I hoped the bubble wasn’t just
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Just spent $250 on a template to test a new idea. This is a lot of cash for me, which is now potentially wasted. What would better or more predictable alternatives be to Bubble? I really don’t want to be held hostage by the service that I use.
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Can’t even confirm NOW unlimited records on paying plans? There are LITERALLY HUNDREDS if not thousands of users crying out that unlimited records is key for them for one reason or another. I am seriously baffled by your lack of awareness that damage control should have started about 2 hours after the announcement… not two hours from now!
I have glanced at TeamViewer this morning (our Team is on a free day because of your surprise yesterday, and today’ we’re having “remote open offices” and a learning day for the staff devs to let off some steam and try to regroup after yesterday.
**Nothing would be better than hearing from Bubble before lunch in the US.**Even a barebones statement, including a groveling and deep apology and much more reassurance that you aren’t planning to kill Bubble’s usefulness.
I don’t want my team going to lunch and coming back with a plan that will cost $10,000 of transition work to get us away from this huge risk you have shown us.
Because it’s an open office day, we all have TeamViewer access to and half our team is reading drama about Bubble or dabbling with an alternative. Every minute that goes by without a “we’re unbelievably sorry we almost killed all your businesses” and “we will not be implementing database thing limits” … is even scarier to me.
@emmanuel if you slept last night, you are different from many of us who were blindsided yesterday
How many more crashed forum threads before we get an actual apology, not reused language?
How long until we know if there’s any point in even asking our team members to believe in Bubble, when they have all been pulling away for other headaches for over a year now…
… the window of opportunity for any sort of Cmd-Z is closing much faster than you folks seem to think.
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unfortunately, this is one of the built-in downsides of relying on a for-profit company to built your software products. They need to make $ off of you somehow 
We can agree a direct AWS charge is better for everyone, but then Bubble would have no primary way to charge us for the value they create.
I’ve been working on a Firebase integration with a client bubble app for a while, and there are a lot of technicalities and brunt development work that go into an external DB. I can’t imagine having to do this for every little app – it’s going to really destroy the agile development Bubble promises. I build on bubble because it’s quick, cheap, and easy to iterate on. Clients are always happy with the cost and speed, with full knowledge of bubble’s limitations.
The more I think about yesterday’s announcement, the more baffled I am. Perhaps it was some finance guy in a VC chair who came up with the idea, but how did this pass the engineering and leadership team? They rely on AWS for their CDNs themselves-- surely they understand the pricing models of industry-standard hosting?
I am mid-build with a client, who has also recommended bubble to many mid-sized and big companies to build their internal tools. We both felt like idiots today on call. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the agency owners and developers who have staked their careers on bubble, and been here on day 1.
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All dear devs out there. We’re all in the same position but now let’s try and give the bubble team a bit of time. Let’s focus on what we know.
- They will not keep this proposal as it is.
- Panic and pushing for more drama will not help.
- Our voice was heard and Bubble management team is aware.
- We say we’re professionals so now let’s act as ones.
Let’s wait for the feedback now.
I would be really suprised if there would be an answer within a day so let’s be a bit real.
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Exactly how I feel. A month ago I was braging to my wordpress-developer-friend about what bubble can do and how amazing it is. Today I was thinking that Wordpress might need old school php and real coding skills but it is open source and will always stay that way. Was I the bigger fool in trusting Bubble?
Also interesting. Back in 2015 even open source was considered. It is a bit sad to see where their priorities lie now.
I really am amazed from the backlashed the potential price change has gotten. I didn’t spot any positive comment towards it and I am also amazed at the maturity of the comments. The 2 posts about the pricing model look like they were written by a politician trying to sugarcoat a very bad move but trying to sell it as a feature rather than an unfortunate change. Serious users in bubble did see through this and also commented on these shady way of expression.
Because of the maturity of the bubble users - many of them being CEOs themselves - maybe it is better to address the bubble community, or the higher paying clients, in a way like board members instead of citizens who voted for you (and now you don’t genuinely care for them). Don’t sugar coat things and lie. Announce your goals and needs. Write “we need more cash” it is very much acceptable and many users are happy to pay to keep the company afloat which in turn would keep their own projects afloat.
I also realize that the bad thing with investors is that they are not using the platform and don’t know how easily they can damage it. It sure is good to take into consideration for my future ventures. I saw so many comments on people wanting to leave the platform now and I myself checked out Wappler which is a bit more difficult but with my programming background still easy to master.
Like someone pointed out the damage would be visible not right away, but starting a few months from now. Will it lead to the end of bubble? I don’t think so. If you spend enough money on marketing you will be able to lure in new users and entrap them in this system, and they will be happy. But the existing users are looking left and right to leave.
Even with an apology people are going to wonder is this just political talk to keep users happy for now so they don’t leave? When will the next big-crushing announcement cripple businesses and kill app en masse.
