Opion Request: has Webflow become too expensive to be viable?

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Recent outages on both the builder / designer and down time on client websites, have brought me to the point where I wonder if it is worth the cost as a small agency to sell the product to clients.

I’m a startup agency, and I’ve been building Webflow sites for a little over 4 years now. I’ve been a massive advocate for the platform since I started, loving the speed with which I can roll out websites.

That being said, scaling, and growing my business to add ONE seat costs the following:

Freelancer workspace: $16 p/m (not bad)

  • 1 Designer to start help building sites: $39 p/m
    = $55 per month, to have a tiny team of 2

Okay, let’s suck it up buttercup. BUT.

If I want to add my clients as Admin users on their accounts, to ensure business contingency should something befall me where I can’t first transfer the website to them, they need to cough up another $49 per month. Should they wish to add me to their workspace, I HAVE to have an Agency / Freelancer profile, or else they need to cough up $49 or $39 per month on top of their platform fee of $29 - $49 p/m.

Gets expensive, right? The major blocker for clients managing their sites themselves is that you need HTML, CSS and a basic understanding of some JavaScript if you want to make it work and look pretty. It’s not the easiest drag and drop builder out there. So, that leaves agencies paying through their noses to sell a product to their clients.

Finally, the instability of the platform is becoming an issue. Two / three weeks ago, it was impossible to work on the designer, for two days. This week, I’m seeing rolling outages on my clients’ front facing websites, which obviously impacts ads and SEO.

So, the question I’m asking agencies and freelancers - and hopefully the Webflow business decision makers ask this question too - Has Webflow become supremely overpriced for the product that it is delivering?

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The pricing stacks up fast once you factor in seats and client access , had to restructure a client’s setup recently just to keep costs sane. The outages are the bigger concern though; stability should match the premium. For small agencies, it feels like Webflow’s tipping from “efficient tool” to “hard sell.”

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I totally agree. I am learning to work with Wordpress to have more options because - sadly - Webflow is too expensive for clients and I lose jobs because of it.

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If you’re trying to compare, you’ll get a better picture if you actually do the comparisons. :laughing:

The closest product to Webflow’s design capabilities might be Framer, so check out Framer’s pricing as a comparison. The per-seat is $40.

As always, it’s about choosing the right tool for the project.

For sites that don’t need the design / branding control but do need co-designers, platforms like Wix and Squarespace don’t differentiate between designers and editors.

For the setup you’re describing, why not do 2 Freelancer workspaces and then do a guest invite? For a very small startup design team that would be the best approach.

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