Supercharge your Bubble app with Supabase

This we take a look at 10 reasons you should consider using Supbase and Bubble together. The new Supabase AI assistant means you don't need to know SQL!

Hey there!

Welcome to this week’s NoCode SaaS newsletter, where I take you along on the journey of building a profitable business without code using Bubble and AI.

This week I want to take a look at Supabase - and why I think it’s such a great tool to have in your back pocket when building with Bubble - and any other platform for that matter.

I’ve been reading about Supabase for years but had never checked out in depth, but over the last few months I decided to finally dive into it.

After getting to grips with it, I moved my app UserLoop’s core database to Supabase and it’s really helped me realise what a great platform it is, and how even non technical people can now use it to build apps thanks to AI.

We actually discussed it a bit on this week’s edition of the Create With podcast here.

So for this issue I’m going to cover my top 10 reasons it’s worth considering using Supabase for your next project - even if you’re not a coder.

One quick thing - reader survey

Could you take a moment to answer some questions in my quick reader survey. I am planning the content for the newsletter for the rest of the year and would love to hear your feedback!

Now let’s dive into Supabase!

10 Reasons to use Supabase with Bubble

I’m going to cover why I think Supabase is a great companion to Bubble here, but most of these points really apply to using it with other NoCode / AI tools as well.

To give some context on my own journey with Supabase, my app UserLoop is a survey app built primarily for Shopify merchants.

Let me know if you find this interesting - and if you would be interested in a video tutorial of how to get everything set up and running.

There are excellent well documented Bubble plugins for Supabase

One of the best things about building with Bubble is the extensive plugin ecosystem. As of this week there are over 6,500 plugins made for Bubble.

Now whilst not all of them are of high quality this is generally a great thing as there are plugins to do anything you could imagine.

I spent some time going through all the different Supabase plugins and eventually landed on Supabase by Nocodegarden.

The plugin has excellent documentation, making setting everything up in Bubble super easy, I even requested a feature and the developer responded in a day or two adding it!

You don’t need to be able to write SQL

One of the most common misconceptions about Supabase is that you need to be a SQL expert or programmer to use it, and this was probably true a year ago.

When I first looked at Supabase a few years ago, I was intimidated by the amount of SQL knowledge that seemed to be required. But trying it again recently, I was amazed at how much easier it's become to use, especially for non-technical people.

Here's what makes it so accessible now, and why I think it’s a good time to take another look at it…

The AI SQL Editor

Supabase has built an incredible AI assistant right into their platform. Instead of writing SQL queries, you can simply describe what you want to do in plain English, and it will write the SQL for you. For example, you could write:

"Show me all customers who signed up in the last 30 days and have made more than 2 purchases"

The AI will then write the correct SQL query for you. This means you can build complex database queries without knowing SQL syntax.

I’ve actually found this to be much easier to use to query data than manually using the database tab inside Bubble.

The assistant can also help you with setting up tables, security rules, populating tables with demo data and just about anything else you can think of.

Visual Table Editor

For basic database operations, Supabase provides a spreadsheet-like interface that should feel familiar to anyone who's used tools like Airtable or Excel. It’s even pretty similar to the Bubble database tab in a lot of ways

You can:

• Create new tables by clicking buttons

• Add columns by selecting from dropdown menus

• Edit data directly in cells

• Import data from CSV files

You can still stream results into Bubble in realtime

One of the most powerful features of Supabase is its real-time features, and thanks to plugins like NoCodeGarden's Supabase connector, you can easily bring this functionality into your Bubble app, without any coding.

Simply drop an element on your page, add your connection settings and you can stream realtime changes to any table or repeating group - it works really nicely and was a lot easier to set up than I anticipated

In my own app UserLoop, I use this for displaying live survey responses. When a customer submits feedback through a survey, store owners see the response appear instantly in their dashboard without needing to refresh the page.

Using Supabase's real-time features through the plugin also helps with performance since you're not constantly polling the database for changes. Instead, updates are pushed to your app only when they actually occur, making it both more responsive and more efficient.

You can do complex queries on data it would be difficult to do in Bubble

One of the biggest game-changers I've discovered since moving UserLoop's data to Supabase is the ability to perform complex data analysis that would be challenging or impossible to do efficiently in Bubble alone. Let me share some real examples from my own experience.

Recently, I completely revamped UserLoop's analytics capabilities by leveraging Supabase's powerful querying abilities. Here's what this enabled:

• Time-series charts showing survey response trends over custom date ranges

• Revenue impact analysis comparing customer feedback to purchase behavior

• Cohort analysis of customer satisfaction scores

• Complex aggregations of customer sentiment across different store locations

What's particularly exciting is how I built these features without being a SQL expert, thanks to AI assistance. I used Claude to help me write the SQL queries, which I could then test and implement in Supabase.

