An Honest Webflow Review (Pros & Cons After 2 Years)

#1. What Exactly Is Webflow & Whats The Benefit VS Everything Else?

Webflow is a responsive web design tool that allows you to build custom websites without writing a single line of code.

Unlike other website building tools, you:

• Get a real-time visual builder
• You're not restricted to a theme
• You don't need extra plugins

Webflow's best feature is their Visual Designer, which lets you see your websites design in real-time.

This saves you a lot of time, headaches, and extra costs as you keep growing and developing your business.

The beautiful thing is that Webflow's flexibility gives anyone the freedom to create any type of website, such as a:

• Blog
• Portfolio
• Event site
• Business site
• eCommerce store
• Landing page
• Micro site

"Webflow gives web designers all the power of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But instead of writing code, you manipulate it visually. As you build your website and lay out your content, the Designer creates clean, semantic code that’s ready to publish to the web, or hand off to developers."

#2. How Easy Is It To Get Started With Webflow?

Like any design tool Webflow has a learning curve.

The team at Webflow handles this problem incredibly well.

They built the Webflow University which is a resource of online courses and training that teach you how to best use Webflow.

It's highly recommended that you watch the Webflow 101 Crash Course to get started and comfortable using the Visual Designer, Project Settings Dashboard, and Editior Suite.

Once you jump in, play around, use the Webflow University and even dive onto the community forums to chat with active Webflow users you'll be up and running in no time.

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#3. Does Webflow Include a Free Trial?

‍This was a HUGE selling point when I first discovered Webflow.

Being able to play around and see if a tool is the right fit for your business is key.

The good news:

Webflow allows everyone to create a website with 3 pages for FREE on a webflow.io domain with no time limit. However, if you want to create more pages you will need to add a hosting plan to your website (we will go over these plans next).

So if you created a website for James Footballs on the free trial it would have the domain name jamesfootballs.webflow.io and have a ‘Made with Webflow’ badge in the bottom right corner.

Pretty sweet if you ask me, as you don't have the pressure of a time limit behind you.

You can create a free trial account by clicking here.‍

#4. How Are The Hosting Plans Webflow Includes?

Hosting a Webflow built site can be done two ways:

• Directly with Webflow (recommended)
• Or by exporting your site and hosting externally

I personally use Webflow's CMS plan, and find it both hassle free and excellent when it comes to site loading speeds.

This is also due to Webflow's Visual Designer writing semantic clean code behind the scenes — helping boost site load times which positively impacts your Search Engine Optimization scores.

Webflow currently has 3 hosting plans:

Basic Hosting

‍This plan allows anyone to get a ‘basic’ site up and running.

It's perfect for anyone who just needs basic pages, such as a home, contact, about, and landing page with a form.

CMS Hosting

‍This plan gives you access to Webflow’s Content Management System (CMS). This is used typically for creating and managing blog posts without having to create each individual blog post page.

This is the plan I use to host aaronward.com and run my blog.

Business Hosting

The business plan allows you to have everything in the Basic and CMS plan, plus access to sell products online (part of their Full CMS API).

While other competitors such as Shopify exist, Webflow really stands out with the opportunity to have complete design over your website, including the checkout.

Therefore you can make design driven changes to boost conversions and make a seamless user experience.

Personally as I sell online courses, I use Kajabi instead of the Business Hosting Plan. Kajabi allows you to have a membership area for digital products, sales pages, and checkouts. This can be also achieved on Webflow by using Memberstack.io.

#5. Is Webflow's Support Any Good?

Luckily I haven't had to use Webflow's email support due to all the available resources they have.

For example, when a problem arises you can check:

• The Webflow University
• Webflows FAQ
• The Online Forum
• Their YouTube Channel

If worst comes to worse, then they have email support with a response time of less than 24 hours which is a perfect backup.

Ultimately Webflow's team is way ahead of the game when it comes to providing their customers with an excellent resource hub of tutorials, video guides, FAQ answers, and a forum of active members supporting each other.

#6: Looking At The Major Alternative... WordPress VS Webflow

WordPress is know as the king when it comes to creating a blog or website.

Why?

Because 43% of sites are built using it. The problem is about 40% of these sites suck!

The biggest question I get after recommending Webflow to other entrepreneurs is "how is it compared to WordPress?"

So to show you why Webflow is a better choice over WordPress...

...let's jump in:

User Friendliness

WordPress

WordPress relies on a back-end editor which is sluggish when you start creating more pages and installing more plugins.

Doing updates in the back-end, whilst crossing your fingers that it looks good on your live site is ANNOYING and so time consuming, as sometimes one change can take 3+ attempts to get it to look correct.

Webflow

Webflow is a visual front-end designer tool. This means that in real time you see exactly how your website looks on all different devices (TV, desktop, tablet, & mobile).

Having this control and power allows you to speed up your design and creation process.

Themes

WordPress

Thousands of themes exist for WordPress sites, the problem is that most of them rely on extra plugins to give you customization or have features such as sliders or forms.

Also these themes typically have restrictions. While you may be able to change the fonts, colors, and navbar style you can't really do much in custom layouts (unless you want to install yet another plugin). This can be frustrating when you just want a specific page layout or design.

Webflow

Webflow has free themes and paid themes. The best part is that you are not restricted to a theme. In fact you could purchase a theme and completely change it to look like an different site.

While this wouldn't be the best use of having the theme, it is possible.

Each theme is also approved by the Webflow team to ensure it meets certain standard sand provides a great site for anyone who purchases it.

Site Speed

WordPress

WordPress sites get slow fast. Usually this is due to having lots of plugins that add unnecessary code to your site.

And users thinking that cheap hosting is going to save them — when in fact it hurts their user experience and SEO scores.

Webflow

Webflow has lightening fast site speeds as there is no need for excess plugins and code.

Site Security

WordPress

WordPress is known for having security issues...once again due to plugins having issues and sites constantly being brute force attacked.

You can install a site security plugin to prevent these issues, but once again you're loop holed into another plugin to fix a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place.

Webflow

Webflow is secure from day one as they include constant threat monitoring and include a SSL certificate for free on all sites.

Webflow also includes options to minimize your CSS and scripts directly inside the project settings:

Here's a video explaining what Minify does for your site:

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Search Engine Optimization

WordPress

It's easy to optimize your SEO by using a plugin such as Yoast SEO.

The problem is that you need to know how to configure the plugin correctly, and by having another plugin it slows down your site.

Here's an example of using the plugin to change the Title and Meta Description for a blog post inside of WordPress:

Webflow

Webflow makes SEO simple and easy.

If you're familiar with using Yoast SEO on WordPress then you'll love Webflow as SEO options are built directly into the Visual Designer.

In fact, they have a video walking through the SEO options available. Here's an example of changing your pages Title and Meta Description:

Unfortunately I don't have experience with other tools such as Wix, Squarespace, and so on. However by looking at these other site builders, they're more simplistic versions of Webflow and I would avoid using them.

Final Thoughts if Webflow is Worth The Switch

Webflow is a must-have tool for any serious web designer or entrepreneur who wants control over the look and layout of their site.

Being able to create pages to look exactly how you want them can help you improve:

• User Experience
• Lead & Sale Conversions

I highly recommend signing up to Webflow for Free and creating a test website.

Pick a website you really like the look of and try rebuilding it using Webflow — this will get you comfortable with using the tool whilst using the Webflow University.

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