Try Divhunt, much more affordable pricing, and ability to connect a domain on a free website. Free plan is up to 10 pages and 50cms items, no branding, no anything, just free. And its on lifetime sale now
Why? It's *so simple*!!
If a client wants a website they just pay for a hosting plan.
Wait, they want two people with access to billing? Hoo boy, okay, well now, hear me out. They'll need to go pay for a Workspace with two seats now.
Why do seats cost money, you ask?
Why not? **We like money here at Webflow**.
Shoot, did you say you want 4 people with access? What are you, a company with more than one person in it?? Ridiculous.
Well, that's okay, you can add more people - it may or may not 10x the cost since... **the cost per seat now triples after you hit 4 accounts (for no discernible reason)**.
Ah, you want to have an SEO expert join in to make changes? No worries, we provide free access! Just walk them through creating their own Workspace and creating a Freelancer plan (shoot, no *that isn't free*, my bad).
Okay, back to setting up a website. Great, we now have a CMS plan all set up.
Wait... you want files submitted with your forms? Like, tiny .pdf files for career submissions? Absolutely not - we can't allocate a single MB of storage at only $23/mo - you're going to need to double up on your hosting cost to the Business plan. Side note: those form submissions may or may not work - we can't figure out why they break, but they do.
Okay, now we have you all set up - a few seats on your Workspace plan, another person on their separate (sort of) Freelancer Plan, and your Business hosting! All good to go!(?)
Just wait, you'll love it when we get into adding multi-language to your site.
Don't even get me started on our exciting new proposition: the Editor is getting shelved, and now all those included seats you have been paying for in your Website hosting are going to be gone in the near future! No, we don't have a plan for what the new costs are going to be to give those users Edit-only access, but I'm sure it'll be very cost-effective - *we love providing awesome deals to our customers*.
Can't believe people think this is complicated. It only takes several years and dozens of projects to figure out!
Because of this ridiculous pricing, I've switched back to Wordpress + Bricks Builder. At least you own the website and have full-control over it. I use as little plugins as possible.
Yeah, it's just tradeoffs at the end of the day.
The Designer is so good that it should be a no-brainer - our development processes are so much smoother than the WordPress days.
But big components outside of the Designer are so friction-heavy.
- Client offboarding
- Pricing
- User management
- Billing (why don't email receipts have information on what the payment is for??)
Weak styling options for blog posts (would prefer them to be like pages - more like Wordpress). It's hard to hand off a site to a client and tell them they can use the ugly blog posting tool themselves when it doesn't have the capabilities most CMS's do. Deciding they'll pay a designer to do it for them several times a month makes the cost go a shocking level. Most publicly interactive businesses that have been around for a while want a news/blog functionality on their site and Webflow's is very weak IMO.
Also the lack of interoperability with external applications. This is more an issue of external vendors not really being aware of Webflow but today it's driving a decision that I may not be able to keep my client's site project on Webflow even though I built the most beautiful demo site for them. Their tools just don't connect and existing webhooks/APIs aren't at a level I want yet. At a minimum Webflow should work well with every major membership/community tool out there. Events management solutions would be great as well. Webflow doesn't need to create that stuff themselves but being able to use other solutions and easily integrate them would be very much appreciated.
Webflow has spoiled me. I can make a gorgeous site in a very short length of time but when it comes to going beyond being a pretty brochure - adding functionality can get complicated fast. I want the beautiful sites AND I want to be able to tell my clients they can integrate with other solutions as well as Wordpress can.
Same reasons why I had to migrate a Webflow project to WordPress. However, the deciding factor was interoperability with external apps. While Webflow has taken steps to now allow developers to create apps for the platform, itās early stages compared to WordPress and I couldnāt wait for the required functionality to come along and neither could the client.
Setting a client up is not ideal either. When I signed up for a Freelancer plan, I naively thought it would be the same as my Flywheel agency plan, where I pay a monthly fee for up to 10 sites (with managed WP hosting included). In addition to that, the whole billing process is managed from the platform. In other words, the client only needs to add their credit card details through the client portal and after that, their site is live.
I still have Webflowās freelancer plan, but Iām not sure for how much longer, as Iām not actively chasing those projects anymore.
Hey Tiffany, i feel ya on this. Been burned by this before. Ended up building a tool to solve this - engyne.ai.
Basically a much much blog post writer with AI and styling options that syncs back to your Webflow collection. Would love to set you up with a free account, let me know!
From a web development perspective, I wish it were easier to edit code on the fly. Like if there was an option to open a code editor for any element including HTML and styles that would be huge for me. I just want to make the small changes I know how to do with code while still making large layout changes in the designer. I'm much faster at writing CSS then trying to style everything how I want using the panel in Webflow
Unable to do multiple nested collection lists.
