Complete Bubble.io No Code Platform Review (Updated for 2024)

in this video I'm going to review bubble.io bubble is a platform that lets you build custom fully connected web applications without code that's right you can build an entire app without writing a single line of code it's a full stack platform so your design database and all of the logic in between is housed Under One Roof with industry standard Tech powering it behind the scenes so that means you don't need to worry about how to configure servers to support your application instead you can get right to designing and building building your app and we've personally helped hundreds of people in our mentorship program and thousands more in our courses build their apps on Bubble so we've seen all types of apps come to life from years and years of hands-on experience let's dive into the review one of the first questions we typically get from someone interested in building on Bubble is what's really possible on this platform will my idea work here on bubble and something you want to keep in mind is that bubble really shines with datadriven applications datadriven applications ations now that covers a wide spectrum of functionality Industries you know solutions to different problems so we've got a list here to give you a sense of what you can build on bubble and these are the types of functionalities and types of apps that we've seen getting built on Bubble this is by no means the only list of things that you can do but hopefully this gives you a better idea for example you can create custom marketplaces where users set up listings for products and services they can be searched they can pay each other either a one-time payment deposits right for reservations bookings rentals they can do recurring payments all sorts of configurations that you can set up there because it's really up to you in how you design the data and how it's going to be manipulated you can create powerful calculators both for internal use let's say Personal Fitness tracking or within a business if you wanted to create a custom accounting system for your um all of your sales and uh clients and invoices that you have uh for your operations you can create really sophisticated automations that connect multiple systems together so that there's seamless flow of data you have a single source of Truth in this new application that's customed to you and your team your organization your project your business whatever it is that's going to help make things easier for you to communicate with each other and streamline systems you can create social networks right these applications can be highly interactive with users engaging with each other creating comments and messages creating posts on things getting notifications and alerts and activity feeds to keep track of you know their connections activities in the application this can be in a social environment or it can be focused around a project project management apps task managers habit trackers those sorts of things are absolutely doable on Bubble you can create sophisticated application tracking system so think about within an HR or some kind of a recruitment environment where candidates need to submit an application for an open position and you need to track every stage of that life cycle everything from the initial application reviews with managers answering interview questions submitting whatever kinds of files you need scheduling interviews or next steps with the company it's up to you again it's up to how you design that flow and the data that powers all of it you can create really customized scheduling and booking systems as well I mean we see aspects of scheduling and booking happening within larger applications we've also seen entire apps get built around specific scheduling tools so custom availability calendar designs uh time slots and blocked availability right having multiple resources that are getting scheduled all sorts of combinations of um calendar logic and uh communicating between multiple people so make sure that everybody's on the same page again this is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do on this platform and we've seen apps built of all shapes and sizes everything from personal use apps for journaling or habit tracking to entprise level SAS solutions for companies in very specific Industries with unique requirements for certain operations and working with people in specific roles so now that we've set the stage a bit on what bubble is and what it can accomplish let's zoom in a bit more into its actual capabilities and we're going to start with design bubbles design canvas is a fully drag and drop type of interface that's right you don't even need a designer background in order to create beautiful looking applications on Bubble all of the standard design tools that you would expect from any kind of a wireframing software you're going to find here in bubble it also has a responsive engine built into it so that makes it really easy for you to create designs that adapt to different screen sizes all the way from mobile devices to laptops tablets and large desk Des toop computers there are many different tools here to help you keep things very evenly distributed even spacing right and create layouts that make sense for your user and bubble supports a style library for your application this makes it easy for you to keep track of all of your commonly used your frequently used colors um the way that you want certain elements to look so for example if you want your buttons to always be rounded versus Square that's something that you can Define um in the editor so that it's much easier for you to create consistent designs between your pages and design faster right you don't have to go through all that configuration over and over again bubble also supports designing for multiple languages there's baked in functionality to help you easily translate your system messages create custom translations in addition to taking advantage of a handful of translated system messages that are already there for you um this way you can really create a Global Experience for your application bubbles visual element Library covers all of the common types of components you would expect to design in an application whether it's to serve a desktop audience or a mobile audience and even if you don't find a specific visual element you can always go to the plug-in Marketplace to access even more we'll talk about plugins a little later in this video now there are a couple of design things that I don't think bubble is the best for and that's anything with heavy animation or sophisticated uh Motion Graphics for example if you're looking to build uh gaming software this platform is really not the best for you um this is really more about datadriven applications now I will say that bubble does support lightweight animation so if you need things to kind of slide in and out fade in and out um flash that sort of thing that's