Petition to keep hosting discounts on paid plans. Pricing reviewed

Hey man.

It might be an idea to do a Q&A or something to capture all of these thoughts, then pin it at the top of the forum and perhaps highlight it in bright pink for good measure… You’re probably way ahead.

The most sensible point I’ve read in this thread is by @DanUK1

Take your time. Remain competitive. Get it right. And stick.

There’s definitely truth to it, and I can see why it’s causing concerns.

@abysmal

I’d just like to quote you on this, not to single you out, but to explore an idea, and hopefully provide a bit of balance. It isn’t aimed at you.

I don’t get it. Webflow has always targeted professionals right?

I’m sure the team have put considerable time, energy and thought into making a move like this - and I really admire that it’s so transparent from the top down, with a very open and accessible community. They’re not a bunch of monkeys throwing peanut butter at each other and banging pans on desks. (I think).

For me, it’s the community that makes it. The fact that we have a voice and a say at all in the evolution of the product, to put it bluntly, is brilliant, and highly innovative. I even get responses from the CEO himself - there’s something you won’t see over at Squarespace.

Webflow is a unique tool. 97% of the time I have no issues with it. Every now and then there’s a bug or a glitch (as there is with any software designed and built by humans), but generally speaking, no issues and the team are responsive to address the ones that arise.

It enables me to build great sites, in less time, without writing any code. It even gives me the ability to offer content management to my clients. I get frequent backups and the code it exports is actually legible.

And now that I’ve been using it a good 7-8 months, I’ve really started to understand what I can do with it (which is more than I originally perceived).

The hosting is fast. The tool is excellent. The support is great, and the team are human beings with actual feelings. They communicate brilliantly.

So.

I’d seriously question you on your idea of professionalism, if you’re questioning the professionalism of Webflow? What are you selling to your clients? A “website” - or a valuable, hand-crafted piece of equipment that’s going to make them more money?. Are you a designer or a mac monkey?

Personally, I don’t entertain clients who don’t understand the value that good design is going to add to their business. I’m straight with them from the start. I don’t charge by the hour. I charge based on value - and if I get a client who isn’t all too serious or sure about what they want, I’ll set them up on Squarespace, but not for a bag of peanuts.

If anything, Webflow is cheap. It’s the miracle I’ve been waiting for. They don’t force you to use their hosting, or CMS. They give you the freedom to do what you want with it, and with the new updates coming, I can’t wait to see how things develop.

There have been things that have got on my tits a bit (like paying for white labelling and extra users) - but even that made sense to me in the end… And now it’s included in the plan I pay for. It’s not for me to dictate how Webflow operates as a business - I don’t have the insight they do. All I’ve got is my subjective opinion.

Essentially, what I’m getting at is, chill ya beans. Have some faith. You’re a part of something that’s going to be a lot bigger than it is now in the not so distant future - and I’m sure Webflow will compensate those who supported it through it’s growing pains.

I worked at a digital agency with it’s own in-house CMS, so I’m familiar with the fire that development and design teams take from clients who just don’t fully understand what’s going on behind the scenes (myself included).

Big up Webflow :thumbsup:

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Vlad - give us an idea of what you are thinking for a pricing structure for ‘multi-site hosting’ customers. I need this now-ish as I need to figure out my future direction regarding Webflow use. I can’t wait for a ‘surprise’ next year. I think and plan on behalf of my customers months in advance.

Here is what I need:

CMS Hosting fees in the $10 range per customer I bring to Webflow.
Improved Forms Handling (conditional logic, calculation fields) ← these are a must for any rudimentary interactive site (as opposed to a static brochure site)
Offer of ECommerce (my customers will be willing to pay up for ECommerce)

Thanks in Advance!

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Not a good idea to cancel the discount system !

