I highly doubt optimizations will make a world of difference for many. Every time we’ve asked Bubble support to help us identify opportunities for optimizing (before we upgraded to Professional), the response was pretty much, “Everything actually looks really well optimized.” Yet we’re at 5 million WU per month on the new structure? It’s insane.
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People need to stop saying there’s an 18 month window. THERE ISN’T.
If you have an app already launched, it could be construed as, you have a 18 months to move off the platform.
If you are developing an app currently, it ends today. Please… please, do not spend another 18 months developing your application without knowing your operating cost. It’s lunacy… please don’t do this to yourself.
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There were some drawbacks to fully integrate bubble.io in our application system, we are a group of 200 000 employees in France. Among the points we can mention :
- The impossibility to have a hosting in Europe.
- No certification (ISO 27001, SOC2)
- No guarantee of durability, for example through an export of the code (even if its edition outside the bubble site is complicated)
The provisioning of a datacenter for our company could have been a viable alternative if the number of applications was not limited… We received a quote of 4700$ per month for 5 applications! Even if the server could handle much more…especially for small apps.
| o | App CPUs: 8 |
|---|---|
| o | DB CPUs: 4 |
| o | Cache RAM: 3.22 GB |
| o | DB Storage: 100 GB |
| o | File Storage: 1000 GB |
This announcement puts an end to our reflection, in these conditions bubble.io cannot be a solution to answer our B2C needs. 18 months to switch to another platform is acceptable for a company of our size, we have 3 applications in production to migrate, which must represent about 40 days of pure development.
I really feel sorry for all the users of the platform who will not be able to stay there and will not find an alternative immediately. But we are in a changing market, don’t doubt that other players will take their place.
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I would advice people first to let @emmanuel and @josh respond to the feedback.
If they stick to the plan. Best way to optimize would be:
- create 8n8 workflows (nocode) for all backend workflows (thats 120 dollars for 60k executions)
- move database to something like xano
- move ui (and frontend workflows) to weweb
Can take 3 to 6 months but it will allow you to be more scalable
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They did survey some “power” developers. You can see many people passionately defending the new pricing changes on Twitter. One even posted a YouTube video just minutes after the pricing email went through to gain subscribers and clout.
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Most of the people I see defending this lunacy are “bubble adjacent” users. Meaning, people whose business is selling Bubble to actual bubble users.
If I was one of them, my bread and butter being “I will teach you how to build on bubble”. This pricing structure opens up a whole new incredibly lucrative avenue “You need to optimise, I will sell optimiztion services”… I would be salivating too.
EDIT: and these people were clearly let in on the scheme early on, and came prepared with their selling material, YouTube videos and “articles” to capture that new nectar.
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As you can see in my post. I was also positive on initial review. Untill i realized this will prevent me from scaling up…
Currently all my apps dont have lots of usage per user. But I wanted to change that in the near future. Thats not possible with such a expensive price model.
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It’s unbelieveable to see those tweets indeed. It makes me feel sick.
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Without more information it is guessing.
I do know that computing power is relatively cheap as is storage so even on personal plan it should be easy to make money.
I do also know from experience that most company’s running a freemium model are far to optimistic about the users that are willing to pay.
So it might simply be the case that there are 80% free plans running almost all the capacity but not paying.
On the other end you probably have customers with real revenue and profit who are willing to pay much much more.
In these kind of business models it is the trick to find a price point for each type of user willing to pay for.
Exactly. When I read their email yesterday that they’ll bill for workflows and not an arbitrary term like capacity, I was positive.
But now, when I’m going through the forum, I realise this will be a shit show until we know how much each action will cost and whether Bubble will upgrade their platform and not have us create silly workarounds for things that should be natively possible.
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My bread and butter is Bubble. I build apps for clients and have a small blog for Bubble tutorials. Now I’m worried how I’ll explain the pricing change to them.
