Two years ago, I had an idea for a niche project-management tool for creative agencies. No investors, no dev team, just me and a credit card. Everyone told me, Use Bubble.io. So I did.
Today that app brings in ~$8,000 a month in recurring revenue, has 1,400 paying users, and still runs 100% on Bubble. But it almost died twice along the way.
This is the real story – the wins everyone posts about on Reddit, and the scary parts nobody talks about until they’re leaving the platform.
Why I Chose Bubble In The First Place
I could design the entire UI in a visual editor that felt like Figma on steroids, set up the database with a few clicks, add user logins, Stripe payments, and send automated emails – all without writing a single line of code.
Most importantly: I launched the first paid version in 9 weeks. With traditional coding that would have taken me 9–12 months and at least $80–100k.
If you want to try it yourself, here’s the link I still send to every founder friend → Bubble.io (full disclosure: it’s my affiliate link, but I only share it because I still genuinely use and believe in the platform).
The Parts That Felt Like Magic
- Pixel-perfect design: I took my designer’s Figma file and rebuilt it 1:1 in Bubble. No “template prison” like on Softr or Webflow.
- Speed: New features that used to take weeks now take hours. Example: I added OpenAI-powered task summaries in one weekend.
- Community & plugins: Need a Gantt chart? There’s a plugin. Need Calendly-style scheduling? Plugin. Need Zapier + Make + n8n combined? There’s a plugin for that too.
- Real success proof: Companies like Dividend Finance (raised $365M), Comet, GoodGantt, and dozens of 6- and 7-figure SaaS are still running on Bubble today.
The Two Near-death Experiences
- The QuickBooks integration disaster (Month 8) We promised clients near real-time accounting sync. Bubble simply couldn’t handle the amount of API calls reliably. The app started crashing daily. We ended up building a small Node.js micro-service on AWS and kept Bubble only as the frontend. Expensive lesson, but the app survived.
- The day the new pricing (Workload Units) hit (April 2023 → 2025 reality) My bill jumped from $129/mo to $1,400/mo literally overnight as we crossed 2000 users. I panicked, spent three weeks optimizing every single workflow, and got it back down to ~$650. It’s still the biggest line item on my expenses.
The Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Upfront
- SEO is possible but painful → We rank top 3 for our main keywords today, but only after moving the marketing site + blog to Webflow and keeping Bubble purely as the logged-in app.
- Performance is 100% in your hands → Badly built Bubble apps are painfully slow. Well-built ones load in <1 second. I had to re-learn everything the hard way.
- You will hit a learning ceiling around month 6–8 → Most people quit here. If you push through the next 4 months, you become “dangerous” (in a good way).
- Platform lock-in is real → You can export your data anytime, but you cannot export the actual app logic. That keeps me up at night sometimes.
My Verdict in 2025
Bubble is still the fastest way on earth to go from zero to a real, paying, scalable web app without a technical co-founder or $200k runway.
But it’s not “no-code fairy dust.” Treat it like a professional tool:
- Learn proper workflow optimization early
- Plan for external backends when you hit complex data processing
- Budget for the pricing jump when you scale
If you’re a solo founder or small team with an idea you want to validate this year, I still recommend starting with Bubble → Bubble.io
Just don’t fall in love too hard – keep one foot ready to hire developers or migrate the day your growth curve goes hockey-stick.
