How Good Is Webflow: Overview with Features & Pricing

Webflow is not just a tool for designing and building websites. It’s much more than that: it’s a comprehensive service that helps businesses and individuals present themselves online in a much more effective way.

Thanks to innovative features, the platform has made designing, building, hosting, and optimizing websites a much more efficient process. In short: Webflow has the potential to be the future #1 website service.

Let’s explore why.

Who Is Webflow Good For?

Webflow’s ease of use is often mistaken for beginner-friendliness. It’s anything but, as beginners will meet a steep learning curve. In other words, if you’re new to the world of Webflow, you’ll have to go the extra mile to achieve excellence. 

Therefore, Webflow is mainly aimed at professional designers and developers, as well as experienced marketers, SEO experts, content writers, and more. It helps by removing redundant steps in the process of building and maintaining a site, allowing for more freedom when creating the site or its content.

Webflow often markets itself as a low-code or no-code tool, which means you can build sites without writing code. 

In reality, however, getting the most out of this service will require professional developers. Yet, they will have a much more convenient way to work with code and will be able to push the boundaries of traditional web development.

Webflow vs Competitors

Webflow is often compared to similar services, mainly WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace.

We compared Webflow vs Wix in a separate blog post, so feel free to read it if you want to know the details. In short, Webflow is a much more versatile option that can build more robust and business-driven sites. In contrast, Wix is more beginner friendly, aimed at solopreneurs and micro organizations that are on a budget.

WordPress is currently the most popular website option, but it lacks one essential aspect that gives an edge to Webflow: clean code. Since many plugins and widgets required to run a site via WP are community-developed, the result is often a site with messy code that’s difficult to crawl and slow to load. All tools that are part of Webflow are internally developed and fit like pieces of a puzzle to create a clean, fast, and reliable website.

Finally, there’s Squarespace, which also provides a range of options for creating websites, although it doesn’t give you near-total control over the look and feel of your site, which Webflow excels at.

Webflow’s Core Features

Webflow is a versatile platform, so the number of core features is rather large. Still, we will try to narrow it down to some essential capabilities that make it stand out from the pack.

• Visual development — Webflow allows you to design and develop websites visually without coding knowledge. You can create custom designs, animations, and interactions and see the changes in real-time. Of course, you can still use code to tweak your sites further and make them more effective and visually appealing.
• CMS — Webflow's content management system (CMS) lets you easily manage website content and data, including blog posts, products, and collections. You can create custom fields, set up relationships between content, and even create dynamic content based on user interactions.
• Responsive design — With more people accessing the internet on their mobile devices, responsive design has become essential. Webflow makes it easy to design websites that look great on any device without creating separate versions for desktop, tablet, and mobile.
• Hosting — Webflow offers hosting for your website, so you don't need to worry about setting up and managing a separate hosting account. Plus, Webflow hosting includes features like SSL certificates, automatic backups, and CDN support.
• Integrations — Webflow integrates with various third-party services, including e-commerce platforms, marketing tools, and analytics services. This makes it easy to connect your website with your existing tools and streamline your workflow.
• Collaborations — Webflow makes collaborating with others on your website project easy. You can invite team members to edit your site.

Webflow Pros

In the following sections, we’ll take a look at some of Webflow pros and cons. Here are some of the main benefits of using Webflow:

• Live prototyping — Quickly and easily see how your design changes will look and function before publishing them to your live site.
• Clean code — Webflow generates clean and organized HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code, making it easier for developers to maintain and modify the site code in the future. Search engines are also quite fond of it.
• All plugins are in-house — Webflow offers a range of built-in plugins and integrations, saving you time and effort in finding and integrating third-party plugins. Still, some third-party integrations are possible.
• Collaboration is easy — Multiple team members can work on the same project simultaneously without conflicting with each other's changes.
• Development time is shorter — Webflow's visual editor and pre-built components can help streamline the website design and development process, potentially reducing the time and resources needed to complete a project.
• Secure hosting — Webflow provides secure and reliable hosting for your website, which can help ensure your site is always up and running.
• Captivating interactions — Create visually appealing and interactive elements on your site, such as animations, hover effects, and scroll-based interactions.
• Highly customizable templates — Webflow offers a range of highly customizable templates that can be tailored to fit your design needs, potentially saving time and resources in the design process.

Webflow Cons

The popular builder also features a couple of downsides that the Webflow team should address in the future.

• Desktop edits not possible — If you don't have internet access, you won't be able to make changes to your website. Additionally, if you prefer to work on a desktop application rather than in a web browser, this limitation may not be ideal for you.
• Steep learning curve — While the platform offers many powerful features, it can take some time to understand how they all work together, which may be frustrating for some users.
• Somewhat confusing pricing plans — Webflow's pricing plans can be somewhat confusing, especially for users who are new to the platform. The good news is that we covered this in our detailed explanation of Webflow pricing.

Final Overview of Webflow

So how good is Webflow, really? It’s certainly a service that has taken building online experiences to the next level. However, the question is whether Webflow is a good choice for you. Well, that depends on what you're looking for in a website builder. 

Some users find that Webflow offers a more intuitive and flexible interface than other website builders, making it easier to create and customize complex designs, turning them into powerful websites. 

Others appreciate the platform's extensive feature set and ability to handle more advanced website projects, such as web applications or complex e-commerce sites.

Still, mastering Webflow takes time, and if you want an effective and result-driven Webflow website, get in touch with the Flow Ninja team for more info.