Newbie Questions

Questions
1

Hi, my name is Milan and I’m new here, so hello to all Bubblers!
I just “discovered” Bubble, and my first impression is just WOW, that’s it! Because I’m a total newbie, please forgive me if I ask something stupid or obvious. I really like the concept of Bubble and I would like to know more.
These are my questions:

  • Suppose I would like to build an app for a specific region - I would like to know, where are Bubble servers located? Can I choose region? Is there a CDN?
    Pricing questions:
  • Is Bubble pricing account based or app based? Can I have multiple apps running on one account? Can I set custom domains for them? What are limits (server space, bandwidth)?
  • Can I clone apps between accounts? For example:
  • If I have multiple apps on my free account developed/tested, can I copy-paste (clone) app to client account (paid) to go into production?
    Speed questions (my main concern):
  • All bubble pages I’ve seen look terribly slow (they are comparable to WordPress a few years ago, but far from static site speed). Are there some benchmark tools available to find bottlenecks in the app?
  • My personal opinion is, that main bottleneck is a database (like always), so can I benchmark database queries and rendering separately?
    Other:
  • I would like to know what language(s) is Bubble platform built with? Java, Javascript (Node), Python, Erlang, Haskel, something else? What database is used? Knowing what tech stack is behind platform would give me more confidence in dealing with edge cases and maybe also with speed tweaking.

Thanks in advance to any community member, who can give me some insight into these newbie questions.

2

Welcome to Bubble :slight_smile:

Suppose I would like to build an app for a specific region - I would like to know, where are Bubble servers located? Can I choose region? Is there a CDN?

Mostly, Bubble runs on AWS servers which are West Coast USA. You can opt to have a dedicated server so this can be wherever you like. The CDN is Cloudfront.

Pricing questions:
Is Bubble pricing account based or app based? Can I have multiple apps running on one account? Can I set custom domains for them? What are limits (server space, bandwidth)?

It is a mixture of both. You can have as many “hobby” apps as you like, which do not have custom domains. You then start paying as you add custom domains, and this allows more processing power. “space” is not really the limit, it is bandwidth.

Can I clone apps between accounts? For example:
If I have multiple apps on my free account developed/tested, can I copy-paste (clone) app to client account (paid) to go into production?

Yes, there is a specific “agency” account that lets you do just this, create apps for clients and then hand them over for them to pay.

Speed questions (my main concern):
All bubble pages I’ve seen look terribly slow (they are comparable to WordPress a few years ago, but far from static site speed). Are there some benchmark tools available to find bottlenecks in the app?
My personal opinion is, that main bottleneck is a database (like always), so can I benchmark database queries and rendering separately?

Most “hobby” Bubble Apps are a bit slow. But once you start paying for more server oomph, it improves.

Not sure about the benchmarking.

Other:
I would like to know what language(s) is Bubble platform built with? Java, Javascript (Node), Python, Erlang, Haskel, something else? What database is used? Knowing what tech stack is behind platform would give me more confidence in dealing with edge cases and maybe also with speed tweaking.

Written in Coffeescript, running on Node.js - the database is Postgress. Some Redis and JQuery in there too.

3 Likes
3

Thanks a lot, @NigelG
Things are much more clear now :slight_smile:

[edit]
… but still not complete…
Regarding payment: as far as I understand, pricing is account-based, because I can create multiple apps under one account, but if I want to have my domain for the app, then pricing is not account-based anymore, it becomes app-based, or not? So for example, I need to pay $62 for a professional plan, I can have multiple apps, but only one app with the custom domain? Is it like this? The only possibility to have multiple domains is agency account, as far as I understand, right?

Regarding speed:

Most “hobby” Bubble Apps are a bit slow.

I understand this, but what you wrote, is unfortunately not completely true. Problem with hobby apps: they are not a bit slow, they are annoying/unbearable/scary/etc. slow :frowning:

But once you start paying for more server oomph, it improves.

