Not a huge fan, to be honest.
I like the idea of a centralized marketplace for plugins and templates. I don’t think it should be so closely associated with the bubble platform’s core, however.
First, who supports the purchase of one of these templates? The template seller or the bubble.is team? I think it’s fair to assume it’s the template sellers responsibility for support, updates, managing feedback and all the other maintenance tasks that are apart of the template/plugin selling business. Unlike other major template marketplaces (Envato comes to mind) there’s nothing that clearly distinguishes who or where any of this support is coming from (or if it even exists). As a use case, if a customer were to buy this template and they need support - refunds, detailed instructions, a forum for detailed reviews and so on - where would they turn? Who’s responsible? @josh and @emmanuel ? support@bubble.is?
A forum thread posted a few months ago comes to mind: Issues with Bubble Partner
Another thing is how to scale something like this? Who’s doing the quality checks? I mean, for example the plugin system as it is today. It’s been somewhat of a discouraging direction for me personally. While I appreciate the effort and direction, the “add plugin” feature in bubble has been a mess ever since it was opened up. Some of them are decent looking, a lot of them are not. One or two doesn’t even do anything.
I understand it’s in it’s infancy, but the way it is now isn’t sustainable in my mind. Nothing said about the future of these templates or plugins brings into light terms of service or any other quality control.
What’s to stop me from buying airdev’s [insert clone template], copying it and then posting it for half the price, for example? Or because they have an AirBnB clone for sale, am I allowed to post my own AirBnB clone for sale? How do I distinguish it from Airdev’s? Where is that line drawn? Speaking of which, does AirBnB (or twitter or uber) have a problem with us profiting off their app architecture? Now that I think of it, exactly how close of a clone is this AirBnB template? There’s nothing much said about what it can actually do.
I don’t mean to be a naysayer - I think it’s a step in the right direction. I understand that copying apps from Airdev’s account to the buyer’s account is a pain in the ass. This feature certainly removes that friction. There’s just a lot of red flags going off now that actual money is involved and I think it prudent to consider the implications.