Framer Review 2025: A Website Builder Made for Designers?

Website builders are great for beginners, but not for real designers, right? If you turn your nose up at Wix & Co., you might want to give Framer a chance: This no-code website builder is a powerful design platform with plenty to offer professionals.

We looked closer at Framer to find out how the design platform differs from other website builders and who it's best for.

Framer is user-friendly, but not beginner-friendly. The platform requires basic web design knowledge – or the willingness to spend time learning the interface. Once you get the hang of it, creating appealing and dynamic websites is straightforward, but reaching that point takes time.

First, you need a Framer account. It's quick to set up and basically free: You only have to pay when you want to publish a website on a custom domain (more on pricing later).

After registration, you'll land in Framer's management dashboard. This is where all of your projects and settings are located. Click "New Project" at the top right to start designing a new website.

Framer's editor is much more complex than those of beginner website builders like Wix or Squarespace. It works similarly to Figma: You'll design on a blank canvas without the restrictions imposed by preset layouts or predefined structures like CSS boxes (and can even copy them from Figma).

This allows you to precisely design, change, scale, and optimize every shape and element. However, this also means that there are many more settings to manually adjust, which can lead to errors and inconsistencies on your website.

The editor's interface is divided into five areas:

The toolbar (1) is where you'll find everything you need to edit your website. Click on the Framer icon on the left to open a dropdown menu with a range of options; next to it are buttons for elements, layouts, text, CMS, and quick actions.

To the right, you can toggle a website preview (play button), adjust settings (gear symbol), or publish your page.

In the sidebar (2) you'll switch between your website's pages, layers, and assets. Head to the pages tab to view your existing pages and add new ones.

Each page is divided into different layers (e.g., text or images), listed in order in the layers tab. The assets tab includes components like buttons that you only need to make once and can later reuse throughout your project.

The dashboard's center is reserved for your workspace (3) where you design your website in a live preview of its frontend.

On the right side, there's a context-based properties panel (4) that shows different properties and settings (like layout, position, styles, and effects) depending on the element you've selected.

In the canvas toolbar (5), you can switch between selection and pan mode, enable dark mode, adjust zoom settings, and leave comments for your team.

That Framer's interface looks clean and organized despite its abundance of features demonstrates the cleverness of the company's approach – and we would expect nothing less from UX specialists.

Framer doesn't skimp when it comes to design options. You'll have access to countless tools and settings to create websites the way you want. Compared to traditional website builders, Framer gives both much more freedom and places fewer restrictions in terms of preset structures.

When you use Framer, you'll be able to utilize templates, however, these work differently than those offered by classic website builders. Framer's templates are sample websites created by other Framer users. You can copy them into your dashboard and then customize them to your liking.

This template concept has pros and cons:

Click on "Resources" on Framer's website to access templates. Each has its own page with a brief description and a list of the pages and features it includes.

A live preview shows you how the website looks. If you like a template, you can import it to your dashboard by clicking on the blue button.

Besides templates, there's another way to create a website with Framer without starting from scratch: the built-in AI assistant. To access it, go to the quick actions menu and click "Generate Page."

Describe how you want your page to look in the input box, along with what content it should have and the design you have in mind. Then the AI takes over and creates a website with placeholder text and images within seconds.

The results are solid for an AI website builder, but they're nowhere near as good as what can be achieved with the platform's user-generated templates. Sometimes, the prompts aren't followed exactly – for example, the testimonial slider we requested for our demo portfolio website wasn't added.

If you want to design a visually impressive website, which is Framer's big selling point, it's better to use a template designed by humans (or create your website entirely with the platform's design tools).

Framer's editor is extremely flexible and offers plenty of creative freedom when designing a website. It uses layers, frames, and stacks organized in a clear structure.

In the Layers tab, you'll work with your website's individual layers, which are automatically grouped and listed. For example, when you create a button, the text accompanying it is placed within a frame, creating a clear hierarchy.

Frames act as containers for elements like images or text. Besides simple frames, there are stacks, which combine frames with extra settings to control the alignment and position of the components inside. Examples include rows, columns, and grids.

To add new elements, just click the layout button in the toolbar, choose the element you want, and place it on the page. You can then edit and customize these elements using the properties panel on the right or by right-clicking and using shortcuts.

Every frame and element can be customized in different ways. For example, if you've created a button, you can right-click it and choose "Fit Content" to automatically adjust the text to the frame. After that, you can refine the spacing and design in the properties panel.

Even if you choose not to use design templates, you don't have to create all the parts yourself. Framer offers a solid selection of pre-made website page structures, sections, and elements. Adding these building blocks is quick and easy, and they can be customized in detail using the platform's design tools

There are page templates for landing pages, blogs, and contact pages, as well as section templates for common website features like testimonials or contact forms. Overall, Framer gives users control over the most important features a website needs:

You can also add individual elements like images, videos, forms, and social media integrations to your website. Even though the selection is good, you'll need to make some elements that traditional website builders offer pre-made templates for.

The advantage is that you have greater control over how your elements look and behave. You can create custom tab or accordion elements with personalized animations and save them for reuse across your website.

The selection of predefined, ready-made elements is slightly smaller than many traditional website builders, and the options that are available could be better categorized.

However, since there are so many customization options, there isn't a need for lots of templates. Plus, there are handy resources and online component libraries like Figma2Framer, where you can find elements to copy and paste onto your website.

These are the elements Framer offers out of the box, compared to other providers:

Another of Framer's strengths is the ability to create impressive animations and effects that can visually enhance websites. Whether it's scroll animations, hover effects, or interactive elements, you can dynamically bring your content to life by animating individual components and entire layers with just a few clicks.

