Monthly operational costs?

From Bubble to Wappler
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Hi there. I’m new to wappler. Coming from Bubble with a non-technical background, I’m quite lost and need some guidance to start. Bubble pricing is quite unpredictable and the vendor-lock-in is now something scary for future growth.

My first question so far, for a small project with small user base (around 50-100users) and small web app traffic, how much usually is the average monthly operational costs?

In bubble, you just pay for the domain and the monthly cost of Bubble platform itself, but self hosting is not something you can have. In wappler, main advantage is you own your code and can self host. Other than the monthly cost of Wappler and Domain name, what are the other fees that can accumulate?

Bubble (my current recurring fees)

  • domain name (around $10-15 annual fee)
  • bubble platform (personal plan $25 each monthly fee for each app)

Wappler:

  • domain name :ballot_box_with_check:
  • wappler platform (monthly fee for unlimited number of projects) :ballot_box_with_check:
  • Web Hosting??
  • Any other fees needed??
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I think a lot of this is dependant on preferences and such in terms of how far you go in terms of performance and storage etc

Wappler pricing can be found on the website

Your domain name varies on where you get it from and the popularity of it e.g .com .io or key words can cost a lot more then less used ones currently im using a .uk one for about £2 a year from namecheap with domain protection as im still developing. With a docker setup you can actually use the ip and worry about domains later this depends how you want to host your app.

Web hosting again depends what your looking for personally im using a docker setup so for me I have a Digital ocean cloud server low tier something like £15 a month

With docker there’s a built in database container you can use so this depends how big you actually go the backups are manual so if you have a lot of users maybe opt in for a managed database (im going to be switching my docker over to this soon so not sure the price will vary on space etc)

For me after this the only other price is s3 storage from digital ocean about £5 to store images and a cdn for speed.

In total my current setup is like £60 a month for Wappler and hosting

I’m sure the community can add to this with different setups to give you a better idea we all have different hosts and such I will say Digital Ocean is a popular one but not everyones choice

Welcome to Wappler

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Just to add Wappler has a few referal links to get you started with digital ocean or Hetzner cloud these links will give some credit on making a new account :slight_smile:

https://hetzner.cloud/?ref=U5z0aWoIB2Nj

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We switched to Digital Ocean after using Amazon for the past year or so, saved a fortune. We kept our S3 Storage on Amazon simply because we have TB's of data stored there and the cost is not that much, most is in cold storage, but for majority of our Projects the S3 costs are about the same as @Sorry_Duh mentioned above, maybe even less (yep under five Euros a month, for quite a few GB's of images). Hosting on Digital Ocean is incredibly good value, we also received a sign-up bonus (100 Dollars currently). Set-up is easy, well documented, well supported, great help section, and in our opinion really hard to beat. Total average cost of a Project is between 20 - 30 Euros a month for us (obviously not including Wappler subscription), this includes back-ups for Droplets and a few other options, AND, and its a big one, we CONTROL all our data, no lock-ins, no forum politics, no bullying, no hidden extras, no price hikes, reliable and fast, scalable and straight forward hosting at its best.

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6

Having switched from Bubble recently, I have been testing out a few hosts and the easiest so far to work with for me has been a nodeJS server on Digital Ocean

If you have more than one bubble site, your operational costs will likely be lower regardless of your choices when you switch to Wappler because the per-site costs are lower in my estimations so far

I recently bid a project that required the production plan on bubble and we are getting a lot faster server for less than half with digital ocean, and so much more control if we need it

Of course, the bubble plan included features that digital ocean does not - such as the bubble editor and some of the built-in easy to use features like the automatic SSL registration for HTTPS on your domain and the app caching

I have not found any surprise expenses so far; if anything the hosting is so much cheaper that if you have more than one bubble site it seems you’ll save a lot every month by transitioning to Wappler

Our clients have complained in past about the price jumps between available bubble plans; it is refreshing not to have to worry about trying to prepare a client to jump from $120 hosting to $500 hosting for one reason (happens to us on Bubble sometimes).

Because of the control and flexibility of digital ocean, we could have probably just gone from $120 to perhaps a $200 plan rather than jumping all the way to bubbles next much more expensive plan that is often about 3-4x the cost of the previous.

Given that these savings are per site & per month/year, it adds up. We have just re-bid a project on non-Bubble hosting and the monthly fees went down ~40% even with us taking into consideration needing more time on a new system. The client was thrilled because the monthly hosting fees were their biggest ongoing cost

I have been looking at a lot of project scopes and have only found a few (2 IIRC) out of ~110 active Bubble sites (109 tomorrow :slight_smile: ) that may cost more on D.O. due to weird use patterns

These are sites with really unique scenarios where there might be an expense beyond standard hosting, database storage, backups, domain and certificates (such as a specific server-based search daemon, etc.)

Time will be the biggest expense as you learn, but I am finding it well worth it!

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7

Thanks for all the inputs. Appreciated it very much! :smiley:

I think this will be my biggest expense also. I'm actually thinking if should I start learning Wappler and slowly migrate the app step by step or should I just hire someone to migrate my app to Wappler while and focus on other business side? :grin:

How's your app loading speed compared to bubble? Also, is app caching something done manually by coding or it can be done automatically thru Wappler?

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This will depend on your timings. If you have time to learn and build it yourself then I would do that. But if there is an urgency to get away from Bubble then you might be better hiring someone. The downside to hiring is you won't get the experience for yourself and, if you're anything like me, weeks and months will pass and you'll still be no further in your Wappler learning.

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9

If your usage is really low, you can probably do this on AWS free tier or Oracle Always Free:

Otherwise, choose the paid service based on your requirements (location, speed, price, traffic allowances, customer service, performance, other services...) - AWS, DO, Hertzner etc. all have pros and cons so it very much depends on your priorities.

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Very good - as in, so much faster that it often feels I am not touching the server and am somehow working locally. I have checked to be sure there is network activity countless times, thinking my Wappler test site was somehow not actually loading live data because it was so fast.

Most of our bubble sites load like cold molasses compared to the Wappler equivalent.

I am finding the approach to be pretty different; I think if you are open to learning a different alternative to Bubble and don’t mind a little code, the DIY route is very rewarding.

If you need any tips, feel free to message me. I am still new to Wappler but am a recent Bubbler and might be able to point you in the right direction if you get stuck along the way :+1:

This is something I am still exploring. I am seeing that browsers are creating caches for the site on their own, but I am not sure I have my head wrapped around how the Digital Ocean server manages things like caching search results, commonly accessed resources, etc.

My experience with Bubble is that they had a few things in their product that helped speed up the molasses apps, especially related to a partially indexed database and cache of common resources.

We liked this a lot on Bubble because it sped things up, but things are already so much faster on a DO hosted Wappler site that I am not sure I’d bother if it requires manual setup.

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