Webflow Review WordPress’ Easy-Going Brother?

The editor looks similar to Photoshop and includes a lot of functions. It’s therefore a bit more complicated to use than other website builders. Beginners (and even advanced users) may find it overwhelming at first. However, Webflow provides a lot of support material, like video tutorials, articles and a forum, to help give their users the smoothest start possible.

There are free templates available; however most of them need to be purchased (similar to WordPress or Shopify templates). Even then, there isn’t a huge selection available, although they are for the most part modern-looking.

Of course, with Webflow your options aren’t limited to just using a template. You can also use a preset or build a site from scratch, and customize it as you like. The customization is way harder than with most website builders though.

There is an ad in the lower right-hand corner of your website when you have a free plan. Premium plans are ad-free.

The interface is available in English. A multilingual website is possible, although it takes a bit of technical work (more info here).

You can purchase a domain via Webflow or connect to one from an external provider. This is possible from the Basic plan ($12/ month) onwards. SSL is also included. Email hosting is not directly available, but you can integrate with an external service like Google Workspace or Zoho Workplace.

You can save subpages within folders to organize pages on your site, and create a dropdown menu in your nav bar. There are usually no restrictions unless the amount becomes extremely excessive. If you host your site on Webflow, you can, depending on your plan, add up to 100 static pages and up to 10,000 dynamic pages. If you need more than 100 static pages, there is a work-around by creating CMS collections. It’s a bit more complicated though.

As their focus seems to be more on manual, do-it-yourself customization, they don’t really offer built-in widgets (other than a few social media integrations). However there are instructions on how to add some integrations (e.g. with PayPal, calendar tools etc).

No mobile app is available, and it’s not possible to edit your site through a mobile device.

Webflow offers an online store feature that’s directly integrated into its editor. You can determine some settings with the free version, however if you want to start selling, you’ll need to purchase one of their eCommerce plans. Features include automatic tax calculation, PayPal and Stripe payments, and the ability to sell digital goods.

The SEO options with Webflow are good. Aside from being able to edit title, URL and descriptions (and even insert dynamic text), you can also perform advanced functions such as set up 301 redirects, generate a sitemap, and edit your robots.txt file (more info here). For inexperienced users, adjusting these settings might be a bit difficult though.

It’s possible to set up a blog with Webflow, but aside from creating the design, you’ll also have to manually integrate any additional features - media, comments, social sharing etc. In the end, this also gives you a lot of freedom regarding customizations, but it’s also quite a bit of work.

You can integrate Google Analytics to keep track of your visitor statistics.

It’s possible to create fully customizable forms with Webflow via the editor - you’ll have complete control over fields, design and behaviours. These can also integrate with third-party tools like Zapier. What’s more, you can also set up workflows to trigger actions from form submissions, such as sending notifications to team members or inviting contacts to become a site member - all from within Webflow.

You can protect one page, single pages, collections (content types) or even your entire website with a password. It’s even possible to change the design of your password protection page. Internally, you can add a “Teams” area in your Webflow account to collaborate with other team members.

With the Memberships feature, it’s now also possible to add members-only areas, e.g. for allowing customers to self-manage their accounts, or for accessing subscription-only content.

There is no newsletter tool included, but you can integrate with external email marketing services like Mailchimp, GetResponse etc.

Absolutely, yes! Users can add HTML code via the embed feature in the editor. Be aware that this is only possible with a paid plan, though.

There is actually no limit when it comes to storage space. Restrictions could only take place if the amount of data was excessive, which, according to Webflow’s support, usually doesn’t happen, though.

Webflow has an integrated backup function, so you can save and restore an older version of your website. With the free Starter plan you can save up to 2 backups, while the Premium plans allow you an unlimited number of backups.

Webflow offers a great variety of video tutorials, detailed step-by-step guides and courses/lessons via the Webflow University. You can download eBooks on relevant topics for free. Pretty awesome! There’s also a forum, where questions seem to be answered pretty frequently. However, the only personal support they offer is via email, and this is only available Mon-Fri.

Whether or not you’ll have fun with this website builder depends on your level of expertise (or endurance). Experienced users will very likely appreciate its flexibility and customization options. Beginners on the other hand need some time to figure out how the editor works. It’s great they provide a lot of helpful material though.