Pricing change is on pause for now

[ed727]

@equibodyapp

Quite a blow for many of us who have built careers and businesses based on Bubble but it is a good lesson for us all in risk management…i.e don’t put all your eggs in the one basket.

I’m embarrassed to say, but Bubble is the 4th no/low-code platform I’ve had to learn. I was hoping it would be the last. Platform #1 was shut down by its corporate owner. Platform 2 overpromised what it could do. Platform 3 had a fatal limitation on searching many-to-many relationships. Now platform 4 (Bubble) threatens to bump prices 5-30x.

I’m waiting to see how Bubble plans to restore user trust, but I’m also wondering if the problems I’ve had with no-code are endemic to the model itself, and in the long run would it be smarter to learn something like django or drupal where you have more control and stability.

[sales11]

I am very concerned what the result of your decision will be and what the future will hold. I just finished building my first app with Bubble, adding finishing touches today and then I get the email. I am building this application for a customer that doesn’t want to spend a lot of money which in my opinion is one of the strongest points of your service. I have been a developer for over 20 years using other tools to create programs for clients that need solutions for their business. I was excited to find Bubble and think that although there are some issues to overcome when using it to build a program, it is a great option for quickly building affordable applications for clients. At this point though I am questioning if I should even sell this program to this client because it makes it apparent how depeding on a subscription option like this can cause the bottom to fall out and what I sell to the client may turn quickly to something they can’t even afford if I sell it for the subscription price you sell it to us for, therefore damaging my reputation with the client also. We all I believe need some reassurance of the plans for the future and now. We understand that you need to make money but you can’t ruin your service in order to get there quickly. Find a way please to build our confidence back quickly and assure us all that we are not investing our time and reputation in something that may be a mistake. Make no mistake I do like the product and commend you for quickly reconsidering your decision but please soon let us know what the future pricing plans look like.

[finn.rothacker]

Thank you for listening to us! Well done

I feel heard, and I feel trust that you will come to a decision that leaves your finances a bit better, and your customers happy.

I think many of us are willing to pay a reasonable amount more if it means the long term competence and stability of the platform.

Best of Luck! I really love this tool, and it would hurt to see it’s beauty lost. At the end of the day, you’ve made something really wonderful. @emmanuel @josh

[georgeaxelolson]

If you want to charge more add a highly compelling feature, like turbocharged SEO for an extra fee, or very easy no code api integrations.

OR charge only new users the new rate, and reward your loyal users with legacy rates.

Here’s other things I would pay more for (indirectly):

• A wizard for converting legacy pages to flex in a systematic way
• more great plugins
• simple reusable element templates
• 24/7 tech chat support (intercom chat not)
• 10x more robust stripe plug-in
• robust lottie plug-in
• SEO improvements or an incredible webflow integration

@emmanuel

[duke.severn]

@yusaney1

100M invested? Who runs the company now?

Good question, though this seems to me like a smart move for the company.

I would like to know if the current pricing model is sustainable. Looks to me like moving from a pyramid where the powerusers pay for the free users and hobbyists, to an hourglass model that charges the mid-tier users more. They built the bottom of the hourglass restricting free plans back then, now the top of the hourglass. It squeezes the middle, by default.

This might smooth out the curve to allow scaling apps, keeping the price of scalability attractive, and preventing “entrepreneur drain” towards bespoke apps when their business hits stride. Remember @natedogg? Is Qoins still on Bubble? I thought I remembered him saying they were transitioning. Single data point but it draws the picture. I think they were among the first apps on Bubble to be funded (my memory is foggy. Yeah six years goes by fast wth). EDIT: still on Bubble, I’m told

We’ve all had our struggles with scalability I’m sure and this seems like a move to address the higher-end of volume and users.

I get it from a business perspective - scalability affordably might be perceived as the core weakness, currently. At least now that this editor new editor is built (and absolute fire, btw) and soon out of beta. This would help that.

Just smart money being smart, in my opinion and if I’m right about the reasons behind the change. However, looks like 2019 all over again, and smart money should have learned a few lessons from the community back then, applied them here. I’m sad to see a repeat.

Nice to see everyone here from then, and all the new faces. Except @kfawcett. He actually left. I thought he was kidding.

[eli.marchbanks]

I know this has all been said - but I’d still like to pile on as I do believe the Bubble team is listening. The number of things and daily active users seem disconnected in the plan as proposed. DAUs seem way too high and things in database seem way too low. I’d much prefer a model that charges based on database size instead of rows of things. There’s a huge difference between a stored video and a text record.

[scriptschool]

In the earlier thread you asked ‘what should pricing be’? There’s nothing wrong per se with price ‘per things’. But Airtable charges $29 / month for virtually unlimited ‘things’.

They give 50K records per base… & unlimited bases. That’s unlimited records for $29/month. Yes you have to be deal with the pain of using multiple bases for your app - but at $29/month it’s fair.

