing on (they donāt seem to be addressing any of the requests from more experienced, technical developers for enhanced/improved functionality, but rather focussing on making things simpler - with AI for example - for non-technical users to get started. Which is all good.
Butā¦
At the same time, theyāve made a pricing model so complicated that even the most technical and experienced Bubble devs canāt fully understand it (even the Bubble manual doesnāt accurately reflect the true WU costs that people experience, and their support donāt seem to understand it either).
So what chance do new, non-technical users (the very people that seems to be Bubbleās primary target market) have of understanding the pricing model in a way that will make Bubble a viable platform for them?
A cynic would suggest itās a deliberate ploy - create a complicated pricing model that only the most advanced users will be able to use in a cost effective way, and then target the very opposite of that to ensure maximum revenue.
I donāt believe thatās the case - I think itās just a very badly thought out idea that may ultimately cause the very people that Bubble are targeting to end up looking elsewhere.
But hopefully improvements can be made in this area.
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I do that thatās a huge problem and you worded it effectively.
Itās easy to forget when youāve been using a platform like Bubble for a while that those just learning it have a huge learning curve.
It takes a while to learn Bubble, and then to throw in a pricing model that is even another huge learning curve makes it troubling.
Myself, I think where Bubble is right now for new users is they want to quickly put together an MVP and have no concern for pricingā¦
but, when and if the app takes off, it will be a wake up call that maybe itās time to consider other options.
As the saying goes, āYou donāt know what you donāt knowāā¦
and with the pricing model, thereās a lot that is unknown, especially for new users.
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Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. Some were going off topic so I cleaned up the thread a bit. Hope that helps everyone engaging in this discussion.
Iāll be sharing this thread with the team so they can read all of your comments
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Excellent post!
To add, I think the discussion is also if you focus on the cost of building something versus running something.
For coders, coding something or use other tools will probably be almost as fast and with the benefit or running speed, flexibility and perhaps most important ownership of the code.
For non technical people there isnāt much that can compete with bubble in the building phase. But in the end you are completely locked in and running cost can be extremely high. To the point that some business models can be hard to get started on Bubble. And of course there are still many use cases that can not be build on Bubble so you need to higher a developer to do it. Which will increase building costs and you still are locked in and still do not own the code.
So there is a sweet spot somewhereā¦.but where does it begin and where does it ends. Thatās the question.
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This is absolutely correct. Not only is it significantly more expensive, but it is also MUCH slower and more complicated for many complex backend processing scenarios.
Consider this example: a clientās complex scheduling operations on the back end were moved to n8 for faster processing and if/elseif loops. Between September and November, despite 140% more processes, the WU were reduced by 14 and 1/2 million units once they were offloaded into n8n.
The goal of switching to n8n was for processing speed, which was reduced by ~90%. As it is an enterprise plan, the WU savings was not the point, but the n8 project cost a mere $100, whereas the WU in Bubble would cost 15x more!! ( Tier 5: 20M workload units at $1,499/month or $1,349/month billed annually, with an overage rate of $0.008/K WU.)
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Good post.
There is absolutely, positively, without a doubt no way a new user will understand the pricing code.
So, who would dream this up?
It boggles my mind to imagine someone actually thought this was a cool concept.
But yes, it is cheaper to build elsewhereā¦
but, the concept behind Bubble and other platforms like it is theyāre designed for those who have no coding experience.
I think the pricing thing is a HUGE mistake. But, as Iāve said before, weāll see in time how it plays out.
My bet is on it being a loser in the long run.
This is exactly the issue with the current pricing. Bubble really wants to be a full-stack application builder; their combination of backend and frontend is what makes it great.
However, looking at the backend and frontend capabilities individually, it is average at best. This new pricing causes people to move away from Bubbleās backend to a different backend. Users suddenly see that providers specialized in backend like Supabase or Xano are much more feature-rich, as that is their core focus. Now suddenly most of their logic is out of Bubble, and they are only using Bubbleās (average) frontend.
You can see where this is going. Bubble now makes less money because users are moving their backend to other places. These users will get better at working with other backends, which are most of the time more code-heavy like Supabase. The step to move the app to a different frontend by using AI is now very easy, and once that is done, Bubble has lost this customer forever.
A whole new world opens up when you are able to literally create everything that you want with code + AI. No more weird Bubble limitations, as you can modify every piece of code. I still think talented Bubble developers can outpace developers who are starting out building apps with AI. But the gap is tightening every day.
Bubble made a lot of bad decisions in the past years. I think I donāt agree with 95% of their decisions. But their pricing change will be the nail in their coffin if they donāt change it quickly
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Itās a good deal when you consider I pay $36,000/month USD for software programmers to develop software that can almost entirely be done on Bubble.
If Bubble just allowed us to have server selectionsā¦ to have exportable codeā¦ and more fine tuning for performance, Iād pay thousands per month because Iād be saving a ton.
Just my 2 cents.
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@w.fly what would you pay someone that can rewrite your code to be even better? Code all yours. Optimized. We got a quote for a subscription database with lots of api calls, views and logging connecting to email services. $60.000. Developed it with AI in three weeks. One guy,
I do think that there is a market for Bubble. Lots of people keep believing that humans will always be better at writing software code.
The question isnāt if you can develop an app for less money on Bubbleā¦
then again, youāll never see an Uber app on Bubble because of the costs.
But, the argument is, who can figure out the pricing?
New users do not understand the pricing.
People who have been using Bubble for years are still trying to understand the pricing.
No code platforms were not designed for Uber-type apps that have over a hundred engineers who run them on a monthly basis.
Iāve worked in the coding world for 10 years and I can tell you that the person no code attracts is not the Uber-minded start-up. Itās the little user sitting at home with an idea they want to implement.
Comparing traditional apps to the pricing structure on Bubble is a non-starter for a ton of reasons.
Bubbleās pricing is confusing and that is the topic here.
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This was true to some (perhaps even a large extent) in 2020. This is absolutely not the case now.
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I ask myself this every time I setup a new Amazon instance lol. Your point is well taken though - And unfortunately I am no closer to answering this thread than the rest. Just providing 2 cents worth of perspective. 
For what itās worth, I miss the old days of $129/month for Professional Planā¦
Then again, I donāt miss the āwait, what is 10 units of capacity equal toā discussions.
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