Every business owner knows how important it is for their company to have an online presence, and one important component of that presence is a business website. But many entrepreneurs lack the skills or the time to learn how to create their own website. If you want a website built quickly, you likely don’t have time to learn how to write code.
Webflow is a website builder that many developers swear by for creating professional websites. But does this website builder live up to all of the hype surrounding it? We’ll tell you everything you need to know in this Webflow review.
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Last Updated: May 28, 2023
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We thought we’d start our Webflow review with an explanation of what a website builder is. A webite builder is a platform used to create and build a website. Some builders allow you to start from scratch, or allow you to use code (if you have the skills and knowledge to do so), while others provide you with templates and customizable layouts that allow you to build a website easily whether you have design skills or not.
Webflow is a website builder with an array of tools and features that we’ll discuss later in this Webflow review.
As we’ve already stated, Webflow is a website builder, but that’s a pretty simplistic answer. We found out that while checking out the builder for our Webflow review that it allows you to build a professional website without using code, which is helpful to those of us who don’t know anything about code. It’s somewhere between the more primitive forms of website builders such as Drupal and WordPress, and the more modern website builders such as Squarespace and Wix.
Because of this, it’s popular among web developers. It manages to provide you with a fully customizable website building experience without requiring you to use code, which is really enticing to a lot of people.
Are you reading this Webflow review and wondering how to tell if it’s a good fit for you? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered in this section of our Webflow review where we tell you who Webflow is good for.
Webflow is good for both web designers and developers who want to provide their clients with highly customizable sites, without the hassle of code. It’s also good for anyone who has previously used a different web builder to create a website, such as Weebly or Wix, and are looking for a web builder that allows them to customize and control the site building aspect of their creations.
It’s also a good fit for anyone who has spent years on WordPress and is quite familiar with the way that WordPress allows you to build a website. If you like WordPress, it’s likely that you’ll like the freedom and creative control that Webflow gives you, the fact that your site will be more secure, and a more user-friendly and intuitive builder.
If you’re reading this Webflow review and wondering if it would benefit your team, then there’s good news for you. Webflow is a good fit for teams, as well. It gives you a way to collaborate with your fellow team members and clients and gives you various ways to control the ways that team members and clients interact with your projects.
Webflow is a web builder designed for those with an intermediate skill set. So if you’re a beginner checking out this Webflow review, unfortunately we can’t really recommend this web builder for you.
It’s important to include a section about the user experience in any Webflow review. It’s definitely not the easiest program to learn to use. There’s a steep learning curve if you don’t have web development experience. It’s definitely the first web builder that beginners should use.
However, for users with intermediate and advanced skill levels, once you learn how to use it then it’s pretty simple to navigate. And for those with lots of web development experience, it’s easier because you have the freedom and customization that you want without the hassle of using code.
Now we’ll get to one of the most important parts of this Webflow review: the features. Of course if you’ve read this far you know what Webflow is, but how does it help you build a website and what tools does it provide to make the experience less arduous? Here’s a look at some of Webflow’s features:
No good Webflow review can do its job adequately without discussing Webflow’s designer because of how innovative it is. Using a visual designer, you generate HTML, JavaScript and CSSL code, rather than writing the lines of code yourself. How does this work?
You move things around on the screen, add your own features and customize the site to fit your needs, while the designer is quietly generating code in the background to make the site perform the actions you’ve indicated in the designer.
This is a feature that every developer and designer reading this Webflow review will be excited about. Of course it’s nice that the designer will generate code for you, but if you know how to write and edit code, Webflow allows you to do so.
Many web builders don’t give you this option. You’ll get all of the benefits that come with CSS3 and HTML5, which means you have the ability to make custom transitions, flexboxes and floats, as well as utilize DOM organization, gradients and more.
Many people who have used WordPress’s services will be excited to learn that while we were doing research for this Webflow review we found that it provides you with website templates. There are three different wireframes and more than 25 templates.
You can find templates for e-commerce, basic portfolio sites, blogs and more. The wireframes come in three different options: business, startup and portfolio. They provide you with an outline for your site, but give you more creative freedom and customization options than templates do.
Webflow has made it a point to keep up with the latest trends in web development, which is why it allows you to use and create various motions. We wanted to include the fact that it allows you to use Parallax scrolling in our Webflow review because this is something that a few other website builders aren’t doing.
