Dear community members,
I’m sure my story is not the first one like this, I’ve read similar stories in other forums but I thought with my tech and business experience I will be OK. My web application is one one of several I have in mind. I spent a lot of time researching the options and determined that this company sounded the best option, the most capable when it comes to Bubble development (name withdrawn for now as they are very active here and advertise a lot).Initial communication and interaction was great. They quoted me for about 100 hours or less for my project.
They turn out to be a nightmare. They took many months and still do not have a properly working application. Their output is riddled with bugs which I have to pay them in order to fix.They barely do any testing, their work looks mostly loose pieces of hacks, not a proper way of doing things. They don’t do any UI design at all and project management is a joke. I already spent over $10,000 with them. I’m in the cross roads now to decide what to do.
A. Take more chances with another Bubble developer(s) to take over the project. Dip further into my savings and try to make it.
B. Start from scratch with a non Bubble platform since there are so limited options for good Bubble developers. Serious lack of designers and programmers, serious limits of platform capabilities, speed and functionality.
C. Cut my loses, lick my wounds and simply quit from trying to develop my project.
In my opinion @jasonlibasci143 before started the project if you gave him a time requirement and they accepted, at the end of that time i should ask them whats happening and see the progress (then decide).
I don’t understand why you guys pay +10k instead of milestone or just 50% on the start and the other at release.
So you should definitely take my opinion with a large grain of salt because I work at a Bubble development shop myself.
But here’s what I would do:
Try to determine whether your app is salvageable or not. The key there is whether the foundation of the app (the database, the structure of the pages, etc.) is solid and there are just some minor bugs to be sorted out OR the foundation of the app isn’t good and the bugs are mostly the result of that poor foundation
For determining the above, it might make sense to recruit an experienced freelancer and to pay them for just an hour or two of work to start. For example @romanmg, who is great, offers an “App Audit” service here: https://coachingbubble.com/app-audit
If the foundation is good, it might make sense to try to salvage what you have. To do that you have 3 options: 1) Try to work out some sort of a plan with your developer to fix the remaining bugs. Remember that they have a reputation to protect, so they are incentivized to make this right for you. 2) Hire someone else, probably a freelancer, to make the remaining fixes. Keep in mind that if you do that, the person will have to spend a whole bunch of time familiarizing themselves with the app first before being able to be productive 3) Dive into Bubble yourself - that will be tough, especially with an app built by someone else but can definitely be done (and will be a great learning process in any case)
If the foundation isn’t good, it might be a losing battle to try to salvage what you have and sink more money into it. That’s a tough thing to go through and something I personally dealt with before coming to Bubble
For future work, whether to complete this app or for a different app, I highly recommend pushing for a fixed-price approach. Hourly projects introduce perverse incentives for developers while fixed price projects make it so that the developer is incentivized to finish the app as quickly as possible and to make it as issue-free as possible
I think you would be doing the Bubble community a service if you were to let us know the name of developer you were working with so as to help us with our due diligence when approaching projects like these ourselves. If working with a company is a nightmare then that is something others would appreciate knowing. Otherwise bad actors stay in business.
