Webflow

The most obvious upside with a no-code web builder like Webflow is that the platform is building the code for you automagically in the background. You don't ever have to see it, but you can if you want to. You can even download it and use it elsewhere.

The no-code approach cuts down the development time of any custom designs, animations, interactions, and CMS setup significantly. And most of the time, we still have all the tools available that we do in traditional development. We usually tell the client we can deliver 80% of their dreams for 50% of the cost. If you're upfront about that, a limitation here and there is not an issue. Also, Webflow is investing big to push that 80% closer to 100%.

It’s ridiculous how awesome you can make your site look and feel using Webflow’s advanced tools for interactions and animations. Just give this page a scroll. And this one. It just feels so good. And those kinds of user experiences are fast and straightforward to do!

Last but not least by a longshot! It is so incredibly easy to edit content in Webflow. You log in, and then navigate your site and click on any text or image you want to edit! Content and presentation are not decoupled like it is in WordPress and other CMS's.

Also, several editors can work on the site at the same time, and you'll see who is doing what and where. Read more about the Webflow editing experience here.

Webflow comes with a staging (test) version of the website at your-site.webflow.io where you can experiment and showcase your work before pushing any changes in content or design to your live site. If you're running a WordPress website, chances are you don't even have a staging server and site setup. Any mistakes made go live on your website. Pray for a backup!

Speaking of backups - every time you make a change in Webflow, a new backup is created. The backups can happen with a 5-minute interval if you're busy working on your site, so if anything unexpected happens, you can get right back to safety within seconds. Preview and easily revert to a previous version of the site from the Webflow control panel.

You can also easily duplicate a Webflow website. It is free until you connect it to a custom domain. A duplicate site can be useful if you want to create a new website based on one of your existing ones. Or if you want your current website available on a different URL while you build and launch a new version. In any case, you can duplicate an existing Webflow website in seconds.

Hosting with Webflow starts at $16 / month for a CMS driven site. The platform is automatically and continuously upgraded without more than notifications about new features for you. And if you need to change or upgrade anything regarding design or structure, it is super fast. What we used to spend hours on developing, testing, and deploying, is usually done in minutes in Webflow.

I cannot overstate the importance of performance and speed. If your site is slow, both users and Google will be very unhappy. The speed you get with Webflow is INSANE! When your site is on Webflow, you are enjoying their world-class global server infrastructure and CDN (Content Delivery Network). Read more at https://webflow.com/hosting.

The above is a side by side comparison of the same website made in Webflow vs Wordpress, tested with Pingdom Tools. This alone is a reason to rush from Wordpress to Webflow. You can see Roman Kremianski break this down and more on his transition from WordPress to Webflow in this video.

In the above image, you'll see the Wordpress version of the site loads WAY more resources (requests) than the Webflow version. It is a result of Wordpress being a bloated platform with so much stuff that is not used by your website. The page size is almost 3 times that of the Webflow version and the load time more than 3 times longer.

Webflow recently released its own built-in e-commerce. So now you can build out totally customized webshops all the way through the checkout, with the same ease and speed as other website pages. The solution is not quite there yet for Europe/Norway though.

Webflow sites come with free SSL certificates (https://). Nothing to set up, it just works. Better for user experience and Google rankings.

We have access to an API (Application Programming Interface) for the Webflow CMS, that allows us to get content out of and push content into the CMS. This can be used to pull content into other applications or to push content into Webflow every time something happens in a different platform.

We are also able to include custom code blocks onto pages or websites as a whole. We have used this to populate a container with customer names and logos, pulled from a client's API, to give you one example.

Webflow is a safe bet. They have been around since 2013. They have about 600 employees. They are profitable. There are over 1 million designers and developers using Webflow to create websites. In 2019 Webflow closed a $72M Series A round of funding. and in 2021 they closed their Series B at $140M. Webflow hit a $4 billion valuation in March 2022 nearing $100 million in yearly recurring revenue.

Using the Webflow Editor, you have access to the basic SEO tools you need. From page titles and meta descriptions to Open Graph (Facebook and such) settings to easily optimize your pages for site search and social sharing.