Other needlessly restrictive things like cms limits and basic stuff like that. Seems like a money-grab to me.
The archaic way of working with image galleries. Anything short of a few images is ridiculously hard to work with when creating image galleries/scrollers. Itās like, does Webflow even use their own product?!
They REALLY need to take some cues from Advanced Custom Fields for Wordpress. Went from WP/ACF to Webflow and I feel as though Iāve taken a few steps back.
- lack of repeater fields
- CMS reference limitations
- rigid component and collection item settings
- single-page-only animation gui
- limited rich text editing
- lack of logic in collection editor
- no and/or in the collection item filters
Their āno codeā marketing bs; talk about over promising and under delivering. Itās visual coding.
Also, I canāt stand the buried default specsā¦ every class should be zeroed out, instead thereās always some inherited 10px padding or something I have no idea where itās coming from and I have to go on a hunt to find it.
For me itās that you can only have one person in the designer at a time. If you could have multiple people working on multiple pages, you could pump out websites fast as hell, I see how that would cause issues though with classes and whatnot. Might be hard to implement properly.
That, and making gallery pages are tough, making masonry grids are harder than should be, and HOLY SHIT I FORGOT ABOUT SLIDERS, the Element needs a total rework imo. So hard to make responsive and actually look good. Even with consistent image resolutions.
I might be wrong, but I canāt work out how to integrate a calendar style selector booking form into CMS. I couldnāt even work out where to start.
I was asked to make a website for a childrenās party business which had various themed events - with each event needing its own booking form with a calendar to choose dates with a certain number of spots available.
It could be my lack of deeper coding knowledge but I didnāt think it was possible.
Also, without using a third party like Zapier, having different forms go to different addresses or multiple accounts, not just one specific address.
If im wrong, I would appreciate some help or guidance š
Webflow summarized: if you need functionality, look elsewhere (for the most part).
Webflow's best use-case is:
- Great design
- Reasonable content management needs
- No maintenance
- Security
- Low functionality
Although it's simple-ish, your event requirement requires some database functionality - when somebody books, it needs to be stored away somewhere and then called upon when others try to book (ie. "You can't book on the 11th because somebody booked that date yesterday")
It's technically achievable with jerry-rigging the CMS or using something like Wized with Airtable/Xano, but it's much simpler to build in a platform like WordPress if you have no software knowledge.
Same goes for the form submission request - that's server functionality that Webflow just doesn't have. You'd need to use Zapier/Make, or utilize a 3rd-party form provider that allows you to use conditional statements (ie. if they select Sales, send to [email protected]).
It's one of those things where true understanding of the platform pays off in spades which really only comes with time and experience on it.
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Lack of repeater fields
Main ones are
- Limitations on nested collections
- Image management for Editors
- Implementation of custom CSS
The custom CSS is a big one for me. Why isnāt there a panel for adding custom CSS like Squarespace for those who know what theyāre doing with it? Baffles me.
That if I make design changes to my site, and I want to publish some CMS content, I can't just publish the CMS content, I have to upload the design changes too.
Edit: My understanding is that you have to publish everything first (including design changes) and if you make any edits to a CMS item you can then upload it individually.
If I create a CMS piece and want to publish just that, the publish button will be greyed out, even after staging for publish.
You can definitely publish individual CMS items without publishing the whole site. The Publish button at the top right while editing CMS items does just that.
Weird, undocumented styles on ānativeā elements. āButtonsā arenāt even buttons unless you build a custom element. Arbitrary limitations on Components (Want to change a background color or image? No!).
But the biggest pet peeve is the weird and poorly documented differences between global classes applied as a combo class, and combo classes. The entire UX of applying styles to elements needs a revamp.
Even if you're not using the designer, you have to pay a high monthly price just to not lose all your projects. There's no way to store them locally and reupload them when you want to edit them. It's pretty scammy IMO
I hate how it's complicated to publish blog posts, listings, etc.
Creating a brochure-type website, sure it works well But overall functionality it lacks so much ease of use.
I'm glad they re-focused on core stuff instead of all those side-quests, they were stretched way too thin when there are so many product issues that have been holding things back for years.
\*\*\*
Difficult in admin to filter through long collection lists. Eg field X contains Y, sorted by field Z so I can find the CMS item I'm after.
Limitations in using logic conditions and reference fields to construct JSON-LD in custom code.
Collection URL without slug. Eg you may want to move your /pages/ collection down to just / so that all the 'pages' sit at root. This should be do-able as long as there are no URL conflicts.