fine those there are actually some built-in animations to support that kind of behavior but again heavy Motion Graphics or really sophisticated animations that um you would expect to be able to build from from scratch not going to be the best for this platform let's talk about how bubble handles data now the first thing to know is that your data is hosted on Amazon web servers this is a globally recognized infrastructure and bubble has taken care of all the configuration there for you so you don't need to worry about um where things are being hosted it's just handled for you out of the box that way you can focus on creating the architecture of your apps database yes so you are in charge of setting up your own tables your own Fields within those tables the relationships that you're going to create to connect records to one another bubble doesn't know what you're building so it's not going to make any assumptions about what you need in that database architecture so it is under your control to put that together on top of that you have a lot of tools to help you create security rights around accessing that data um so there's privacy rules that you can create to Grant or restrict access based on whatever kinds of conditions you want to Define and as with any platform that you're building your app on be mindful of any potential industry regulations that your app has to stay compliant with we'll talk about Security in a little bit more detail later on in this video you also have the option to expose an API to your app's database you don't have to configure it bubble's going to do that automatically for you around the custom structure that you've designed so if you want thirdparty systems to connect to your application database right to retrieve that information they can do so through this data API so if you're familiar with relational database is this is the kind of system that bubble has uh within this component of the platform and if that is foreign to you that's okay just think of it as putting together spreadsheets um organizing your data into rows and Columns of information um you have a little bit of flexibility there to help connect things to one another to make things easier to look up and search right so you can query things in an efficient way um so that your users can search through your data in an efficient way and there's a a lot of wonderful tools to help you move through the development much more efficiently now the aspect of the platform that really ties together your designs with your database is the logic in between in bubble these are called workflows and workflows are set up through Visual programming again you are not writing a single line of code to bring your app to life workflows really work like this if this then that right if something happens then do something else if the user clicks on a button then send an email or if the user clicks on a button then create a record in the database and then send an email and then show an alert message to let the user know that the email was sent right this is the basics of putting together stringing together logic to make your app interactive to create data in your database to modify and manipulate data in your database and there's a whole host of possible actions and triggers that are available to you so that you can puzzle together the exact experience that you need in your app this is where the learning curve can get high but because you have so much flexibility this is really where you can create powerful systems um that are really going to solve problems for you whether it's in your daily life in your business right for an industry for a market of people that you are a part of or that you care a lot about visual programming is how it all comes together now I will call out a few special areas here when it comes to the logic um that is helpful to know coming in bubble does support recurring workflows so things that can run in a loop um and also things that can run in the background so there are serers side workflows that your users don't even need to be present for for example let's say you want an email to go out every single week to um your managers so that they can get a recap of the stats for the company right so this can be set up in an automated way way nobody needs to babysit a page to click on a button to send out that email you can set it up so that it automatically happens and it's completely up to you on what's the content of the email what time of the day it's going to be sent who it's going to be sent to um the information can be highly Dynamic so that way it changes from week to week this is just the tip of the iceberg okay um these scheduled workflows or these recurring types of workflows um can really power robust automations um bulk operations to modify lot of data all at once okay so I wanted to call that out because that's one of the questions that we get all the time about how how much can you really do how how much can we really push this system to work hard for us so that we don't have to by the way if this has been helpful bookmark our free extended training over at coaching nood apps.com workshop and be sure to head there next in that training we'll guide you step by step through more in-depth info of the platform and we'll also help you get started with the development of the app itself when it comes to building your application you'll spend most of your time in the three areas we just talked about the design canvas the database and the workflows now there are several components that come with the editor in general right the platform that I want to call out um because they're really helpful to know and can really support a more efficient long-term scalable um development of your application the first is that your app comes built in with workflow API and data API I mentioned the data API a little bit earlier this is really powerful if you plan to connect your app to the outside world in any way so with workflow API you can have external systems trigger workflows in your app so this is typically for appto app notification type of flows or automations you can also have external systems call your data API to retrieve data from your database the next platform component is collaboration so if you're building your app within a team environment you have plenty of tools to help you work together without stepping over each other this also works alongside bubble's powerful version control system so you can actually have multiple versions of your development environment um which can help you separate different builds if certain things are under construction while other things are ready to go live you can control those releases you also can go back in time and revert your application to previous builds also revert your data set back to a previous state in time the plan that you are on will dictate how far back you can go so you want to be mindful of that but these controls are absolutely in place as safeguards