Trying to choose Wappler or Bubble

As said in my beginning post, I can’t test it due to it’s availability, and is really the only “real” app that I’ve seen built with Wappler - the rest are just websites.

If you are looking for more mobile showcases, you can check also the showcases from Framework7 - that is the framework we use for the mobile development in Wappler:

https://framework7.io/showcase/

Wappler is different from Bubble - in a good way though. It essentially helps you build an app with current web technologies and host it yourself.

Compared to Bubble the Wappler community can be a little gruff, but there are a lot of lowcoders here as apposed to Bubble, where the majority now appears to be nocoders. If you spend the time With Wappler you can see the advantages very quickly.

Because Wappler uses common programming languages how much you dive into the code or tech is up to you, but I have found that you need a good grasp of Bootstrap, CSS, HTML and it helps if you Know something about JavaScript and databases.

Using Wappler has motivated me and others to learn more about Bootstrap, MySQL, JavaScript, php and nodejs. The more complex your app the more you will need to learn (there is no avoiding the inevitable) after jumping in head first It will take me about a year to get up to speed to build a complex app.

If you want to learn then Wappler is a great tool, if you just want to focus on process, logic and the business then Bubble is a good start, but like a lot of us ex Bubblers, eventually you will come up against the Bubble limitations, one of which is you don’t own the code!

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Ex Bubbler
IMO. When you start off with Bubble all seems good, but you will hit the wall pretty quickly in terms of flexibility and performance. You can buy plugins to fit your needs, but customisation is probably hard.

With Wappler there is probably a bit more of a learning curve. But I do not think you will regret this path. You can plug in almost anything you want and have total flexibility in the choice of hosting solutions.

Or you can do as me. Start with Bubble and keep going until you realise what you are trying to do is “impossible”, and head over to Wappler :wink:

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Thanks for your reply, Steven. I think I’ll do a bit more scouring, watch some tutorials before making my decision.

You’ve also got the 7-day trial although I completely understand that might not be quite long enough to properly make a decision.

Thanks. Is there no “Hobby” or “Community” plan that I can use to demo Wappler and its features? As you said, I don’t think 7 days is enough and I don’t want to contribute money to something I might not use.

There’s the free version but it doesn’t have much when it comes to the development stuff. I think they do a monthly plan so you could pay for one month to give it a longer go.

I actually backed it by paying a year up front before it was even available!

As I said: ‏‏‎ ‎ ‏‏‎ ‎ ‏‏‎ ‎

So, is it a yes or no?

We offer 7 days trial only. It is meant to give you a taste of the product so you can see if it will be useful for you.

If you need more time you can always take monthly subscription - that you can cancel any month.

Okay, thank you for the straight answer. think I might do that.

Absolutely totally what happened to me!

So I’ve decided to stick to Bubble, in the mean time, as I’ve already built a lot of my app on it already. Bubble have also made huge performance improvements, and will be launching their redesigned & performance-improved editor in a few months, removing all the aches and pains of the old one. Also, I haven’t seen any apps (apart from @Antony and the PopDish guy) that aren’t websites, and the Framework7 showcase isn’t very exciting either. To put it in comparison, Bubble is used to manage a finance app (Qoins), an entire solar panel financing platform and CRM for installers (Dividend) and a freelancer marketplace for data professionals with Bubble which scaled to $800K ARR.

So, at least right now, I’ll be sticking with Bubble for my primary app, but I have got plans to use Wappler fin the future.

As someone else put it, Wappler isn’t for everyone, and in this case, not for me.

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I think I need to eat my words :grimacing:.

I just realised that I am planning to build more apps with Bubble, and just realized that (especially with the price increase) I will be paying a lot for these apps, some of which will need functionality from external services due to Bubble limitations. The current app I’m building is too deep into Bubble to stop using, but I think I’ll be using Wappler for my data-intensive apps, and Bubble for my other “hobby” apps.

As I said, both Bubble and Wappler cater to different markets, and none is perfect…although Wappler may be close at this point, but we’ll see what Bubble (and Wappler) have to offer down the road.