Bublup

Welcome to my 71st Android note-taking app review and the rabbit hole that keeps on going like the Eveready Bunny!

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Welcome Brian from Canada and "seeasteria" from South Korea to the newsletter!

Don, one of my note-app doppelgangers, sent me a tip on Bublup last year. We've been keeping in touch completely via this app by putting in notes and comments periodically. I really appreciate the chats and support of my hobby. Thanks Don!

This week I'm again reviewing an app which is cloud-first. I try to prioritize local-first apps but am running out of good ones on Android so let me know if you hear of one.

The Bublup service is from a private company of the same name. It was founded in 2014 and funded by Alain Cohen and Marc Cohen who sadly passed away in June 2022.

Bublup is fun to use, has a nice design, and has lots of options to share with friends and family. The free version gives quite a bit of functionality and for USD 2.99 a month, you can increase your storage. After that, unfortunately, the plans get quite expensive starting at USD 6.99 per month.

Some very interesting features of Bublup are the ability to publish a folder and the files in it with a customized theme. The resulting page is called a "roll" I suppose like a photo roll. You can even publish rolls to your own custom domain. The first screenshot is from the Web view of a roll, not the Android app.

I like that you can comment on things including notes and files. Their site has a ton of support options and a lot of content to answer your questions.

Read on for the ugly, bad, good, great, and awesome features of Bublup!

Screenshots

Meta

Pricing

  • Standard - Free : 3 GB of Storage, 3 GB Upload Limit, All File Types, Group Folders, Shareable Links, Visual Thumbnails. Earn 5 GB per Bublup referral. Purchase 100 GB for USD 2.99 / month
  • Premium USD 6.99 / month has everything in Standard plus: 100 GB Storage, 50 GB Upload Limit, Custom Logo & Branding, Folder Admin Permissions, Analytics
  • Pro USD 9.99 / month has everything in Premium plus: 1 TB Storage (Shareable), 50 BG Upload Limit, Organizations & Teams, 10 Members per Org, Central Billing
  • Teams USD 24.99 / month has everything in Pro plus: 5 TB Storage (Shareable), 1000 Members per Org

Ugly

  • Requires an account, not offline first
  • When I edit the note, then published (roll) doesn't seem to get updated automatically. You need to use a menu item to force the sync
  • Really don't like the idea of it integrating with my email, not something I would use

Bad

  • Share via email asks for access to your address book instead of launching the default email app
  • Bullets are indented, I kind of like it but in most apps the bullets are fully left justified
  • Only one image attachment
  • No Markdown support
  • The cards are not the same size
  • In my published page, the first few headings were centered and the last few were correct, left justified

Good

  • Fast
  • Spell check
  • Onboarding tutorial
  • Nice default font
  • Text formatting: bold, italics, underline
  • Formatting toolbar
  • Ordered lists
  • Bullets
  • Indent and outdent bullets
  • Hyperlinks
  • Undo and redo
  • Unfortunately and redo
  • The image is shown in the note list
  • Favourite a note
  • Sort items by date added, date modified, manual sort
  • List or card view of notes
  • Change the background colour of a folder to one of 24 colours
  • Set an image as the background of a folder
  • Trash

Great

  • Very cool animation when you click "..." on a note, it rolls over and gives you a menu of choices
  • The folder view has a nice look, kind of like Instagram with the preview image at the top of each card
  • Sort by date of photo
  • Sort by reactions
  • Gallery view of notes
  • Slideshow of the photos in your folder
  • Organize the files in a folder (in Beta)

Awesome

  • Can publish a folder and the files in it and customize the theme of the resulting page called a "roll"
  • Can publish "rolls" to your own domain
  • Can comment on a note, file, or anything
  • Collaboration (if you need it)

Thanks for reading

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