Building SaaS Apps on Bubble: The Starter's Guide

if you've ever thought about building a SAS application on Bubble this video is going to leave you taking concrete steps towards launching that app in fact we're about to go through a real app example that someone probably very similar to you recently launched but the reality is SAS applications involve a ton of moving Parts everything from automating flows of data between multiple Services managing custom user roles and many things in between if you don't have a rock solid plan to work through your SAS development you can easily spend the next one to two years guessing your way through that development so use this video to guide yourself towards launching a successful SAS business way faster and more correctly too like I said we're going to dive straight into going through an example SAS application that was built on Bubble by one of our own built- tocale clients and the MVP version of this application was recently released all right so this application was built for athletic trainers um typically they're working within an organization such as a school so that they can keep track of all the information they need to support their athletes whenever an injury occurs follow-ups treatment plans things like that so the data structure of an app like this is critical especially because it's a SAS type of app right you have multiple organizations each of those may have multiple teams uh you may have trainers assigned to those teams so there's a lot of separation of information and the and the architecture behind the scenes is really important so this was one of the biggest things that uh our client here had to keep in mind um when building this out so that that the right people got access to the right areas and of course the features within this application uh you know there's a lot of common ones that you'll find in SAS apps such as uh graphs and charts to visualize information can Ben boards so that you can move things from one status to another right like the the athletes recovery how they're doing keep in mind this is the first version app built by a non-coders within an incredibly compressed time frame and while this client gets all the credit for bringing this app to life now is a great time to talk about what's happening under the hood on the bubble side of things we do have actually two other real app examples that we're going to dive into in just a bit but for now let's dig into using bubble for SAS we love using bubble.io for SAS applications because number one it's no code you know you don't have to learn any traditional coding languages or hire a team to build a real scalable SAS app so this is going to significantly cut down your development time especially when compared to traditional approaches the second reason is that it's full stack everything that you need to customize such as the front-end designs the backend data architecture and all the logic in between it's all Under One Roof so you don't need to worry about cobbling together different systems so that they can communicate with each other the communication is much more seamless here so the time it takes to put together and launch a true scalable SAS application is a fraction of what it would be with traditional methods let's dive into some key capabilities that are most relevant for SAS apps the first is the ability to create multi-tenant data structures this is really important for SAS applications because you've got to have data separation between your organizations so it's up to you to create the right tables the definitions within those tables the field the option sets the relationships between that data so that the right people can get access to the right things and they're also restricted from the things that they're not supposed to have access to from these custom definitions you have the ability to create hierarchies so you can have an organization and then maybe teams or groups that fall under that organization users that are assigned to those teams this is completely up to your own definitions bubble's not going to assume what you're building uh it's not going to give you a template or box you in in any way but this is a great thing this allows you to create a fully robust custom experience for your specific needs with these custom data structures you can also create custom privacy rules which is very important for security and this is also alongside the built-in security features that bubble has out of the box no matter what app You're Building because you have custom data structure stres it's up to you to Define different access rights that people have for that data so maybe I can view something versus edit something right just depends on who I am as a user what my relationship is to other data and finally when it comes to custom data structures you also have the ability to have users upload their data into your custom system um so that it's a seamless experience for them we see this all the time with SAS applications if they're coming for example from another system they may want to import their existing exting CRM their existing transactions whatever it might be tasks right for project management and you can create the logic to pull in that data normalize it if you need and have it fit right within your custom definitions in this bubble database the next capability that's really helpful for SAS apps is single sign on or SSO there's a couple different options here actually the first is one of the most popular you can add um thirdparty login providers as a part of your login system for users to get access to their account um you've probably seen this all over the web when you sign up for something it will ask you if you want to do so through your Google account your LinkedIn account you have the capability to offer that to your users as well um you can do this with plugins there are many of them out there that you know are are connected to the most popular Services allows you to do things out of the box a bit more easily uh you can also connect to an API to accomplish this in a