New Pricing Disaster

Suri.M · 2024-08-25T17:06:50.783Z

Hi Ryan8,
Thanks for sharing this with us. Your case is quite a cautionary tale everyone needs to be aware of. We have grown to love Bubble and have been working a lot with it. Your workflow screenshot is another cautionary tale of a maintenance nightmare. I am already exhausted just looking at it! As an experienced software developer for the past twenty years, working in this environment sometimes feels like a leap of faith. So, we’ve developed an in-house tool to dissect it and lay it all out in markdown files. This way, we have a way to share and discuss the problems. We are launching a beta program. We think your project will be an excellent test, and you can benefit from having a document. You can probably use it to help with migrating to other tools down the road. I know you use a Mac, but if you have a virtual PC running, try our beta for us.

Bubble Documenter

Bubble Documenter is an automated tool that takes your .bubble project file and generates a clean, organized markdown file. No more endless screenshots, no more getting lost in the nested logic, and no more spending hours trying to assemble...

Thanks
Suri M.

ryan8 · 2024-08-25T17:39:54.163Z

i will check this out too

boston85719 · 2024-08-25T19:06:39.046Z

ryan8:

well a 10X increase in price is not the norm. this is much less a problem for new users. when your plans are going from 250/mo to 1500/mo due to THEIR changes i think it is ok to be a little upset.

Recently Bubble showed the popup in my client app, suggesting a WU cost of around $1,100 a month…they were grandfathered in when Bubble made the WU pricing change 17 months ago, so we knew this change would take place and last month I made some changes to how the app functions. The cost of the app on the grandfathered plan was $142 USD/month and is going down on the WU plan to $134 USD/month.

Not all apps are going to be impacted by the price scheme change in the same way as not all apps require the same functionality.

Based on that screen shot of the backend processes, you may want to consider moving your backend to a 3rd party backend. @GH5T @eli @vnihoul77 or @jared.gibb might be able to help get you started on that.

jacob2 · 2024-08-25T19:25:57.339Z

Start migrating to Xano

lindsay_knowcode · 2024-08-25T20:13:21.160Z

Bubble is not and doesn’t position itself to be an economic place to do bulk data processing.

Use the right tool at the right time for the job …. Use the workflow usage pie charts to tell what you need to move elsewhere. No drama.

and we’ve all had 18 months notice of this change …

ihsanzainal84 · 2024-08-26T01:58:00.666Z

That’s a nifty looking app! We can see that a lot of effort was put into it. You also got the attention of a lot of people who can help you out. I wish you all the best.

Though it does sound like you purposefully chose to ignore the switch to WU. As others pointed out, Bubble already made more than enough announcements and provided just enough (not enough but just enough) tools to gauge your apps’ WU and potential costs.

GH5T · 2024-08-26T03:11:22.907Z

jacob2:

Start migrating to Xano

Could be beneficial but there are more cost-effective scenarios for his use-case that would be more efficient.

stuart8 · 2024-08-26T04:06:08.902Z

We had a simiar AI image gen app, looks like yours has a lot more interesting edit functionality! It is possible to optimize though, we took the app from over 6 million WUs to less than 100k monthly. It did involve learning about a whole new backend and structure but it is possible.

Agree that the new pricing sucks but they have given enough time for people to be aware of it. Not sure having the conference on the crossover day is a good idea though as I am sure there will still be a few people caught out / not super happy come October 1st.

Let’s see, the WU logs and calculator are still half broken since the announcement all those months ago so I can’t see it ending well for some users who don’t check forums regularly.

fede.bubble · 2024-08-26T12:12:38.773Z

stuart8:

the WU logs and calculator are still half broken

I’ll be happy to send the details to the team if you don’t mind sharing what’s broken

ryan8 · 2024-08-26T16:15:54.967Z

yes i was aware of the change BUT not aware of how it actually would affect my cost

ryan8 · 2024-08-26T16:43:10.354Z

does anyone know if bubble dings your for publishing the APP?

