Issues with Community Awards 2025 agency winner

Meta
1

Awards like this matter to non-technical founders choosing a partner, so I want to share a firsthand experience.

I don’t have any personal or competitive stake in this. I’m not affiliated with RapidDev or any Bubble agency, and I’m not posting this to promote my own services. I’m speaking up because I’ve seen firsthand how this played out for a non-technical founder.

The founder spent at least $80K over roughly two years and walked away with nothing usable. The app ultimately had to be rebuilt from scratch. It froze regularly, failed at basic objectives, and was never actually used in the business. He’s kind, non-confrontational, and not technical, which is exactly why agency responsibility matters more, not less.

To be specific, the app had serious foundational problems, including:

  • Dozens of separate confirmation popups
  • Very limited use of styles and reusables, and no documentation at all (no outline, no readme, zero notes in the app)
  • Poorly designed data structures, including unrelated concepts grouped together and duplicated across types
  • Large workflows with dozens of conditional branches that caused the app to freeze every time core actions were triggered
  • Extremely poorly planned validation logic, with excessive inline conditions
  • UI patterns like using separate images for checked vs unchecked states

These are not stylistic preferences or minor optimizations. They point to a lack of basic product planning and technical standards from the start.

I can’t say for sure what the intent was, and I don’t doubt that effort went into the project. But effort alone isn’t the same as responsibility, especially when working with non-technical founders. In no/low code, implementation is usually not the hard part. Product thinking is. If a client can’t provide that, the agency either needs to lead it or not take the project on (until someone else does).

What concerns me most is the signal this award sends. RapidDev has been a Gold agency for some time, and I haven’t spoken publicly about this before. But an Agency of the Year designation goes further. It actively promotes trust and endorsement. To a non-technical founder, that reasonably suggests protection from exactly this kind of outcome.

This isn’t about attacking one agency. It’s about whether Bubble’s partner and awards programs are doing enough to protect founders who trust them. Some outcomes should be disqualifying regardless of effort or discounted hours, and that doesn’t feel like an unreasonable expectation.

I’m sharing this because staying quiet would suggest this is acceptable. I don’t think it is, and I think Bubble must do better here.

5 Likes
2

Totally agree, I think only community champion makes sense here, otherwise interfering with competition is not acceptable for me too. If an agency owner is selected the champion and thus his agency grows I am okay with that.

3

Hi @code-escapee ,

My name is Theo and I manage agency partnerships at Bubble.

Thank you for sharing this detailed feedback. we take feedback seriously and I will be sharing it directly with the RapidDev team.

RapidDev is a Gold Tier partner who meets all our partnership criteria. Their Clutch profile (which we show on their Bubble agency profile) shows a high rating across 90 verified reviews, with consistent praise for communication, project management, and technical quality. We’ve also worked closely with their team on product feedback, sales collaborations, and larger opportunities, and our direct experience has been consistently positive.

That said, your experience clearly didn’t meet that standard, and the technical issues you’ve described are serious concerns. I’d like to understand what happened here. Would you be open to a private conversation? You can DM to setup time to chat.

Thank you

3 Likes
4

I actually did handle this privately first. I didn’t post publicly at the time.

I’m speaking up now because an “Agency of the Year” award actively promotes trust to non-technical founders. That’s a different context than a one-off support issue.

1 Like
5

Without making judgements on any particular agency, I still can’t decide if the agencies that do stuff like this don’t know what they’re doing or don’t care. And I don’t know which of those would be worse :thinking:

6

Hi @theo.goldberg , thanks for jumping in and taking this seriously.

I’m open to talking privately and happy to share more detail. I do want to explain why I raised this publicly though.

This isn’t about denying that RapidDev has happy clients or that Bubble has had good experiences working with them. I’m sure both are true. The issue is that a non-technical founder spent a lot of money and ended up with nothing usable, to the point where the app had to be rebuilt from scratch.

I’m not trying to argue one project in public. The reason I posted is because situations like this raise real questions about what partner status and awards are signaling, especially to founders who don’t have the technical background to judge quality themselves.

I’m glad to continue the specifics in private, but I do think the broader question around standards and trust signals is worth discussing openly too.

Feel free to DM me and we can find time to talk.

7

@mario11 All good, no offense taken. I get where you’re coming from.

This isn’t really a court issue though. Hours were likely worked, and courts aren’t good at judging whether a product actually delivered value versus just burning time.

That’s exactly why agency standards and awards matter. For non-technical founders, the protection usually isn’t legal, it’s trust based.

Once an award publicly promotes that trust, I think it’s fair to talk about what happens when the end result is still zero value for the client.

2 Likes
8

Thank you - will DM you.

9

Yeah, that’s basically where I land too. Either way, the outcome for a non-technical founder is the same.

1 Like
10

Hey Everyone,

Ya, the project @code-escapee described was definitely an unfortunate outcome. Here is a video I shared with @code-escapee about it way back in May when he took over the project.

The client worked with us starting back in 2023 and we spent 2 years trying to figure out what to build while limited to 10hrs/week. I spoke with the client this summer after the fact as well. He never asked for a refund. He didn’t yell or scream or blame us. We absolutely could have done things better on our side, and same for the client side too. At the end of it we both acknowledged it didn’t end up going the way we wish it had gone so we all need to learn from it and move on.

It’s definitely super disappointing for me that we have situations like this.
We’ve done hundreds of projects (maybe even over a thousand projects at this point actually), and not all of them have perfect outcomes.

Probably some folks here have worked in similar tough situations?
And maybe some folks in the community don’t have a 100% success rate with all their client projects either?

We have a lot of systems internally to always do our best at delivering consistent quality, but there are still some outcomes that we aren’t proud of. Even today it still happens! I don’t view Agency of the Year as a claim of perfection. It reflects outcomes across many long-term projects. Any situation where a founder walks away without a usable outcome deserves reflection though. We are constantly improving to drive this percentage down and down.

9 Likes
11

Matt, I appreciate you responding, and I agree that not every project ends perfectly.

Where I think we’re talking past each other is the difference between effort and value.

This wasn’t a project that needed more iteration or refinement. The founder walked away with nothing usable, to the point where the app had to be rebuilt from scratch. Whatever time was spent, the end result for the client was zero value.

I’m not questioning whether your team tried or acted in good faith. But trying hard isn’t the same as delivering value, especially when the client is non-technical and relying on the agency to lead product thinking, not just execute requests.

When outcomes reach this level, I don’t think they should be treated as just an unfortunate project or folded into averages. In the context of partner status and awards, some failures matter more than others because of the trust those labels create for future founders.

To be fair, once a product is clearly spec’d and someone else owns the product decisions, it’s very possible your team can execute against that. That’s not really what I’m pointing at here. The issue is taking on non-technical founders without clear product ownership and then continuing to build anyway. That’s where things break down, and that’s the part that concerns me when those same agencies are promoted as broadly safe choices.

That’s why I raised this publicly. Not to rehash one project, but to question how trust is being signaled when a founder can spend that much and still walk away with nothing usable.

3 Likes
12

Not really knowing context other than whats stated here but as a consultant for 30+ years, the golden rule always was –

  • Top priority is adding business value, if necessary by doing hard work to figure out what the product should be
  • Technical skills are secondary
  • Mistakes do happen but it’s important to own them.
  • @code-escapee is correct a top-tier rating and annual award implies a certain trust level.
1 Like