Webflow Review 2025: CMS & Website Builder in One?

Webflow knows that website builders don't have the best reputation among web design enthusiasts. That's probably why the announcement that it's "more than a website builder" features prominently on its homepage. But what can Webflow do that Wix & Co. can't?

We looked closer at the website builder that doesn't want to be one and let you know what it's capable of.

Webflow is "more than a website builder", for better and for worse. Its interface and overall handling are much more complex than traditional website builders since Webflow doesn't hide or ignore coding logic but turns it into visual processes. In return, its editor gives you complete control over your website's layout, design, and content.

For its target audience – web designers and developers – Webflow is user-friendly, but the platform has a steep learning curve and isn't for beginners who want to create a website quickly and easily.

Getting started with Webflow is easy since the provider offers a free plan (more on pricing later) and you don't need to provide payment details to use it. To sign up, click “Start building” on Webflow's homepage and follow the instructions.

After signing up, you'll land in Webflow's dashboard. This is where you'll manage your website projects and adjust basic site and account settings.

Every Webflow project gets its own Workspace, which you can use alone or share with team members or clients. Even from the start, it's clear that Webflow isn't targeting small business owners looking to get online, but rather experienced web designers juggling multiple projects.

Features and settings are neatly arranged in Webflow's dashboard:

Webflow's dashboard is neatly designed and logically organized, offering a clear management hub for all kinds of projects. If you're aiming for a simple website, you can ignore most settings here.

When you create a new website, you're given a choice: start with a blank site or use a design template that you can further edit in Webflow's editor.

There's also a link to a very well-made interactive tutorial that explains the editor's key features and encourages you to "learn by doing". Overall, Webflow's documentation and help content are excellent (more on that later).

Once you're in Webflow's editor, you'll realize that even though the platform doesn't require you to know how to code, you can't completely escape the complex world of programming.

In its Photoshop-like interface, you'll program visually on the frontend canvas, which the platform converts into code in the backend. This is the same concept that other website builders follow, but Webflow stays much closer to its programming roots.

Even here, you'll need to work with the "box model," which plays a key role in website design. Every element in Webflow is situated in a container, into which you can drag and drop other content. The website you end up with is a collection of different containers arranged together.

Here's what Webflow's editor looks like:

The learning curve with Webflow is much steeper than with traditional website builders like Wix or Squarespace. If you're not familiar with the box model, hierarchies, floating, and other basic web design concepts, Webflow's editor will be quite challenging, especially at first.

Beginner-friendliness and user-friendliness are two different things. Webflow is user-friendly for its target audience: Once you grasp the core concepts and interface, you get an intuitive workspace that offers precise control over every design element and much more creative freedom than standard website builders.

Webflow's complexity pays off in design. While traditional builders limit customization to a few presets within a set framework, Webflow lets you configure each element's attributes in detail, allowing for granular design adjustments.

However, this requires more manual work than other website builders. There are also some templates and predefined elements available.

Webflow offers over 1,500 templates, with 50 available for free at the time of review. Premium templates cost between $29 and $129 (one-time).

There are templates for all kinds of websites: portfolios, blogs, events, service pages, and more. You can filter what's available not only by industry and category but also by style preferences and included features. Depending on the type of website you're creating, you might want dynamic pages with CMS or shops where you just need to add products - look for the templates where these come preset.

When you pick a template, you don't have to worry about being locked into a design that can only be minimally adjusted, like with other website builders. Webflow's templates are highly flexible and offer various layout options right from the start.

Quality varies, but most templates are first rate. The majority of templates look modern and up-to-date, with clean lines, appealing color palettes, and well-structured layouts.

Webflow's templates are generally "responsive," meaning they're optimized for display on different devices. But you don't have to rely on this blindly; you can extensively adjust how your layout displays using what's called breakpoints.

Breakpoints are specific places where the design adjusts for different screen sizes. By default, Webflow lets you switch between seven breakpoints in the top bar, which includes views for desktops, tablets, and smartphones (both vertical and horizontal).

Style preferences are generally applied automatically to other displays from the desktop view, which is the primary breakpoint. However, you can override these default settings by changing the attributes of specific elements directly in the breakpoint.

In other words, if you change a text block's font size or background color in the "Style" tab while in the mobile breakpoint, your adjustments are only applied in that breakpoint.

This way, you can fine-tune how your website displays on different devices and screen sizes, so everything stays in line.

In Webflow's editor, you can modify almost every part of your website—colors, backgrounds, borders, positions, or spacing. You can also add effects to make your content more dynamic.