I believe, that Bubble website itself has best backend and most advanced testing/speed tweaking possible, and it is still slow. Just slow (performance grade C). If you don’t believe me, test it for yourself.
I don’t want to explain the importance of speed, as there are many articles on the net about it, but it can be all summarized in a conclusion that load time higher than 3 sec has a dramatical drop rate in views/sales/etc.

If I remember well, I think that I’ve seen somewhere, that I can test my app on a higher configuration for an hour, but I lost that link. Could someone please help me to find it again?

Thanks again to the friendly community for any hint :slight_smile:

4

Then don’t use Bubble for your potential customers landing page. It’s not as fast as a regular static website, but the overall performance isn’t bad when using the database. Waiting a couple seconds for a page to load to enter data isn’t as bad as climbing through a website trying to learn about the product.

I’m using only about half the resources available on the professional plan and it works just fine. Once a page has loaded there’s little delay entering data unless you’re doing a very data-intensive action.

If you’re not happy do it the old fashioned way and code every action. :wink:

1 Like
5

I use a personal plan to develop and have spent a great deal of time making sure I do things so they don’t slow down the response time and I don’t see slow speeds at all - even with some heavy data requirements. You can’t really judge without building an app.

1 Like
6

as far as I understand, pricing is account-based, because I can create multiple apps under one account, but if I want to have my domain for the app, then pricing is not account-based anymore, it becomes app-based, or not? So for example, I need to pay $62 for a professional plan, I can have multiple apps, but only one app with the custom domain? Is it like this? The only possibility to have multiple domains is agency account, as far as I understand, right?

It is $14+ a month for EVERY Personal (and above) app, so one with a custom domain and no bubble branding. So $28 for two apps with custom domains, etc. $42 for three. So $62/124/186 for Pro.

I understand this, but what you wrote, is unfortunately not completely true. Problem with hobby apps: they are not a bit slow, they are annoying/unbearable/scary/etc. slow :frowning:

I have dozens of Hobby apps, and they are not any of those things. Some pages are slow because of the data access that has yet to be optimised.

Here is one that is rated Good by google and is on a Hobby Plan. And could be faster still if I optimised the images.

image

If I remember well, I think that I’ve seen somewhere, that I can test my app on a higher configuration for an hour, but I lost that link. Could someone please help me to find it again?

It is in Settings/App Plan

image
image989×424 20.1 KB

1 Like
7

@StevenM @gnelson Thanks for the reply, guys!
Please, don’t get me wrong. I think Bubble is a fantastic platform, a real revolution, and a true innovation on the market.
But there are problems, like always :slight_smile:

I don’t care if UI is ugly (or call it non-standard if you want) because I don’t care if my tools are ugly as long as final products made with these tools are beautiful.

Also, I don’t care if my tools are a bit slow (because of debugging, etc) as long as my final pages are lightning fast.

That was the reason I asked about stack behind. I can understand the CoffeeScript/PostgreSQL choice as fast to market strategy. Such stack has it’s known limitations (speed) but also benefits (rapid development, etc).
But after announced 1M of yearly revenue, I can’t understand, that it can’t be rewritten in something fast and stable (WebAssembly, Erlang, you name it).
Hopefully, it will because it would be sad not to go forward with such a great project.

Again, if someone knows if I can test my hobby app for an hour on higher configuration, please let me know how.

8

Bear in mind that it is unlikely to have much effect if you have an app that is trawling through your database multiple times.

If you are familiar with technology (and it seems that you are) then I cannot stress enough that you need to understand how Bubble does relations/foreign keys. Because it is NOT like mySQL. Or at least, you can make it like mySQL but it will be slow.

9

@NigelG Thanks, man, you are a real help! I can’t agree more with everything you said. Actually, my plan is to use DB as little as possible and use microservices for content. It’s great that on this platform this looks like totally possible :wink:
Thanks again for your time!

1 Like
10

Yes, totally possible. I have quite a few little microservices running on webtask.io and it works pretty well.

1 Like