custom way if you need uh and so that is a really handy feature if you know that your users will typically have accounts with those systems it can save them a couple clicks that's one less password for them to remember the second method is if you're on a bubble Enterprise plan uh bubble has some built-in connections to popular identity providers for you know Enterprise systems things like cloudflare um Salesforce AO Azure there's a whole list of them there um so you can take advantage of that as well and then you also have the capability to do the reverse where your bubble application is actually the system that is being used to authenticate access to outside systems so you can go either way with it the fact that you have access access to these types of features is going to allow you to make things much more convenient for your users really scale in a real way in a SAS environment for the organizations as well one of my favorite capabilities of the bubble platform is being able to work with apis apis really open up a lot of doors you can communicate with the outside world you can extend functions and design in your app and bubble has a few different tools to help you do this very easily this is great for SAS applications as well so the first is the plug-in Marketplace the marketplace on Bubble is vast there are many different plugins that can give you extra workflow functionalities design elements that you can add to your front-end interface um some are free some are paid it just depends on what you're looking for some are published by Bubble a lot of them are published by the community there are a handful of them that we even consider Staples with every single bubble application and because they're plugins a lot of them are just plug in and go so you can just start working with them out of the box without too much configuration the next tool is the API connector so let's say that can't find what you need in the plug-in Marketplace the API connector is typically where you're going to go next to create a custom connection uh to an API whether it's to pull in data from an outside Source or to send data out elsewhere this is a fantastic tool I consider it one of my Staples uh for communicating with apis and again for SAS apps it's great because usually users of a SAS application are also working with other tools so you want to have your bubble application offer that ability to work alongside your user users other systems and being able to communicate seamlessly with them is going to be a big win for them the next tool is the Bubble app connector so let's say that you're building multiple bubble apps and you want to create a suite of tools as separate applications the Bubble app connector allows you to have each of those apps communicate with each other so one app for example can pull from the database of another or one app can trigger a workflow inside of another that can really open up a lot of possibilities especially for scale if you have a suite of tools that you want to create for an industry or for a specific Market this can really give you a lot of Leverage to do so in an efficient way and finally we have your backend workflows this is a part of your workflow API you know every bubble application actually allows you to expose a workflow API and a data API so that external systems can communicate with you via those API connections it's similar to the Bubble app connector but this is any type of system that has the ability to make an API call they can communicate with you the backend workflows is something that you'll use for both external and internal purposes you can set up workflows that can run on a schedule they can happen on a recurring basis they can happen behind the scenes right the user doesn't necessarily need to be present for something to happen this is a very powerful area that is great for bulk updates to databases with lots of changes that need to be made to a lot of records for example or if you just need to have something on a recurring basis you can wait to receive information incoming in real time from external systems hugely powerful section it's one of my favorites and is especially true for SAS applications this is again typically an environment where you're often going to have relationships with other systems that need to communicate with your app so the apis are the way to do it okay before we head any further I want to take you through another SAS app example that one of our other built- tocale clients launched and if you're interested in learning more about how these entrepreneurs are working with us you can head over to coaching no Cod /bt tocale whether you're building a SAS app or something entirely different but for now let's check out this application and we're going to have one more app example after that too this application was created for curtain and blind retailers and this is an industry that where there's a lot of customization it's very data driven a lot of different data points you know window treatments can be customized in all sorts of directions the type of fabric the dimensions the various accessories a lot of things can be combined in many different ways and he built this in a SAS structure to sell to these retailers so they're using it within their own businesses right they're not seeing information from other businesses and this is essentially one giant project management space he's created um you know a Consolidated Command Center for operations helping them move away from traditional pen and paper so he's got custom features that are unique to the industry such as calculators that he built from scratch to help calculate the dimensions of the various accessories and the Fabrics um a quick way to set up invoices you know going from an EST it over to an order and then generating an invoice from that he has a way for them to manage their library of materials and products and just a general job management system as well with a retailer that might be very busy they may have many jobs going at the same time so he's got a whole area project management space for them