Effects can be configured in the properties console. If you're having difficulty with an animation you created, duplicate a template that uses the desired effect to find out what its settings are.

Your website should look great on any device, whether it's a laptop, desktop, smartphone, or tablet. Framer helps you to ensure this with "breakpoints" for responsive design.

Breakpoints allow you to display different device formats side by side and instantly see how your design appears on various devices:

Then, you can adjust content and edit its design for each breakpoint to ensure your website looks how you want it to on any device.

Framer offers much more than just design and prototyping features. These allow users to create complex and custom websites.

With Framer's built-in content management system (CMS), you can keep tabs on dynamic content like blog posts, product pages, help articles, or job descriptions.

The CMS is user-friendly and flexible, which makes adding and editing content easy. Content is organized into "Collections," which are simple databases with user-defined fields.

You can create a collection of blog posts or products and easily integrate them into any part of your website. Content is centrally managed and added in the Collections area. Style and structure for all pages in a collection are automatically updated and applied globally in their templates, known as CMS Pages.

Also useful: You can specify access rights for your CMS to determine who can perform which actions. Use this to allow team members (or clients) to add new products or blog posts, or restrict their rights so they can only edit existing content.

Creating a multilingual website with Framer is straightforward. Click the globe icon at the top right to add a new "Locale" to your project.

You can then localize the content in a list view, with support from an AI translator, or simply switch between languages in the canvas tools to directly edit the text on the canvas.

From an SEO perspective, Framer offers nearly all the most important settings. You can edit meta tags, titles, descriptions, and URLs, and add custom Open Graph tags to boost your website's visibility.

Framer also automatically generates a sitemap and ensures that search engine crawlers find your website. You can also edit the robots.txt file.

Here's an overview of Framer's SEO features:

Framer's built-in real-time collaboration tools make web design a team effort. You can work with your colleagues on website designs and layouts, leave comments, and track changes.

You manage your current team members in the dashboard and invite new ones via a link or email address. Members can access the entire workspace or individual projects. There are also different user roles: for example, you can give certain team members design rights, while others (like the blog team) only get content rights for the CMS.

Each team member with editor rights needs a paid Workspace plan.

Again, with Framer, you can do much more than with other builders, but you'll need to either design the features yourself or add them through extensions, which are usually paid.

There aren't any native ecommerce features: If you want to add a store, you need to use integrations like those from Shopify or Ecwid. Memberships are possible through Outseta, and bookings via Calendly. There are also user-generated templates with special features, like CourseOS for video courses.

Framer isn't intended for applications with overly complex backend systems, but compared to typical website builders, you'll definitely get more possibilities. Taking advantage of these is left up to you: The selection of pre-configured features you can add to your website with a few clicks is quite small compared to other platforms.

Framer's support section is home to around 150 help articles that detail its basic features, settings, and pricing. Entries are divided into different categories and there's a full-text search to find whatever you're looking for.

The articles are decent and include screenshots, but they could be more comprehensive. They currently cover only a small part of the platform's features. If you want to learn Framer's basics, you're better off in the Framer Academy.

Before you create your first Framer website, make sure to check out Framer Academy. It offers a wide range of high-quality (and friendly) video tutorials from Framer experts who explain important features step-by-step.

Lessons in Framer Academy often assume some prior web design knowledge. This means that it isn't really designed for absolute beginners, but rather for Framer newcomers who are already familiar with concepts like HTML or CSS (or Figma). It would be nice to have a basic tutorial for web design novices that explains Framer's features from the ground up.

Unfortunately, Framer doesn't offer direct support or only does so in a limited way. The contact button leads to a live chat, but there's only ever an AI assistant on the other end. You can get human support for billing issues – for product questions, you need to rely on the Framer community in the forum. Framer's staff are also active there.

Framer offers four standard plans that are billed per website, and an enterprise plan for larger companies. You can pay monthly or annually, with yearly subscriptions being much cheaper.

If you want to collaborate with colleagues on your websites, you'll need to purchase a Workspace plan, which is billed per editor.

Both types of plans are also available in an enterprise format with enhanced features.

You can find an overview of all Framer plans here:

How does Framer's pricing stack up against other website builders? In the table below, we compared the cheapest ad-free plans (with a custom domain) from all providers in our review.

Framer's Mini plan is a good deal but is only suitable for one-pagers. If you want to create a website with multiple pages, you'll need to pay at least three times that amount, which makes Framer relatively expensive.

Framer doesn't offer a free trial of its premium plans. However, you can use the free plan to thoroughly test the platform for as long as you like.

All premium subscriptions come with a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Web designers who turn up their noses at Wix and its kind shouldn't dismiss Framer out of hand. Framer is a powerful no-code design platform aimed at advanced users and professionals. You can use it to make creative, interactive websites with few limitations, and achieve much more than the often plain results of typical builders.

So, Framer isn't your everyday website builder—both in good and not-so-good ways. All of the extra freedom and design options come at the cost of the conveniences all-in-one website builders provide. Some features, like ecommerce, are completely missing.

Framer is more of a design tool enhanced with website-building capabilities, not the other way around. It's best for those familiar with web design basics or programs like Figma.

What do Framer's users think about it? We checked out review sites and summed up the most common feedback.

Is Framer too complex or just not the right website builder for your needs? One of these alternatives might work better for you:

Find the best alternatives to Framer here:

Want to create a simple website with Framer but don't know where to start? Our beginner's guide can help: