im open to experience at this point 
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i think there need be conference or round table on this.
the points you mention are important.
I need to be able to predict costs because the WU are so crazy expensive.
but there also other important topics.
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i have experienced discussions where companies where ready to lose a third of their customers because they would be doing a better(profitable) busiess with the remaining two thirds.
in this case, this could work for bubble if they they have enough customer that can are will to accept the new deal.
I also wonder what the pricing will be in 3-5 years, thinking beyond inflation etc.
totally agree
I finished a prototype(using) recently and it will be demoād on a huge exhibition in June.
this will be WTF intensive and costly.
the app will cost a lot even in development. Millions of workload to properly develop it, same for testing it.
now while I may be able to develop it on the bubble before the end of the 18th month. but even then development and testing will be very WTF intensive. On top of that comes production.
When I have 100 customers on board I may be able to pay for but how does one cover the customer until then? maybe bubble can take quite in my company and carry the risk with me (kidding)
so probably i will use bubble until the exhibition and after postpone development and go with another tool.(likley wappler or ātrue codeā)
it is so scary not to know what it will costā¦
so many questions
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also, i whish they would just give you slower perforamce once you hit your WTF limit instead of continue to bill at the given price
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When dreams deflate!
I shared my thoughts on Linkedin and I might as well share them here:
Dear EmmanuŠµl StraschnĪæv and the rest of the Bubble team,
The new pricing plan for Bubble has got a lot of us in the community worried, to say the least.
As costs go up for both new and experienced creators, it feels like the platform is losing its charm and becoming less accessible. These rising expenses might force many of us to look for other creative outlets that we can afford and support.
Iāve always been a huge fan of Bubble, and Iāve told everyone I know that itās the best place for new developers to learn visual coding. I even planned to teach Bubble in my classes this fall. But now, Iām not so sure if itāll still be a budget-friendly option for everyone.
The thought of Bubble becoming a playground just for rich companies is hard to swallow. The platform has always been great at helping regular people and small teams create, innovate, and grow. Seeing that core value slip away is pretty heartbreaking for those of us whoāve worked hard to promote Bubble as a hub of creativity and opportunity, and have spent days, months, and years building our first applications.
If you ask me (knowing that you didnāt, but stillā¦) I think Bubble could have handled things differently by being more community-focused. Instead of suddenly dropping a pricing plan that hits individuals and small teams hard, you could have talked to us, your loyal users, to get a better idea of what we need and what weāre worried about.
Maybe instead of just looking at workflow units, you could have come up with usage-based pricing tiers that factor in other parts of app development, like data storage, API calls, and the number of active users. That way, weād have more flexibility to pick a plan that fits our specific needs and how we use the platform.
Bubble could also invest in creating tools that help us manage our workflow units, data storage, and other resources more efficiently. Itād be great if Bubble actively involved us, the creator community, in developing the pricing structure.
If you had asked for our thoughts and feedback on proposed changes, you could better understand what we need and expect, and come up with a pricing model that works for both us and the platform.
I was about to deploy my app. Never felt so proud!
Right now it just feels like a breakup.
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Nice, so I had my account blocked after being a forum member helping countless people over the past 5 years.
It was blocked for āspammingā. After posting a link back to this thread in two other threads where the poster asked a question regarding API.
If you are building an app today relying on API connections, I would think itās highly pertinent to be made aware what effect this pricing change will have on their future plans.
I have seen threads where the poster was unaware of this discussion, and after being made aware in a reply have then been able to take a step back and re-evaluate. I canāt find the thread in question now, it may or may not have been deleted as well.
I understand mods have a function, but having threads removed, posts removed, accounts locked for very flimsy reasons on top of the ongoing disbelief and anxiety many feel right now only compounds the growing disgust and disappointment in the Bubble platform.
Shaking my headā¦
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I would like to let you know where the frustration comes from. See this image which you proudly display in this article - Workload Explained.
The image is complete fiction based on what the community have shown to be true. An internal scheduling tool which only uses 30k WFU a month. What is the scheduling? Updating one thing in the database daily? That would reach this amount of WFU units.
The B2B2C platform using just 0.5 WFU million a month but making under 1 million in revenue. For one, under 1 million in revenue is quite a broad number, it could be a bootstrapped founder making a few hundred to a few thousand or a company making 900k, quite ridiculous to put all of these under the same umbrella and then think that these businesses can run on 0.5 M units a month. It simply isnāt possible for a company trying to SCALE and trying to get market share. Freemium users, trial users will eat up much more than 0.5 M WFU and that doesnāt even account for paying users. āWe win if you winā, it certainly doesnāt seem like that.
Then we get into the bigger projects which are equally absurd based on what others have shown. A rental marketplace with 4 million listings. You would bet that such a rental marketplace would be updating their listing regularly, once a week is probably fair plus adding new inventory, so this is minimum 16 million workflows to update listings in a month and all the testing has shown such updates to take multiples of WFU and certainly not less than one. You show this business using 4 M WFU, were your team just putting their finger in the sky to come up with these numbers? This then doesnāt account for any other actions on such a platform.
The final example is a Hiring Marketplace, so you are going to have thousands of users uploading and updating credentials regularly such as CV, work experience and so on, you are going to have a chat messaging function in such a platform. You are going to have thousands of businesses updating and uploading new jobs and then you are going to have everyone interact. The database alone would be way over the WFU allowance for such a business to get to 1.6 million in revenue unless they are recruiting for Astronauts or C-Suite.
For me, this is the BIGGEST disconnect of this whole announcement SHAMBLES. Your own graphics are so completely out of whack with the reality. Did someone not vet this? Did someone think this was accurate and the way things work? Why after more than 48 hours has there been SILENCE on such matters? It is absolutely ridiculous that any of the businesses shown in the graphic be viable with the amount of WFU that have been specified, if they are, show me. I simply donāt believe it nor does anyone else.
My second major issue is the name of the plans. Starter plan for a company starting out, ok makes sense but starting out should include actually launching and getting to a milestone of a few hundred customers. Others have shown that this plan will be blown out the water before even launching. Growth plan, so your a company in the growth phase, you may have a few thousand users and you are now looking to get even bigger, in reality, this plan only works for a company with a few users.
The DISCONNECT here is massive and that is the most FRUSTRATING thing for everyone, nobody seems to care about this based on the silence and example after example of how the WFU system simply does not allow scale of any kind and INCREASES the barrier to entry for everyone.
I foolishly believed you when you said you wanted to simplify pricing, you said capacity was difficult for newbies to grasp and you wanted to make it better, how the heck is creating a whole new made-up unit, having multiple plans which make no sense and then having overage plans which also make no sense more clear to a newbie than capacity? Seems like you donāt solve that issue either.
I would hope that Bubblew owns these issues but it seems you are intent on doubling down so you have lost trust, you have lost goodwill and you have lost customers. Unfortunately, weāre all captive to this as it isnāt so simple to move an app in a day but just know, thousands of us are putting plans in place to do just this.
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A hypothetical question, but nonetheless quite interesting.
IF we assume that this new pricing structure is Bubble re-targeting its customer base and aiming to become an internal tooling no-code solution for enterprise level customers. As @boston85719 was made aware in discussions directly with Bubble, theāve been struggling to convert users into paying users. Platforms aimed at no-code internal tooling applications for enterprises usually starts in the price range of a few thousand USD/month. And with a relatively fixed user base (employees) scalability is not as much of a concern.
With that out of the way, letās assume this is the direction Bubble is going. Would you have been more receptive to this being the announcement rather than the perceived shift in business model to enterprise level customers, but messaging that Bubble is still for the small maker and budding entrepreneur?