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I had been curious why a lot of members I remember being upset in 2019 aren’t popping up in this thread today. I thought surely after 24 hours or so we’d see some familiar avatars.
One of the developers I work with sent me a screenshot from somewhere else on the web and many of those previously well-known “power bubblers” have seemingly transitioned. So if Bubble is waiting on these people to pop in and voice an opinion… I doubt they will.
I am at a loss again this morning - having to do damage control on my own team today with no information to go on. Bubble is giving me and so many others so much time to think about just how upsetting this last move was!
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my exact feeling, im working on something which just got funded last - and our tech was part of the reasons for the investment…and now this…
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I am posting a screenshot because the thread was locked yesterday, making it hard to quote here inline.
Wanted to add another q̶u̶i̶c̶k̶ thought after reading a lot of replies here:
I think we should be careful in assuming intentions before the Bubble team has had a chance to respond properly. I’m as baffled as anyone as to how this decision was reached and communicated, but I don’t find it given that this somehow indicates a major change in the company’s culture or failure to commit to its founding values. I think it’s important for now to see this as what it probably was: a major miscalculation and failure of communication.
Without getting philosophical, I’ll say that assuming the worst in people with very little information to go on is a major problem of our times and a seeming bi-product of how we live our online lives. Every assumption made about Bubble’s intentions is just that - assumptions. We should remember that Bubble has been bootstrapped for years by young founders just like many of its clients and that the transition from unknown startup with two employees to an industry leader with ripple effects probably far beyond their wildest imagination, we should all be understanding that it takes some adjustments to learn how to handle. I don’t find it completely unreasonable to turn the mirror at some of the more angry voices here and remind them that you did make the choice yourself to invest your time and money in a young company that’s going to go through growth pain, new investors, management changes, new boards and possible acquisitions in the years ahead. That’s a chance you were willing to take to get a low-cost development framework.
While I completely sympathise that yesterday’s move gave a strong sense of uncertainty and can affect people strongly bot financially and emotionally, I think it’s healthy to remember that this is by no means an unusual event for a startup to go through, and you shouldn’t expect this to be the last misstep they take.
While I have personally been more critical of yesterday’s event than anything prior to this, I also remain continually impressed and have a high level of faith in the integrity and ability of @emmanuel/@josh and their team to solve this. No one is more aware than they are of the challenging navigation they have to do in the coming days, and I personally find the calls for an apology to be quite unnecessary and unproductive. I also don’t expect a completely revamped pricing strategy to realistically be communicated a mere 18 hours since the last one was bombarded. What they decide today needs to balance the needs of the platforms Users with Bubble financial health for years to come: I wouldn’t want it rushed. In fact, I’d rather read about over the weekend or even later.
Af of now, you are still on the same plan as you were two days ago - take a breath and pretend nothing happened for now.
I hope I get the point through in my previous comments that my intention was to highlight what I thought was important:
- that the decision seemed incredibly rushed, not researched and frankly not even subject to common sense
- that the communication was extremely poorly executed
- that I think there’s an ongoing issue with agencies, freelancers and founders fighting an uphill battle to convince the market that Bubble is not just for MVP’s while Bubble themselves in many ways seem to fairly consistently communicate the opposite. I get the feeling a bit too often that Bubble don’t quite grasp the gravitas of what they’ve created and what it’s used for.
- that they also don’t seem to be fully aware that there’s a chain of communication that’s not serviced in the right way today: to publish these news without any indication to the thousands of developers who have clients to answer to is thoughtless, bordering on reckless.
- I also agree that going forward we need some guarantees in place that can remove some of the uncertainty that people are feeling now and have felt for a long time. As an example, to suggest applying this price change retroactively to existing apps seems to me pretty insane, and the reaction from the community is entirely predictable
Whether I was successfully able to convey this in a productive way I honestly don’t know, but at least it was my intention to do so.
Oh, and yeah, so I guess I’m unable to write short posts. I did try though.
For now, let’s give the team some room to breathe. Comment and provide feedback all you want, but let’s try to keep it constructive: if you have strong opinions about how the future of Bubble should look, it’s in your best interest to convey that in a way that they’ll listen to.
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When someone holds my business hostage on a whim, I think expressing frustration in a forum and pointing a light at the fact this is not the first or second time is helpful to ensure Bubble’s reaction is enough to save itself from… well, frustrated users being beyond wanting to post.
I’m here because I’m waiting on an update. I’m paying a team today who is doing no work because they saw yesterday as insane, too. I think until a meaningful announcement is made, asking people to say something without emotion seems like the wrong thing to focus on.
Edit: And lost funding for a huge project, possibly costing me future opportunities as well. This may not have had the same effect on your livlihood @petter , so I’m glad you’re here to add your voice to balance it out in case Bubble can’t handle feedback unless it is nice (I have seen otherwise, but I understand where you’re coming from)
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very much agreed with @petter above.