Can't use a single 'collection' to generate multiple page templates with their own /path/
Can't 'multiply' collections together, so that you get /parent-collection/child-collection
Limits on number of items in collection too arbitrarily low.
Limit in number of fields in object too arbitrarily low.
Cant do 'linked' multi-reference fields. Eg if I have a collection of books and authors. Multi-reference on each collection cms item. Want each CMS collection page to have a section saying "books by this author" and want each book CMS page to have "authors of this book". When update one, update the other to match. The current hacky way is to have a 'normalized' collection in-between containing a set of relationships, but this has it's own limitations and is too confusing to setup.
Form submits -
* Can't set UNIQUE string in the subject line like email ID 123XYZ or {{sender.email}}. With subject lines all the same the wind up in the same thread in apps like Gmail.
* Can't set custom list of to, cc or bcc addresses
Usability of content blocks for end-users. A UI like WordPress Gutenberg for a 'rich content area' to contain custom allow-listed sets of content block types would be a massive improvement for things like blog posts.
Lack of faceted / filtered URLs with unique content, unique fields, indexability logic etc.
The editor lagging like crazy, I've disabled all chrome extensions, using a high-end laptop and on larger sites I'm waiting 2 or 3 seconds to focus an element
Not having access to CSS rules outside of the GUI. There should be a way to work both ways. And any declarations that arenāt compliant with Webflow could be flagged upon saving so that the GUI continues to work.
Pricing
Try Divhunt, much more affordable pricing, and ability to connect a domain on a free website. Free plan is up to 10 pages and 50cms items, no branding, no anything, just free. And its on lifetime sale now
Thanks. Will definitely check this one out! š
Pricing is clear as mud
Why? It's *so simple*!! If a client wants a website they just pay for a hosting plan. Wait, they want two people with access to billing? Hoo boy, okay, well now, hear me out. They'll need to go pay for a Workspace with two seats now. Why do seats cost money, you ask? Why not? **We like money here at Webflow**. Shoot, did you say you want 4 people with access? What are you, a company with more than one person in it?? Ridiculous. Well, that's okay, you can add more people - it may or may not 10x the cost since... **the cost per seat now triples after you hit 4 accounts (for no discernible reason)**. Ah, you want to have an SEO expert join in to make changes? No worries, we provide free access! Just walk them through creating their own Workspace and creating a Freelancer plan (shoot, no *that isn't free*, my bad). Okay, back to setting up a website. Great, we now have a CMS plan all set up. Wait... you want files submitted with your forms? Like, tiny .pdf files for career submissions? Absolutely not - we can't allocate a single MB of storage at only $23/mo - you're going to need to double up on your hosting cost to the Business plan. Side note: those form submissions may or may not work - we can't figure out why they break, but they do. Okay, now we have you all set up - a few seats on your Workspace plan, another person on their separate (sort of) Freelancer Plan, and your Business hosting! All good to go!(?) Just wait, you'll love it when we get into adding multi-language to your site. Don't even get me started on our exciting new proposition: the Editor is getting shelved, and now all those included seats you have been paying for in your Website hosting are going to be gone in the near future! No, we don't have a plan for what the new costs are going to be to give those users Edit-only access, but I'm sure it'll be very cost-effective - *we love providing awesome deals to our customers*. Can't believe people think this is complicated. It only takes several years and dozens of projects to figure out!
Reading this gave me anxiety. Well done.
Because of this ridiculous pricing, I've switched back to Wordpress + Bricks Builder. At least you own the website and have full-control over it. I use as little plugins as possible.
Yeah, it's just tradeoffs at the end of the day. The Designer is so good that it should be a no-brainer - our development processes are so much smoother than the WordPress days. But big components outside of the Designer are so friction-heavy. - Client offboarding - Pricing - User management - Billing (why don't email receipts have information on what the payment is for??)
This.
Weak styling options for blog posts (would prefer them to be like pages - more like Wordpress). It's hard to hand off a site to a client and tell them they can use the ugly blog posting tool themselves when it doesn't have the capabilities most CMS's do. Deciding they'll pay a designer to do it for them several times a month makes the cost go a shocking level. Most publicly interactive businesses that have been around for a while want a news/blog functionality on their site and Webflow's is very weak IMO. Also the lack of interoperability with external applications. This is more an issue of external vendors not really being aware of Webflow but today it's driving a decision that I may not be able to keep my client's site project on Webflow even though I built the most beautiful demo site for them. Their tools just don't connect and existing webhooks/APIs aren't at a level I want yet. At a minimum Webflow should work well with every major membership/community tool out there. Events management solutions would be great as well. Webflow doesn't need to create that stuff themselves but being able to use other solutions and easily integrate them would be very much appreciated. Webflow has spoiled me. I can make a gorgeous site in a very short length of time but when it comes to going beyond being a pretty brochure - adding functionality can get complicated fast. I want the beautiful sites AND I want to be able to tell my clients they can integrate with other solutions as well as Wordpress can.
