Don’t hold your breath waiting for any tangible improvements to page load speed
@boston85719 Why not?
Because we have been requesting this for over 6 years now and it has not been done…plus, when I’ve asked higher ups in Bubble about this, they provide honest replies that it is a technical challenge that likely will not be overcome anytime soon, if ever. Plus, it is an issue with Google as well, in terms of how Google treats javascript based sites differently from HTML, and Google just didn’t keep up with the times in how websites were moving toward more being created with javascript rather than HTML and so Google needs to also make some alterations into how they calculate a performance score for sites built with javascript.
At the end of the day though, Bubble still could do things to improve it, but as mentioned, higher ups at Bubble have indicated it is a challenge likely not being undertaken anytime soon. One of the biggest drags on performance is the usually 2-3 second first load of javascript, which is essentially just accessing your site.
Below are screen shots of lighthouse report from a blank page.
The 2,530 ms (2.53 seconds) with transfer size of 2,081.6 KiB is just loading the site, for a page that has nothing on it. This has been this way forever, and I believe is the technical challenge Bubble is not undertaking any time soon, if ever.
Unless @josh as some great news that this is being addressed in the near terms, I would say, don’t hold your breath.
8 Likes
Thanks for elaborating. Pretty crazy we’re talking seconds and not ms when loading a blank page.
Slow page load speed is one of the main things that makes me consider if Bubble is the right tool for the type of apps I’m building – or if I should restructure to a one-page app, which comes with its own set of challenges.
FWIW page load speed is touched upon in one of the AMAs from BubbleCon: https://youtu.be/JItxZUEeqlM?si=SqNLmZBD0FRU6dC8&t=275
Sounds like there is work being done on the issue, though I’m not sure if it falls in the “a few improvements here and there” bucket or actually is an attempt to solve the root causes (like how plugins are handled as mentioned in the answer).
2 Likes
That has been what it has been for a couple of years now, since Bubble has started to publicly address the page load speed issue as something they are working on addressing.
I just watched that video you linked, and plugins may play a role I guess, but doesn’t seem to be the main culprit.
And thank you @eli for that second question. I’m not sure if they are really working on it though, as last I heard from Bubble that feature was in the works 18 months ago, but no team has it on their roadmap at present. I was told this a couple of months ago in a ‘listening session’.
2 Likes
Run_debug.js only runs on test versions, right?
I’m kind of cheating here because my landing page is quite barebones and my app doesn’t use client side plugins for the most part but I can get okayish speeds. The only problem is that it takes forever just for the server to initially serve the request as you pointed out. Compared to the fastest websites that serve content statically this is still really slow. They need to work on this next and the expression composer next and stop fiddling around with the UI.
It only runs with debug mode - normally it is run.js. That’s swapped out for a debug version when needed. The debug version is just slightly larger.
You should check out toddle.dev with SSR. Maybe thats what you are looking for!
Spent a couple of hours looking into Toddle and it seems very capable. The only real potential alternative to Bubble I’ve come across in the sea of no-code tools. What’s your experience building in Toddle vs. Bubble?
I think Toddle is more low code and not really the same level of nocode as Bubble.
Does the pagerabbit plugin in works solve the loading speed issue described here or does that still require a site be loaded in properly(slowly) the first time?
It is closer to real coding, which is an advantage for me. And it is a frontend-only tool which is also a better fit for me as I am using xano as backend already.
And the biggest advantage in my case is just simply SSR and therefore the huge performance boost compared to bubble and other tools.
You can build everything you can build with NextJS/Javascript with it. In fact the toddle editor IS BUILT with toddle itself. Which is quite impressive I think.
Sure, if you are good with code, toodle is a great option.
Thanks, that’s pretty much what I gathered too from the videos I’ve been watching.
It’s not my impression that you necessarily have to be good with code, but sure it might help, like the way elements are called div, img etc. and it seems you have more direct access to manipulating the CSS of elements if you wish to do so. And of course having to provide your own backend, which I would imagine could be the biggest showstopper for non-technical people. But as a UX designer with outdated knowledge about HTML and CSS, none of this really scares me. On the contrary it seems like several things that are notoriously difficult to do in Bubble is easier in Toddle (for example having a reuseable element / component communicate with its parent page/element).
1 Like
please create a new topic if you want to continue discussing SEO optimizations. Thanks!