There are users then there are active users, keeping a track of Users is often a vanity metric because it's always rising. Active users are the ones that are coming back and using your app on a regular basis, these users are much more likely to pay in the future or pay now. We need Active Users for a successful Startup.

What classes as an active user is kind of up to you and does vary between sectors and types of apps. For example an App for managing your insurance might class an active users as one that has logged-in in the last 12 months , where as game may class an active user one that has logged-in in the last 7 days. A typical timescale is 30 days.

Last Login

With Bubble.io last login is not a very good indicator of activity because most apps don't force a logout at the end of a session, users just close the browser or leave it open. Therefore, if you track last login you can find that it was weeks or even months ago and yet the user is very active but they just haven't had to login. For this reason we don't use it to track activity.

Bubble.io & Active Users

Bubble has no in-built function for tracking active users so it has to be built. A constant across all Bubble apps is the User Data type, so that is where we will create our data storage for last active.

Where to capture it

You want to update the users last active date on pages they are likely to visit regularly for example the dashboard. A typical app would have at least 3 workflow instances to update the users last active. There is no need to update last active for admin users.

Install Guide

Follow these steps to track a users last active date in Bubble.io.

1- Add a new Data Field to the User Data Type, call the Field Name "LastActive" and give it a Field Type of Date