1. Design Your Query: I describe what I want to analyze in plain English to Claude (you need to give it the basic structure of your table as context, you can just copy and paste this from Supabase)

2. Generate SQL: Claude helps write the SQL query

3. Test in Supabase: Run and refine the query in Supabase's interface

4. Connect to Bubble: Use the API connector to pull the results into Bubble's UI

In Bubble alone, complex calculations across large datasets can be challenging because:

• They can consume lots of capacity

• They might time out on large datasets

• They're often slower than native database queries

• Some types of calculations are hard to express in Bubble's workflow language

But with Supabase handling the heavy lifting, we can:

• Process millions of records in milliseconds

• Perform complex mathematical operations

• Create sophisticated data groupings and aggregations

• Generate reports in real-time

Here's a glimpse of the kind of analysis that's now possible by using Supabase in my app.

This query aggregates customer feedback by answer, works out the count, percentage, revenue and average order value.

Then in Bubble I can chart that over time and put it into a repeating group. This is all called via the API Connector directly to Supbabase using a JWT generated for the specific user.

In another report I’m able to take it a step further with a whole host of new calculated metrics all powered by Supabase and based on querying a single table.

Here I’m working out all sorts of things like the total number of orders per response, order frequency, repeat rates etc. This would have been impossible to make using the built in Bubble database so this is a good example of why if you have any analytics capability in your app it’s worth considering Supabase.

It’s cost effective when reading and updating many records

One of the most compelling reasons to consider Supabase is its pricing model, especially when dealing with large volumes of data operations. While Bubble's wokflow unit-based pricing can get expensive when doing lots of database operations, Supabase remains incredibly cost-effective even at scale.

For example, in UserLoop, we process hundreds of thousands of survey responses per month. On Supabase's free tier, you get:

• 500MB database space

• 50,000 monthly active users

• Unlimited API requests

• Real-time subscriptions

• Database backups

Even when you outgrow the free tier, the pricing remains very reasonable. I'm currently on their Pro tier ($25/month) which handles all my app's database operations with plenty of headroom to spare.

What's particularly great is that you can use Supabase just for the data-intensive parts of your app while keeping everything else in Bubble, giving you the best of both worlds.

I still use the built in Bubble database for data types with low volume like billing, user preferences etc. But the ability to have Supabase as an option for very high volume tables / frequent read write operations is great to have in your pocket!

You don’t have to use Supabase’s built in auth if you don’t want to

Supabase does have a built in auth system, but if you’re already using Bubble’s built in auth you don’t need to switch. You can generate a JWT for each user in your database (basically an API key for each user) which lets them read only their own data from Supabase.

The Nocodegarden plugin handles this really simply, and you can just run it from a backend workflow to generate a token easily. Supabase’s AI assistant can also set up your RLS (Supabase equivalent of Bubble privacy rules)

I've found this particularly helpful when setting up row-level security policies, which can be tricky to get right without the AI's help.

One thing I love about Supabase's JWT authentication system is how it lets you be strategic about what data you keep where. In UserLoop, I use this flexibility to keep sensitive survey response data in Supabase while storing user preferences and billing info in Bubble. The JWT system makes it easy to maintain secure data access patterns without writing complex code. This hybrid approach gives you the best of both worlds - you can use Supabase where it makes sense while keeping the rest of your app in Bubble.

It also works great with the API connector, you can pull data into Bubble just like any other API. You can choose whether to use the plugin to pull data (maybe if you need the realtime updates) or to just use the regular old API connector.

The integration between Supabase and Bubble's API Connector feels completely natural. When I first set it up in UserLoop, I was pleased to find that making calls to Supabase felt just like working with any other API in Bubble. The difference is that you have the full power of a PostgreSQL database behind those API calls.

This makes it perfect for handling large datasets and complex operations that might be challenging in Bubble alone.

It works great with Cloudflare Workers if you want to do more of your processing on the edge at a low cost

I've recently started exploring the combination of Supabase with Cloudflare Workers, and it's opened up some exciting possibilities.

I’ve covered Cloudflare Workers a lot in the past, and how I love using them for backend processing tasks. The good news is they work amazingly well with Supabase too!

For example I have recently made a Cloudflare Worker which pulls data from Supabase and runs it through OpenAI to extract key themes from customer feedback, it then responds with a nicely formatted JSON object.

I’m going to touch a bit on combining Cloudflare Workers and Supabase in future issues - I think this is going to be a great combination for building AI Agents.

If you’re interested in learning more about building agents I really recommend checking out JJ Englert’s new course on the topic. He’s one of the OG Bubble and NoCode experts - and this new course on agents covers everything on how to build them, the tools to use and what they can do.

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That’s it for this week’s edition!

Let me know if you would find a video tutorial of getting started with Supabase and Bubble useful and I’ll put one together. I really do encourage you to give it a try!

Don't forget to fill out my reader survey to help shape future content if you have a spare moment!

Thanks again for reading, and happy building!

James

PS: There is only 1 week left to get your early bird to the Create With Conference in London on Thursday May 22nd. It’s going to be a day of talks, tutorials and of course drinks with some of the best NoCode and AI builders from around the world. Tickets here.

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