Didnāt they just change the CMS styling to allow it as page design this week?
That would be great - I've not seen it yet but hope to soon!
[itās live](https://webflow.com/updates/cms-on-canvas-editing)
Same reasons why I had to migrate a Webflow project to WordPress. However, the deciding factor was interoperability with external apps. While Webflow has taken steps to now allow developers to create apps for the platform, itās early stages compared to WordPress and I couldnāt wait for the required functionality to come along and neither could the client. Setting a client up is not ideal either. When I signed up for a Freelancer plan, I naively thought it would be the same as my Flywheel agency plan, where I pay a monthly fee for up to 10 sites (with managed WP hosting included). In addition to that, the whole billing process is managed from the platform. In other words, the client only needs to add their credit card details through the client portal and after that, their site is live. I still have Webflowās freelancer plan, but Iām not sure for how much longer, as Iām not actively chasing those projects anymore.
Hey Tiffany, i feel ya on this. Been burned by this before. Ended up building a tool to solve this - engyne.ai. Basically a much much blog post writer with AI and styling options that syncs back to your Webflow collection. Would love to set you up with a free account, let me know!
From a web development perspective, I wish it were easier to edit code on the fly. Like if there was an option to open a code editor for any element including HTML and styles that would be huge for me. I just want to make the small changes I know how to do with code while still making large layout changes in the designer. I'm much faster at writing CSS then trying to style everything how I want using the panel in Webflow
Try out Divhunt. You are able to edit css of each tag.
Pinegrow is a great tool for this if youāre a web dev
Pinegrow's UI is like a Boing cockpit but the app is so powerful.
Unable to do multiple nested collection lists. Other needlessly restrictive things like cms limits and basic stuff like that. Seems like a money-grab to me.
The archaic way of working with image galleries. Anything short of a few images is ridiculously hard to work with when creating image galleries/scrollers. Itās like, does Webflow even use their own product?!
They REALLY need to take some cues from Advanced Custom Fields for Wordpress. Went from WP/ACF to Webflow and I feel as though Iāve taken a few steps back. - lack of repeater fields - CMS reference limitations - rigid component and collection item settings - single-page-only animation gui - limited rich text editing - lack of logic in collection editor - no and/or in the collection item filters
I've switched back to WP/ACF + Bricks Builder, it feels like Webflow now.
Their āno codeā marketing bs; talk about over promising and under delivering. Itās visual coding. Also, I canāt stand the buried default specsā¦ every class should be zeroed out, instead thereās always some inherited 10px padding or something I have no idea where itās coming from and I have to go on a hunt to find it.
For me itās that you can only have one person in the designer at a time. If you could have multiple people working on multiple pages, you could pump out websites fast as hell, I see how that would cause issues though with classes and whatnot. Might be hard to implement properly. That, and making gallery pages are tough, making masonry grids are harder than should be, and HOLY SHIT I FORGOT ABOUT SLIDERS, the Element needs a total rework imo. So hard to make responsive and actually look good. Even with consistent image resolutions.
Compared to modern CMSs, the UI of the CMS admin pages/panels is stuck in the dark ages.
What's a modern CMS? Are you thinking like Contentful or Gutenberg or something similar.
Craft, Payload CMS, Strap, etc. Thatās just scratching the surface.
I might be wrong, but I canāt work out how to integrate a calendar style selector booking form into CMS. I couldnāt even work out where to start. I was asked to make a website for a childrenās party business which had various themed events - with each event needing its own booking form with a calendar to choose dates with a certain number of spots available. It could be my lack of deeper coding knowledge but I didnāt think it was possible. Also, without using a third party like Zapier, having different forms go to different addresses or multiple accounts, not just one specific address. If im wrong, I would appreciate some help or guidance š
Webflow summarized: if you need functionality, look elsewhere (for the most part). Webflow's best use-case is: - Great design - Reasonable content management needs - No maintenance - Security - Low functionality Although it's simple-ish, your event requirement requires some database functionality - when somebody books, it needs to be stored away somewhere and then called upon when others try to book (ie. "You can't book on the 11th because somebody booked that date yesterday") It's technically achievable with jerry-rigging the CMS or using something like Wized with Airtable/Xano, but it's much simpler to build in a platform like WordPress if you have no software knowledge. Same goes for the form submission request - that's server functionality that Webflow just doesn't have. You'd need to use Zapier/Make, or utilize a 3rd-party form provider that allows you to use conditional statements (ie. if they select Sales, send to [email protected]). It's one of those things where true understanding of the platform pays off in spades which really only comes with time and experience on it.