If you’ve never heard of Parallax scrolling, it’s a web design technique used to ellicit something of a 3-D effect. It’s accomplished by making various elements on the page move at varying speeds as a user scrolls through the site. Aside from the Parallax scrolling, you’re able to make your own animations and create interesting microinteractions that will catch your viewers’ attention.
One feature that many people consider crucial to web development is the ability to backup your work, so we thought it was a good idea to mention Webflow’s automatic backup feature in our Webflow review. This gives you the ability to use a save file in the event that you encounter some sort of calamity while building your website.
Another feature that Webflow takes seriously is security, which is why we wanted to discuss their security features as part of our Webflow review. Your Webflow site comes with an SSL URL. SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer”, and is a type of encryption between computers linked by a network. T
his means that when customers input their information on your site, it will be encrypted and secure. The SSL certificate lets visitors to your site know that your site is safe, and so is their information.
Like many web builders, Webflow offers integrated hosting, which means you won’t have to seek out a third-party hosing service to purchase your own domain (.com or .net). You’re provided with your own domain from even their least expensive plan. They don’t provide email hosting yet, but you’re able to integrate Google Workspace or Zoho Workplace.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is a method that consists of altering the content on your site in order to ensure that your site appears higher in the search results of search engines such as Bing and Google and it’s an important part of most business websites which is why we’ve included it in this Webflow review.
Often when website builders offer SEO tools, you’ll find things like the ability to add and edit metadata, make alt image text, and create a list of target SEO keywords. In addition to those features, Webflow also allows you to customize your 301 redirects and it automatically generates sitemaps.
You can integrate Google Analytics to get various statistics about your viewers.
This is an important feature for eCommerce stores created on Webflow, so we felt it was important to cover it in our Webflow review. Of course, many eCommerce sites allow you to choose how you want to pay for products or services, and sites created with Webflow have this option as well.
Webflow uses Stripe, an online payment processing service, to take credit and debit card payments. In addition to credit and debit card payments, you can also accept PayPal and Apple Pay payments.
Many people reading this Webflow review are probably wondering if it’s feasible to use Webflow to accept payments and ship products globally. Webflow makes taking payments from other countries simple by automatically calculating the sales tax or VAT for you. VAT stands for “Value Added Tax”, and it’s a tax applied to a broad range of goods and services in the European Union (EU).
It’s also referred to as a Goods And Services (GAS) tax in other parts of the world. The VAT is quite complicated because it’s applied in increments throughout the supply and retail process, so it’s incredibly helpful to have this calculated automatically.
If you’ve been reading this Webflow review and wondering whether you’ll have to start from scratch even though you’ve already created a Facebook or Instagram shop, then the good news is that you won’t. Webflow allows you to integrate your Facebook and Instagram shops, and will sync them to your Webflow site.
This allows you to use your Webflow site to obtain sales in your Instagram or Facebook shop. It also gives you more options when it comes to advertising and marketing campaigns for your shops. Check out this Instagram story maker if you are looking to create free designs for instagram stories.
If you’re reading this Webflow review with the intent of finding out if Webflow can handle the traffic volumes your site generates, then the answer is yes. Webflow has what it calls a “fleet” of more than 100 servers and datacenters located all around the world with CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) that are powered by reputable companies like Amazon Cloudfront and Fastly.
Because Webflow uses an Amazon Web Services (AWS) foundation, it can provide support for even sites with the highest traffic volumes. It provides a 99.9% uptime and a guarantee that your site will load in milliseconds.
It’s important to talk about help and customer support any time you’re discussing a piece of software or online service, which is why we felt it imperative to add this section to our Webflow review. No matter how good their services are, you’ll eventually have a question or require technical assistance, which is why customer support and help centers are so important to the consumer.
Webflow has a help center, called Webflow University. As one might guess from its apt title, Webflow University is a wealth of information on all sorts of subjects. You can find all a myriad of tutorials, guides and video courses here. The best part about Webflow University is that it’s user-friendly and you can search it. There’s so much information on it that as part of this Webflow review we recommend that you check the University before asking someone else about your problem.
Another helpful tool at your disposal is the community forum. There are a ton of helpful posts on the forum, so if you have a problem it’s worth searching through the forum for an answer. People use the forum to discuss various user experiences and any problems they’re having with Webflow. If you can’t find the answer to your question there, you can always create a post and ask your question there.