If they can do that surely you can do something similar? What about $10 for every 50k records or something? Be reasonable.

[hirayaleads]

I have an app where 1 user can consume tons of DB things. Damn! I am having 2nd thoughts on releasing it

[narayan]

I am < 100 days on Bubble and find it and it’s community just awesome n unimaginable! My 2 cents on the pricing:

1. Increase a certain % every year on all plans and just like on other topics, declare much in advance. So, all know an x % hike every year rather than keeping a cap on unique visitors or db.
   ( The whole idea and USP of Bubble gets dented otherwise)

2. For the newbies, instead of a grant, make one app free to launch. In our part of the world, AWS gives 12 months free so one can even get pmf. ( This would encourage 000’s more to adopt Bubble)

Best,

Narayan

[keith]

I’m shitposting. but seriously Bubble needs to freakin’ figure it out. What a bunch of clowns.

[jessefarquhar48]

Can someone help me understand how these proposed changes would affect my start-up?
When Bubble says that it’s introducing database items/things into it’s pricing does this mean each row in the database contributes to my expenses now? (that would be pretty bad) or does it just mean i’ll be now charged for each type of thing. Charging us for each row would be pretty hardcore. My app currently has each user doing quizzes (~50 questions) and their answer to each is stored as a row in the database, they take this quiz each week. Now i could design it to delete all users data that is older than say 6 months but that is not super cool and reduces customer value.

If someone can help a fella understand that would be great.

[ed727]

@jessefarquhar48

When Bubble says that it’s introducing database items/things into it’s pricing does this mean each row in the database contributes to my expenses now?

Yep, though Bubble has put that change on pause.

[keith]

But I might delete List Shifter from the plugin store we’ll see how we feel tomorrow.

[jessefarquhar48]

Ok, great news, had a heart attack when bubble sent the email to us. I hope they don’t do anything that ruins their competitive edge. When i was looking into which no code app to use for my company the unlimited database entries is what sold me in the first place. changing this would make bubble less remarkable in the crowd. Also, whats the deal with including charge for “monthly unique daily visitors”? Does it cost bubble is computing power for each new person that arrives on my website each month to warrant a charge to us app owners? i’m not a technical person so i don’t know but this doesn’t sound right. Sound like a cash grab.

Stay beautiful Bubble

[Levi]

Allow me to show you how absurd this pricing is:

Google charges $0.18/GB of data stored [1]

Bubble charges $0.0016/thing (row of data) [2]

• 0.0016($/unit)*X=0.18($/unit)
• X=0.18/0.0016
• X=112.5

Bubble would like to charge you the same rate for 112.5 rows of data as Google charges to store 1GB of data

1GB of text is 1,048,576,000 characters

If we assume that the average Bubble customer has 100,000 characters stored per row (1000 columns at 100 characters per column)

• 112.5 rows * 100,000 characters/row = 11,250,000 total characters

Bubble charges the same amount for 11,250,000 characters stored as Google charges for 1,048,576,000 characters stored

Storing data on Bubble is 93X more expensive than storing data on Google

Store less than 1,000 columns per row and 100 characters per column? You do NOT want to know the multiple you’re paying now

I understand that Bubble has operating costs, and that Bubble is a startup, but how do you justify marking up your data storage costs by 9,300% to your notable competitor?

I had to rotate my phone sideways to calculate how much more expensive your costs were than google. I didn’t even have to do that to buy my house.

[1] Pricing  |  Firestore  |  Google Cloud
[2]

- Break -

Bubble,

Please think of your pricing in terms of:
Value growth for our customers = value growth for us = value growth for Bubble

Metrics that indicate value growth for our customers:

• User visits increasing
• User time spent on app increasing
• Database / file storage size increasing
• Bandwidth used increasing

As the above metrics increase, we can charge our customers more, and then we can pass along a greater share of that revenue to Bubble.

I would love to have a synergetic pricing model, not a suffocating pricing model.

[rio]

@duke.severn

Is Qoins still on Bubble? I thought I remembered him saying they were transitioning.

Yeah, it is still on bubble. Landing page is migrated to Webflow. I checked on it with dev tools.
I wonder if Dedicated plan has different price plan than the regular pricing. model. If that is true, I want to know how these successful apps’ pricing model are applied.

[duke.severn]

Ah that’s what it was. Thanks - I’ll edit the comment. Would love to hear from powerusers as well.

[aj11]

It’s a cash grab. It costs almost nothing. Cost is only incurred when they start triggering workflows that draw on computing power.

[jessefarquhar48]

@shwabbie

This price change would have made building this site on a budget impossible and forced me to fundraise ASAP or start over on another platform.

Yes i feel the same. Fundraising should ideally come after validating your MVP with a few hundred users and with little to no money. That’s the whole point and use-case of bubble if you ask me. Now they want to make that less realistic.

[jobs]

Bubble already has dedicated plans that run individually on AWS. Just put a 2 or 3X surcharge on AWS costs and we will all happily pay it