logo
Contact us
Author picture

Professional Services

August 14, 2026

Things I wish I knew before developing on Bubble platform

If you’re diving into Bubble, here’s a practical guide from my experience. I’ve been building apps on Bubble since 2022, and these are the things I believe worth sharing plus what I wish I knew before starting. Although this is not a comprehensive one but it should give you some useful information.

1 - What Bubble Is

  • Bubble is a full-stack visual programming platform where you develop both your web & mobile applications using a drag & drop editor. The front-end, the backend, the integration with external systems, backup & restore and extending the platform functionalities through plugins all exist within the same editor. Even using custom code (if needed) is supported. If you would like to take a look at what applications could be built on Bubble, you can check out this link:
    https://bubble.io/customers
  • You can integrate your Bubble app with external applications via "API Connector" You can export your Bubble app and import it on Bubble platform, However the source code of your application can only run exclusively on the platform and there is no way to export it and self-host it by yourself. This is something that I don't like because you stay locked in. If vendor lock-in is a concern for you, then Bubble is not the right platform for you.
    https://manual.bubble.io/account-and-marketplace/application-and-data-ownership

    • 2 - Pricing & Plans

  • Bubble has different pricing plans with a free tier that you can use to explore the platform capabilities. You can check out all their plans in details via this link:
    https://bubble.io/pricing
  • In every plan there is a parameter called "Workload Units (WU)", actually this is the work that Bubble does to power your application. There's no way you could guess in advance how much workload untis does your application need, you can figure this out only when your application is being accessed by real-world users and based on that you can decide whether to buy new workload tiers or not. Workload Units (WU) is one of the frustrating things that I just don't like in Bubble, it has been introduced in 2023 and it was really controversial, however it's there. You can check out this link to read more about its announcement:
    https://forum.bubble.io/t/more-context-on-our-changes-to-pricing/255551

    • 3 - Hosting & Data

  • Bubble platform is built on AWS (Amazon Web Services), Meanwhile, you don't have the choice to select where your data resides. It's always stored on servers in the US and you can't change this fact except in the Enterprise Plan (Highest tier) which costs around 3000$/month. Yet another thing I don't like in Bubble and hopefully this will change in the near future.

    • 4 - Templates & Plugins

  • You needn't start your application always from scratch, there is a marketplace where you can pick up a template to give you a headstart, here is the link:
    https://bubble.io/templates
    It's worth mentioning that not all templates are free and not all of them is well secured so you always need to pay attention if you select a template for a real-world project.
  • You can extend Bubble functionalities by installing plugins, here's the link for the plugins marketplace (most of them are free):
    https://bubble.io/plugins
  • Any plugin you install might affect the performance of your application even if you don't use it anywhere so don't install a plugin unless you really need it. In general, these plugins have proved to be the most useful ones: I used it in exporting data from multiple data types to a csv file. There is a limit for the data size you can export because of Bubble limitations not because of the plugin itself, however there is a workaround for this so you can export any data size you want without limits but it requires that have basic understanding of JSON & recursiveness to be able to overcome this limitation. I used it in different use cases, the most complex one is in a "Global Reporting" use case that extracted data almost from everywhere in one of the Bubble applications I built and being used currently by a French company. The report is now automatically scheduled 3 times a week and it has currently 60+ columns. it's been running in Live since 2024 without any problems. A simple yet useful plugin that enables you to download a file from the browser with the ability to specify a file name. This plugin lets you automate the creation of custom PDF documents like invoices, contracts, agreements, certificates, proposals, reports, etc.. I didn't use it myself, however I saw an interesting use case for it in a 15M$ funded Bubble application and I liked the plugin output. I have used it in different applications for advanced & complex graphs and it didn't let me down. It needs some workarounds for complex use cases like sorting a grouped by data set, however it's perfectly doable using this plugin only.

    • 5 - Learning Curve

  • You can develop your own application even if you don't have a technical background. However, as a powerful platform, there is a learning curve that depends on each person's capacity and aptitude for learning. Reasonably, you can get familiar with the platform in a matter of days, develop an inefficient application in a matter of weeks and it could take you months to be good to some extent.
  • The best way to learn is to avoid the perfectioning trap and just jump in and explore the platform practically, in other words, get your hands dirty. From time to time, you'll get stuck and this is exactly when you need to search in the above resources. Most probably you'll find answers to your questions. Don't worry, your 1st application is not expected to be efficient at all.