Most adjustments are made using the design toolbox on the right. In the "Style" tab, there are plenty of options for tweakingk specific CSS properties like layout, size, position, typography, and effects.

Be sure to check out the "Interactions" tab. There, you can create custom animations, like parallax or mouseover effects.

To avoid editing each element one by one, use "Classes". These are style presets that you define once and can later apply to as many elements as you want.

Webflow doesn't offer page templates, at least not in the traditional sense. You can create your own templates to use repeatedly for your projects. However, there are no pre-made templates for entire pages, like portfolio or "About Us" pages. This means that with Webflow, you'll need to design a lot on your own.

However, Webflow does provide a few section templates. You can find them under "Add Elements" in the Starter Library's "Layout" tab.

The most important section types are included: You'll get hero areas, testimonials, team sections, pricing lists, image galleries, and more. Each category has several different layout options.

Compared to other builders, the number of section templates is limited. Webflow tends to attract users who are more hands-on, so there's a lot of DIY involved. Here's a comparison of Webflow's section templates:

Webflow offers a much wider selection of elements you can place on your website canvas. These are divided into categories like "Typography," "Ecommerce," and "Media." In the Structure category, you'll also find containers and stacks to organize your page layout.

Convenient: When you hover over an element, a question mark appears. Click it for a brief explanation of the element, often with a video.

Webflow does offer the most important elements out of the box. And anyways, completeness isn't as crucial here as with other builders, since you can usually create elements that don't have a default option.

For example, you can make an FAQ accordion by customizing the dropdown element with interactions.

Here's a comparison of Webflow's default elements:

You'll find your photo and media library in the "Assets" section of the left toolbar. All your images and documents will be listed, which you can organize into folders and browse using the search function.

Unfortunately, there's no stock photo integration. Each template comes with some images and icons, but Webflow itself doesn't offer much in terms of images and videos. However, as expected, Webflow provides many design settings you can apply, like filters or shadows.

We haven't covered all of Webflow's design tools, since that would fill an entire book. It's enough to know that with Webflow, you get comprehensive control over your website's design, down to the smallest detail.

Webflow combines the features of a website builder with those of a content management system (CMS). This means you can create not just simple websites, but also more complex projects with unique needs. However, if you're mainly looking for a shop or blogging platform, Webflow might not be the best choice.

In Webflow's CMS, you can create "Collections" to centrally organize different types of content. Each Collection consists of several fields (e.g., text fields, images, switches, and colors).

For example, you can set up a "Blog Collection" with fields for titles, permalinks, and content. An "Author Collection" might have fields for photos, short bios, or social media links of team members. These Collections can be linked to assign blog posts to specific authors.

You don't have to define all collections and their fields yourself. For some collection types, like blogs, customers, or team members, there are "Collection Templates" that come with pre-selected custom fields.

Thanks to its integrated CMS, Webflow helps to create and present structured content. Unlike other website builders, you're not limited to the restricted features of blogging platforms or portfolio templates, but enjoy greater freedom in terms of both content and design.

However, this flexibility also has downsides and Webflow isn't the perfect solution for every purpose. As a blogging platform, WordPress is much more flexible since Webflow's post editor is quite basic and lacks advanced formatting options.

For some specific blogging features, like comments, Webflow doesn't offer integrated solutions. To add this to your blog, you'll need to use third-party apps.

From an SEO perspective, Webflow is pretty well equipped. You can directly adjust SEO titles and meta descriptions in the page menu, set custom URLs, and decide whether the selected page should be indexed in the automatically generated sitemap or not.

Since you can access source code in Webflow, many advanced features are supported. You can also edit the robots.txt and add structured data. However, the latter is a bit tedious compared to platforms like WordPress due to the lack of plugins.

Here you can see a comparison of Webflow's SEO features:

We were a bit disappointed with Webflow's ecommerce platform, but that's partly because our expectations were so high.

Basically, Webflow offers almost everything that website builder shop systems do, so long as they aren't primarily intended for ecommerce. You can add products to your store —physical or digital—and include all of their important details. Product variations are possible, and you can also categorize your products into groups.

A tutorial with a checklist guides you step-by-step to your finished online store. Webflow explains what information you need to provide and what elements to add to get a fully functional store.

Webflow supports Stripe and PayPal; you need to define shipping zones and costs yourself. Taxes are automatically calculated based on the store and buyer location, but you should definitely check if everything is correct—some users report errors in the Webflow forum.

However, Webflow can't compete with dedicated shop systems like Shopify or WooCommerce. Many features are completely missing, like customer accounts, advanced delivery options (e.g., pickup), or the ability to do business in multiple currencies.