to uh monitor all of that and having this all under one Ruth is huge value for his users this is an application that is live was built on bubble and is doing fantastic the next capability is one that's almost expect Ed for SAS systems and that is to White Label the user's front-end experience and this can be done to different degrees so to start at a basic level you can capture information that is unique to the organization and then display it back to them and really give them a more seamless experience for example logos colors everything that you know is a part of their branding um custom names for user roles right organizations are going to call things differently so being able to capture this information and dynamically present that back to them makes things feel more native for their own organization it's as if you built a tool specifically for them so it's up to you to design the logic and the data structures to support all of that but that's absolutely possible here now taking things one step further bubble also supports the ability to create sub applications and this really creates a more formal approach for the multi-tenant environment the way that it works is you set up one primary application you do all of your logic all of your data uh building and your designs in this one application and then you you'll create clones anytime you have a new tenant that wants to join the entire system you're going to create a sub app from that primary a lot of great benefits from this it really creates a true white labeling experience because you can customize their domain for each individual sub app the databases are going to be independent now because they are their own app it's a much more formal approach to creating a wh labeled experience and it's really popular with SAS systems imagine if you're creating something for a franchise operation where each individual location needs needs to be in its own environment it helps you keep data separated per environment um but still give everyone the same experience gives everyone the same features that you've built um you know from that primary design and of course you can customize things so maybe some sub apps get access to certain things whereas others don't it's just all in the logic that you've created the next key capability is monetizing your app and there's many different ways that you can accomplish this as well so that you can bring in Revenue the main thing that you want to start with is integrating with a payment processor this is what's going to actually allow you to collect uh transactions whether it's a one-time licensing fee or uh a subscription based system depends on the industry that you're in uh and how you want to build that Revenue model for your own business being able to connect to a payment processor is key now we love to work with stripe we recommend it with all of our clients but there are many other ones out there as long as it offers an API you should be able to connect to it bubble's API connector is the best tool for that you may also find that there's a plug-in built for the payment Gateway that you want to use in the plug-in marketplace now a lot of SAS applications will use a subscription system for their revenue model and you can do subscriptions many ways you can do just a traditional you know multiple plan option you can do a per seat type of uh system where you're charging uh based on how many users are added to the organization right 10 members 100 members a thousand members and that can dictate the plan that they're on uh you can do things by usage so if you want to track based on how many files they've uploaded um or how many records they've created in the database the size of the files that they've uploaded that's all under your control it's all up to you to create that logic alongside the integration with the payment Gateway of course enforcing those different tiers um may come through restricting access to different features so if you're on tier one maybe you get basic access to some modules that you've built out in your app whereas tier two gives you more access to things right it's up to you and then if you are working within a Marketplace type of system if that's what your app is you can of course take fees out of the transactions that your users are paying each other that's another uh approach to bringing in Revenue if you don't want to uh put a subscription on your users that can be another way of going about it this next capability is one that I get asked about all the time when someone is unsure about whether it's possible in bubble and really all this is is just another feature that you're building in your app but it's important and valuable for SAS systems and that is an admin portal so this is an area where you create kind of This Global view of activity of data um for yourself so that you can see how your organizations are doing one of the first things that you can do in this portal is just to be able to manage all the subscriptions um and just accounts that have been created see what plan they're on see what status their plan is if it's active cancelled trialing um and be able to control things from there in one place if you need the next thing you can do is to run admin based changes so if you need to manually add an account to your SAS system if you need to blacklist somebody or change someone's email or in some way support your users this is an area that you can create to make it easy for yourself to do that at the end of the day you have access to all of the information all the data that's being saved to the database by your users because you're designing it in your app so along those lines you can also build custom reports for yourself so if your users are generating content being able to search through all that content with custom filters and gather important insights uh so that you can improve the application in further iterations and those reports can also be visualized with charts and graphs to help you grab those insights in a very easy way let's say that you have a team around you that's supporting this