you can of course connect your application to a custom domain so that when you go live it is on your own domain you can also send emails from your custom domain and that's actually tapping into um one of bubble's built-in Integrations with a service provider an email service provider called send grid if you don't want to use srid that's okay you can still connect to any other service provider you'd like through your own custom API connection bubble also has a built-in connection with Google location services so if your app needs to work with maps um addresses in any way if you want to do directions if you want to uh calculate distances between things um you have a lot of capabilities there if you want to search search for addresses find points of interest um plot things on a map right lots of built-in capability that's available to you again you also have control over customizing it even further by adding in your own integration if you need of course no one's going to build their app perfectly from the start without making any mistakes so bubble of course has plenty of tools to help you troubleshoot your work to debug things if you're running into issues and help you identify problems with uh the way that you've set things up uh bubble has a an issue Checker that will reveal things that are not set up technically correct so that you can make those Corrections and any requirements um that need to be filled in in order for things to work properly are surfaced you the issue Checker is also pretty interactive so it makes it easy for you to find those issues especially as your app grows in size bubble also has a fantastic debugging tool to help you evaluate um the design of your application the you know any conditional uh logic that you have in your app you know if you see something that's not behaving properly this debugger can help you investigate and uncover what might be going on there there's also a great server logs area that will track all activi in your application as it happens um so you can always go back and search through the logs if you need to um investigate further and figure out you know how things played out and compare it to what your intended Behavior was um and it can help pinpoint where that happened so you can make the proper Corrections from there now there's an important thing to understand about the bubble platform and that is that bubble apps only work on Bubble you cannot export your bubble code so that the application is functioning on some some other system and vice versa you can't import code from another app building system and expect it to work on Bubble it doesn't work that way bubble apps only work on Bubble now you can always export your data to a variety of formats you know if it's in a CSV file if you want to get it out via uh API um if you want to print it right you can generate PDFs however you want to do that that is always available to you and this leads me to the ownership of your application who owns your app short answer you do bubble does not own your application they only own the platform on which you are building your app they also do not own your data in any way your data is yours so think of it like building an e-commerce store on Shopify a website on WordPress writing a novel on Microsoft Word right none of those platforms own your intellectual property or the content that you're generating within them they are simply the tools you are using to create create your products content and systems let's talk about pricing how much are you going to be paying bubble to build not just the first version of your application but future versions longterm how sustainable is this especially as your app starts to grow how cost effective is it going to be bubble prices your app through a unit of measurement called workload your app's workload consumption is dictated by your overall activity that you've designed into the app now there's 12 different categories of activity not all activity is weighed the same so some activity is a little heavier or more expensive than other activity some examples of activity that you can design into your apps logic include searches of your database right querying everything filters um of those searches manipulating your database creating records updating them deleting them um making API calls uploading files running certain types of workflows all of these will cost a certain number of workload units and oftentimes you know if you break it down to like the bare components these are fractions of a workload unit but of course with you know an application there's going to be a lot of stuff coming together so those workload units are going to add up it is up to you to build the most efficient system you possibly can because that will not only make a better performing app uh but also keep things more cost-effective for you there are many ways to accomplish the same thing so some of this may just be a matter of trial and error and leveraging bubbles tools to help you track your consumption so you can see where there might be opportunities for optimization where those heavier spots are to see again if you can make any corrections or help slim things down maybe you need to restructure things to make things more efficient it is under your control to build the best possible performing application and most cost-effective app um as you can but the way that you are priced and measured is through this workload consumption So based on the plan that you are on with bubble uh you're going to be allocated a certain number of workload units every month okay so all you want to do is stay under uh that number now if you need to go over for whatever reason maybe your type of app is one where there could be an unexpected spike in activity then you will go into overages and at that point it's more like a pay as you go type of system at a slightly different rate for a certain number of units that you're going over by you're not going to get cut off from the system it's not going to be taken offline if you're in overages your app's not going to slow down in any way right there's no throttling the only scenario where your app could be taken offline is if you decided to disable the overages capability okay and that would be if you wanted to kind of control your cost if you have a very specific budget that you don't want to go over um but keeping those overages on will ensure that your app does stay live now at the end of the day you want to design your app so that your consumption is as predictable as possible and you have a lot of resources to help you build an efficient app to help you track what you're doing and how much you're consuming um as you're developing even before you go live bubble also gives every single app a certain number of workload units to use uh just free um within your development environment so you have a big playground that you can move around in and and be able to see what works and what doesn't and so when it comes to