Struggling with Workloads and Bubble’s Limitations: Need Advice from the Community

Need help Database
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Hi Bubble Community,

First, I want to start by saying how much I appreciate this community. Over the past few months, I’ve posted a few questions here, and the responses I’ve received have always been thoughtful and helpful. You all make Bubble feel like a warm and welcoming place, so thank you in advance for reading this.

I’ve been working with Bubble for about 3-4 months now. Before this, I’ve always been someone who struggled with the traditional way of coding—it felt chaotic, overwhelming, and often discouraged me from taking on projects I had dreamed about. When I discovered Bubble, it was like stumbling upon a treasure chest. It felt like the answer to everything I had been searching for: a no-code platform where I could finally bring my ideas to life without the headaches of traditional development.

At first, learning Bubble was a steep climb. There were days I felt like my brain was breaking trying to figure things out. But I pushed through, and slowly, it all began to make sense. The joy of seeing my ideas come to life with Bubble was unmatched. It felt like I had unlocked a superpower.

Now, a few months in, I’ve started working on a self-service kiosk platform for restaurants—a project I’ve always dreamed of. Bubble has been the foundation for this project, and everything was going smoothly. Or so I thought…

Recently, I’ve started noticing workload spikes, and it has sent me spiraling into stress and doubt. My project is still in the prototype phase, yet the workloads are already growing. I can’t stop thinking about what will happen when this scales:
• What happens when multiple restaurants use the kiosk simultaneously?
• What happens when transactions start flowing in through APIs like Bancontact, Payconiq, Visa, or Mastercard?
• What happens when the database updates constantly due to customer orders and payments?

I thought about optimizing the database by using custom states to store data locally and updating the database only once every 24 hours. But I’m worried that this solution will still result in a massive workload spike at the time of the update. I’ve also considered batching API calls to reduce their impact, but I’m unsure how feasible this is within Bubble.

The thing is, I’ve poured so much time and energy into Bubble, and now I’m faced with the reality that it might not support my long-term goals without astronomical costs. It’s disheartening, to say the least. How can we as users grow a business with bubble?

THE WORKLOADS PLAN ARE A DEALBREAKER

Here’s the truth: I’m lying in bed right now, feeling defeated. Bubble, which I once thought of as a friend, now feels like a foe. It feels like I’m playing a never-ending chess game against the platform itself. And that’s not how it should feel.

Bubble has so much potential—it’s genuinely a brilliant tool—but some of its limitations and unexpected behaviors make it hard to fully trust. For example, I’ve experienced moments where Bubble randomly deleted parts of my database or where configurations changed on their own without me doing anything. These quirks make me question whether I can rely on the platform as my business grows.

And the workloads? It’s like a shadow constantly looming over me. I can’t help but wonder: Was all this effort for nothing? Should I have gone the traditional coding route after all?

What I Need Help With

  1. Are there any strategies or best practices for managing workloads efficiently in Bubble, especially for a high-traffic use case like mine?
  2. Is it possible to batch API calls (e.g., for payments) to optimize workload usage, and how would I approach that?
  3. Are there ways to make database updates smarter (e.g., only updating when specific triggers happen, rather than constantly)?
  4. For those who’ve faced similar challenges: How did you make Bubble work for your large-scale application without breaking the bank?

Again, I want to emphasize how grateful I am to this community. You’ve been nothing but supportive, and I hope someone out there has some advice or insights that can guide me through this tough spot. I don’t want to give up on Bubble—it’s been such a transformative tool for me—but I need to figure out a way to make it sustainable.

Thank you for reading this long post and for any help or advice you can offer.

Kind regards,
Samir

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There’s no wrong in feeling defeated. Failing will always be the lowest point, know that it can only get better, one way or another.

Without going into specifics, there are many ways to optimize your Bubble app. Some of which can be done natively in Bubble. Some examples are:

  • Structuring your DB so you only load the data you need at any point of time.
  • Breaking Datatypes into satellites when privacy rules are not enough. (eg. A User’s stats can be a separate data type from User.)
  • Loading page data into states instead of using Searches as element data sources
  • Paginating the loading of data in repeating groups
  • Micromanaging UX and data load. Load data at the points your user needs to view them.
  • Passing results of Searches as parameters in custom workflows for search results that need to be used over multiple workflows.
  • Shifting backend workflows to the frontend where possible and secure.
  • Using JSON instead of native fields when you need to process large amounts of data.
  • You can use JavaScript to process data or call APIs instead. You can use plugins such as Toolbox to run JS (frontend, backend), or take the time to learn to build your own plugins if you are handling sensitive data (like API keys).

There are times that you will require to shift certain processes off of Bubble. Be it to save costs, process data faster and/or transactionally etc (Bubble has a lot of limits when it comes to these). There’s no taboo in adding microservices to your Bubble app. All native apps use some form of microservice or more.

