So I’m working on a price comparison app which starting out is going to involve around 15,000 products and each product will be checking prices at 3-5 different retailers. Naturally, the source of this pricing data is coming from several different merchant API’s.
I’m learning very quickly that constantly running workflows in the background to keep my DB updated with the latest prices is not optimal. It doesn’t take much to hit CPU capacity, the process of updating is a slow go and often breaks, and not to mention it’s a bit crazy trying to get all these different feed formats to fit nicely into a unified database.
I started looking into something like Make.com to run all my APIs, store my data nicely in something like Google Sheets, and then pump that clean data back into my Bubble DB. However, doing that everyday with a big database will quickly escalate my costs.
Then I discovered Xano.com from other Bubblers here and what caught my eye is the unlimited rate limit on the paid plans.
My original thinking was to have all my pricing data pump into Xano and then from Xano I sync to my Bubble DB, but then I’m back to Bubble’s limits and bogging down my server CPU.
So I’m curious, is Xano fast enough and limitless enough that users could pull directly from it when comparison shopping? Normally with this method I’m worried about rate limits being hit but with Xano there are none.
For a price comparison website (think Trivago/Kayak) are there disadvantages to having the DB completely remote when it comes to search/filtering/sorting?
I will let others comment who have more experience but for what little experience I have had, Xano has been stella. The only thing you have to do accommodate is the fact using a 3rd party DB does affect what we all take for granted in bubble. For example if you have a repeating group and you update or change something within a thing in that RG the RG will not update or refresh automatically… And other similar benefits to using bubbles own DB. I’ve been using Xano for about 2 months and its all good. I have no affiliation by the way… i did look at beckendless.com. thats good too. but for me Xano is better for my needs. Pricey compared to what you get with Bubble builtin but thats my choice as it will serve my needs in the long term
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@Bubbleboy: Mind if I ask what needs you had/have that ended up being a good fit for Xano?
Only ditch when you shortly before you need to.
Xano is great and will suit you well! Get a discount on your Xano plan here
No, I think the bubble database is great for a lot of things. But when you really need performance searching, you plan to do a lot of database actions, or you have to run a lot of back and workflows and or run workflows on a bunch of database objects, bubble might not be what you need. Similarly, say you’re selling products and you need to make sure that you don’t over sell to what you have an inventory. You need to be able to do transactions or batched operations on your database while locking it out from anything else occurring until the first operation is finished to ensure that inventory counts are always accurate and you can actually complete a sale. These are all things that you can do on Xano.
No the bubble system does not automatically know when you’ve made updates to your Zano back end, however it’s a simple as reinitializing your API call. You should not run into issues when this is done wisely. The truth is though, the set up will take a little bit longer because you’re working into systems and bubble doesn’t automatically know what your data structure is. So there will be initial API set up and then working it into the rest of your system.
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Four reasons:
- I needed my data to be stored in Europe GDPR etc (i dont want to go dedicated)
- I actually call my Database from outside of bubble… long story… No rate limits.
- Xano has “addons” like Graph QL which means i dont have to make several API calls to bubble DB. i just make one single call to Xano and wham job done. better user experience speed wise
- Backend actions and and workflows on DB where bubble was starting to grind.
I would just say Bubbles DB is outstanding and for me… in possibly 90% of apps people should use bubbles DB
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I would say 90% of apps is a high number. 90% of apps that are MVP apps, yes.
However, at some point when your app scales, you have more data, more processing and more real world requirements such as “Europe GDPR” or “Database Transactions”.
Until Bubble provides us with this type of functionality, it will only serve primarily as a niche platform for MVP products.
