Bubble Review: AI No-Code App Builder for Web and Native Mobile

Creating apps is a time-consuming and costly process without the right tools, especially if you have little or no coding experience. Fortunately, no-code app builders like Bubble promise to do all the hard work for you. In this Bubble review, we got hands-on with the cloud-based platform, so you can decide if it’s the right solution.

What is Bubble?

Bubble is a comprehensive app building platform for web and native mobile apps on Android and iOS. 

It offers a unified experience, allowing you to seamlessly develop cross-platform apps through drag-and-drop, pre-built components, and thousands of plugins that easily extend functionality.

The introduction of AI further cuts down time, bringing your ideas and iterations to life in an instant.

Bubble supports your projects from design and building to deployment, with premium plans starting from $32/mo. You can get started for free to get familiar with the platform.

Key Features

Let’s take a closer look at Bubble’s main features, including its new native mobile tools:

Visual Builder

At Bubble’s core is a powerful yet simple drag-and-drop builder. You can start with a blank canvas or choose from countless customizable themes and templates. It couldn’t be easier to re-arrange and add new elements to the canvas, and you don’t have to worry about responsiveness, as this is already taken care of.

All the components you could need for a functional UI are here, such as headers, sign-up forms, buttons, etc. It does a good job of adhering to design principles, but there’s enough freedom to customize each component to your desired look and feel.

It takes one click to switch between web and mobile – cross-platform apps can share design elements and databases. Likewise, the one-click preview lets you see exactly how the finished app will look.

Plugins

Thousands of plugins (including Zapier) are also available in the marketplace and other sources to enhance the functionality of your Bubble app, integrating with external services, or adding custom elements and actions. This includes the ability to integrate AI into your app.

Furthermore, advanced users benefit from the API Connector. This enables you to connect your app with any external service that provides a RESTful API, such as JSON or XML. This gives you even more freedom over integration with third-party services, such as payment gateways, messaging platforms, or databases.

Workflow Actions

Bubble seamlessly links design to actions, which can be customized in the Workflows tab. This is where you control how the app responds to events such as clicking a button, submitting a form, or loading a page, allowing apps to respond to user interactions dynamically.

It’s as easy as dragging and connecting pre-built workflows and creating a sequence. 

Each action can be customized by setting parameters, such as selecting data sources, specifying values, or defining conditions.

For example, you might show or hide UI elements based on certain conditions or send email or push notifications based on user actions.

Bubble has managed to keep the process straightforward while offering more complex actions than found with other app builders.

Native Mobile

Creating Android or iOS apps follows the same visual design approach, with the addition of native features. 

Rather than just a weak copy of a web app, you can make use of push notifications, camera access, location services, and more. 

Workflows also include mobile custom logic for actions like tapping and swiping.

Like web apps, there are lots of mobile plugins that make further use of native device features and functions. 

For example, the Mobile Pack bundles 30 essential UI components, including onboarding screens, mobile calendar, ratings, media players, and more.

You can preview your mobile apps at any time on the web, along with an emulator bar for different devices and screen sizes.

For an even more accurate preview, BubbleGo is a separate app to test apps on physical devices themselves. This mirrors the experience of actually using the app without having to publish it first.

When finished, Bubble lets you submit your app to Google Play Console and App Store Connect for review right from the editor.

Bubble AI

Bubble now leverages AI in several ways to enhance the app-building process. You can jump right in at the start, using prompts to describe the type of app you want, then tweak the results within the no-code builder.

While it can essentially build the entire app, in practice it works more as a drafting process for iterating ideas and allowing you to start several steps beyond a blank canvas.

It then functions as a co-pilot when tweaking the design and building pages, allowing you to skip the process of manually choosing layouts, adding elements, and configuring their placement. The AI ensures all pages are consistent, further saving time. 

AI is also integrated into Bubble’s analytics, analyzing app data and usage patterns, so you get insight into improving the user experience.

Data

Bubble also handles the database side of your app, which can be accessed under the Data tab. This is the data that end users interact with, enter, or modify while using the app. E.g, user profiles, completed forms, and preference settings.

The database is created automatically when you build your app, and for the most part, runs by itself. However, you can easily add custom data types and fields for the unique data structures of your app, and option sets, which are predefined lists of options that can be used in dropdown menus, radio buttons, or other UI elements.

AI is always on hand to help generate data types and fields for different app features, with automatic privacy rules where necessary. 

Bubble integrates with third parties like payment processors via API, and you can also import existing data.

The Bubble database scales seamlessly as your app and user base grows.

Publishing

For the web, apps are hosted on Bubble’s infrastructure, and you can choose a custom domain. It has steps for configuring SEO settings and can then go live with a single click.

For mobile apps, it guides you through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store approval and distribution process.

Pricing

Bubble offers scalable pricing to suit projects of all sizes. Start for free and then upgrade to one of the following plans, which let you publish your apps:

• Starter ($32/mo or $348/yr) – Single account, custom domain, versioning, 175k workload units/mo (measure of resource usage), 2 days of server logs.
• Growth ($134/mo or $1,428/yr) – 2 app editor accounts, advanced versioning and 10 custom branches, 2FA, 250k workload units/mo, 2 weeks of server logs.
• Team ($399/mo or $4,188/yr) – 5 app editor accounts, sub apps, 25 custom branches, 500k workload units/mo, 20 days of server logs.
• Enterprise – Contact sales for a custom plan.

Visit the pricing page for a more detailed comparison of plans.

Bubble Review – Verdict 

To conclude this Bubble review, the platform has everything you need to create complex web and native mobile apps, regardless of coding experience. 

The combination of AI, point-and-click editor, and database management, streamlines the entire process from the idea stage to publishing on the app stores.

With plugins and API integration, the possibilities are endless.

You can start for free, so there’s no reason not to give Bubble a try!