It was our decision.
You knew of vendor lockin.
You decided to save time by not learning to code instead.
No need to lash out as much.
Sure, I also made some sarcastic jokes and had a bad night.
But I did offer logical reasons and most importantly alternatives that I supported that would make sense (many posts did not)
I did not make comparisons to war or dictators because a dictator ignores feedback and war destroys lives not only online businesses.
The decision has been revoked.
And waiting a few days can also be expected and should be in order.
100 years ago it would take a week for a letter to arrive across the world.
Now I can write this post (theoretically) from my toilet while ordering my Uber with a device with enough computing power to go to the moon
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I apologize if anyone’s feelings were hurt or if I upset you; clearly in that case we are going through very different experiences.
I don’t know why anyone would want more time – I have had a lot of time to reconsider since yesterday, so the more time that goes by, the more concerned I am that the team is bickering over something again that will be another bomb.
It seems like an easy crisis to start defusing immediately.
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Não Acredito !!! Principalmente na Limitação do Banco de Dados. aqui no Brasil temos um dos maiores crescimentos na plataforma Bubble. Temos vários aplicativos e cursos em desenvolvimento. agora com essa nova política de preços vai tudo para o Lixo. Bora procurar outra plataforma…
Good morning or good afternoon.
thank you emanuel for putting dreams or projects in check, I would like to emphasize that everyone who is using the bubble is because they trust or trust the tool, I really like the tool but I can’t stay on this check, rethink your business vision really in which one will be your impact, and many will migrate to other tools and abandon the bubble. I’m wondering if we can really trust the bubble tool now, a flea behind the ear. thanks
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i just hope the bubble team comes up with good news in the future…
Just a bit of a sort of mod thing from me.
- What a thread!
Thanks to everyone who has posted, there have been very very few reports. Given the emotional nature, that is pretty amazing. And testimony to the community. Bubble is listening. How could they not?
- Totally get the pain. I have been here before.
No, really. Twice before. Removing unlimited apps with unlimited data in 2016(?)…wow that was bad. I think I have a great-grandfather plan.
- I could never put it better than what @petter has written.
Let’s give them time and space. Take a breath.
- No removal of rants (at least not from me) but please be as civil as you have been, and also don’t repeat. Once (maybe twice) is enough. Thanks.
Thanks again
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Finaly some wise words.
Let’s be honnest, Bubble has always been able to answer our questions, and adress our problems.
Did they make a mistake ? I’d say yes.
Should we be angry forever ? Definitely not.
Companies like Bubble actually talk with customers, not like GAFAs.
@emmanuel took less than 24 hours to answer our concerns to tell us they heard us. Would Zuckerberg do that ? Don’t think so.
So please just calm down.
All those threatening, and saying they’ll leave bubble, and “trust is broken” and “we’ll never forgive you” and “you will never find a customer like me again”, please allow me to laugh. You are not talking to your future ex girlfriend.
You have zero alternative because there is no product as good as bubble.
That is why you guyz are becoming crazy.
So now, just breathe and let them bring a solution to us.
They’ll do something sustainable for everyone for sure.
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Es por eso que me gusta estar acá, no somos un numero si no una comunidad
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Wanted to drop my comment in here quickly since @emmanuel said he was monitoring the thread.
First, I do appreciate that your team was willing to listen and take a couple of steps back. So credit where it’s due there. I’ve certainly made mistakes in my career and learning to truly own them is not easy. Kudos for listening to your fans.
That said, we’ve spent the last 5–6 months researching and organizing resources around the tech stack we’ll use to build our own app—which is planned to be a significant part of our business model. As of yesterday, I was about 2 days away from initiating a build of the first module (potentially with help from a prominent member of your community) and kicking off a huge investment in time, resources, and trust in Bubble as a foundational building block of my company’s long term growth strategy.
I have to say, the announcement yesterday was a harrowing reminder of the inherent risk that comes with locking into a system where we literally own nothing and you could, at any point, make sweeping changes out of our control that could ruin our entire model… That just feels like a lot of uncertainty, now.
One of our co-founders cautioned against this exact scenario a couple months ago when I made my case for why Bubble was our best possible option. I fought for Bubble pretty hard—even referencing your recent funding round as a strong indicator that Bubble was here to stay and was likely facing rapid improvement because of the new backing. But now I’m feeling pretty silly about those conversations. It seems the funding could have had an opposite impact and created a soup of motivations that now don’t really serve anyone particularly well.
I’m still undecided what I’ll do but the silence is admittedly difficult. I did spend almost all of yesterday exploring Wappler, its feasibility for our project, if the talent I have on my team could make it work.
I’m rooting for you and your team @emmanuel ! I want to believe… but I’m really just not sure now, in all honesty. Am I willing to bet my company’s growth on this without really knowing what changes could come down the pipe in the future? I don’t know. I’m looking forward to hearing your next proposal.
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