Now onto the most important part of this portion of our Webflow review: Webflow’s customer support. Unfortunately, even though they have some awesome help options such as the Webflow University and the community forum, their customer support leaves much to be desired. You can’t simply call or initiate a live chat with a customer support agent.
The only way to contact their customer support team is through email, and if you’ve dealt with email support before then you know how inefficient that can be. Their customer support team is available from 6AM- 6PM PT Monday- Friday, and they’ll typically get back to you within 24-48 hours. The only real plus side to their email support is that you can attach files like screenshots so that you can show them what your problem is.
You’re probably reading this Webflow review and thinking “Okay, those features are great, but how much does it cost?”, which is a fair question. In this section of our Webflow review we’ll tell you everything you need to know about Webflow’s pricing options.
First, you need to know that there are several different pricing plans. Here’s a look at the individual plans:
The Lite plan allows you to create 10 different projects, export your code and transfer your projects to another Webflow account.
The Pro plan allows you to create an unlimited number of projects, and gives you the ability to export code and transfer projects. You also get access to other features like the ability to protect your websites with passwords and white labeling.
The Basic plan allows you to have up to 100 pages on your site, with up to 25,000 monthly visitors. You get 500 form submissions and 50 GB of CDN bandwidth. However, you don’t get a Content Management System or CMS.
The CMS plan allows you to have 100 pages, up to 100,000 monthly visitors, 200 GB of CDN bandwidth, 60 API requests per minute (RPM), 3 content editors and the ability to search your site.
The Business plan allows you up to 100 pages and 1,000,000 visitors per month. You also get unlimited form submissions, 400 GB CDN bandwidth, 120 API requests per minute (RPM), the ability to search your site and 10 content editors.
With the Standard plan you’re allowed up to 500 items in your store, all of the features from the CMS plan, a custom checkout, shopping cart and product fields, email customization, CMS integration for blogs, 2% fee for transactions, Stripe payments, an automatic tax calculator, Apple Pay, web payments and PayPal payments, integration with Facebook, Instagram and Google shops, the ability to manually set your shipping rules, up to three staff accounts and the ability to earn up to $50k in yearly sales.
With the Plus plan you’re allowed up to 1,000 items in your shop. You also get all of the features of the Standard plan and the Business plan. You aren’t charged anything for transactions made in your shop, you get up to 10 staff accounts and the ability to earn up to $200k in yearly sales.
With the Advanced plan you’re allowed up to 3,000 items in your shop. You also get all of the features of the Standard and Business plans. There’s no charge for transactions made in your shop, you get up to 15 staff accounts and can make an unlimited amount of yearly sales.
Because we’re writing a comprehensive Webflow review, we can’t leave the Team plans out of our pricing section. Team plans are a good idea for agencies or businesses with multiple team members who need to access the site or store.
With the Team plan you get all the features from the Pro plan, unlimited projects, white labeling, the ability to protect your site with a password, and export your code. There’s also a team dashboard which provides team members with a convenient way to collaborate with each other.
This is an important question for anyone who is on a tight budget, or who wants to try the service before making a purchase decision immediately after reading this Webflow review. The good news is that Webflow’s services are free by default. There’s no trial period to worry about- it’s simply free until you make the decision to purchase a subscription plan.
If you decide to cancel a subscription plan, your plan reverts back to the free plan. With the free plan you’re able to build two websites. However, it’s important that we point this out in our Webflow review: you can’t export your code or transfer your site to another Webflow account using the free plan.
You’re also stuck with a webflow.io domain. So if you created a site called Eat This Food, then your URL would be eatthisfood.webflow.io and display a banner in the bottom corner that reads “Made with Webflow”. This is enough of a fly in the ointment to many people to make them consider the paid subscription plans.
If you work with even one other person to create website projects, then you’ll benefit from this section of our Webflow review. We’ll tell you everything you need to know about what it’s like to collaborate with other people on Webflow.
The first thing you need to know is that you only have the option to collaborate with your team if you use one of their Team Plans (see the “How Much Does Webflow Cost?” section.) This means that you don’t have the option to share projects if you use any other plan. But it’s well worth the money to purchase the Team plan because it only costs $35- $42 per person depending on if you choose annual or monthly billing options.
