I currently work for an Agency & Take clients on the side. I’ve gone through the Video Tutorials and am liking what I see so far. Not all of our/my clients need a full web app, is it cost effective for me / my client to have mostly static websites built on bubble? Will handing a project off to a client & teaching them how to maintain/add content be an issue?
It wouldn’t be great as a handoff, as it does take a bit more to understand than Wordpress.
On the flipside, ts really easy to build them a simple backend that would allow them to maintain/add content.
In my experience your mileage will vary based on a lot of factors.
Are you planning on educating your clients so that they can edit their own apps in the Bubble editor (or custom built front-end dashboard) without breaking the functionality and responsive design you’ve worked on? If yes, then I say sure, you could build attractive websites (that have the potential to become web apps down the road, adding custom functionality at whatnot) on the Bubble platform and hand off a project to a client.
Keep in mind there are many differences when compared to WordPress. The main one I’ve come across is people don’t like the platform lock-in. With WordPress a client could easily move to a different hosting company on a whim, but when selling a Bubble app (even though it’s websites you’re talking about) requires all parties understand the platform you’re building on and that moving it off the Bubble service is not an option. Besides that, I don’t see why you couldn’t go forward and test it out with a client or two to see how you enjoy the experience and ultimately come to your own conclusion as far as Bubble vs WordPress (your pros and cons list will be different than mine or anyone else).
Like all things this heavily depends on who your clients are, what you’re selling them, and the expectations set forth at the start and end of a project. One aspect I like about Bubble is the ability to copy and paste entire apps as a new app, saving you time down the road when re-selling a website to a new client (just as you would with WordPress). You could begin by creating an app on a Hobby plan at no cost, and as you’re doing so imagine you’re building it for another person to one day maintain (if that is in fact how you want to sell projects).
If you can streamline this process and not get too convoluted in your app’s structure and design, I think everything you want to do is achievable with Bubble. You will probably miss the enormous WordPress plugin ecosystem and ability to touch code (at first) but you’ll notice the Bubble plugin ecosystem is growing at a fine pace and offers plenty to cover your needs based on what you’ve shared. When I sell WordPress websites I always provide a training session + videos to help people navigate the Post and Page editors in the WP Admin dashboard. In my case, clients rarely ask about editing page templates and more or less just want to add and edit pages and posts using existing templates built on top of custom fields. It’s no different in Bubble, except you’ll be building your own admin dashboards for people to add and edit pages and posts. That’s where copying and pasting apps comes in handy: you can build a fully functional admin dash (connected to your custom data types and fields in Bubble) and re-purpose it as a core part of all your website projects. I could be oversimplifying things here, I am saying all this from the perspective of someone who knows Bubble and can build out pages pretty quickly. If you’ve learned the ropes and are confident in your abilities to deliver, then I say go sell and build You won’t know until you’ve tried.
Tons to consider here. The time it takes to deliver a Bubble website depends on your skill level/speed of execution, client wants and needs, your ability to sell at a profitable rate (and much more as I’m sure you’re aware with WordPress history). As for your ongoing costs: monthly visitor counts, complexity of Bubble workflows, number of elements on a page, etc can all have an effect on the subscription cost for an app. Fortunately the cost scales as the app scales, so you can start off fairly inexpensive and once a client’s app hits some sort of traction you will notice a need for a more expensive hosting plan (I’d recommend prepping clients on the non-static aspect of app hosting and pricing ahead of time). There’s a lot of good info on the forums discussing these topics, definitely worthwhile searching and reading those posts if you haven’t yet.
Compared to your average WordPress site, sure, the time to delivery and cost to maintain is a bit higher. But in the end is it well worth it? IMO the answer is a resounding YES. I couldn’t be happier building on Bubble and look forward to staying here for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for the detailed answer! I’ve got a freelance client coming up that’s looking for a Mobile Application & one of the templates I found actually had all of the core functionality they were looking for. I figured I’d give that a shot & modify the UI to match / be similar to the UI they provided.
The template I’m referencing also has a view for “Administrators” with that functionality, I’m assuming that handing Admin over to the client will take care of most of their needs in terms of updating available products.
I’m excited to start working with the platform!