The biggest mistakes businesses make is that they forget their roots. They forget where they came from and why their here. Us designers chose Webflow because of the flexibility of designing a site fast and effectively with cheap hosting plans… if you change that then you change the reason why were here and the reason why your in business. Sure… you’ll keep customers but I believe the majority of your stock will go elsewhere… I might have too, otherwise I’m going to have to change my whole business plan, change all of my clients bills… adding on more to their total, more to my total… yeah its only an extra 10 dollars but over the course… its a lot.

KEEP YOUR PRO AND TEAM PLANS THE SAME.

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I run my own dedicated servers… so I just export everything.

Maybe I should start a hosting company.

oh… and I agree with @Grobigger.com
- please don’t raise the price of Pro and Team Plans.

I have a Team Plan… and I am paying through the nose already.

@callmevlad - I do love the idea of unlimited mockups (that’s you mentioned in a different post).

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I agree with Joe alot.

I don’t think webflow is expensive and I take between $250 and $700 a year pr client depending on the work and how big the company is.

BUT

I think I would have made about 5 more sites this year if I could charge smaller cms clients $120 and still make a little money on top. I have a lot of small business and private clients request, but they think $190 a year is a lot.
And as Joe said, what do you want them for if they don’t appreciate the work. Well, some of the coolest work and the most freedom in design comes from the small clients.
And also, I made a website almost for free three years ago. She gave me 15 new clients in three years. 15!
So I think there should be room for the small ones as well. with cms and all that jazz.

I would love a discounts for multi-site hosting customers. And I think that can be a solution.

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Brilliant… Very well put. I hadn’t considered that. :upside_down:

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As I have yet to purchase any plans through Webflow, my words may not carry much weight but I have been exploring the platform for about 2 months now, considering pricing and establishing a business that benefits primarily from hosting.

I had planned to purchase into a pro plan, develop sites for clients around my local area for a relatively cheap price, and then charge them with a monthly hosting fee. Nothing ridiculous, it was just to prepare me with some passive income when I started university next year. The update has caught me a little off guard and definitely makes it harder for me to establish a profitable business by any means…

Going forward, I see that the best course of action (for myself) may be to develop the sites on a free plan and occasionally purchase a Lite plan to export, but host elsewhere, as it is no longer a viable option for smaller designer/developers like myself. I don’t disagree with the changes they’ve made, I understand all business’s have to ensure growth and development and this is a way of going about it. It’s just a shame that I may no longer be able utilise Webflow as much as I would have liked.

@Revolution I’m interested in hearing more about your hosting prospects.

Although the legacy discount is a very nice thng, I completely agree with @abysmal, I have designed more than 6 sites and i was about to start hosting some of them but since the price will be dramatically increased on jul 2017, i can´t see my “small” clients affording this prices when that moment arrives.

On the other side, i don´t understand why a basic hosting (non cms) can´t have a collaborator i don´t think that’s welcome when the client is paying for a hosting and we are also paying for a plan.

Having a collaborator that can edit static sites, it´s a big help for us designers, this way we don´t loose time in changing small things…

To be honest this new structure doesn’t make too much sense for me…

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Hmmm

First off as a front end designer / developer not to shabby with CSS and HTML I am absolutely loving Webflow. I Signed up a few months ago, learnt as I went and launched first site today and working on a few more.

I am a bit on the fence here. Yes willing to pay extra for such a quality solution, however will small clients? I don’t believe so unfortunately. I come from Australia, where the Australian dollar isn’t great against the US dollar, so am paying 25% more than most, and now to go up, and quite a bit. It will be tough. Especially competing against everyone who are on WordPress with cheap hosting.

Most people are on GoDaddy or Crazy Domains for around $10-15 a month, however with Aussie dollar I will be up to around $40 a month on CMS hosted sites with Webflow and that is without making a small profit. I will have to charge more on the design and build.

Again loving the platform, however this will be tough for small businesses.

Mark

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Same here in the UK Mark.

The Pound has dropped significantly recently and this makes it hard to justify the Webflow hosting costs to new clients. I will probably have to carry on hosting basic sites here in the UK but was hoping to move away from Wordpress for CMS.

