SaaS Builders: PagePalooza vs Bubble
Startup founders, entrepreneurs and businesses in general are heavily relying on no-code tools to develop web applications. PagePalooza.com and Bubble are both platforms that specialize in building ‘Software As A Service’ (SaaS) applications. An example of a SaaS could be a booking app, or a document management app. SaaS applications usually involve pricing models such as subscriptions.
In this article, we will compare the two platforms and highlight the main differences to help you choose the best platform for your app. We will start with the basics, and go in-depth into their pricing modules, integrations and scalability.
- What is PagePalooza?
PagePalooza is a web app builder that is known for its ease of use without having to deal with complicated web editors, numerous options, and confusing configuration settings.
One interesting aspect of PagePalooza is that you can generate a 90% ready landing page from a single prompt. Any additional features that you need will get built on top of that generated landing page. After generating the base landing page, you can enable built-in extensions such as e-commerce or subscriptions. On top of that, you can create custom tasks that will connect you with a Palooza software engineer to discuss the requested features and implement them on top of the generated landing page. You pay a one-time fee for the custom built code and you have the ability to download it.
PagePalooza becomes a task management tool to manage the features you are adding and consulting with the software engineer on the best ways to implement them. This gives you full control of the build. Your website, your rules.
- What is Bubble?
Bubble is also a web app builder that allows you to design pixel-perfect solutions. You are not bound to any templates and you can move elements around on a canvas to achieve your desired design.
One interesting aspect of the platform is the complexity of options and settings that you can adjust. While there is a learning curve, and some users find it easier to learn coding than to use Bubble, the platform offers a significant number of customizable options. The web-editor looks somewhat like Photoshop, a lot of options that you need to learn. Once you get used to the editor and get familiar with the naming you would be able to build a clean prototype to start off with and choose from hundreds of built-in extensions.
Instead of showing a difference table, or the old advantage/disadvantage chart, I have decided to explain the key differences by explaining a creation process for a “dentists appointment booking app”.
In the next section and in order to easily understand the workflow of creating and launching a web application, we will discuss the steps needed to build a dentist booking app on each platform.
- With PagePalooza:
You start with generating a landing page from a single prompt. The prompt can be as simple as “A website for booking appointments for a dentist called Glens Dental”. Next, you can edit the generated website using a standard web-editor.
After that, you will need to create custom engineering tasks that will be implemented on top of your landing page with the help of a software engineer. You can create multiple tasks or just one task with all the information about the feature you are adding. These tasks are created by filling in a form and attaching any document or image than you think will help in the development.
Task 1: Creating the authentication and authorization (login & register). I want the user to input his location when signing up.
Task 2: Scheduling an appointment. I want the user to select a date, fill in a form on what they want to do during the appointment (cleaning, crown…).
The software engineer will check the customization requests, leave comments and put a price on each request. You pay a one-time fee for each customization request and the development begins.
The software engineer will create and deploy your own application or API and your own database on Amazon Web Service (AWS). You will need to provide access to your AWS account by adding a user. Features get implemented one by one and deployed on top of your website so that you can test them and provide any feedback.
- With Bubble:
You start by opening the editor and dragging elements onto it. You can add a menu and a hero section with a button to begin with. Next you will need to start adding the features you need.
Task 1: Creating the authentication and authorization (login & register). I want the user to input his location when signing up.
You will need to first set the data fields which you want each user to have. Such as name, last name, email, password. You will also need to create another table with address information such as street, country, city, zip code and link it to the user id.
Task 2: Scheduling an appointment. I want the user to select a date, fill in a form on what they want to do during the appointment (cleaning, crown…).
You will need to add a calendar plugin. There are multiple calendar options with different limitations on each, so you will need to select the one that would work best with your flow. After that you will also need to add another table to your database called “appointment” and add all the fields that should be saved into that table such as date, time, patient, type of service (cleaning, crown…). You will need to make sure that the form is correctly bound to the database fields so that everything is saved.
Each workflow in Bubble will require you to configure the process. If you want to retrieve the booked appointments, you will have to do something like ‘GetAppointments’ and input what it needs to return such as all appointments or only appointments that are in the future by setting the correct parameters.
Learning basic web development skills before starting your project on Bubble would make things easier for you if you start fresh.
If you have made it this far then you already have an idea on how different integrations such as a calendar can be added on each platform.
Regarding scalability, we can also conclude that Bubble can be limited with respect to the plugins or when manipulating the backend logic through inputs and configuration settings. PagePalooza has no limitations since you could request whatever feature you like and it will be developed on your own API if it requires a back-end.
The Cost:
On PagePalooza, you pay one time fees for the custom features you request. An MVP build for a booking appointment app could cost between 1,500$ to 3,000$. You only pay that once and you will own the code. This includes owning your own API (backend logic and database), in addition to any custom front-end designs. You will be paying a monthly fee on AWS depending on the cloud services you use. You can always benefit from the AWS free tier aswell.
On Bubble, you will be paying monthly fees depending on the package you choose starting from 32$/month and up to 399$/month for the highest package. The higher the package the more workloads you get. You can think of workloads as the number of requests or activities happening on your application. On top of that, you will also be paying for any paid plugins you add.