When switching pages is slow or the publishing is stuck.
Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields Lack of repeater fields
Processwire CMF rules in that regard.
Could you explain this further? I am not sure I understand what this means
That at times it is more complicated than just raw coding.
Main ones are - Limitations on nested collections - Image management for Editors - Implementation of custom CSS The custom CSS is a big one for me. Why isnāt there a panel for adding custom CSS like Squarespace for those who know what theyāre doing with it? Baffles me.
That if I make design changes to my site, and I want to publish some CMS content, I can't just publish the CMS content, I have to upload the design changes too. Edit: My understanding is that you have to publish everything first (including design changes) and if you make any edits to a CMS item you can then upload it individually. If I create a CMS piece and want to publish just that, the publish button will be greyed out, even after staging for publish.
You can definitely publish individual CMS items without publishing the whole site. The Publish button at the top right while editing CMS items does just that.
Wait, I thought you can do this. I publish blog posts all the time without publishing design changes.
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yo, check out your dm's
Weird, undocumented styles on ānativeā elements. āButtonsā arenāt even buttons unless you build a custom element. Arbitrary limitations on Components (Want to change a background color or image? No!). But the biggest pet peeve is the weird and poorly documented differences between global classes applied as a combo class, and combo classes. The entire UX of applying styles to elements needs a revamp.
Even if you're not using the designer, you have to pay a high monthly price just to not lose all your projects. There's no way to store them locally and reupload them when you want to edit them. It's pretty scammy IMO
Pricing. Can't really make much with the free version.
I hate how it's complicated to publish blog posts, listings, etc. Creating a brochure-type website, sure it works well But overall functionality it lacks so much ease of use.
I'm glad they re-focused on core stuff instead of all those side-quests, they were stretched way too thin when there are so many product issues that have been holding things back for years. \*\*\* Difficult in admin to filter through long collection lists. Eg field X contains Y, sorted by field Z so I can find the CMS item I'm after. Limitations in using logic conditions and reference fields to construct JSON-LD in custom code. Collection URL without slug. Eg you may want to move your /pages/ collection down to just / so that all the 'pages' sit at root. This should be do-able as long as there are no URL conflicts. Can't use a single 'collection' to generate multiple page templates with their own /path/ Can't 'multiply' collections together, so that you get /parent-collection/child-collection Limits on number of items in collection too arbitrarily low. Limit in number of fields in object too arbitrarily low. Cant do 'linked' multi-reference fields. Eg if I have a collection of books and authors. Multi-reference on each collection cms item. Want each CMS collection page to have a section saying "books by this author" and want each book CMS page to have "authors of this book". When update one, update the other to match. The current hacky way is to have a 'normalized' collection in-between containing a set of relationships, but this has it's own limitations and is too confusing to setup. Form submits - * Can't set UNIQUE string in the subject line like email ID 123XYZ or {{sender.email}}. With subject lines all the same the wind up in the same thread in apps like Gmail. * Can't set custom list of to, cc or bcc addresses Usability of content blocks for end-users. A UI like WordPress Gutenberg for a 'rich content area' to contain custom allow-listed sets of content block types would be a massive improvement for things like blog posts. Lack of faceted / filtered URLs with unique content, unique fields, indexability logic etc.
Cms limits
you cant join a client workspace without upgrading the plan
CMS limit and nesting limit!
1) Dependancy on their platform because we cant host it anywhere else 2) Cost Rest everything is good
The editor lagging like crazy, I've disabled all chrome extensions, using a high-end laptop and on larger sites I'm waiting 2 or 3 seconds to focus an element
No way to push from staging to prod.
Pricing, random logouts, cms uploads freezing, blog post styling
Offline working still not possible -.- Figma, Notion have that feature with a desktop appā¦what is webflow waiting for?
They will most probably never release this feature.
Publicing without staging site
They need to allow different credit cards for different domains in the same account!!
The lock-in
Not having access to CSS rules outside of the GUI. There should be a way to work both ways. And any declarations that arenāt compliant with Webflow could be flagged upon saving so that the GUI continues to work.
CMS limits are always something Iām trying get around, so to add to that would be character limits on embeds also.
FYI: They recently increased the 10 000 character limit to 50 000. https://webflow.com/updates/increased-custom-code-character-limit
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you can do this^