Rant: Why do I Need to Pay $45k/yr for Canadian Hosting?

Meta
1

I love Bubble. I build fast, I iterate faster. But every time Canadian data residency comes up, I hit the same brick wall: “You’ll need a Private Server.” Cool… until you see the price tag starts around $45,000 USD/year. For what is essentially regional hosting, that’s bananas.

All I want is Canadian hosting. Not HIPAA. Not some exotic compliance wrapper. Just “please put my app and database in ca-central-1 (or an equivalent Canadian region) so I can meet client and procurement requirements.” That’s table stakes in 2025.

Meanwhile, data is cheap and compute is cheap. We can spin up robust managed databases and app containers with region selection across a dozen providers for a fraction of that. Even Supabase’s free tier lets you choose a data residency region. Free. Tier. If the open-source/Postgres crowd can do it out of the box, why does Bubble require me to jump to a premium, enterprise-only SKU just to pick a geography?

This pricing wall is actively pushing people away:

  • Canadian SMEs, healthcare, and public-sector-adjacent clients require data residency.

  • Startups can’t justify a $45k paywall just to land their first contract.

  • Agencies can’t pitch Bubble when the answer to “Is our data stored in Canada?” is “Yes, but it’ll cost you an extra freaking luxury car per year.”

I don’t buy the argument that regional hosting necessarily equals “dedicated everything.” If the concern is multi-tenant complexity, then ship a paid add-on or regional tier for the shared clusters. Or let us BYO database and let the Bubble runtime stay where it is while app data stays resident in-country. Give us VPC peering or Bubble-managed DB with region pick. There are a dozen pragmatic shapes this could take that don’t start at $45k.

What I (and many customers) actually need:

  • :white_check_mark: Region selection (at minimum for the database, ideally for app servers too)

  • :white_check_mark: Contractual data residency language for procurement

  • :white_check_mark: A price that doesn’t nuke early-stage ROI

What I don’t need:

  • :cross_mark: Dedicated everything, isolated clusters, or bespoke enterprise ops just to choose “Canada”

  • :cross_mark: A year-long sales cycle to get a simple geography flag

The result right now? Bubble loses customers. I’ve literally watched teams prototype in Bubble, hit the data residency wall, and migrate to stacks that let them tick the compliance box without committing to enterprise pricing. That’s heartbreaking, because Bubble is fantastic for velocity… until it isn’t.

Constructive ask:
Please introduce Region Selection as a standalone paid add-on (or a new shared-tier plan) that guarantees Canadian data residency. If the engineering constraints are real, be transparent about them and ship an interim: DB residency in Canada first, then app layer. Or BYO DB with clear guardrails. Any of these would unlock a wave of real, paying customers who are currently forced to churn.

I want to keep building on Bubble. I just don’t want to pay $45k a year for the privilege of storing rows in Canada.

cc @josh @emmanuel :folded_hands:

11 Likes
2

It’s already been announced as in the pipeline. I think before all the AI stuff.

Issue is that the team has gone incognito about it for quite a while now.

1 Like
3

That’s a very logical request. I faced the same issue here in France a while ago and just when I mention the pricing tag for the enterprise plan just for the sake of data residency on EU-based servers, the whole subject hits the wall as the pricing cannot be justified.

2 Likes
4

Same issue here but I saw two years ago a price document for dedicated instance in EU starting at $3’000 for 3 months not by month. So it’s more $12k / year no ?

1 Like
5

Thanks for chiming in. Sounds like this is hitting people in Canada, EU, everywhere.

If residency is really “in the pipeline,” awesome… but the silence makes it impossible to plan. Even a skinny roadmap would help us decide whether to wait or jump ship.

On pricing: if there’s a legit residency-only option closer to ~$12k/year, that’s a totally different convo than $45k+. Would love a clear, current answer from Bubble on what’s actually available today.

6

the honest answer is that if we haven’t announced this work in our upcoming roadmaps (check Josh’s monthly community updates, section “what we are working on” for example) then it’s safe to assume it’s not coming for a few months at least (if not longer) and you are better off not planning not app work banking on it happening by X date.

1 Like
7

The first thing is that you don’t pay just for “canadian” hosting (in fact, you should called this dedicated server/ entreprise plan). You pay for more stability, you don’t care anymore about WU in most case, you can also host more than 1 app on one dedicated server at the same cost, you have a direct support line access, you manage Bubble update yourself, have a direct DB access and much more.

The second thing is that you should consider that you are also paying a cheap price to get a full team that care about infrastructure. It’s cheaper than paying 1 IT on your own team…

However, I do agree that actually Bubble should offer a cheaper plan that could include a choice for hosting location (from my point of view, this should be available in the Growth plan). I believe that what recent Bubble update that is moving more stuff like balancer to AWS will make this possible after they complete this important update.

@fede.bubble This is something that Bubble mention like 1 year ago, like loop and parallel processing, that we should expect some update because if this was mentionned, I consider this is in the roadmap already and this should have an expected delivery quarter…

4 Likes
8

Well, doesn’t bubble run on AWS anyway… what’s the problem with having the instance in a different region. Probably tech debt, but this must be a thing at some point.

It will still be a shared env, just like the current one

1 Like
9

Exactly. You can read more on here. This is not just running on AWS, but using AWS solutions and infrastructures instead of homemade stuff..

10

Appreciate the transparency here, even though it’s not the answer I was hoping for.

@Jici You’re right, I don’t care about having a dedicated server. I’m frustrated that this is the only pathway to set where my data is stored. It’s really a ridiculous price to pay for a feature that’s free on other hosting platforms. While I hope you’re right about this becoming possible in the future, it may end up being more economically feasible to re-build my entire app off bubble for that price :frowning:

2 Likes
11

When asked about server location at last year bubblecon during the AMA, they said it was planned in early 2026, is it not the case anymore ?

1 Like
12

^^^^^ This

2 Likes
13

Thanks for posting about this @gina . I’m facing the same issue. Bubble has been, and is, amazing but this is one of the shortfalls that has me contemplating a move. I would love to see this in the roadmap (even if it was in the form of a more affordable enterprise plan offering data residency selection).

14

I completely agree with this.

I ran into the same thing during COVID with a few Canadian clients who needed strict data residency. What worked for us was hosting the sensitive data in an AWS ca-central-1 region (Montreal) and linking to it securely from Bubble.

That way, the app still ran on Bubble, but anything that needed to stay in Canada lived in AWS and was only accessed when required. It checked the compliance boxes without needing a Private Cluster.

Is that kind of setup something that might work for you?

15

After some discussions with bubble team, price for a dedicated instance starts at $40k / year so $3.3k/ month, i think i misunderstood information two years ago.

I read a tweet from attendees at Bubble Paris Conf and it seems that EU location for a shared cluster is not on the roadmap.

We now plan to switch to Xano.

1 Like
16

@sebastien.etter or you can switch to supabase too.

1 Like
17

Or supabase of course but i have in mind that Xano will be easier to integrate and manage for a big app. Any feedbacks ?

18

If you have experience with code, I would say go with Supabase; if not, go with Xano. Both are pretty okay for big apps. Supabase has a bigger community than Xano. But with Xano, you get customer support pretty easily; with Supabase, it’s a bit tough. You can self-host Supabase if you feel like it later.

@sebastien.etter