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Bubble’s new and refreshed tools, product features, and resources make it easier than ever to boost your performance and manage costs as you scale.

Bubble’s mission is to make app development more approachable and accessible for everyone. While many other, simpler no-code tools focus only on one aspect of development, Bubble is full-stack — meaning we also take care of the backend infrastructure services you need to host your app, like the server, database, storage, network, and security.

With traditional full-stack development — as in writing code — a lot of time and resources go into managing backend services and their costs. (Case in point: There’s an entire industry dedicated to helping companies manage cloud spend.) But at Bubble, we simplify the process by folding all those details into workload.

Workload combines all the server resources needed to host, run, and scale any app built on Bubble into one metric — workload units (WU) — that you can monitor and manage. Unlike “capacity” (our legacy usage metric), workload isn’t a shared resource across all Bubble apps, and it doesn’t limit your app’s speed. Instead, workload is only concerned with your app’s resource usage, and you can use more or less of it as needed. In other words, capacity was a speed limit on the highway, whereas workload is more like the fuel for your car — and you get to decide how much to put in the tank.

But in order to leverage workload and scale seamlessly, we know you need the right tools to understand, track, and optimize your app’s workload usage. Here’s a roundup of all the existing and new workload management resources that have launched recently. (And stay tuned for even more updates in the coming months.)

To help explain workload top to bottom, we created a one-stop shop in the Bubble Manual. We recently reorganized the workload section and added new articles categorized by understanding, tracking, and optimizing workload so it’s easier to find the most helpful materials.

This collection of resources lives in the Bubble Manual for easy access anytime. From understanding the workload calculation to the top workload optimization opportunities, it’s all there.

Most users find that their plans include more than enough WU to get started, but our new cost estimator will generate a more personalized projection for your new app ideas. With just a few inputs from you, we’ll use a combination of AI and historical Bubble data to interpret what you’re building and share your estimated total monthly costs. This estimate will include the cost of your monthly plan, workload units, and plugin subscriptions. Try it out today.

If your existing app is on a legacy plan, we’ll be launching a tool to help identify the best new workload-based plan for your app. The tool will also clarify if you should purchase a workload subscription in advance for a volume discount, or pay as you go by enabling workload overages.

Last year, we released the app metrics tab to help track historical workload usage. The charts provide an overview of your app’s total workload and offer ways to drill down into each activity to get a granular look at how workflows, actions, and expressions are impacting costs.

We’re now excited to introduce new custom workload notifications to help you stay informed about your app’s workload consumption. You can specify a custom workload threshold in the notifications tab of your app settings to set up an email alert. When your app hits that threshold, we’ll send you an email so you can make any desired changes — like pausing or updating workflows or changing your workload subscription.

By measuring which app processes are using resources, workload also helps you identify optimization opportunities. Over the past year, we’ve released new resources and tools that help you maintain workload efficiency.

Besides this workload optimization guide published in April 2023, the Bubble Manual is also an incredible resource. We recently added new materials to the refreshed articles in the Bubble Manual, as mentioned earlier — including optimization tips from Bubble agencies Minimum Studio, Neam Co, and Support Dept that detail how they’ve helped clients decrease workload by as much as 400%.

Reading about workload optimizations is one thing — implementing them is another. We’ve been hard at work on platform improvements that help you build smart and rest assured that your app is humming along efficiently:

Our workload tools and resources were created to help your apps continue scaling — but we’re not stopping here. In the next few months, we’re releasing a new workload-related video course on YouTube and even more improvements to help you understand, track, and optimize your workload.

Build quickly without managing a traditional infrastructure system, while scaling confidently knowing your app has the resources to keep pace with demand, and stay cost-efficient by only paying for what you need, when you need it.
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