ryan8 · 2024-08-26T17:18:36.148Z

thank you yes i worked on it for a long time lol PLUS the industry changes faster then i can keep up

zelus_pudding · 2024-08-27T06:24:45.452Z

From the looks of it you should rebuild a number of backend workflows as Python APIs you selfhost (on something like Render or Heroku). I do this all the time and it’s almost always far faster and cheaper to run (and develop) than trying to bake the same logic into Bubble… especially if you’re regularly updating many items in your DB. For example, I once hired a (good) Bubble dev who spent 20 hours trying to build an airtable integration that could perform special groupbys/rankings all via backend workflows… It was a mess of like 16 workflows all with 2 to 8 steps in them… and it was sloooow. I had him stop developing and coded the same thing up in Python in roughly 2 hours. It was maybe 20x faster than what he’d made and cost basically nothing (like $10 a month but more like $0 since I already had the server in place for running other background tasks/only had to add an endpoint). Lot’s of AI stuff plays nicely with Python… hopefully you can sort this all out

ed19 · 2024-08-27T14:58:01.015Z

App looks great! So there’s that haha.

We run a platform that houses dashboards and other administerial functions for ~ 120 Shopify stores, which I too built back in 2022 on the legacy model. Once bubble transitioned over to displaying (but importantly not charging for) wf units, it highlighted just how inefficient my operations were, when previously I’d had no idea.

Our wf unit usage sat at upwards of 4m/month, which eclipses any new plan available. I worked it out as costing us a couple thousand pounds each month with overages (up from legacy production £600), which was obviously a huge problem.

For months I was dreading the change, unable to see how I could possibly make it that much more efficient, but funny story… for a humungous application, with only me working on it and pretty high stakes financially if I mess up, it took me one solid week (admittedly working until 2-3am every day) to reduce our monthly wf unit usage from 4 million plus, down to about 300k.

I guess what I’m trying to say is all hope is not lost! You’ve delivered a great client-facing product from the looks of it, and that is by far the hardest part.

gnelson · 2024-08-28T05:58:57.840Z

What new pricing?

gnelson · 2024-08-28T06:16:14.270Z

I HATE AIRTABLE! Just saying.

I’d love to learn how to take advantage of your python suggestion, but how would I find out what scenarios it would benefit?

Thanks for the suggestion.

ihsanzainal84 · 2024-08-28T08:12:15.121Z

I just want to add that I hate Airtable too!

Though it’s because of that annoyance with Airtable that led me to find Bubble.

zelus_pudding · 2024-08-28T16:08:43.440Z

Knowing when to write your own Python API to extend a Bubble app, for me that usually comes down to when doing compute heavy actions… Bubble’s greatest value proposition is “display stuff in a browser”… it’s not very good at “compute many things” to display in browser. For example, the cost calculator for one of my plugins is powered by a Python endpoint… could I have done that in Bubble? Probably. Is it way easier in Python - yes! Expand the hidden code below and think about how to do it in native Bubble… I probably could have baked this into an Expression element using javascript but… because I already have a Python API setup, just adding this endpoint was easy enough. Beyond that, if trying to fetch data from other APIs/was a longer running process, like I was here, then that’s even more reason to try to do it in Python.

Cost Calculator Endpoint Code

@app.get("/api/v1/get_search_provider_pricing")
def compute_search_provider_costs(
    search_provider: str = "algolia",
    average_record_kb: float = 0.6,
    number_of_records: int = 50000,
    monthly_searches: int = 50000,
    regions: int = 1,
    is_new_algolia_plan: bool = True,
):
    def select_typesense_cluster_base_cost(
        number_of_records=50000, average_record_kb=0.6, regions=1
    ):
        region_cluster_pricing = {
            1: {0.5: 14.40, 1: 21.60, 2: 36, 4: 64.80, 8: 122.40, 16: 180},
            3: {0.5: 64.80, 1: 86.40, 2: 129.60, 4: 216.00, 8: 432.00, 16: 669.60},
            5: {0.5: 108, 1: 144, 2: 252, 4: 432.00, 8: 828.00, 16: 1260},
        }
        cluster_pricing = region_cluster_pricing[regions]
        cluster_gb = average_record_kb * number_of_records / 1000000
        minimum_cluster_gb = cluster_gb * 2
        recommended_minimum_cluster_gb = [
            key for key in cluster_pricing.keys() if key > minimum_cluster_gb
        ][0]
        base_monthly_price = cluster_pricing[recommended_minimum_cluster_gb]
        return recommended_minimum_cluster_gb, base_monthly_price

