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MOBILE
September 30, 2024

How Bubble Powers the ChurchSpace Mobile App

ChurchSpace uses no-code to connect open churches with community members. Now, they’re pivoting to mobile to enhance the user experience and maximize conversions.
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How Bubble Powers the ChurchSpace Mobile App

5X

cost savings

3X

time savings

150%

YoY growth

Emmanuel Brown and Day Edwards, both children of pastors, know firsthand the financial burden of ministry: There are nearly a trillion dollars tied up in church real estate, with the average church empty 80% of the week. At the same time, the communities surrounding them lack access to affordable spaces and their resources. To close that gap, Emmanuel and Day used Bubble to build ChurchSpace, an Airbnb-style platform connecting empty churches with anyone who needs space.
Since developing their prototype with the help of Bubble Gold agency partner, Rapid Dev, the ChurchSpace web application has grown to over 11,000 users and has been dubbed by The Washington Post as the “Airbnb for churches.” 

“The beauty of no-code is you can strike a healthy balance of speed and capital efficiency,” says Emmanuel. And so far, they’ve been able to achieve just that: With Bubble, ChurchSpace was able to launch their MVP three times faster than they could have with custom code, saving an estimated 5 times in development costs and achieving 150% year-over-year growth.

Now, Emmanuel, Day, and the Rapid Dev team are continuing to improve the user experience on their app — this time, through mobile.

Bringing no-code to ministry 
The inception of ChurchSpace dates back to 2019, when Day’s own church was at the point of foreclosure. When she asked her pastor if she could experiment with renting the space, he “basically threw me the keys,” she says. After just one open house, her church was booked for the rest of the year. 

From there, buzz and demand spread and ChurchSpace was born. Soon, the team needed to build an MVP that “was both feasible from a capital perspective and could give customers a world-class experience,” says Emmanuel. The prototype had to be as simple and user-friendly as possible.




They considered hiring an in-house developer or working with a third-party development team to build the app with code. But both seemed expensive and too slow for their needs. They’d tried some other no-code tools, too, but nothing was working. “We quickly spent a lot of money and got nowhere fast. We realized then that there had to be a better way to do this,” says Day. 

 “When we compared Bubble to the other no-code products in the market, we clearly saw that there was a differential in quality,” says Emmanuel. ‌From there, Emmanuel and Day found Matt Graham and his team at Rapid Dev, a Bubble Gold agency.

From MVP to 11,000 users and 84 churches supported 

With the help of Matt and his team, ChurchSpace’s web app was quickly able to come to life. “The best thing about Bubble is how fast you can iterate,” says Emmanuel.

“The best thing about Bubble is how fast you can iterate."

Once they had a very rough version-one of their idea, Emmanuel and Day started to onboard their first users — quickly, they had ten churches from Houston on the platform. Since then, they’ve continued to grow: ChurchSpace now has over 11,000 users and has helped 84 churches avoid financial stress.
 
Now, the web app is a fully functioning marketplace that lets church leaders list their spaces and users book them.

Leveraging Bubble’s native mobile builder to minimize drop-offs
Despite ChurchSpace’s quick success, they noticed a steep drop-off point, usually when a guest would message a host. Implementing an SMS integration went a long way toward solving the issue. “Once users were able to communicate from their cell phone, we saw a 100% uptick in our host responses. Our average host responded within 24 hours, and our best hosts were responsive in less than two hours.” When they realized streamlining communication would maximize conversions, they pivoted to mobile.

The native mobile app will help with the rest of the booking process, too, including the ability to rent amenities and buy add-ons. “Our entire goal is to make the operations behind space sharing as easy as possible for [church leaders],” says Emmanuel. “So putting communication and booking autonomy in their pockets is essential. Though it seems like a really minor product push for us, we know it’s going to have a world of value.” 




With Rapid Dev’s early access to Bubble’s new mobile functionality, which integrates with existing web apps, databases and backend logic, the process of building the ChurchSpace native mobile app has “been a breeze,” Matt says.

“The new native builder changes everything. Now, you can truly build a great experience for both web and mobile in one place."

“The new native builder changes everything. Now, you can truly build a great experience for both web and mobile in one place. There isn’t really any other true cross-platform technology that can make it this easy to have both a great web app and a great mobile app on one codebase. It’s a complete game changer.” 

Using Bubble mobile to expand nationally and target new community spaces  
ChurchSpace is excited to expand outside of Houston and Dallas. In fact, shortly after BubbleCon 2024 on October 1–2, ChurchSpace mobile will be available nationally for any church and any user. “Being able to share ChurchSpace as a resource directly from your phone is something the mobile app will help us to do exponentially.” 

Aside from expanding their reach, the team at ChurchSpace also hopes to one day target other underused community spaces — like schools, libraries, and restaurants. But, for now, they’re eager to continue building and iterating their existing product on Bubble mobile. 

“Bubble allows us to constantly readjust and realign,” says Emmanuel. “No-code is probably the most efficient way to experiment, iterate and scale at a low cost but high impact type of way.”

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