[New Thread] More context on our changes to pricing - FAQs answered

To anyone mentioning or asking about alternatives. The only one I’ve seen that has similar features(especially for workflows), is Retool. Also, their data source integration is kind of unmatched.

I roam the forums daily, on break times, during commutes, or when I’m simply bored. Bubble has one of the biggest numbers of enthusiastic users in a community in my experience. Helping others with questions ranging from the mundane to sharing complex solutions. Another part of the community consists of our beloved plugin builders offering free to low cost solutions to basic functionality that Bubble has yet to implement. It’s also boosts my confidence in the platform to see more prominent community members grow.

So it really is a kick in the nuts to see these same people get thrown to the curb because Bubble decided to throw in some funky “proprietary” metric, sending costs to the moon, that no one can truly understand.

Bubble success is only because of its community and the loss of confidence scares me. I am on the cusp of scoring my first government contract and this happens on a long weekend no less. Like many others I’ve not been able to work on my apps because

  1. This optimization curveball has thrown a wrench into my work
  2. I just lost major value proposition in my bid against my competition

I was all in the pay a lot more upon winning the contract but as others have pointed out and from my own calculations, scaling is just not feasible with the new pricing. Currently it’s like I am being punished if I succeed using Bubble as my medium.

There is a way out as suggested many times, and I would still like to believe that management hasn’t decided to abandon it’s community;

  • Increase the WU capacity at least 10x for each plan
  • Introduce better transparency on the WU cost of every action
  • Keep the “capacity” based pricing until Bubble can offer better native "optimization’ features, a “Best practice to optimization” section in the manual
  • Offer native actions from plugins that allow users to run their own client-side scripts/code that don’t have WU costs

I have always advocated that Bubbler’s spend at least half the time building new features as they do optimizing and to be honest I understand the why for the new pricing structure. The problem is that it looks like Bubble has decided to squeeze every penny from Bubblers with their new WU metric.

Bubble gave me an opportunity to create additional opportunities to create income and provide for my family as a solo dev, so I really do feel heartbroken that management has decided to take the route of abandoning us little guys.

One last point I’d like to make is while I think it’s a smart move to release this on a long weekend, take the punches from the community, tire us out, and then respond. Though you guys could have done much better to prepare us for WU costs. It seems to me that even with an additional year of research and testing your lack of preparedness and vague information on WU shows very little confidence in your own pricing.

I’m not gonna comment on this issue anymore cause I’m gonna focus on working with support to ride this new optimization meta. I hope we get a better response from Bubble than just marketing speak. FYI I work in marketing comms.

14 Likes

While I appreciate that you don’t want to comment further, @ihsanzainal84 , I’d be interested if you could “share your pie” as @NigelG would have it.

How does the proposed pricing schedule impact you? Less, same, more, LOTS more?

1 Like

It’s post your pie, @keith, and it’s one of the best things I’ve seen in 1,498 posts in 2 days.

By the way, my reply here makes 1,499, which means the next poster will have the 1,500th post… so they’ll have that going for them, which is nice.

5 Likes

You can’t even start building an app for customer if you cannot present the running costs for them.

Our example is simple enough - 2 weeks ago we’ve Sent a proposal, agreed on terms, pricing structure etc. We gave info on pricing plans, how they work and right now we’re almost finished. Surprise surprise, based on new metrics, the running costs might increase up to 10 times for the customer. Will they be happy to hear that? No. Will they want to accept the product and use it? No.

4 Likes

@aj11 bro, just noticed that. So helpful.

2 Likes

I’m literally laughing out loud, @mikeloc. Obviously, I am not British. And clearly Siri hates me. :man_shrugging:

EDIT: But please, post and/or share your pie.

2 Likes

Yeah it was a long time coming.

What’s the probability that the pricing models actually change to this. I’ve only been using bubble for 2 years.

What the… this thread is still throttled? What the hell are you afraid of @bubble? Your own users?

2 Likes

I can’t do anything because of the stress caused by the bubble price policy. If many users are attached and create an application that they use all day long, Bill Gates is likely to go bankrupt. It is a price policy that completely discourages the desire to make something.

2 Likes

7 Likes

Just compared bubble’s new pricing with weweb. Weweb gives 150k page views for $249 on their growth plan. Some bubbler’s tests are showing 4-7WUs to load an empty page (without/with bubble cookies). By combining bubbles growth and tier 2 I’d get 1m WUs for $233, so about 150k page views. Difference is on weweb I could actually afford to put content on the page, run workflows, like actually build a web-app. Bubble can introduce all the new features it wants but I’d rather pay for a platform where it was affordable to build more than an empty squarespace page. And if I just want a square space page I’d go there and pay $15 per month rather than $233. And I’d be able to afford to put content onto it too. Bizarre!

1 Like

Excellent point!

@emmanuel your silence is deafening. We’ve supported you for all these years of growth and this is how you treat us? Just two months ago, you wrote me to ask for a review on G2 to help potential new users evaluate Bubble, which I gladly did.

I did because I foolishly believed you stood behind you mission.

Boy I really do hope all this is just a bad joke or a massive f-up by someone who will be escorted out of the premises on Monday, but even if that’s the case, I think the trust that we had in you is gone and many of us are going to be planning our 18 month exit plan.

This was the email.

Hi Danielle!
I hope your Bubble journey has been off to a productive start and that you’re making progress towards big goals for 2023. On our end, I’m looking forward to a transformational year for the Bubble team and platform. We have big challenges to tackle, but I’m confident that our team will continue striving towards our mission – to democratize entrepreneurship for everyone.

As potential users research and discover Bubble, they look to the larger community for confirmation and confidence. Your honest feedback is invaluable not only to them, but also to us, as we work towards continuously improving and delivering a high-quality product that helps you bring your ideas to life.

Will you take 60 seconds to leave us a review on G2 ?

With much appreciation,

Emmanuel and the BubbleTeam

13 Likes

…but you’ll only be able to to provide us with that honest feedback every 15min.

5 Likes

Hahaha

1 Like

7 Likes

Stop please. Not helpful. @christo1.

These decisions bubble has made really have a huge burden on people.

I’m just going to go to sleep with questions unanswered.

POST YOUR PIE

If I come out of the last few days with nothing other than getting people to use the phrase Post Your Pie then it will have all been worth it :grin::grin:

Jobless. Begging for WUs on a street corner. But hey, people will point and say ‘that’s the post your pie guy’.

11 Likes