Webflow is a great tool, and I fully intend to use it now and in the future. I just wish that the hosting was a little more competitive. Although I can’t really blame Webflow for exchange rates :slight_smile:

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I can only agree with you guys.

I am using Webflow since beta and I absolutely love this product.

Webflow allowed me to start my own business with some local customers in my area (Normandie) and this is fantastic.

However, for the moment, the sites I make in Webflow are for small businesses (local) and the new hosting price is too much for them, they won’t pay 20$ every month just to be able to add 2 articles per month to their blog (made with Webflow CMS).

I definitely understand that all business’s have to ensure growth and development, but if I remember, Webflow was also initially built to help “small designers” create their own “small business”.

Hope this makes sense,

Best,

Blaise

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I have 80 sites with Webflow, having switched from another system and this is the second time (IMS) that there has been a radical price change. I now have to go back to my CMS clients and tell them the price has doubled.
I also know that other small businesses won’t go with me when my monthly charges are double that of the competition - Wix, Squarespace Weebly etc - all of which allow customer editing.
Whilst I understand Webflow is an excellent system, it is beginning to look like the wrong system for me to offer any clients who want to manage their own sites, and that would be very sad.

@Lou667 and everyone else…

  • because everyone in this discussion is affected by the pricing.

I’m trying to understand.

What’s a fair (monthly) price to charge YOU (the Designer)

  • to hosting one (1) website that YOUR CLIENT “would want / are willing” to pay…

  • and still provide YOU (the Designer) with a reasonable profit.

  • NON-CMS website ?

  • CMS website ?

The current (read ‘old’) pricing is fine.

$5 - non CMS
$10 - CMS

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@Hywel You don’t need to go back to your CMS clients and the them that the price has doubled because all current accounts are grandfathered in.

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You’re right, my bad, but my point about new clients still stands; none of them will pay double for hosting.

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@Hywel

Staff at Webflow mentioned they are looking into bulk hosting discounts, but there’s no timeframe for that yet and how far they are into it. Time will tell though!

This final paragraph appeals to me as a one man business. Im a professional designer and webflow has over the course of 2016 enabled me to offer website design to several clients adding up to around 20% of my income for the year.

I tell everyone about webflow. As a graphic designer I love it. I dont want to spend my days with open source or restrictive wyswyg solutions. It enables me to offer a complete solution for a realistic price. I can focus on the design and not with just trying to adapt a template. I really see it as the main future focus of my business.

So I would prefer the pro plan to remain as it is. CMS+hosting - well I think its pretty cheap at the moment, so I think the rise in price fair enough.

But equal if not even of more importance for my clients is the CMS. So the idea of being able to buy add ons as required like search, uploads, membership, login, shopping widgets, more complex forms or even simple things like amount of collections would be quite brilliant. Although I can appreciate that you dont want to stretch your company resources to thin in developing the cms. You could open this up to other developers to expand the community, although I wouldnt want to end up in the same situation as with open source solutions where plugins and addons dont get updated - or im constantly having to update with fingers crossed. What I really like about webflow is that I can rely on it and dont have to worry about this.

Thats the end of my ramble. Keep up the great work webflow.

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Just reading through this feed, I wanted to add that for me the yearly fee to the client is for the CMS. Thats how I sell it as thats what they are really interested in - a well designed site that they can develop over time.

Hosting is hosting, but this webflow CMS is really something else. Its Drupal but intelligible :wink: No wordpress bloat. I design from the content out, and my clients dont know what the structure of their site will need to be until I suggest it to them. Then as they begin to understand whats possible they start to request new features, so I explain to them, along with providing how to use pdf guides of the cms, what they can do themselves and what I can do to manage how their site grows over the years, so a relationship develops - I earn a little more month by month. You could almost sell it to a client as if the hosting is free, what you pay for with webflow is one of the most practical, adaptable, user friendly, reliable CMSs out there - and its getting better all the time.

Talking about hosting is perhaps missing the opportunity webflow can provide both designers and clients.

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