Yes, the pace at which disruptions are happening this year is intense.
However I think my main concern is not only the recent/current production system outages with forms and the Membership API, and the seemingly-daily appearance of new bugs in the designer and editor - it’s also the unclear roadmaps, and the features and functionality that were there yesterday but are gone today, with no warning.
I literally don’t know where the Webflow platform is headed.
An analogy that keeps coming up in our team discussions is that the experience is rather like being on a plane, with too much turbulence.
That would probably be ok, flying involves air, and air moves… so… slight turbulence is just part of the whole flying deal. But then you look out the window and see people working on the wings… while we’re in the air… and that’s just disconcerting.
Even that would probably be ok, if we knew what was happening, and why, and how long the turbulence will last, but the captain is silent. Not a peep, except occasionally after an incident is hopefully-maybe-over. Most of the time, that’s the only indication we have that anyone is actually in the cockpit.
It’s super uncomfortable, and I think it’s the absolutely the wrong approach.
I’d really like to see a lot more communication from the Webflow team, specifically;
Outages
Details of what’s happening, what’s unstable, and what’s being done. Should we hold on tight, or do we need to move all of our form handlers to Basin to save our clients? My team don’t know, and with zero information on what’s actually happening, how do we decide?
The current Webflow status page is nearly useless, and often doesn’t indicate outages until the day after they’ve occurred, so we can’t even tell if anyone knows that the system is failing.
Current open bugs
I submit bugs 3-4 times a week, and I’d guess that for at least 50% of them, I’m not the first one to contact support. But… there’s no public database, so there’s nowhere to go to check that, and find workarounds.
Hiding the bug database doesn’t make sense. Not only does it mean far slower resolutions for clients without the ability to find bug fixes and workarounds, but the support team takes a direct hit for that, because the same question is asked probably 20 times, on a slow day. That lack of visibility is expensive for everyone.
Roadmaps
Logic, Memberships, and Multilingual are super exciting, but what is the planned feature set and roughly when? I actually have no idea. Mostly, my expectations are based on subtle hints, and guesses based on how my team would build it.
I don’t get it. The roadmap is one of the best marketing tools possible- if you tell me we’re aiming for Atlantis, and show me the route plan, I’m buying my ticket. But right not, I’m not entirely sure what city we’re landing in, or if I’m on the right plane to get there.
Components is a great example of why this is important to Webflow’s image, and to the community. In the forums, there is so much push-back on the transition from Symbols… and to be fair, Components is a little bit of an anomaly, like feathered mouse. We’re hoping it’s mid-evolution to something far more exciting and useful, like a feature-rich library of 3rd party drop-in “smart elements”. Now that’s a useful mutation.
@Oswaldo thanks for sharing your thoughts, I’d been meaning to sit down a reflect on whats happening also. Good share.
I do want to say that Webflow’s support team has been amazing. I get solid responses with clear details and excellent diagnostic instructions. Huge props to the support team. Without them, we would have had to abandon quite a few Webflow projects and choose other platforms instead.