    • 6 - Learning Resources

  • Below is a list of valuable resources that can help you get started to learn Bubble: This Slack community with thousands of members is awesome. There is a dedicated Slack channel for Bubble with 3000+ active members who share valuable knowledge and collaborate together. However, this is a french not english community but I am mentioning it because I really found it useful and learned from it when I started my Bubble journey back in 2022. By the way the French Bubble community is one of the 3 biggest Bubble communities worldwide beside the US & Brazil.

    • 7 - Security & GDPR

  • Bubble platform is GDPR compliant and secured, however as a developer you should know that the security of your application is your responsability. Security is not the topic anyone would like to overhead so please make sure that you know very well what you're doing before going Live. Bubble editor offers a security dashboard that scans your application for potential data leaks. The corner stone for your security is your "privacy rules" so please make sure you understand them very well. You can read more about security in Bubble here:
    https://manual.bubble.io/help-guides/security
  • Marking your backend API workflows as "public" means that anyone could call them, so don't do this unless you know very well what you're doing.

    • 8 - Tips & Recommendations

  • Although Bubble's database is "PostgreSQL", but database design in Bubble is totally different compared to traditional database design. Here's a good blog post that shows the differences:
    Database Design in Bubble - What you need to know
  • The best starting point for your application is your database design and privacy rules. I would recommend that you use any diagramming tool to draw your database and see the relationships between them before execution. If you just jump in and develop whatever comes in your mind without any prior planning, then be sure that you're accumulating technical debt and maintainability challenges that will pile up along the way until refactoring becomes mandatory. This is not a big deal at the beginning if you're still learning, but you should take this into consideration once you're more comfortable with the platform.
  • Even if you're not a frontend developer, it would be better to put a simple design system before developing your application rather than applying random styles. This should guarantee the consistency and ease of modification of your UI if needed. So set up your design system (fonts, colors, etc..) from the "Styles" tab before you start.
  • The pages you develop in Bubble are not responsive by default (i.e. they don't display correctly on different screen sizes), however, Bubble's responsive engine should help you get there. It's your responsibility as a developer to make sure that your application is responsive. There's quite a learning curve to get there, however it's perfectly doable and I don't find it so complex.
  • Backend workflows are used to handle logic behind the scenes so the user doesn't have to wait for actions to be finished. You should make good use of them rather than putting all your logic in frontend workflows (i.e. on the page itself).
  • Do not enable "Data APIs" unless you really need to.
  • Backend API workflow steps are triggered in order, however Step 2 doesn't wait for Step 1 to finish before being triggered unless it's dependant on Step 1. This means that Step 2 could finish execution before Step 1. If you want to guarantee the order of execution, use "Custom Events" rather than "Backend API Workflows".
  • "Race Conditions" are one of the most annoying, hard to debug issues in Bubble, simply because database records lock is not well-handled by the platform. This means that 2 updates to the same record could happen simultaneously leading to inconsistencies in the result of execution. I prefer to rely on "Recursive Workflows" to overcome potential race conditions and guarantee that all my logic is executed consistently everytime.
  • Start simple, test often, avoid over-perfection.

    • 9 - Localization

  • Your application could support different languages in Bubble, you can use "App Text" to do the translations or integrate with 3rd party providers like "Weglot" for example.

    • 10 - Dev -> Live workflow

  • There are 2 environments in Bubble (Dev. & Live). Development always takes place in Dev. and then deployed to Live. it's not possible to develop directly in Live environment.
  • Version management is supported in Bubble, so a team of developers can work simultaneously where each developer works in his own branch (usually derived from the "Main" branch) and then all branches are merged back into "Main" and then deployed from "Main" to "Live".
  • Backup & Restore in addition to logging are supported in Bubble, however the duration of log preservation and the time window to restore your data depends on your application's plan. it's worth mentioning that logs in Bubble are not so user friendly and it can be frustrating easily if you're tracing a bug or an issue in your application.