scalability I cannot stress enough that you are the architect of this application it is up to you to balance all of these important components so that you have a reliable consistent scalable application you not only want to think about your user's experience on the front end but also the foundation that is really supporting it behind the scenes you need a strong database architecture that makes sense that's going to allow you to grow if necessary you need logic that is incredibly efficient and not bloated you need to be mindful of your workload consumption and keep an eye out for any area that may be heavier than they really need to be you are the architect of all of these different components that can be intimidating to some but it really keeps you in the driver's seat if you are truly looking to build a custom application that is going to be precisely specific to your own needs and it's possible we work with non-technical entrepreneurs every single day and they are making things happen in their app they are bringing their ideas to life solving problems within their daily lives um within their businesses they are cutting out extra expenses that they would otherwise be paying other systems that don't exactly work for them right they are solving problems with this and if you are committed to learning these important concepts for creating smart structures around your database around your logic your application will come together in a seamless way the fact that this is a full stack platform is what really sets this apart from other no code systems since everything is under One Roof the logic the designs the database they can all seamlessly communicate with one another I do want to go into a few more technical details just in case you're still on the fence about whether this platform is right for you in regards to hosting and security bubble applications are hosted on Amazon web services you know a lot of the internet's most popular business tools um Cloud Solutions and websites are hosted on AWS as well and so you know you're going to be in good hands and bubble has confed figured all of this for you so you don't have to worry about it now if you do need to um customize where in the world your application is hosted right which region um Bubble does have an Enterprise plan option you do need to reach out to them to get started with that um but that is available to you and you do have the ability to customize that if you need um your data is encrypted at rest bubble is gdpr compliant it is also sock to compliant you have custom control over your editor private privacy your API privacy and your data privacy so how you give uh and restrict access to all of that information not just the data or not just the front end but literally also the backend Editor to your application so all of these tools are available for you now the bubble platform is highly extensible which is one of my favorite parts of working with this tool um there's many ways to add extra capabilities and functionalities to your app uh depending on what you need and there there's a few ways to do this first is through the plug-in Marketplace this is a vast Marketplace of plugins created mostly by the community um which is awesome to see bubble also has a handful of plugins in there that they've created themselves but this thing is really growing every single day some plugins are free some are premium they're they're paid um as a one-off payment or a subscription payment so it just depends on what you need for your application we've certainly found plugins to that we consider to be Staples uh we go to all the time but you don't always need to have a plugin added to your app it really just depends on what you're doing um some of these plugins will add extra workflow capabilities extra visual elements or connections to popular tools in the outside world so whether it's an email service provider um a conversion tool of some kind uh a financing system I mean there's really a lot of different categories of plugins so you know exploring that Marketplace can give you a better sense of what you can add on to your editor now you can also create private plugins for your app so these don't need to be published to the marketplace but they're just private to you and the great thing about creating a private plugin is that you can add custom code like actual code um if you need to inject that into your app you do have the ability to do that um I did mentioned before that your app comes built in with a data API and workflow API um so you know if you choose to expose those things that helps you extend you know capabilities there so that you can communicate better your your your data or um send information through a workflow API to the outside world if you need bubble also has a handful of connection tools for you so so an API connection tool if you ever want to do a custom API connection that you may not currently find in the plug-in Marketplace you have the ability to customize this I use this all the time because you have complete control over those API requests and specifically how you want those format uh requests to be formatted um there's also a bubble connector tool that lets you connect multiple bubble apps together so if you want to pass data from one bubble app to another Bubble app you can absolutely do that or have one bubble app trigger workflows in a different app you can do that through that tool there's also a SQL database connector tool so if you are coming to the system with a datab a SQL database already in in place um and you just want your bubble app to communicate with that um so that you don't if you don't want to use the bubble database or if you want to use it in combination you have the ability to do that as well now I'm sure this question has been on your mind it's certainly come up for us uh many many times recently and that is can I connect my app to chat GPT or other similar AI type of tools and the answer is absolutely you can we've actually had had um clients already uh build in Integrations with chat GPT into their own apps and really um really creative ways you know to generate content to um systemize different flows to help streamline the way things are communicated to summarize information um to help uh you know generate prompts or tasks in a really smart way based on the data that's in the application I mean there there's really many many ways to leverage it um and integrate it into your app uh and long as the AI that you want to connect to even if it's not chat GPT necessarily if it exposes an API uh you are most likely good to go there bubble's API connector tool is is set up to support all standard methods of API protocols so if if you can find the documentation for the AI uh you know go through it check the requirements for it uh but you will usually find that it is going to follow a best practice standard and bubble's API connector tool will support that we also know that bubble has a on their mind