It would not have a different effect on your cost, moving off the platform etc. of course. But would it have made you more āunderstandingā as to why you are being encouraged to leave the platform?
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The big worry for my company, is that we were about to start marketing. Because in order to GET users in the first place, they have to find us, right? But now Iām concerned what would happen if we did a big marketing push and got, say, 250k people visit & testout our website, browse our products (requiring searches) etc. Visitors <> revenue. We could be crippled before even making a penny or getting a single user.
This should now be the exciting part, the part where we finally tell the world about what weāve built & show it off proudly. But now Iām just worried about it actually getting usage. 
Absolutely frightening.
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if bubble will retarget their customer group, then they will need to change their staff becuase they need another marketing, sales, support approach to compete with mendix etc.
But you are right @casheets123. also the pricing would all of a sudden make sense. look at mendix and outcast.
Yeah for sure, and Itās all hypothetical. But if this is part of a long term shift in customer base (18 months or more). A directional change certainly isnāt crazy.
But the question is not so much āwhat are bubbleās plansā but more, would you have been more understanding if that was in fact the plan, at that is what was communicated instead?
Thatās the thing. If you build a product with Bubble you are now actually scared to have users! Thatās such the paradox Bubble became!
I think Bubble itself is going to hurt its revenue because itās just not a tool for building apps anymore. Itās a tool to build prototypes that you can show.
I cannot understand how the Bubble management team and founders did not see that. Itās just so clear and itās so annoying that their treat us as a bunch of idiots with their marketing *** 
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Of course - - If so I would have respected it and understood that bubbleās path forward was going to be that.
The breakup would have been tough, but not as tough as being told yet again that this pricing model will change and weāre just supposed to wait until a decision has been made for this platform weāve all willingly chosen to be ālocked-intoā with no code export.
Well believe me Iāve learned my lesson!
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however they will be dependent on all plugin builders even if they retarget. so may they get a sweeter dealā¦
Yes, a lot more understanding. It is the mixed messages, it is the lack of clarity and it is the āI am excited to announceā announcements which are anything but exciting for your actual users. Bubble has failed with announcements and strategy it seems.
They ran the AI event just last week focusing on solo / indie builders and small devs to show that Bubble will be the place to build AI applications. The event wasnāt great from the initial internet and mic issues to other things but they had a bunch of small business showcase what they had built and why they chose bubble. I cannot believe they ran such an event with the full knowledge that all of these guys will be screwed a week later.
I did find it interesting they announced an Azure plugin for AI which is totally corporate speak and not of interest to 99% of the people who tuned into that event I would assume. Seems there is a wrestle for control of Bubbleās direction and the Bubble staff are too weak to explicitly state the direction they want to go in and that is a shame.
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It does certainly feel like thereās a little bit of pull in two directions. This is of course a bit off topic, which is a little bit touchy at the moment it seems.
But there is this nagging thought I canāt reconcile. Who is bubble now competing with?
It used to be;
Flutterflow
WeWeb
Wappler
Webflow (yes, even webflow)
Noodl
Bildt
Draftbit
etc.
Which is becoming a very crowded and fast moving segment, and profitability is likely more difficult.
Or are they now competing against internal tooling systems like;
Mendix
Stacker
Retool
Outsystems
And over time we will see marketing material better reflect that? I for one will find it highly interesting to follow Bubble for the next 18 months from the outside looking in to see if it does morph into something more akin to an internal tooling service.
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Right now Iām concerned about losing this community (I suck at breakups) Iāve got support and guidance when I needed it, and to be honest the community is the only thing that keep me from getting out of here. Which is a big lie because I have no idea where to go.
We need a creators association so that we can feel supported and not alone if we need to leave. I sure as hell need one
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I am sure that the community will hopefully get through this. I am sure Bubble intended a fair increase - no more than 2x
But with users highlighting cases that seem to be way off @tatiana.a suggestions, I think this will be examined and shared with the community more in-depth.
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