While you can collaborate with team members, it’s important to point out as part of our Webflow review that it’s currently impossible to make and share changes with team members in real-time. We don’t mean that in the sense that they’re working on implementing this feature, but simply that it isn’t available at the time we’re writing this Webflow review.
However, each member of your team can access all parts of your Webflow projects. So if you have different team members with different roles, such as someone who is in charge of content creation and someone who is in charge of design, they can both access the projects and work on the aspects that they’re responsible for with no additional effort on your part.
We also need to discuss the team dashboard in this section of our Webflow review. It’s quite convenient and it’s something that you don’t see often with other web builders. You can keep track of all of the collaborative efforts between your team members in one place, using the team dashboard’s easy-to-read UI.
The one question that the majority of the readers of this Webflow review are eager to learn about is “How does Webflow compare to WordPress?”. Approximately 43% of websites are created with WordPress. And because we’re writing an unbiased Webflow review, we’ll tell you. Here’s everything you need to know about how Webflow compares to WordPress.
It’s important to note that for the purpose of this Webflow review we’ll be discussing the free WordPress.org and not the paid WordPress.com with integrated hosting. WordPress.org is what many people are more familiar with, and even if they spring for the paid version of WordPress later on, people typically start with WordPress.org.
What we discovered while we were doing research on both web builders for this Webflow review is that there are several similarities between the two. They’re both web builders that are designed to help users build websites, and they both have a nice Content Management System (CMS). But their approach to providing web building services is different. WordPress uses a modular design, and Webflow is more interested in seamless integration and creative freedom.
WordPress offers thousands of plugins and templates, which gives you a sense of customization and creativity. But the problem with that is that while there are lots of high-quality premium plugins and templates, there are also a lot of really low-quality, buggy extensions. And because you’re dependent on templates and plugins, your creativity is limited to their functionality.
There aren’t as many integrations and extensions you can use on Webflow, so you’re limited a bit in that way. However, it’s built-in capabilities are so robust that you can add nearly any feature or create any setup you want without extensions and integrations. In fact, there are a lot of features that come built-into Webflow that you simply can’t get with WordPress, like integrated hosting or SSL certificates for your site. After completing thorough research for this Webflow review, we feel that Webflow is a lot more efficient than using WordPress.org and using a hosting service.
SEO features differ between the two services. Of course everyone knows that you can access SEO plugins such as YOAST SEO on WordPress. These SEO tools are so fantastic that they lead the entire SEO industry. However, the drawback to using a plugin for SEO services increases your site’s load times and can hurt your site’s overall SEO score, which defeats the purpose of the plugins. But Webflow’s SEO tools are built into its visual designer. This means that your site won’t be weighed down by plugins and excessive code.
Another area with vast contrast that we need to point out in this Webflow review is Webflow’s education center. This is is ran by a dedicated team of employees that work for Webflow. There’s a wealth of information at your fingertips in Webflow’s knowledge center, and it’s easy to navigate and find topics you want to read about. WordPress, on the other hand, offers customer service from a loosely assembled group of volunteers that may or may not know what they’re talking about, and their education center isn’t as comprehensive as Webflow’s.
We found while doing research for this Webflow review that sites created using Webflow enjoy faster loading times than sites created with WordPress. This is generally because of all of the plugins and extensions that are necessary to create a customized, good looking website with WordPress. These extensions and plugins slow the load times because they cause your site to be weighed down with unnecessary code.
Another important distinction between the two services is security. It’s pretty well-known that there are frequent security breaches on WordPress. This is largely due to low-quality security plugins. WordPress itself doesn’t offer any security protocols for user websites, so you’re dependant on plugins and extensions for your site’s security. This not only puts your site at risk, but will also bog it down and give you slower load speeds. Webflow, however provides you with an SSL certificate, and they’re constantly monitoring security threats. You don’t even have to pay extra to receive an SSL certificate.
For the purposes of this Webflow review, let us summarize. If you’re a complete beginner with little to no experience in designing websites, then WordPress is a good bet for you. If you’ve created enough sites or used WordPress extensively and want to proceed to the next level of web design, then Webflow is a better option for you.