Bubble’s pitch over the past couple of years has been that non-technical people can build software. Now I can’t tell beginners that Bubble should be your pick because they’ll be heavily penalised. Not just penalised, they’ll be shot in the back for their lack of programming skills.
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I agree with your point on operating cost. If you read my earlier post, a late-night first-pass estimate of my operating cost per user session on the new pricing model is exactly what I calculated and shared. My point about the 18 months is that it does give some time to figure out the extent to which that operating cost can be reduced, and if it cannot be reduced sufficiently, to stop developing/move off the platform. I’d also observe that if Bubble come out with some more guidance on optimisation costs, transparency on how different actions contribute to workflow units and power-users share some tricks over the next month or two, we’ll all probably be in a better position to judge and respond in 1-2 months time that with the limited and imperfect information available today.
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I guess the bubble had to burst… I am wondering how much this thread is worth now btw 
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This is how we all discuss and I have the impression that we do not know what the strategy was behind these changes.
We are surprised by such a drastic change because many of our applications and businesses simply will not stand it.
What generates such costs that you came up with such an idea of increases?.
What bubble.io wants to be in a few years?
What is the reason for such a change - the pressure of the fund to raise the bubble price quickly, a large burnout in the company, rising infrastructure costs, etc. ?
You have here professionals, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts from various industries.
Maybe share the assumptions for the financial model and reveneus or profits you expect after the change and I am sure that many people will be able to help you and propose a business and financial model where you will achieve the expected results in a different way, without destroying the dreams of thousands of people about their own startup, business or idea for life.
I have the impression that such a Bubble community is like the socios in Barcelona, they want the good of the club, they are ready to help but unlike the residents of Barcelona, they can change the club or stop going to matches.
No code in this bubble.io is not only a platform, it is democratization and hope for big changes in the coming years which can now be easily missed.
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Same here. I was factoring in an upgrade to the next tier paid plan reasonably soon after launch, and when I saw the email I thought, oh that’s a pretty good option.
Then I realised that the “WU” included in a plan is not even enough to run sign ups for the projected early user adoption.
And then I realised that I would have to not only buy the plan… but a plan on top of the plan for WU.
So as of today, all future work is on pause. Luckily I always build on a monthly plan in case something happens proving the application untenable. I will let the current billing period run, and if there is no change to the pricing structure, downgrade to free tier and move to a different platform, most likely Wappler which will run a comparable monthly cost to what I’m currently paying.
The next couple of days will instead be reaching out to people I have previously built applications for, to let them know that there’s no way they can continue on Bubble (roughly knowing their revenue).
What it made me realize is how captive we are with a solution like Bubble. And while I loved being captive until now, what about prices changes in 2 years when the VC will want even more return. I am only considering alternatives where I can export the code from now on.
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As a first impression, I don’t like new pricing system. It conflicts with Bubble itself in two ways
- It destroys the “citizen developer” concept, as from now on, everyone must know how to optimize apps and understand programming.
- This is more important, I think. It destroys creativity and capability. For example, you can’t build a system that checks a user’s online status every minute anymore. You can’t build complex things in most cases, and it kills Bubble’s charm.
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This is the second time in a row (1 year) that you introduce a pricing scheme based on unsustainable metrics for your users. It is not hard to understand that this will not only kill your users’ projects very fast but also Bubble itself!
Again, this pricing drastically reduce the spectrum of products being made with Bubble, so it would be helpful to know if you are pivoting and building Wix or a landing page builder…
I know you want to base the pricing on “usage” but this just never work whatever metric you choose. It just doesn’t fit your value proposition or your editor. 1 year on this… it is not only crazy but scary too…
This is nonsense.
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Which is the same for bubble isn’t it ? It takes hundreds of hours to master bubble and be able to do even basic stuff like a slideshow.
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Exactly, I think people have to forget about some features :
- Recurring Workflow
- Do something every N seconds
- Recursive workflow
bubble can remove the associated documentation 
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