April 2023 Summaries

You can integrate your Bubble app with OpenAI to leverage its capabilities, thanks to OpenAI's API documentation and Bubble's API Connector. A step-by-step tutorial is available for those who want to try it out, using a fun example that involves movies and emojis. If you're already using AI in your Bubble app, you can share your experiences by joining the conversation in the comments thread linked below.

Nidhi Jain, a software engineer at Bubble's New York office, joined the company in 2022 after completing her degrees in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and interning at Facebook, Instagram, and NASA. She was drawn to Bubble's goal of democratizing software creation by abstracting complex concepts to make it more accessible to a wider audience. Nidhi found the interview process unique and valued, which included an open-ended conversation about her values and character. As a software engineer at Bubble, she is excited to work on impactful projects, particularly integrating generative AI with Bubble, and appreciates the company's mission-driven culture and diverse team. She enjoys a typical day of collaboration, stand-ups, and intentional meetings, as well as having lunch with colleagues every day, which has surprised her by how quickly she was able to make an impact in her first few months on the job.

Chad Sakonchick co-founded BetterLegal to help entrepreneurs save time and money when registering new businesses by automating the legal document process, initially using a combination of SaaS tools and custom code. However, the business faced challenges with expensive and inefficient development processes. In early 2022, Chad began using Bubble, a no-code platform, to completely rebuild BetterLegal's infrastructure, allowing him to manage front-end work independently and significantly reduce costs. This transition enabled BetterLegal to enhance their offerings, such as optimizing user flows and adding new features like a state compliance add-on, which doubled subscriptions and boosted revenue. Additionally, Chad developed internal tools using Bubble, which improved operational efficiency and saved on subscription costs. Now built on Bubble, BetterLegal is positioned for growth, aiming to increase annual revenue from $2.7 million to $5 million, while continuing to innovate with tools like the BetterLegal Assistant to simplify legal language for users.

Finding the right way for your specific use case can have a big impact on how many workload units (WU) your app needs, and therefore which of Bubble’s pricing plans might be right for you. Understanding what drives workload consumption is key to optimizing your workload so you can make your app leaner and more efficient. To get started, visit the Logs tab in your app, then look under App metrics to see a bar graph showing an aggregate measure of how much work your app has done over time, and a pie chart giving a detailed breakdown of the different areas contributing to your overall workload. Common pitfalls that might drive unnecessary workload include excessive database activities, such as fetching or creating data without adding additional constraints; recurring or scheduled workflows that trigger too frequently; conditions that consistently look for specific conditions to be true, especially if they're heavy actions like database searches; and repeating groups that pull a lot of information from your database. To optimize your app's workload, consider reducing unnecessary activity, using official Bubble plugin tools, replacing recurring or scheduled workflows with backend database triggers or webhooks, eliminating conditionals where possible, and storing data in static fields instead of searching the database each time. With trial and error, gradual changes, and measuring the impact as you go, you can find the best workload configuration for your app and make it more efficient.

We started Bubble 10 years ago to enable anyone to participate in software creation regardless of their coding ability. Since then, the platform has evolved significantly and is now powering various businesses, including life-saving earthquake response apps and international enterprise agencies. After collecting feedback from hundreds of customers, Bubble is introducing new pricing structures across all plans, effective May 1, 2023, with changes to workload-based pricing, a more generous Free plan, a new Starter plan for launching live apps, a Growth plan for growing user bases, and a Team plan for scaling businesses. The platform aims to maintain its commitment to users while providing flexibility and affordability, ensuring that building on Bubble remains free and affordable to launch.

Workload is a metric that measures the work done by Bubble to power an app, quantifying activities such as database operations, workflows, and web interactions. Most apps will have sufficient workload included in their plan, but if needed, users can subscribe to discounted workload tiers or pay-as-you-go overages at $0.30/1,000 WU. To choose the most cost-effective subscription, users should first select a plan based on features needed, then add an additional workload tier if necessary, considering break-even points between tiers. Users can also opt for a workload cap to prevent overages and receive email notifications as they approach their workload limit. Assessing workload needs is crucial, especially when scaling an app, and tools are being developed to help quantify needs; users can start by using the Free plan or Starter plan to gauge their workload usage.