I now have to choose Bubble or Webflow+MemberStack+Jetboost for my client project. But I keep getting the impression that the web-apps built by Bubble take a lot more time to load at first – For example, when I visit Nucode.co, it usually takes more than 15 seconds to complete loading on my browser (Macbook Pro 2014 and Chrome Browser with the latest versions). Another example is Vidi.is – it also takes a similar time.
Is it because I’m visiting those webs from South Korea? Or is it simply the limit of the web-apps built by Bubble?
Such a problem can occur when the concentration of complex logic at the time of loading the application + loading third-party libraries required for the plug-ins to work. If you correctly design the page load, then such long downloads can be avoided.
Although most likely this is due to your location and possibly the speed of the Internet. My page loads in 3 seconds
The Nucode site loads fine for me (in the US). Perhaps reach out to them and ask them what’s going on. They’d probably appreciate knowing if they are having a loading issue in your country if that turns out to be the case.
I recall seeing some discussion here and there on the forum about load speeds globally – you could probably find them with some digging and learn if there is a difference between US and rest of world.
The bigger question is whether what you want to do can be done in Webflow + bolt-ons, or could only be done in Bubble. In my case, I started with Webflow, but eventually moved to Bubble because Webflow couldn’t do what I needed in terms of database functionality, logic, and user integration.
I read somewhere that Bubble (recently?) changed to front load pages when visited for the first time or after an update is deployed.
Recently my own page jumped from a few seconds load time to well over 10seconds after I deploy an update. I cleared my cache and visited a few other bubble apps and saw load times from 10sec all the way up to crazy 20sec. I also see this when previewing the app, which has significantly slowed down development for me personally, as I like to tweak and preview, and tweak and preview. There’s probably merit in taking the hit on the first visit and gain improved speeds for repeat visits. Most of us are building repeat users anyway.
However, from the literature out there, if a page takes up to 10sec to load, most visitors will simply just leave. I’m probably too old to qualify as a low attention span millennial, but that certainly aligns with my browsing behaviour.
My plan is to use Webflow as a landing page. Webflow has other benefits when used as a lead to bring new users in. But in no way can it rival Bubble on the app level, and neither is it meant to.
It does increase cost, but neither of them are outrageously expensive on the lower tier plans.
I might of course be completely wrong, and bubble loads super fast for everyone else, but that’s my take on it, YMMV
Would you be able to post a couple of those sites where you are seeing 10-20 second load times? I’d be interested in seeing them to understand what’s on that page, and therefore what’s causing the slowness.
I also read the post about the front loading and this seems to be exactly what is occurring. After the initial loads though, page load times are radically reduced.
I don’t remember which sites I tried and which sites had what load time. I also don’t want to
name and shame people here If people are seeing slow load times on their apps it would be up to them to add it to the discussion I feel.
Having said that, you should be able to do some tests on your end and replicate it to some extent. One page I tried was recently posted on the forum as a showcase, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a few ones and run some tests.
I did find that the slowest load times occurred when previewing a dev page. When I clicked the “we’ve updated this page…” banner it would take 5seconds before the page started to reload and then another +10 seconds for the page to fully reload. In my tests it didn’t seem to have any strong correlation to which, or how many, elements were on the page. But, today this issue has completely gone away and the load time for previewing a page is fully reasonable again. Perhaps there were some tweaks on Bubble’s end, or just one of those things that randomly starts working. This issue might not have been related to the front loading change at all of course, but it seems reasonable to connect the two.
At the end of the day, I think front loading the pages is a good idea.
