I’m Vitalii Doroshenko. I build web apps for clients and create my own products. I work solo, from idea to launch.
Bubble has been my main tool for years. But these days, I’m writing more code with the help of AI. With my own projects, I’ve already gone through the process of launching on Bubble and then moving to code. So this blog is about Bubble, AI-assisted development, and how it all works in practice.
How it all started
I built my first websites back in 2015–2016. Most were landing pages made with WordPress and visual website builders. So I was using no-code long before I discovered Bubble.
Adobe Muse really stood out to me. It was a great tool at the time: you could build a website visually and launch it yourself. I already liked that approach back then. I also studied HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to understand how everything worked.
In 2019, I started building chatbots. Then, around 2020–2021, I found Bubble.
At the time, I wanted to build my own app. I was looking into different tools, and what caught my attention about Bubble was the ability to do everything myself, without a team of developers.
I started learning through trial and error, watched YouTube videos, and later took two courses. About two months into learning, while still taking a course, I built my first app for a client. The agency running the course offered me a paid internship. That’s how I started working as a Bubble developer.
I now have around five and a half years of experience with Bubble and more than 5,000 hours of work behind me. I’ll share my client projects separately.
My own products
I’ve always wanted to build something of my own. Come up with an idea, build it, launch it, and see if anyone actually uses it.
That’s what people call indie hacking. You’re the developer, the marketer, and the support team. A team of one.
Over the years, I’ve built around ten projects of my own. I launched quite a few, but only three have survived, so to speak. Two of them have built a pretty good audience:
- YouTube to Transcript: over 20,000 weekly users.
- PDF to Text: around 7,000 weekly users.
My first product was Vocabulary AI, a language-learning app. The extension got good reviews, but I struggled with marketing, and eventually stopped developing it.
Building your own products makes you realize that development is only part of the job. You can build a good app, but you still need to find a way to bring people to it.
Why I started moving to code
Bubble helped me launch ideas quickly. I still think it’s a good tool for MVPs. But I also ran into its limitations firsthand.
As the number of users grew, so did the Workload Usage bills. I spent a lot of time optimizing the app, removing unnecessary operations and reworking the logic. Eventually, I couldn’t see anything else left to optimize, but the costs were still high.
So I started exploring AI-assisted coding and moving my products from Bubble to my own tech stack. All three apps that are still running have now been moved to code with the help of AI.
For me, this is the next step. I want to keep learning, use AI, and gradually automate more of my work. The goal is to build faster, improve quality, and make my apps more reliable.
How I work with clients now
When someone comes to me asking for a Bubble app, one of my first questions is: why Bubble?
I want to understand what they’re trying to build and explain the limitations before we start. That way, the cost of maintaining or growing the app won’t come as a surprise later.
If the goal is to test an idea and launch an MVP quickly, we can start with Bubble. Then, if the product grows and needs to move to code, I can help with that too. I already know the project, its logic, and how people use it. That can save time and money during the migration.
If a client is ready to start with code, we can do that from the beginning. It may cost a little more upfront than building with Bubble, but it can be a better fit for the project.
That’s the direction I’m moving in now. I still work with Bubble, keep developing my own products, and use AI more and more to build apps with code.
On this blog, I’ll share what I’m working on, what works, what doesn’t, and what I learn along the way.