I’d like to request a feature enhancement that would notify users before a hosting subscription renews—especially since your policy does not offer refunds, even for charges made just hours prior.
I’m aware there is a list of upcoming invoices available, but a proactive email notification would be a valuable addition. This would give us time to check with our clients to confirm whether they wish to continue their hosting, particularly for annual plans. Without this, users risk being charged for a full year—unexpectedly and non-transferably—which creates unnecessary frustration.
A possible solution might be offering an option to default to monthly billing unless otherwise specified. This would help avoid costly surprises and show greater support for the agencies and freelancers who trust and promote your platform.
When I originally joined Webflow, we had the ability to send the invoice directly to the client. That functionality helped prevent awkward billing issues. As it stands now, we’re left absorbing the costs when a client decides not to continue, and we’ve had no heads-up.
Please consider this feedback seriously. A little more flexibility and communication would go a long way in supporting the Webflow community.
Hey there @Joel_Buckley! Joshua here from the Webflow Support Team. I apologise for the late response here. I appreciate your detailed feedback and for sharing your concerns regarding the hosting subscription renewals. I definitely hear you on alerts for users considering the refund policy.
A couple things that might help here:
Webflow does already provide email notifications for recurring subscriptions, but this function is only for annual billing subscriptions. Monthly billing subscriptions do not receive renewal notifications. If you’re message is referring to an annual subscription renewal, you should receive an email notification 7-28 days before renewal. Let me know if that isn’t happening.
Regarding your concern about absorbing the costs when a client decides not to continue, you do have a couple options that you could look into.
Site plan transfer. You are able to transfer the existing subscription to another site in your workspace. While this may not be the perfect solution, it could serve as a potential workaround to not have to worry about the billing hassles while also being able to keep the subscription for any upcoming projects.
Additionally, we offer Client Payments as a solution to avoid absorbing the costs of your client’s subscription. This feature allows you to set up payments directly with your clients, ensuring that you are not financially responsible if a client decides not to renew their subscription.
I also definitely hear you on the previous functionality with Client Billing (deprecated in favour of Client Payments) that allowed sending invoices directly to clients. I can pass this feedback onto the team.
Let me know if you have any questions from all of this.
I do only receive the update that a domain has been renewed. I do not pre receive one. So I only get the email that shows the project has been billed for the next year.
Thanks for that information @Joel_Buckley — in that case, could you please submit a ticket to support.webflow.com and flag this to our support team. They will make sure the correct engineering team is notified of this issue.
yes - you do get a notification, but ,it just says “for your site”. it really should say the site name, so we don’t have to login and search around.
Also - I don’t know why the refund policy changed in April - but if the site renewed for the annual plan, there was a refund given within 30 days.
So right now, I have a couple of clients that cancelled their site on me within weeks of the site being renewed in webflow.
I guess the little web design shop eats the cost of that instead of webflow simply refunding a hosting plan that will create no burden on their servers for the next 11 months and 2 weeks…
