I apologize in advance for the rant but I’m here to shed some light on a glaring limitation that everyone building with Webflow Ecommerce should be aware of.
After months of building my ecommerce storefront, I try to get started with Analyze and Optimize add-ons, two headlining features touted at Conf last year. It was finally time to take those fancy CTAs in the Insights tab for a spin. But lo and behold, “Add-ons are not available on Ecommerce Site plans” according to this article.
I double checked with support and sure enough, a site plan that is designed to directly monetize traffic does not allow me to see insights or execute A/B tests on that traffic. Yes, I am aware that I can integrate other platforms as a workaround, but one of the major reasons I chose Webflow in the first place was that it promised to provide such functionality out of the box, so this is pretty disappointing.
I’m hoping we can discuss recommendations for anyone in a similar situation, get some clarification from the Webflow team about this seemingly arbitrary decision, and push for a feature request :)
If you’re interested in switching to CartGenie (more powerful than WF Ecom), then you can use a Webflow CMS site which would then allow you to add Analyze and Optimize add-ons to your site.
Let me know if you have any questions. We have an automated migration of Ecommerce products, orders, categories (and all associated custom fields) into CartGenie and we’ll create the necessary CMS collections for you on your new blank CMS site. So then you just need to move your site design.
I know its not ideal to migrate to a CMS site after all the set up you’ve already done (WF doesn’t allow removing Ecom collections / pages right now), but it will allow you a lot more flexibility – and a ton more functionality in the long run using CartGenie instead of WF Ecom.
Yup. It really shows hom much Webflow cares about e-commerce customers.
No addons, no localization for e-commerce (which is essential!!)
Stripe integration is luckuster. You just get the card and that’s it. Other popular payment methods that are normally available via stripe checkout are not available here.
No test environment for payments. You have to actually buy your own goods to test everything and pay Webflow & Stripe payment processing fees. (support might help with that - but that’s just annoying)
CMS lags and the UI becomes unresponsive for 5-10s then crashes EVERY time you try to edit items (both the CMS, CMS related fields, or page custome code (the more items/product variants you have the worse it gets)
Cannot link (or bind) to a specific product variant (only to the default). In order to link to a variant u have to use attributes and custom js…
Cannot pull/link to values associated with your product variant’s. You have to create a separate CMS field and link to that (essentially duplicating an existing default field). So if you have an XXL size (default variant) and want to display L variant price in a product carousel on your home page you have to create a separate CMS field for that. Want a compare-at-price as well? Sorry, you need another custom field….
Conditional visibility only hides the element, instead of removing it from the DOM.
If you want to link some related products, same colour variants from a collection, they will all load with the page- this is terrible for page load speeds.
If you enable e-commerce you have to pay from day 1. You can’t simply develop, then publish and start paying… **
And many, many more….
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I spent over 2 years developing a custom e-commerce store on webflow. It was a nightmare! Every Webflow addon or feature is a disappointment. Webflow doesn’t care. There’s only one thing they care about - proving that they are ‘player’ in the AI space, and squizing every penny from existing customers. I’ve been using webflow since 2017/2018. It’s just sad to watch. They became the Ryanair of website builders. Charging for features that should be included. They rarely fix or address issues, listen to feedback….
If you can, do yourself a favour, and stay away from Webflow.I didn’t listen. Learn from my mistakes.
We’ve been trying to solve as many of these pain points as possible at CartGenie!
Since CartGenie uses CMS site, you can use add-ons like Optimize and Analyze! We’re designing out how we can integrate with localization, but that isn’t live just yet.
We’ve got Paypal and Stripe – including Klarna, Apple, Google and we’re currently in QA for iDeal, Bancontact, Afterpay / Clearpay, and Twint!
We have a test feature that allows you to checkout with a dummy credit card and see the entire process from order confirmation, to order emails, to the order details in your dashboard.
You can create and edit products directly inside CartGenie and we immediately publish them to WF CMS so you don’t have to deal with their interface for your products.
We’ve added variant specific product links! If you open a product and select your variants, we’ll add the parameters to the URL bar so you can easily copy and paste wherever you want.
Currently any CMS list page will pull in the “parent” product, but you can add the option dropdowns so the customer can select any variant they want to see the price / compare price, etc. We also have added a product-specific (including specific variant) add to cart & checkout button! This can be really useful for linking a banner or call-out to a specific product variant.
This is a WF CMS limitation and not something we can control unfortunately.
We have a completely free plan which allows you to set up your CartGenie store and even launch on a live domain – all for free! You only start paying once you get $250/mo in sales. Since you only need a CMS WF site, then you can potentially build for free as well depending on your workspace.
We’ve seen a lot of the frustration around the lacking features of Webflow Ecom and have tried to create a more viable alternative for WF users without having to resort to connecting and paying for Shopify.
Nice! good job! CartGenie looks very promising tbh, and your pricing model is very very reasonable. Bonus points for form validation (it’s ridiculous that webflow doesnt have that by default)
Luckily, I was able to overcome most of webflow e-commerce limitiations by now, and developing a clone of my website on a fresh cms plan is the last thing I want rn, but it actually might be the smart thing to do (thinking long-term here).
I will definitely test your product.
Questions:
what are the limitations when it comes to styling cg-xxxx classes? will i be able to style it the way I like?
bulk product price editing possible only via CSV? no bulk editing via an option in your CMS?
localization for product pages possible? (text, price etc.) ?
You can style the cg classes however you want! Our system functions using custom attributes so as long as all the necessary custom attributes are in their proper place, then everything will work properly.
Currently, we allow bulk updates via CSV upload. But we do plan on adding an in-app sheet for easier editing.
Currently localization isn’t fully supported. You can install it and create translated product pages, etc. but our system only recognizes a single checkout and confirmation page which would be in your default site language. So all users would get routed to those currently. We do plan on adding full localization support to allow end-to-end translated sites.
