To collate all the concerns across forum posts so staff and Bubblers don’t have to scroll through 100s of pages of repetition, I’m creating this post. I’ll try update this top post with any new bullet points I’ve missed if anyone wants to add something.
First, to address points made in the pinned thread by Bubble VP of marketing @tatiana.a that users have taken issue with:
“we see that if every paying app switched today without optimizing at all, 92% of apps would see less than a $250/month change, and 83% would see less than a $50/month change”
- The majority of apps are likely on a $29/month personal plan or a $115/m professional plan. An increase of $250/month for 92% of apps (a mind-boggling 2x - 10x price increase) is not the flex you think it is… Sickening to imagine the future costs if our apps were to scale further under this proposed pricing model.
“In our analysis of our user base, our team was either able to find massive workload optimization opportunities (sometimes >95%)”
- Not without losing functionality. You’re also forcing us to think about WU for EVERY menial action added to our app which is unbearably tedious and stressful. This doesn’t just change the price for bubble devs, it changes the actual user experience of Bubbling and limits the power of Bubble as a tool.
- The knock-on effect is it creates worse quality apps with less functionality. We will all be forced to have less functionality and features to cut WU costs at every turn.
File storage update and free plan changes.
- Thank you, this change is appreciated
“Most workflow actions have a base cost ranging from roughly 0.1 to 3 WU”
- Contradicts countless screenshots in the forums of people reporting much higher WU for simple workflows - up to 13 WUs for ‘creating a simple new thing’ in one screenshot. API workflow WU seem to be a major issue.
“Almost everything the server does incurs at least some workload”
- Optimizing and testing new features in dev mode incur workload. If we get it wrong the first couple times and eat up 50% of our workload in the process of optimizing or even just checking if something works is ridiculous. Dev mode should not be included in WU capacity.
- There is no way to predict random visitor actions, how many times they click a button etc. Its extremely dangerous to build on Bubble if users (or competitors / bad actors) can start costing our app thousands of dollars extra per month by exploiting workflows. It’s insane to think we would now have to build extra security and fail-safes for literally every workflow to try stop people from exploiting our WU capacity.
On optimization
- We’ve been given a prediction that most apps can optimize their WU by 30-40%. If we accept the 40% optimization prediction, that doesn’t offset the 100% - 1000%+ cost increases that is being reported for the large majority of apps (and corroborated by Tatiana’s expectation of a $50 - $250/m increase for 92% of apps).
- Optimization SOUNDS like a good thing because it generally means increasing speed. Unfortunately the reality is more nuanced then that when we’re FORCED to optimize or face being charged money. The real effect is a speedy app that has limited funcitonality because we can’t afford to develop the functionality that we want and are constantly trying to cut features and workflows at every corner.
- Bubble is the best no-code platform currently because of how “powerful” a tool it is. If we are too scared to use any of the power it offers, then what’s the point.
Other concerns and suggestions
- Majority of people agree that a price increase is fine and are happy to pay 10% or up to 50% higher than current prices compared with the proposed new pricing model based on WU.
- Seems like there is a mismatch between their estimates of WU and what is really being calculated. Seems off by a factor of 10x. This is also reflected in the extremely low base WU capacity offered by each plan.
- No way to accurately measure or predict how much WU a new workflow will use in testing (let alone on live mode).
- Growing a business to the first 100 or so users during MVP stage is now completely unfeasible. While the company is yet to secure funding and validating the idea, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars per month on Bubble fees for a couple users/visitors is not even an option. Only when the company begins making money or secures funding can they afford this pricing model. Unfortunately they will never have the chance to reach that level on the Bubble platform with the new pricing model which would require $100s/m for any reasonably functional MVP with 10-100 users/visitors.
- Operating costs of any business need to be predictable. Under the proposed pricing model, Bubble would become the #1 riskiest no-code platform in terms of exposure to cost changes month-by-month as users use more/less WU and with each new workflow/feature added.
- Agencies and freelancers will no longer be able to accurately tell their clients how much their monthly costs are going to be with any degree of certainty which is a major red flag for any client, and a deal-breaker for most.