Evaluating Bubble.io? Everything you need to know in six minutes!

What is it?

Bubble.io (“Bubble”) is a proprietary cloud-based web application builder and visual programming language. Bubble Group Inc, which owns Bubble, was founded in 2012 in the USA.

What is Bubble’s core value proposition?

• Bubble enables non-technical people to build web applications without code via a web-based what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor.
• Bubble removes the need to hire teams of programmers to build typical web applications for most use cases.
• Development time in Bubble is 20–40% of coding for many use cases.

How much does it cost?

Consumer plans:

• Bubble has a free plan with some limitations for getting started.
• Bubble’s plans start at $29 USD/month for a very basic app suitable for small hobby projects or personal portfolio websites.
• For $119 USD/month to $349 USD/month, you can host a production-grade app with all of the features of Bubble enabled.

Consumer plans are hosted on Bubble’s AWS infrastructure in US West 2 Region (Oregon, USA).

There are various Workload tiers that are an add-on to the base pricing plans listed above, for apps that will have higher workload capacity than these plans allow for.

See Bubble’s pricing page for the latest information.

Enterprise plans:

• Bubble’s “Dedicated” plans offer enterprise-grade features starting from around $3,000 USD/month. Contact Bubble’s sales team for current pricing and offers specific to your use case.

Dedicated plans are hosted on AWS infrastructure in the AWS Region of your choice globally. Dedicated plans offer priority support, architecture assistance, and isolated infrastructure.

What can you build on Bubble?

You can build and host fully customized web applications for computer and mobile web browsers.

Web applications are data-driven websites with features such as Signup/Login, User Accounts, a customizable Database, Workflow, and API integrations with other web services (e.g. payment gateways, email providers, etc).

You can also build native mobile applications (submitted to Google Play and Apple App stores) with the assistance of several third-party service providers.

For which use cases does Bubble make sense?

Bubble makes economic sense when off-the-shelf (OTS) software does not offer the functionality required, and the time or money is available to invest in building a custom solution.

Popular use cases for Bubble include:

• Two or three-sided marketplaces
• Consumer or business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SAAS) products
• Internal web platforms for small-medium businesses (SMB), not-for-profit organizations, and enterprise businesses.
• eCommerce sites
• Social networks

Most OTS software, even those offering the solutions listed above, usually offer one account only (where an account typically has one or more users working on a common set of data). On Bubble, you have the flexibility to build:

1. any one of these solutions,
2. a hybrid of any of these solutions, or
3. a platform hosting any of these solutions with accounts for different users within the wider platform.

What are its strengths?

1. When you create a Bubble app, you get a blank canvas that comes pre-loaded with styles, a workflow-building engine, a database, storage, and API connectivity out of the box.
2. Bubble is vertically integrated, meaning that it hosts the front end and back end in a secure way on the same infrastructure, which significantly reduces development time.
3. Bubble handles all of the cloud architecture, content distribution network, caching of content/database queries, security, version control, deployment, and maintenance of the underlying code base. This means Bubble users can focus on business requirements (not technical requirements) such as user interfaces, workflows, and data structures.
4. Bubble has a strong user base and community, meaning there are plenty of resources to support your application development on Bubble including training, mentoring, and development partner options.
5. Bubble product is mature, meaning that the features you would expect to achieve more common and less common tasks have largely been built already. Where Bubble does not offer a solution, there is a wide range of plugins available.

What are the limitations?

The main limitations of Bubble are:

1. No direct, on-platform support for creating and deploying native mobile apps.
2. Vendor lock-in. As Bubble provides an “all in one” development environment that includes hosting, Bubble does not allow for code export into your own hosting environment.
3. Hosting is only available in the USA unless you have a Dedicated plan.

What is the learning curve of Bubble?

Bubble is accessible for everyone to learn.

In our experience, it will take around 3 months of full-time work to become proficient with basic to intermediate tasks.

It will take up to a year of full-time work across a number of projects to become intermediate to advanced.

As a proficient Bubble user, you can expect to spend:

• Tens of hours building a proof of concept (POC) or prototype of an idea.
• Hundreds of hours creating a minimum viable product (MVP) that feels complete.
• Thousands of hours creating a mature, complex web platform.

Can teams operate a Bubble app?

Yes. Bubble offers a collaborative cloud development environment that supports multiple users making concurrent changes.

Unlike tools such as Figma, it is difficult to see exactly what collaborators are doing in real-time, so it is important to communicate outside of the platform to avoid making conflicting changes.

Bubble’s new version control system (circa-2023), available on the growth plan and above, improves the collaboration environment with a simplified GIT-style system for creating changes in development branches and merging back to the main branch before pushing changes to the live, production environment.

Is it secure?

Yes. Bubble is hosted on secure cloud technology (Amazon Web Services — AWS) and offers numerous security credentials and ways of securing your data (more here).

Bubble allows table, row, and column-level security of database entities through privacy rules. This allows you to create complex rules about data access within the application including user roles, accounts, and subaccounts, or whatever hierarchy of data access your app requires.

Is it scalable?

Yes. Bubble is hosted on AWS and has recently introduced elasticity in its new workload-based pricing model.

Bubble performs well for CRUD operations in “small data” use cases, e.g. datasets into the tens of millions of rows with thousands of concurrent users. Bubble uses PostgreSQL as its database.

I would be confident about Bubble’s scalability for most use cases.

If you building a true big-data, a read-intensive platform with volumes of data outputted every minute, such as a mass market social media platform with millions of concurrent users — you are truly building a high-performance machine and would consider a full-stack solution in this case.

For most other use cases, or building the MVP of a highly scaled-up platform, Bubble is a great choice.

While Bubble may not impress old-school technical purists, the business case for Bubble far outweighs the ability to customize the finer details of the web application stack in most use cases.

Does it work in all verticals?

There are hard and soft reasons to choose or avoid Bubble. Some industries require compliance with standards such as HIPAA or SOC2.

HIPAA is not supported by Bubble, and SOC2 compliance is in the pipeline but not yet achieved. These may be hard reasons for you not to choose Bubble in particular situations.

There are also soft reasons, such as the possibility that a client of your web application may not pass Bubble in their enterprise security assessment. In these situations, more research about the typical expectations of the clients in your vertical may be required before choosing Bubble.

Who owns it and is it popular?

Bubble was founded in 2012, and was a bootstrapped company until a few years ago. Last year Bubble raised a Series A round of $100mil USD.

Bubble has a user counter on its landing page, currently showing about 2.75 million accounts (May 2023). Bubble is increasing in demand, as companies look for more cost and time-effective approaches to implement digital transformation.

What are the alternatives?

• Full stack solutions using code — e.g. hiring an agency or developer to work and build your solution from scratch, or using popular web frameworks.
• Enterprise no-code low-code (NCLC) tools — these are tools with similar functionality to Bubble, except they are priced at the enterprise level as an entry point.
• Consumer NCLC tools — these are emerging, direct competitors to Bubble. Some are showing merit and points of difference such as code-export, however often they lack the maturity and features that Bubble offers.

Conclusion

Bubble is a powerful tool with a strong business case and a bright future.

Written By Will Ericksson

Managing Director of MomentumGroup.tech, Founder of Momentum Academy, and former Bubble Bootcamp/Bubble Immerse Instructor created over 40+ apps with Bubble.io.