It also seems that Webflow hasn't updated its ecommerce platform for a while, unlike many of its other features

As always, Webflow shines in design: When it comes to the display and layout of your shop and product pages, there's no shortage of creative freedom.

Webflow's ecommerce approach might be enough for small shops, but compared to real store systems, it's a bit underwhelming.

Here you can see a comparison of Webflow's ecommerce features:

Webflow is designed for seamless team collaboration. Teamwork happens in what's called Workspaces: Each Workspace is a dedicated area where team members can work together on projects. You need to purchase each user license separately (website hosting costs aren't included in Workspace plans).

You manage your team members in Webflow's dashboard. Depending on your plan, you can also assign different user roles to participants. You can decide who has design, edit, or comment rights on which pages. It's also possible to invite (free) guests, like freelancers or clients. You don't pay extra for users who can only comment.

Team features in Webflow aren't just a nice extra like in other builders; they're seamlessly integrated into the platform's design and editing processes.

Of course, Webflow has plenty of other useful features that we can't cover in detail. Here's a small overview:

Webflow's range of features is huge, and for anything that you can't find a tool or template for, you can usually design something comparable with CMS features, integrations, and automation.

However, the scope and implementation of some features, like blogging or ecommerce, aren't always as intuitive and powerful as on other platforms. Summing up, Webflow might be a jack-of-all-trades, but it's definitely not a master of them all.

Here's an overview of Webflow's advanced features:

Webflow's support section is excellent. Webflow University sets the standard for how tutorials should look today. This online university offers hundreds of courses and videos, organized into progressive lessons, helping you learn Webflow's features as well as general web design and programming principles.

Often, you don't even need to switch from the designer to the support section because Webflow has seamlessly integrated most help content and explanations into its interface. You can access a list of available video guides by clicking the camera button at the bottom left. The interactive tutorial for beginners is also well done, and our only complaint is that there aren't more.

Besides Webflow University, there are plenty of other support resources, from e-books and blogs to webinars and extensive documentation. There's also a forum where you can connect with other members of the Webflow community.

If you ever need a more personal touch, you can reach Webflow's staff via email or live chat. Use the contact form to describe your issue and upload screenshots or videos that illustrate the problem. You can also specify the workspace and website project involved.

Webflow aims to answer standard support questions in less than 24 hours. However, we usually got responses much faster: often within two or three hours. If you book a paid workspace for your team, you'll get prioritized support.

In the chat, the AI assistant answers first, but if it doesn't satisfy your questions, you can be connected to a human support staff.

Webflow's pricing structure seems more complex than it is. Basically, there are two types of plans:

Both categories offer several plans with different resources and features. You can choose from three paid Site and Ecommerce plans and several Workspace plans for in-house teams or freelancers and agencies.

Webflow also offers free plans for both Workspaces and websites. Every user starts with a free Workspace that supports only one user and a free Site Plan, where you can publish a website with up to two static pages on a webflow.io domain.

There are special Enterprise plans that are customized individually for businesses.

Here's a current overview of Webflow's plans:

It's also important to see how Webflow fares price-wise against other website builders. To make the rates comparable, we look at the costs in two specific scenarios:

Price comparison 1: Simple website, ad-free, own domain possible

Even the Basic plan, Webflow's cheapest website plan, is relatively expensive. Unfortunately, you don't get access to CMS features in this plan, which limits the overall experience quite a bit.

Price comparison 2: Online store, ad-free, own domain possible

You'll pay even more expensive if you want to run a store with Webflow. Webflow's Ecommerce Standard plan was actually the priciest option in our comparison:

You can use Webflow's free plans to test the platform out for as long as you like. Unfortunately, there's no money-back guarantee for paid subscriptions.

True to its marketing claims, Webflow is "more than a Website Builder"—both in good and bad ways. Unlike traditional website builders, Webflow doesn't completely hide complex coding logic. Instead, it visualizes it in a user-friendly way, giving you full creative control over your website and the ability to execute complex, custom web projects.

This makes Webflow less suitable for beginners and anyone who wants to avoid coding. For its main audience—designers and developers—Webflow is a powerful hybrid builder. It lets you visually program, create custom websites with dynamic content, and manage them easily thanks to its CMS.

Webflow is more complex but also much more powerful than traditional drag-and-drop website builders. However, since it can't compete with WordPress in blogging and ecommerce, and isn't as flexible or cost-effective, it isn't going to slay that giant any time soon.

So, what do Webflow's users think of it? We checked out major review sites and gathered key feedback for you:

Is Webflow not the best choice for you? Maybe one of these alternatives will be more your cup of tea:

Browse more of the best alternatives to Webflow here: