I love Webflow and the new innovative way of making a website. I’ve been using Webflow for all of my projects for clients. However with the new hosting plans how am I supposed to get new clients? These rising costs are turning my clients away. I don’t want to export my site I’m dependent on the designer. Clients expect to pay $2-5 dollars for hosting. Clients wont pay $15 or $20 dollars a month. I’m already paying $42 dollars a month for the legacy plan and my competition is undercutting prices by hundreds of dollars and offering free hosting at times. The real question is what direction does Webflow want to take? Us designers are already paying monthly and buying these templates for $70 at times. I CANT keep using Webflow at $42 dollars a month and $15 dollars a month for my hosting for my own site and at the same time have my competition undercutting prices and offering free hosting. I also have to tell my clients they will pay $20 dollars a month because of CMS. They will think I’m a scammer.
Webflow needs to cut down prices/hosting significantly!
@poryak Interesting. I find selling clients on Webflow hosting is no problem. A lot of my clients were paying more than that per month for hosting. When we do managed WordPress hosting on Media Temple they would be paying the $20 a month just to host their site anyways. We use that when we hit limitations in our Webflow projects.
Haven’t had any issues yet selling them on the $20 per month CMS plan.
One, yes you will loose clients, I just lost one yesterday to squarespace. And I think I lost 5 last year. But with that said. Clients that don’t see the value in the sites you make and think $300 a year is a lot, its not a client you need. Most of the time. Some of them wants cool sites and you can often get a lot of freedom from them, but if they don’t want to choose you over a free product, you need to meet other clients or sell your product differently.
I have shifted from showing my portfolio first to talk to the client about what the product can do for them. If they don’t think the site can make them at least $700 more a year, I don’t see a reason to have a website.
But do I think the price is to high? yes. Because I think the coolest sites is made for creatives and artists, and they don’t have a lot of money.
But is it expensive. Not at all.
I am inclined to agree. Most hosting these days is very cheap. And i am talking <£5-10 per month, depending on the size of the site (storage space) I woul’nt suggest my clients to get hosting with workflow as it is way over priced compared to most other hosting companies. But i will suggest workflow as a website building tool 100%
then export the code to your own cheaper hosting provider.
I cannot fathom why hosting is so expensive with workflow
I think the trick is showing the value of the platform. I have built a few now for clients in the entertainment industry. What has got them the most jazzed is when I show them how easy it is to use Webflow. It will save a client a ton of time updating. And a site can be built on the backend with the CMS to be tailored to individual clients needs.
I think this is the missing piece. That’s why I am so sold on the webflow platform. People who can upgrade facebook and instagram with little or no computer skills can do this. And most of my clients want to update their sites themselves. Pair that with the closed source platform for security and automatic updates and its a pretty great platform. When I compare it to something else for customers I always say it is like managed wordpress hosting but you don’t have to learn WP which many people find difficult.
I’m working around this issue for now and I have confidence that Webflow will come up with a fair and equitable solution that will reward their loyal customer.
But as far as the customer, education seems to be the key. I’ve been dragging my feet on the screencast for clients and potential clients. But I think its a big part of selling them on the platform. Let them see how simple it is.
@poryak Show me free or very cheap hosting that is not limited in some way. It’s usually either rate limited, or not backed by a CDN, or both. Except in the cases where it comes free with another paid product. Make sure the customer is aware they’re not comparing apples with apples.
“Us designers are already paying monthly and buying these templates for $70 at times.”
What designer buys templates? I don’t know about anyone else, but I find that a strange statement. If you’re a designer, you build your own templates. If the template is so good that it’s worth $70, rather than spend the time to build it yourself then you shouldn’t quibble.
"I CANT keep using Webflow at $42 dollars a month and $15 dollars a month for my hosting for my own site "
There are plenty of free hosting options you can export your site to if money is an issue.
I agree on showing value of the hosting compared to 4 or 5/ mo$ options (which are quite inferior performance wise). But I also think you can do that without revealing your tool-set to the client. Webflow allows us to save time, which allows us to take on more jobs. We can pass those savings on to the client or keep them as profit, which ever makes the most sense at the time. I think that part of Webflow is separate from hosting.
To add value to hosting you can present two scenarios. Using “your” platform (the more expensive option), allows them to save on future updates as you can work directly in “your designer platform” and push updates in an efficient way, ultimately saving them even more $$ in the long run.
Or they can opt for the cheaper option, resulting in higher fees for you to manage their updates as you export changes from designer and upload to hosting of their choice, assuming they kept you around for that (you did sell them on that, right? ).
Maybe they even explain to you how they plan on doing their own updates, which is a great opportunity upsell on CMS options (webflows monthly option or incorporating Joomla, whatever) or reinforce a long term-relationship by showing the client you will be needed long after the site is “done”.
My point is to show scenarios. Build value. Show them the Maserati and then show them the mini-van, then let them make their own decision. And clarify all pieces required for them to maintain an updated site. Managing a website is NOT easy, if you want it to generate revenue (leads/sales). Insert yourself as a necessary piece of that puzzle and magically 20 a month is nothing.
That is the other piece, for sure. I try to explain I am setting them up for this iteration of the site. But I explain how easy it is to upgrade by me afterwards. I don’t have a maintenance plan as of yet but it is one business model I am looking at.
I don’t make it a secret I’m using webflow. But, I don’t volunteer they can get their own account ect. I just add clients as collaborators. The dashboard would make most of my clients head explode. I just hope webflow continues to make my hosting cheaper than someone just buying directly. Otherwise, that does become the awkward conversation.
But the more expensive hosting is because of the CDN and the editor among other things. It’s premium hosting and thus far if people don’t want to pay for hosting cause it’s too expensive then right now I’m not entertaining that. It’s a bundled thing. Keep in mind the sites I build are quite small compared to corporate sites. For larger hands off sites I have been looking at webflow to wordpress options.
But I’m about building the relationship so that they trust me. My service becomes helping them be able to use the platform(editor) themselves and helping people (artists, in particular see having a website doesn’t have to be scary and daunting) I also bill 1 yr hosting in advance.
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