application having access to a portal like this can allow everybody to stay on the same page about the health of the application okay I promise you one more app example built by a non- coder in our built- tocale program and if you're interested in learning more about whether you and your app idea are a good fit for that that program too whether it's a SAS app or something else entirely different head over to coaching nood apps.com SLU tocale this application is a true SAS tool for organizations it's actually a recruiting tool it'll guide users through the process of building out a hiring campaign and they can customize every corner of this thing so they can put together all the requirements around the position they can Define their various interview stages associate incentives with those stages of course track the candidates she's actually built out both sides the hiring company side and also the candidate side so all the information flows freely between the two sides it's all Under One Roof and this is a very data driven application so there's lots of Entry that needs to come from the users and what she's doing it is organizing it in a way where by the end of this flow the users come out of it with a well-crafted campaign that they can then post into their website or a jobboard um and everything is just managed for them it helps normalize standardize the way that they build their campaigns so that they don't miss anything and this is just a great example of a datadriven application with a lot of customization options that the users can take advantage of that is also collaborative now let's talk security when you're building a SAS application you're generally building for organizations companies businesses right and so they typically have a higher standard and when it comes to the security around the tools that they use because they need to make sure that their data their customers data is protected and bubble's going to take care of of you there there's a lot of built-in security that's going on behind the scenes that you don't have to worry about for example bubble is sock to compliant their gdpr compliant you can send email confirmations when your user signs up um your user's passwords are encrypted you don't ever have access to your users passwords you can set up two Factor authentication you can set up single sign on I encourage you to take a look at bubbles own security page as it details um all of the various capabilities that are protecting your applic so you don't have to worry about what happens when you start to scale that SAS app now what about your own management of a SAS application behind the scenes you know as you start to grow this application you're typically going to involve a team of people at least that's what we have seen it may not be in the early versions it may come later on but you want to be uh prepared to work with other people to help maintain your app if it starts to grow so what is bubble going to do to help you collaborate with other developers alongside you well first you have the ability to invite people into your editor and you can restrict the type of access they have as well this is great if you're working with someone who's going to be dedicated on uh troubleshooting things or on implementing a new feature on integrating things with your app while you work on the rest or maybe it's reversed those roles are switched around you have the ability to invite collaborators to your application the next thing that you can do is work in multiple branches so this is available on the higher tiered paid plans uh of bubble but you have the ability to create multiple development environments to work on features you know in an isolated way this is especially helpful if you're working in a team that way someone working in one area isn't going to interrupt somebody else working in another area there's a lot of different things you can do to take advantage of multiple branches it's very common for even in traditional uh coding environments to be able to separate your work in that way and then finally you also have a lot of helpful Version Control restoration of your construction of your app of your database if you ever need to revert back to a previous version this is absolutely available to you I mean these things are standard when it comes to building applications so of course bubble is going to offer them as well now when it comes to SAS applications these are typically ones that will grow very quickly because usually the users of a SAS app are companies organizations that can likely bring in a lot of users all at once or a lot of data very quickly uh to work with on a regular basis so I just want to call out that for the long term bubble does have an Enterprise plan that you can take advantage of as well on the Enterprise plan you can place your app on an isolated server in the region of your own choice you get a dedicated account manager uh you have much more granular controls over a lot of the technical settings behind the scenes Version Control data restoration and a lot more so know that this is available here for you to grow with longterm all right listen s F based businesses are some of the most sought after because the scalability is high which means the revenue potential is high as well so use this as your guide and if you want to see more app examples head over to coaching noode apps.com nooda showcase all right I hope this was helpful and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Coaching No Code Apps

Views: 2,955

Keywords: Bubble, bubble.io, no code, bubble for beginners, saas, sub apps, privacy rules, multi-tenant, franchise, bubble app connector, api connector, white label, custom domains, data structure, user roles, user permissions, sso, single sign on, enterprise, subscriptions, admin portal, monetize app, saas app, saas app on bubble, bubble.io saas, sub apps on bubble, white label bubble, bubble.io saas apps, what can you build on bubble, what type of apps can you build on bubble

Id: Mf0ujWopnE0

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024