This is an important section for any serious developers who read this Webflow review. We found out that Webflow uses its own framework. This is soemthing that some people will like, but other people who are diehard fans of using other frameworks, such as Materialize, Zurb Foundation, Kurb or Bootstrap will be disappointed. There have been people who have incorporated the Bootstrap framework with Webflow, and they say it’s manageable but it’s hard to do.
This is an important question, and we’ll tell you everything you need to know about Webflow’s refund policy in this section of our Webflow review.
Unfortunately, Webflow doesn’t offer refunds. This may be a turnoff to some people who are used to using business services that provide a money-back guarantee and no-questions-asked refunds.
However, you can cancel your Webflow subscription at any time. Your service will not renew when the new payment period rolls around, but will remain active until then. If you cancel your subscription then your site isn’t deleted or damaged. You still have access to your site, as well, but you’ll be downgraded to the free plan.
We’ve already discussed the some upcoming e-commerce features in our Webflow review. Here’s a more thorough list of the services and features that Webflow plans on implementing in the future:
| Pros of Webflow | Cons of Webflow |
| + Innovative design features + Wireframes & templates + Get integrated hosting | – Customer support only through email – Not for beginners, lots of creative control |
Because we want to provide you with an unbiased Webflow review, we’ll provide you with both the positive aspects and the drawbacks of Webflow so that you can make your own decisions about whether it’s right for you. Here are some of the drawbacks we found while writing this Webflow review.
Webflow only offers customer support by email. Of course it’s nice that they offer customer support at all, but email support isn’t efficient or convenient. If you need quick answers, you’re likely not going to find them from customer support.
It’s not a good choice for beginners. You get a lot of creative control when you design a website with Webflow but the web builder is targeted to web developers who already know what they’re doing, not beginners. You need some skill and experience to be able to use Webflow.
While writing this Webflow review, one thing that really stood out is that their pricing can be confusing. There are so many plans that it can be overwhelming. And while we’re on the subject of pricing, some of their plans are quite expensive. This can be a real turnoff to a lot of people.
There aren’t a lot of integrations. Sure, you have the ability to integrate Facebook, Instagram and your Google shop. However, there are many different services and applications that would be massively beneficial to a web builder, or to those running business websites. They’re working to create more built-in features such as multilingual websites and logins, they’re still in development.
We have to mention as part of our Webflow review that Webflow still isn’t 100% compatible with around 1/4 of the internet browsers on the market. Seriously, it isn’t guaranteed to work optimally on either Firefox or Microsoft Edge. Given the amount of people that use both of these browsers, that’s a pretty major oversight, and it can be quite annoying if you’re either working with a team or a fan of one of those browsers.
While Webflow has lots of e-commerce options, they’re still in development. This means that none of their e-commerce options are really as good as they could be. And if you get used to some particular asset or attribute of the e-commerce kit, it will likely change later. Learning this was a little concerning when we researched Webflow for our Webflow review because many business websites include e-commerce shops, so this could affect a lot of people.
Webflow is an excellent website builder that provides a sort of middle-ground between templated site design and using code to build a site from scratch. It has several advantages over its biggest competitor, WordPress. Webflow provides better security, provides faster site loading times because your site won’t be bogged down by tons of plugins and extensions, and Webflow has a superior education center and customer support.
There are a few drawbacks to Webflow, as well. They have a really confusing pricing system that can make it far more complicated to choose a plan than it needs to be, the fact that it doesn’t work well on several big-name internet browsers, a lack of integration, and email support that can feel like it takes forever when you really need an answer. It’s also not a good option for anyone who is a beginner because of its steep learning curve.
However, Webflow is a great option for anyone who wants more control over the creative aspects of their website design. People who have used other web builders successfully and want to take their site-building skills to the next level are good candidates for Webflow, as are web designers and developers. And Webflow is a good choice for agencies and teams because of its Team plans, as well.
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Webflow is a website builder with many tools and features to help you build and run a successful website without having to pay a website designer to build and maintain your site for you.
Webflow has many exciting features like SEO, analytics, designing and developing, templates and more.
Webflow has a few pricing tiers (individual, ecommerce, website, and team) but their most popular plans start at $16/month and go up to $35/month.
There are different subscription plans. There’s the Starter plan for $0, the Lite plan for $16/month and the Pro plan for $35/month. They also have account plans and eCommerce plans.
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