If I host my own Webflow site will I have to export it each time a do a CMS update?
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@GetDex, I asked a similar question on a recent post. It seems as of now that is a yes, but I believe Webflow is working on a solution for us who use a different host to host our clients website.
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@seank @GetDex If you use the CMS features in Webflow then export site all the dynamic lists and dynamic pages created will be blank. So if you plan on exporting, don’t use the CMS features. Hopefully down the road webflow will allow dynamic elements to be converted to static on export. But that isn’t the case right now.
At the moment I use Adobe Muse but wanted to switch to Webflow mostly because I wanted to produce dynamic sites.
Muse will be updated soon to create dynamic sites but requires a newer operating system than I have. Webflow looked like the best switch and similar pricing.
CMS was going to be the kill feature for me but I don’t want to pay hosting if I have my own hosting.
So if I create a CMS website - export it and host it on my server none of the pages will work or will they still link to Webflows servers for this part?
So a CMS website will cost me an extra $20 a month on top of my $16.00
$36.00 a month for CMS!!
They won’t work. I tried it with one of the new templates.
To clear up any confusion, you can host a CMS site (with 20 static pages) for only $20 a month (you don’t need a Personal or Professional Plan)
@brryant But it has all the restrictions of the free plan… so if it needs to be unbranded, has more than 2 pages, requires more than 2 backups per month, etc. you need to host it on a personal plan.
$20 per month for a webflow branded 2 page website that has CMS access? Steep…
Oops - also meant to add that once you create a site subscription on a free plan it will have 20 static pages
You’ll also be able to add typekit, etc once you upgrade a site’s subscription. We’ll be addressing pricing details very soon (sometime today)
This is interesting I haven’t thought about this. So me and my client can work together on a Webflow hosted site on my pro account. I design the site and the cms, client can add some content via the cms. When we are ready I ask him to start a free account and upgrade to cms for 20/month and I transfer the site over. Is that possible?
Yup exactly! You can transfer the site to the client after you guys are done designing it. Billing will then be tied to their own account and you won’t be paying any subscription fees for that site after you transfer it.
Does cms content transfer aswell?
Yup - CMS content will all be transferred. Things like Typekit, custom domains, etc, will have to be set up again though since they are tied to your account.
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@brryant - Is the webflow team working at a way to export everything and still have the front-end admin capabilities? Or is this something that can’t be done currently? - If hosted elsewhere.
Guys. First i would like to say, that you did an amazing job with the CMS. It is just brilliant. Everything is sooo nice, slick and simple. Great job!.. BUT… The pricing is ridiculous. 20$ per site per montr? 240$ a year? So what i suppose to say to my clients, that we have a deal for 1 year? Or maybe for 3? Let’s say i would tell them, that the site is live for 3 years (whiich i complete nonsens), i need to extra charge them 36 x 20$ = 720$!!!
For that price i would easily get my PSD’s done for wordpress, and it would be free till the end of the world. Did you guys made a calculations like thgis? I blieve, that you will just kill your great feature with this ridiculous pricing… Can’t you consider some other payment options, like 100-200 $ charged ONCE for 1 domain? Or maybe 10-20 $ for an update or a single export of the site, with working CMS on my hosting?
Really i don’t think it is just me who thinks like that. Wish you all the best, and really ask people how much would they pay for this service.
And again keep up the great work!
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Hey @seank, we’re currently thinking about how to solve this, but it’s a really hard technical problem, especially since we don’t know how people want to host their sites externally. A lot of the CMS features require a very complicated server setup, and that’s really hard to set up in a reliable way after you export your site.
For static sites, export is really straightforward, because all you need is HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But with dynamic CMS content, all of a sudden we need 1) a database 2) a server-side application framework to speak to the database and render HTML and 3) a way to host everything quickly and securely. This becomes really hard to solve at scale, so that’s why it will likely take us a while to figure out a solution for this area. I hope that makes sense - just making sure you know that we don’t have this feature “just because” - it’s a very hard problem to solve :\
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Great! So with this way problem starts first when client want my help with design changes to site or cms. How would we solve this?
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@jorn - currently, you would solve this by having the client temporarily share their account with you (similar to how you would have been doing this for the last 2 years with Webflow).
In the future, we’ll be introducing managed client billing, so that you can have your customers be responsible for billing (or even add an extra cost for them for you managing their site) while you have control over the full design/CMS from your account. Does that make sense?
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Understood @callmevlad, thank you! Would it be easy to do this for a GoDaddy hosted site? I know a lot of my customers are hosted in GoDaddy. If, not… if I want to Xfer my customers over to Webfow, can I FTP into the hosting? or do you currently not offer FTP access?
Thanks Again!
Hey @callmevlad,
Thanks for the transparency and detail description of the current issue you guys are facing in consideration of the CMS being hosted elsewhere. This is very considerate of your team and also very understandable.
But we have faith and believe that you guys would be able to solve this very soon and surprise us.
Anyhow, what about feedback upon designing a dynamic site with webflow cms … adding content and all but later a client decides they want to host elsewhere … we could export the site as static along with the data associated with it.
This would be more easier for your team to accomplished right? Because we are merely just exporting the current visual view of our site in the already generated html page and our data sheets stored in our database that was generated with webflow’s cms.
What is your thoughts on this @callmevlad?
Cheers and best regards,
Diana 
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