CMS Pricing Concerns... Per Site License + Hosting Requirement?

First of all, thanks for addressing the basic hosting price hike in such a quick manner. It goes without saying how amazing both Webflow & the CMS actually are & we all appreciate how engaged the entire Webflow team is in regard to listening to our feedback as a community.

I’ve touched on some of my concerns that I believe are shared by many in the community in much longer winded rant in another thread… I’ve simply created this to see if we can get some actual confirmation from the team that you guys are at least open to a discussion on your pricing plan for the CMS product instead of just clarifying/simplifying the language on your landing page.

I feel like the current pricing structure forces us to make the client pay for the CMS with ZERO transparency (hard to hide a $20 hosting fee) & opens the door for a strange/awkward conversation between the client/designer as to why they are forced to pay a high monthly fee for hosting when many are hip to the going rates (when in reality they are paying for the CMS).

To counter that, I think a much more reasonable approach would be to use a single per site license fee with a requirement to host with Webflow at a lower per month rate. I honestly do not care how much this is… I would easily pay $100, $150, or $200 per site license plus a much lower monthly fee as it’s an easier sell for either new clients or clients who are on the fence about switching their current hosting plan. It’s not about the premium, I’m more than willing to pay for the ability to incorporate dynamic data into a Webflow build, and more importantly - keep it all within Webflow, hosted with Webflow.

This structure would allow Webflow designers to “hide” the CMS fee into their project proposal as opposed to opening the possibility of awkward client/designer conversations that touch on common hosting fees, why exactly you have to charge that amount, what tools we are using to make it all happen, why we can’t just “use Wordpress, it’s free”, on & on…

Essentially “spilling the beans” so to speak. The tools provided by Webflow allow us to create responsive/compliant html & css with a bit of jquery voodoo via interactions, now with dynamic data - no different from what a traditional hand coder with front-end development skills are capable of doing. I just feel like there is no need to cause “alarm” or seem “incompetent” in a client’s eyes should this discussion arise & they push to go with cheaper hosting + some other “cheaper” cms simply because of sticker shock when it can all be avoided via a different pricing structure.

Thanks for your time, if any Webflow users are interested in this approach - a per site license + hosting requirement (at a lower rate) then please feel free to chime in.

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: General questions about Webflow pricing