as well and they're looking to incorporate it more deeply into their own editor um such as describing what you want to build and having the AI create the pages for you directly in the in the app editor so it's not live quite yet but it's on the horizon and we're very much looking forward to seeing that in regards to device compatibility bubble applications are web apps which is great because that means they're Universal doesn't matter what type of device you have or what operating system you're on if you have access to a browser and an internet connection you can access a bubble app just like you can any other web page and you're designing your app on a fully responsive engine which means that bubble has all the tools to help you ensure your layouts and your designs adapt to different screen sizes so everything from a smartphone to a tablet laptop a super wide monitor you have the tools to test your designs at those different breakpoints which is really really helpful to make sure that no matter where your user is visiting you from they'll be able to get a really good experience now you can deliver your app to the App Stores through a wrapping process you're going to go through a third party um to help you wrap your web application it's really just converting the web app into a format that's compatible for delivering to those stores um making sure that you follow all the requirements for the Apple App Store as well as the Google Play Store um but at the end of the day it's still more like a hybrid you still need an internet connection to work with the app but if it's important for you to have your app in those stores because you may expect your users to search for you or search for your type of app there then that's a great option that is available to you you're still going to build your web app just like you would even if you weren't going to wrap it and then you'll go through that wrapping process after you're done um building it out now there's also kind of an in between option uh where you can convert your bubble web app into a progressive web app or a pwa for short so this does not require you to send your application to the App Stores which means you can save yourself from having to meet those you know sometimes strict requirements uh for the App Stores but still have some native like capabilities such as targeted push notifications um some access to the device such as the contacts um special alerts like offline alerts if they've lost their internet connection and showing a message for that um a custom splash page when they first open the page or a home icon on a smartphone's you know uh kind of Icon homepage design so it's like a little shortcut to get to the app and and yeah if you need some kind of a hybrid with some native like capabilities that is an option for you it's much lighter weight um to get done finally bubble has recently announced that they are working on supporting native apps which is very exciting it's still very much in the early stages but we are looking forward to seeing what happens there as you can see the bubble platform offers a robust full stack solution for for creating datadriven customizable scalable applications from start to finish without writing a single line of code we've been using it for years with our own clients who are non-technical we haven't seen anything else come close to it so it's our number one recommended tool now if you're looking to get started I have a few tips for you the first is don't let this intimidate you yes there's a learning curve here um but you can't let this scare you I promise you're not going to break the internet you just need to create an account open up your first app and get comfortable with the interface just play around with it see how that Canvas Works for the front end design the drag and drop um visual elements start to put together some data tables so you can see how spreadsheets of information come together and put together some simple workflows so again you can understand how the logic brings things to life now we usually tell our clients that you have to come into this from a programmer's mindset you know just because it's no code doesn't mean click click click now I have an app right this is very logic based and this is typically where the the learning curve comes in for most people you have to instruct bubble with every interaction you want it to carry out for you it's not going to know what you're building it's not going to assume anything for you um and that often surprises people how much more there actually is to building an application from scratch you have to tell it everything the trade-off is that you are in complete control over what it is you're building you are not boxed in to a templated set of features or even a templated design there are no guard rails um it is up to you to create proper security rules to make sure that it's stable longterm with higher volumes of usage so it's a balance in every aspect of the application both for what the user sees on the front end and also all the stuff that happens behind the scenes so just be mindful of that one of the uh best approaches that I like to suggest here for if you just don't even know where to get started start with a database okay conf configure your tables configure your Fields as best as you possibly can then put together some of your layouts in the front end design so that you can start to see some of your test data on those pages even if things are created a little bit more manually to start right so you start to put together some wireframes and then connect the two with the workflows database frontend design and then the workflows and you'll typically jump between those three the bigger your app gets kind of going back and forth if you don't know where to start and you're starting completely freshh start with the database I promise that is something that is going to dictate so much of how your app comes together it's one of the most important parts now if you're looking to dive even deeper into this whole system learning more about the platform head over to our free extended training over at coaching nood apps.com Workshop we'll take you through stepbystep go through things in more detail um I can't wait to see you there head over there now coaching no code ./ Workshop thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: Coaching No Code Apps

Views: 5,061

Keywords: bubble.io review, bubble review, bubble app builder review, no code app platforms, no code platform reviews, no code platform comparison, should i use bubble, should i use bubble to build my app, is bubble.io good, what can you build on bubble, building an app on bubble, no code, no code apps, bubble app platform, no code app development, bubble overview, bubble app builder overview, bubble.io overview, bubble no code, bubble review 2024, bubble capabilities

Id: bmkP_aKALiU

Length: 33min 11sec (1991 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023