Exploring Bubble No Code's Plugin Library - A Deep Dive!

The Value of Plugins in Bubble.io

I'm about to reveal the hidden gems in the Bubble plugin library that can take your no code app to the next level. But before I do that, if you're building a no code app, then click the link down in the description because we've got hundreds of resources for cell openers just like you on our website. But let's launch into this. First of all, let's just say, well, should I use plugins? So there is a range of plugins, there are a range of plugins on the Bubble library ranging from abandoned to amazing. And I've actually talked to people in Bubble coaching calls, many of them are reticent about using plugins because maybe for good reason, adding bloat, becoming dependent on software developed by someone else that you've got no control over the continued maintenance and development of. But in my experience, plugins are always worth trying.

Exploring the Bubble Plugin Library

So let's go into the library and just start off. I'm going to just throw some comments out there about my experience working with different plugins in the Bubble plugin directory. So right at the top, mainly because I've got them sorted by usage, we have the API connector. Now we've got tens, maybe 50 or more videos using the Bubble API connector because this is a powerhouse for connecting with probably hundreds of thousands of other web services out there ranging from AI to web scraping. In fact, let's go back a step. I would say that most plugins in the Bubble plugin directory fall into two categories. They either add something visual to your Bubble app, in which case they're loading in some sort of script library, for example, like drag and drop or icons that you can see here, or they're connecting to a third party service.

The Power of the API Connector

Most of the apps that connect to a third party service aren't doing anything that you can't do yourself through the API connector. So they are a useful shortcut, but often a third party service, let's take Postmark for example. Postmark has probably got 30 or 40 different endpoints, whereas I doubt the Postmark plugins listed in the plugin directory have got every single endpoint mapped out. So if you want to use the full potential of a third party API, you might find you have to do that yourself through the API connector. But we've got tons of videos showing you just how to do that.

Visual Enhancement Plugins

So we've got some icon libraries too coming up. So something that is frustrating with Bubble is that the built-in icon element uses a really old version of Font Awesome. We do actually have a video showing you how you can update that. But yeah, the Ionic elements and the Google materials icons are very good. I particularly like the toggle, like you sort of get on iOS and Android, you get nice toggle switches in the Ionic elements.

Toolbox: A Versatile Plugin

Toolbox is fantastically useful. The instance that I think I've used it the most is allowing you to execute JavaScript in a workflow. And the single example where this is most prevalent is if you are using some sort of CRM and event tracking, and so you need to you put the CRM's main script in the header tag for your Bubble app, and you want to be able to log an event and associate it with the user, Toolbox allows you to do that as JavaScript as a workflow action.

Progress Bar and Chart Elements

Progress bar is very handy. Progress bar needs to take a value between zero and 100. So if you're working with percentages, make sure that it's not a decimal is actually a zero to 100. One workaround that I found with progress bar is the doesn't there's not an option to disable the percentage text that sat in the middle of the progress bar, the way that you can work around that is you set the font size to zero. If I find that the progress bar is a little bit inflexible, you can always use the HTML code block and you can make your own custom div with variable width values. If you need a bit more flexibility with progress bars, multi select drop down is great for making like a tag interface. Or you're working with lists in Bubble chart elements.

Now, one more on this chart elements, I do find that a little bit disappointing because you have to have your data structured in quite an obscure way, particularly for the pie charts. I have, I find that Thimos plugin on charts, Apex charts, which we've got a couple of videos on, is so much more flexible and also beautiful for representing your charts.

Stripe Integration and Other Useful Plugins

We've got the Stripe plugin here. Notice that this is the one made by Bubble and it's called 90-95% of use cases. Even if you're running a marketplace, you can just use the built in Stripe plugin. And that's really helpful because there are some additional behind the scenes kind of data fetching, exchanging going on behind bubbles, such as setting the Stripe customer ID as a field that is created for you on current user.

We've then got some interesting ones such as logging in and OAuthing into other accounts like Google. Full calendar is a great place to start if you're wanting to add a calendar app into a calendar widget into your Bubble app. Rich text editor, that's going to allow you to not quite on the scale of like building a notion clone, but maybe you think more like medium, which has got a very restricted rich text, bold, headers, that sort of thing. That's all very cool. Multi file drop down. Yeah, you'll need to use that if you want to upload more than one file at a time.

Date and Time Plugins

Got more OAuth elements here with Facebook, anything else stand out here? Yeah, I like zero codes. Air date and time dropper slash picker. It's much more flexible than the date time drop down that or picker that Bubble provides. You know, if you want to exclude certain days or do specific date ranges, maybe like an Airbnb filter. This is the one to choose.

More Useful Plugins

What else do we have? Well, actually, these are two both by air table, not by air table by zero codes. Actually, this is not the one I use. I use this one the most. This one's got a very particular look like kind of a droplet feel. That's why they call it dropper, I would guess. Star rating is very good because you can provide a number. So you can say I want a star rating of naught to five. And you just save that as a number field. Very good if you're building some sort of review based site.

Instant text. Yes, I've used this before too. Because you may have noticed that if you wanted to say count the characters, or even words in an input field, Bubble will only actually kind of do an analysis of the data in the input. When you click out of it, instant text allows you to feel much more live and up to date if you are wanting to take data out of an input field. That is also useful if you find that your workflow is running before or too early compared to data in the input field. You could use a pause in there, but I'd actually suggest using something like input instant text here.

Search and Keyboard Shortcut Plugins

Search and auto correct. Well, I've not tried that one. I was thinking that might be their fuzzy search, but that looks like it is separate. Or maybe that's a pro one. Anyway, there was a very good fuzzy search plugin by Zeroqode 2 that I use in a lot of projects. What else do we have here? Yeah, Air keyboard shortcuts. I've used that in projects. So you can do really cool stuff, such as like a command bar, like hitting command or Ctrl K, bringing up a pop up and combining that with fuzzy search to make like a yeah, command bar for your app. Yeah, that's very cool. Here's the fuzzy search plugin that I use a lot.

API Integration Plugins

So here's an example. I'm sure you can access all of these same features by just connecting to the Clearbit API. So it is a bit of a shortcut. Oh, here we go. We're into toast notifications now. So if you want to show a really helpful alert that has got flexible styling, but ones that you can't go wrong with, have a look for different toast libraries. They're very good indeed.

Profile Image Plugins

Oh, yes, I use alphabet profile images a lot. So you can use these to say if the if this user or this profile or this contact doesn't have image field is empty, you can use alphabet profile images to just show the letter. So the first name, and then each letter has got a side different color backgrounds, makes your app look more populated.

Conclusion and Advice on Using Plugins

So they go, there are literally 1000s of plugins to extend Bubble. And something that I find I say a lot to people in Bubble coaching calls is that bubbles core features will take you a really long way for so many ideas of SaaS apps. But you can extend them with the plugins. So don't be afraid of them. Do test them out.

One final thing, if we've tried to find a paid one. So by price, they go 6000 plugins in total. So I'm on a I'm just in a demo free Bubble app. But if I was on a paid Bubble app, I can subscribe. And they're always worth trying out plugins because the subscription is pro rata. So if the subscription and these ones are very expensive, but if the subscription is like $10 a month, and you use it for 15 minutes, then that's only going to be a few cents. As long as you make sure that you remove it correctly from your app and from your billing, then yet you can test out and you can try it in your app with it only costing you a few cents.

So are there any plugins that I've missed, please leave a link down in the description or any plugins that you think I should have covered.