    if search_provider == "algolia":
        if is_new_algolia_plan:
            if number_of_records <= 100000:
                cost_number_of_records = 0
            else:
                cost_number_of_records = (number_of_records - 100000) / 1000 * 0.4
            if monthly_searches <= 10000:
                cost_monthly_searches = 0
            else:
                cost_monthly_searches = (monthly_searches - 10000) / 1000 * 0.5
            cost = cost_monthly_searches + cost_number_of_records
        else:
            if number_of_records <= 10000:
                cost_number_of_records = 0
            else:
                cost_number_of_records = (number_of_records - 10000) / 1000 * 1.0
            if monthly_searches <= 10000:
                cost_monthly_searches = 0
            else:
                cost_monthly_searches = (monthly_searches - 10000) / 1000 * 1.0
            cost = cost_monthly_searches + cost_number_of_records
    elif search_provider == "typesense":
        recommended_minimum_cluster_gb, base_monthly_price = (
            select_typesense_cluster_base_cost(
                number_of_records=number_of_records,
                average_record_kb=average_record_kb,
                regions=regions,
            )
        )
        # works out to 720MB per day per node across a month multiplied by regions and 0.09 GB
        bandwidth_out_cost_base = 0.720 * 30.44 * regions * 0.09
        bandwidth_out_cost_searches = (
            monthly_searches * average_record_kb * 100 / 1000000 * 0.09
        )
        cost = (
            base_monthly_price + bandwidth_out_cost_base + bandwidth_out_cost_searches
        )
    return {"cost": cost}

georgecollier · 2024-08-28T16:37:26.109Z

+1

I now have a library of custom APIs that I use with various apps we work on. Some built with Python (using Flask), some with Node.js. I host them all on Google Cloud Platform for pennies.

Examples:

File conversion endpoint that converts any endpoint to text (saves using expensive external API)
Pinecone upsert endpoint that takes a text and custom metadata, chunks it, and upserts it all to Pinecone (saves loads of WU for large documents)
Progressive tax rate calculator that takes tax bands, deductions, and an amount, and returns the relevant tax (would be more efficient in a client side plugin but wasn’t a rabbit hole I was willing to go down)
Wasabi URL generator (the plugin I use has this integrated but Bubble SSAs take ages to spool up, so I just deployed it on Google Cloud).

The best thing? I coded all of them basically entirely with ChatGPT / Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Claude is better at this in my experience). I can’t write code - I can look at it and understand what’s going on, but I can’t be bothered with syntax (hey, that’s why I use Bubble!).

I dream that one day Bubble will add proper SSA building that’s reasonably priced and would actively encourage developers extending their app with custom code. However, it’s clear their product direction is ‘make bulk data better’ so that custom code becomes unnecessary.

I’m a Bubble-native all the way advocate wherever it’s reasonably possible, but Bubble isn’t perfect for every use case (and how could you expect it to be), which is why it’s okay to integrate it with other tools

senecadatabase · 2024-08-28T17:11:47.701Z

Nice idea you have.

I do think the code could be improved?

It makes the cost calculations easier.

Has error handling…

and rounds the final costs to 2 decimal places.

Just something you can consider.

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/senecadatabase/aad9734cadb57b142366891342afcadf

gistfile1.txt

from typing import Literal, Dict, Tuple
from fastapi import FastAPI

app = FastAPI()

# Constants
ALGOLIA_FREE_RECORDS = 100000
ALGOLIA_FREE_SEARCHES = 10000
ALGOLIA_NEW_RECORD_PRICE = 0.4
ALGOLIA_NEW_SEARCH_PRICE = 0.5

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