Bubble, Webflow and the No-Code cult are selling you smoke

"Build your app without coding." Sounds beautiful. And it works, until your app has 200 users, you need a custom integration or want to migrate. There you discover no-code wasn't free, just deferred the cost.

Bubble's invisible ceiling

First 4 weeks on Bubble are magical. You ship a working prototype, hook Stripe, have login. You feel like a genius. Week 12, your app is slow because Bubble runs every workflow on shared servers. Week 20, you want custom ERP integration and discover Bubble doesn't support advanced HTTP. Week 30, you hire a developer to migrate.

When SHOULD you use no-code?

No-code is brilliant to validate an idea in 2 weeks. If you don't know yet if people will buy, DON'T hire a developer. Ship an ugly happy Bubble. When you have 30 paying customers, migrate to your own stack. The error is skipping validation OR staying in no-code after validating.