Is bubble pricing mode making bubble unsustainable?

dmcoyotesi · 2024-12-11T07:08:05.160Z

Hi.

In my opinion, the real issue here is not price, but unpredictability. In my case, I charge a fixed fee to my users, but my costs are not fixed, or even predictable, since they depend on what the users decide to do.

It is very hard to build a business around this, when you are not sure about the price you need to charge your users to make sure that you don’t lose money.

Regards.

alex.chen · 2024-12-11T07:29:57.685Z

Does Bubble offer any single-tenant options for users who want dedicated infrastructure? This could be a solution for those who need more predictable performance and don’t want to be affected by other users’ resource usage. While I understand it would be more expensive than the shared hosting, it might be worth it for certain use cases where resource isolation is critical.

sem · 2024-12-11T08:00:04.362Z

Yes they have. It is about $3500 a month I think. When you start your business, need to test a lot, offer things for free, make mistakes all with yet no profit this might be a bit much for most startups

adam0112 · 2024-12-11T11:01:37.016Z

For a ‘developer’, the ability to allocate resources reasonably is a necessary skill. However, as @rpetribu mentioned, many beginners lack this knowledge. While charging based on server usage seems fair, there might be a situation where Bubble should actually offer certain database CRUD operations for free. I recently came across a platform on YouTube

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where they only charge $120/month for unlimited RPS, not to mention that database operations are completely free in their free tier. Bubble has fundamental flaws in their backend processing. @alex.chen maybe you should check this platform. $3500 for a startup seems absurd.

senecadatabase · 2024-12-11T12:01:39.822Z

dmcoyotesi:

In my opinion, the real issue here is not price, but unpredictability. In my case, I charge a fixed fee to my users, but my costs are not fixed, or even predictable, since they depend on what the users decide to do.

That does seem to be the main issue.

It’s like going to the bank to get a car loan and asking how much the monthly payment is…

the bank says that for each mile driven, it’s .05. But if it’s driving uphill, it’s .09, and coasting downhill would be .02. If it’s above 60 mph, it’s .08. For every minute the car is running, it’s .03. If it’s running and driving, it’s .07, and every time you start it, it’s .10. And also…

Then they say you can get the starter package for $50 a month, but if you go over, your car just won’t operate.

Or you can spend $3500 a month and be ok.

Bubble is a great platform and has a lot of benefits…it’s the whole pricing thing that is just so confusing and I don’t understand why it has to be.

georgecollier · 2024-12-11T12:03:37.864Z

Do I need to add a WU analysis bot to NQU Secure

senecadatabase · 2024-12-11T12:05:12.933Z

That would be good!

Your other app which I was going to comment on is a huge help.

adamhholmes · 2024-12-11T12:15:02.834Z

georgecollier:

Do I need to add a WU analysis bot to NQU Secure

It wouldn’t be a bad idea… (I’m sure it would be very useful).

But the notion that external third-party services are required for people to have any chance of understanding Bubble’s pricing only emphasises the problems with it, in my view.

georgecollier · 2024-12-11T12:15:49.061Z

adamhholmes:

the notion that external third-party services are required for people to have any chance of understanding Bubble’s pricing only emphasises the problems with it, in my view.

No doubt.

axons · 2024-12-11T12:22:58.613Z

You’re absolutely right! As a developer one need to understand how to optimize processes, reduce workload, and ensure better resource efficiency. It’s always satisfying to see how thoughtful implementations can have such a tangible impact on clients’ operations. Great work!

ihsanzainal84 · 2024-12-11T13:01:56.861Z

I agree with everyone’s point regarding unpredictability when it comes to WU.

I just wanted to chime in that there was a conversation/article/post (it was a while back) by Bubble that the ideal journey of a Bubble dev is to become a dedicated plan subscriber.

Whether or not we agree with it, that is something that IMO is one of the many goals that guides the Bubble team.

Before everyone puts on their tin foil hat, I’m not saying that there is some conspiracy of “making WU incomprehensible” because of it. Opposite in fact. The hires and updates by the team, while arguably slow or insufficient, show that they are trying to find a good balance (of features and fixes) for both new and experienced users as we make our way through that journey.

From all the posts I’ve read by the team and users alike (sharing stories of Bubble Support woes), it’s obvious that lots of issues today stem from the tech debt created from the team’s bootstrapping days.

randomanon · 2024-12-11T13:21:40.320Z

The WU model is fine but they need to just reduce the overall costs by around 30-50% and possibly 200-500% for server-side actions which have a 15,000% markup.

adamhholmes · 2024-12-11T13:39:27.216Z

Yeah, exactly…

And then it wouldn’t be necessary to spend so much time worrying about the cost of every single little action…

As I’ve said before, if the actual costing wasn’t so high, then micro-analysing WU would be largely irrelevant (and completely unnecessary).

randomanon · 2024-12-11T13:48:06.014Z

100%

Neurotic microanalyzing is the worst part. I’m ok with optimizing on a more meta or macro level and not running billions of searches or doing really crazy stuff but the having to choose between discrete actions in a workflow is just crazy.

J805 · 2024-12-11T14:39:53.115Z

Thanks @axons

J805 · 2024-12-11T14:42:55.317Z

Just so you know, if you work with someone who pays for an agency plan, it’s free to add them as a collaborator no matter what plan you are on. So it just depends on who you work with.

boston85719 · 2024-12-11T15:35:13.829Z

Yes, do that

jiangyaokais · 2024-12-21T00:08:57.579Z

I do think the pricing model goes against “serving non-technical founders”

people choose no-code because they are not technical. Corollary to that is: they are the least suitable bunch to do performance / cost optimization.
while it is a good idea to charge by usage, bubble has made things so prohibitively expensive. We can compare directly with other BaaS solutions such as dynamoDb or firebase. Bubble is about 10x dynamoDb and 5x firebase. Neither are known as particularly cost friendly for large applications.

Combining 1 and 2, we get high marginal cost imposed on a user base who is least equipped to optimize that cost away, meaning bubble effectively put a very high threshold on the required return of each unit of compute. So high that things data intensive but have low ARPU becomes financially non-viable.

patricia · 2025-01-09T18:58:02.412Z

UPDATE: When it turned out that the cost of doing calculations backend in bubble would cost a more than of twice what I can charge for my business app I had no option but to hire a developer and move the calculations off bubble. Once that is done then I’ve got to ask myself why not move the whole thing off because I’ve lost the concept of a single supplier simple stack. It’s means building an app requiring lots of calculations and recursive workflows in Bubble is ok for a proof of concept but not for a commerically viable app. They’ve got the backend charging very wrong I think.

randomanon · 2025-01-11T02:37:57.291Z

I think the AI slop builders will force Bubble to lower pricing to remain competitive. They simply won’t be able to get away with it anymore.