For example:

  • Storing certain types of data in an external database
  • Run processes in the cloud (eg. AWS, Google, Cloudflare)
  • Connecting your own web sockets (eg. live notifications and sync sensitive processes)

At the end of the day, it all comes down to costs. No matter what anyone in the forum likes to say, if you are building for scale, you’re going to have to do the legwork to explore, compare and then learn to run processes cheaper be it natively in Bubble or externally.

Note: IMO, you cannot avoid code even in no-code (Bubble is not actually no-code)

That said, if you’re at a dead end, there are plenty of good folk here who can optimize your app for you.

While it’s nice to think that Bubble can handle the needs of every type of app that exists, that just isn’t true. Neither is hoping that Bubble eventually will. I am using a lot of code for my apps nowadays and am planning to move some processing to Cloudflare (cheaper, faster and I need some transactional processes). I still (and plan to) keep my front end and most of my processing (such as User validation) in Bubble.

To me Bubble is easier to work with and I find it easy to stack other tech, so for me it’s the right way to go.

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Sadly, so many others are in the same position.

In the near term future there will be some new best practices introduced by community members on how to build optimally within the new era of Workload Units. Until then everything that @ihsanzainal84 has said is spot on.

And remember, at the end of the day, what you have accomplished so far is an accomplishment in itself, which can be used to motivate you to find alternatives to Bubble for actually launching live and just use the Bubble app as a prototype to gain some early traction and potentially attract investors who will provide the funding to build the app in traditional code. Most of the time investors are demanding this anyway as they do not want to be vendor locked and they want true ownership (own the code).

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at scale wu do get slightly cheaper but bubble is still expensive compared to other platforms - we pay for convenience of using the platform.

for an app like you’re talking about the wu should be manageable

create order - 10-50wu
order submit - 5wu
payment process - 5-10wu
process order in kitchen - 10-50wu
notify users of stage changes - 5-10wu

restaurant initial setup of products etc
100-500wu

lets assume 500 daily transactions (per location)
and 50 wu per transaction

= 25000 wu daily
x 30 days
750k per month

workload tier for 750k = $99

at the end of the day it is feasible to build an app like this with bubble. there are certainly things you can do to reduce wu costs and if your app reaches a certain scale then you can always take it off bubble if the costs make it not worthwhile

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I agree with @ihsanzainal84 . In my point of view, What he mentioned is right. The Workload Units could be overwhelming and you need to always taking it into consideration while building you app, however the practices he mentioned are important and beside other points they help you to control the WU spikes efficiently.
However, I believe that it all starts from the planning / analysis phase of you app because the trick is that you’ll have to know Bubble best practices when it comes to your database structuring before you even start building your app, otherwise, you might need to refactor it on the go while you have users already in production simply because designing a database in Bubble is not like traditional database design when it comes to traditional development while most of app builders start building before they know Bubble’s database design best practices.
The questions you’re asking make sense, but I can say that there are so many solutions to your problem:
1 - You can stick to Bubble and dive deeper to know its best practices and start applying them in your app. This will require some consistency from your side and asking more often here in the forum where you will find support from many people.
2 - to overcome the workload units problem forever, you might consider using an external backend (there is a learning curve in here because there will be an API call for every operation) but you’ll never think of workload units again. Personally I know many people who adopted “Supabase” as a backend for their Bubble applications and everything is going well with them. It’s also open source so that’s good to know.
3 - Go back to traditional development, and in my opinion, I won’t recommend that unless you really need and that your app’s use case cannot be implemented otherwise which I don’t think that is the case for you.

Finally, it’s up to you choose which path to go, and if you choose any of the first 2 options, feel free to always ask here and we’ll be more than happy to support you. Many people here have gone through this and now could overcome it. The WU thing has been around since 2023 and within the past 2 years, we’ve learned a lot about it.

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Thank you for all your answers. :pray: I believe I have no choice but to transition to an external database. Which external database would you recommend for long-term scalability? Should I consider Firebase, Supabase, SQL, Xano, or another solution?

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@samir.elkaddouri79 I think that before moving to external DB, you should first optimize your apps. From what I read, this is actually the main issue, not the DB stuff (but maybe you have some DB update optimization to do too like @ihsanzainal84 said).

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Hi, it’s me again! I have a question about the following point:

“To overcome the workload units problem permanently, you might consider using an external backend (there is a learning curve involved because every operation will require an API call), but you’ll never need to worry about workload units again.”

Doesn’t the use of these API calls result in high workload costs?

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API calls are not that expensive. And with for instance Supabase you can exactly decide what to share in an api call. Using Supabase will drop your workflow units with 100x easily. So from a cost perspective you are safe.

The only reason to use another frontend than Bubble would be better features or stability. Or the requirement to be owner of your data and software. After all, Bubble can shut down your app and they think you do not live up to their standards, or they can increase price with 10x, or whatever they want.

I think for rapid prototyping and first paying customers there are not many solutions like Bubble. It is when you need to scale, want to own your code you often need to look elsewhere

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No, you won’t ever worry about workload units costs.

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