Overview
Webflow is more than just a website builder rather it's a combination of a website builder with CMS. Webflow is ideal for web designers who wish to power their websites by themselves without writing even a single line of code. Webflow offers freedom of design which means you could fully customize your website without any limitations. Watch this quick video to understand Webflow:
Pros and Cons of Webflow
Pros
✔️ Freedom of Designing
✔️ 100% Customization
✔️ Integrated CMS
✔️ No Coding Required
✔️ Powerful eCommerce
✔️ Very Easy to Use
✔️ Professional Templates
✔️ Free and Secure Hosting
Cons
❌ Requires 10 minutes of learning to start and then learn as you go.
What to Expect?
Webflow is like a website builder merged with a CMS which means you will have full control over the design and creation of your website. You not only get a fully responsive website with Webflow but, you can also customize the mobile version of your website without affecting the desktop version which is not offered by most of the website builders at the moment.
Webflow's website creation and designing methodology are quite similar to that of Wix Editor X. However if compared side by side Webflow dominates Wix Editor X.
Webflow is much easier to use when compared to WordPress. Also unlike WordPress, Webflow can host your site on its own so you don't have to worry about buying a hosting service separately.
Webflow puts a great emphasis on customer support and has many useful resources on its Webflow University, including courses, video tutorials, articles, and a user forum.
Why Webflow?
If you are a front end developer or designer or someone who is trying to create a website, the first question that might come to your mind is, why use Webflow? Well, let's try to answer these questions by discussing some of the bold and basic reasons why you should choose Webflow over literally any other website builder available in the market.
Modern Tools
Webflow had a vision that writing CSS codes is about styling a website visually, so why is it needed to write codes? There has to be some way to style a website visually while the software generates code in the background.
Working visually doesn’t mean you are limited to anything in Webflow rather Webflow provides modern layout systems like flexbox and CSS, which means you will have full control over your website and you could build it the way you want.
Webflow is truly a website builder of Next Generation... Try Webflow Today
Powerful CMS
Creating static pages for your site is great, but websites are meant to live and grow dynamically. With the help of CMS in Webflow, you or your teammates or your customers can add or update 100s of pages in your website without interrupting the actual design.
Confused? Let understand this, Webflow CMS is an extremely powerful tool that combines visual designing with the flexibility of a CMS. Then to create content for your website you only have to design 1 page and then connect the elements of that page to your CMS.
Customized Responsive Designing
Webflow not only provides you with responsive web designing features but also allows you to customize it on various devices or screen size. This means you could customize your website styling based on the type of screen it's being viewed. You could also create a reflowing design that automatically adapts the browser width and adjusts the page layout accordingly so that your website looks great everywhere.
Webflow offers you 4 breakpoints to design your website. You can also create your own breakpoint in case you need one. Watch this quick video to better understand what responsive designing with Webflow looks like:
Automatic Backups
Webflow automatically creates a backup version of your site every 20th autosave or any time you press Shift + Ctrl + S on Windows. With Webflow you can easily switch back to any version of your website in just a few clicks. You could manually save and give custom names to a particular version of your website before making big changes. So that if things don't go your way could just switch back to the version you started with
Watch this quick video to understand how backup works in Webflow.
What's Webflow Best For?
Well if you are going to take my words then I will say, "Webflow is literally best for everything". You could build Blogs, Ecommerce, Portfolio, Brouchers, Photo or Video sites, Social Media Platform, Consumer Forum, Review and Rating Website, or anything else that is in your mind. However, we listed a few things below in which Webflow has aced its competitors.
Online Store
Creating an online store with Webflow Ecommerce is both easy and super fast. If you are trying to start an online store for the first time Webflow is the best option for you. Webflow creates a unique buying experience for your customers. You could sell any type of custom products like physical, digital or even services.
Brands like Dell, Freelancer, MTV, Yelp, Zendesk use Webflow.
Technology Startups
When the country is marching towards ideas and startups, it becomes the prime responsibility of developers and designers to code the exact same idea visually for potential customers as well as angel investors. To showcase your idea to the world Webflow provides you with a cutting edge designing platform for you to build and shape the future.
But don't just take our words, check out Startup Templates by Webflow
Blogs & Entertainment
Webflow was specially built for designers and developers who want to bring their ideas to life quickly, beautifully, and responsively. But that doesn’t mean Webflow’s just for the design-savvy. In fact, it’s also a powerful platform for bloggers of all kinds, from in-house marketing teams to anyone who wants to build their brand online.
First of all Pick a Webflow CMS template, if you clicked that link and picked a CMS template it’s already done for you. Now all you need to do is choose your font, style designs or anything you want to customize and hit that publish button. Now add your first blog from the Webflow dashboard using CMS and put it live in front of the world. Learn more about Blogging with Webflow
Webflow Pricing
Webflow has got one Free Plan which is Free Forever and seven paid plans. Its pricing starts from $12 per month and ranges up to $212 per month. All seven plans are designed to meet various requirements of the clients as per the project.
The Ecommerce Standard plan is found to be the most suitable plan for a business website. By business website, we not only mean an online store rather any kind of business like Hotels, Clinics, Restaurants, Colleges, Hospitals or any business that requires accepting payments, calculating taxes, billing and staffing should go for an Ecommerce Standard Plan.
However, the CMS plan is found to be the most value for money option. Features like integrated CMS, 200 GB Bandwidth, Unlimited Storage, Site Search, and 60 RPM API makes it fast, reliable, and powerful to host giant blogs, portfolios, podcasts or even a video streaming website.
Plans & Comparison
Plans
Features
Offers
Free Trial
Website builder
Full design control
Free Forever
Basic
at $12/mo
Custom domain
100 Pages
25k Monthly visits
50 GB Bandwidth
Value for Money
CMS
at $16/mo
Features of Basic+
Integrated CMS
200 GB Bandwidth
100k Monthly Visits
60 API Request/min
3 Contributors
Site Search
Business
at $36/mo
Features of CMS+
400 GB Bandwidth
500k Monthly Visits
120 API Request/min
10 Contributors
Site Search
Ecommerce Plans
Expert's Choice
Standard
at $29/mo
Features of CMS+
Upto 500 products
Custom checkout
Custom shopping cart
Email customization
Integrated CMS for blogs
2% Transaction fee
Integrated Stripe
Automatic Taxation
Apple & Web Pay
Paypal support
Social Integration
Google Integration
Integrated Analytics
MailChimp integration
Custom Shipping rules
3 Staff accounts
Plus
at $74/mo
Features of Standard+
Upto 1000 Products
0% Transaction fee
10 Staff accounts
Advanced
at $212/mo
Features of Plus+
Upto 3000 Products
10 Staff accounts
Experts Verdict
After analyzing various factors, we can say that Webflow is a next-generation website builder with integrated CMS to meet the requirement of both web designers and web developers.
One should choose Webflow over any other website builder for its flexibility and efficiency. The combined power of Designer, Editor/CMS, Hosting, and eCommerce makes it the best custom web development platform.
Webflow is a hybrid solution to simple website builders and complex open-source CMS. Webflow might not be super easy to start with so you need to prepare yourself to spend a certain amount of time getting used to its powerful features. But that's not tough, you will keep learning as you keep building your website.
Webflow Alternatives
Except pricing, there technically is no reason to look for an alternative for Webflow. Webflow gives you literally all the features that you need from a website builder. But I could understand that for few users it might look expensive, but trust me it's not. As other website builders that provide quite similar features are either of the same price or costly.