Please add a Designer plan option for web exports!

Publishing help General
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Hello, I love this platform as I have said in many of my other posts but I would really like an option to use Webflow simply as a design tool. I am a graphic/web designer and all of my clients already have their own hosting with various providers. Therefore, I would not want any type of hosting on Webflow. What I would want is a paid plan that allows unlimited websites with unlimited pages with export/ subdomain only options. This would allow me to design multiple sites and keep track of them in my account for future updating and simply export as changes are made. I think that based on the fact that there is absolutely no cost to you guys as far as overhead is concerned this should be a no brainer. Hosting is what gets expensive for you guys to maintain so this should be relatively cheap. I just want an unlocked account without hosting.

Also, what would happen if I purchased a Professional Plan and created a bunch of sites then stopped my subscription. What would happen to my sites? Could I keep them or would they disappear forever?

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Sites that are on your account are hosted anyway on webflow so I donā€™t think that this is something we all need. You pay for using webflow as an awesome tool for designing a website. If you want to have more slots for sites available you have to pay. Simple.

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I canā€™t tell if you are agreeing or disagreeing with my idea. Hereā€™s my logic. Hosting costs around $4 a month where i have already paid for many years. This offers imap emails, domain registration, and if i choose, CMS integration. I am not sure what Webflow offers in these regards but it seems extraordinarily expensive. If you look at webflow only as a designing tool, like rapidweaver or something comparable, you pay a one time fee to purchase the program and you have it forever. Tools like this cost less than $100. I think, even if itā€™s subscription based, Webflow should offer an option like this. It is by far the easiest tool for creating responsive websites i have found and i want to pay just to use that. Let me pay you!

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I TOTALLY agree with DFink. I donā€™t need hosting, therefore I donā€™t want to pay for it (regardless if Webflow hosts it on an un-needed basis).

I too love the product, but itā€™s expensive to use simply as a design tool. I would like to see either a downloadable version - pay once (which I doubt will happen given the platform), or a cheaper solution to simply use the tool for design - unlimited number of sites, export unlimited - no hosting or domain needs.

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I have to say that @DFink speaks a lot of sense. I am also a designer and I would love to have a paid account as WebFlow is a fantastic service but I really, really canā€™t justify the current cost for a number of services that Iā€™m not going to use.

Please, please create a designer package as suggested by @DFink and you will surely get a huge increase in people paying for membership (you will certainly get me).

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@DFink, @Designer, @DavidJ Recently we reduced our monthly prices by removing hosting. Now hosting is an add-on and not part of the plan. So you can use it as purely a web design tool if youā€™d like.

At the moment Webflow has a rapid development cycle which means a lot things change over the month. We arenā€™t comfortable charging a one time $100 for the tool that is changing so much. Thatā€™s why we decided on the subscription model - to make new feature roll-outs a lot faster and easier for our customers. The subscription model also allows for add-ons like hosting, email, etc to be added on easily (but these are add-ons and you only pay for them if you want them).

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Wait a minute, the $16 and $35 a month plans donā€™t include hosting?? That is so incredibly expensive! Thats $420 a year to have unlimited exports as a native app would have. Thats approaching Adobe Creative cloud pricing for only 1 app! I think it will be the free account and exporting over and over for me until that kind of plan becomes affordable for a casual freelancer like myself.

Also, if you purchased the professional plan for a month or year and created a few sites, and then your subscription ended, what happens to your sites?

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Thanks for your feedback @DFink. At the moment Creative Cloud doesnā€™t offer a web design platform that lets designers creates the kind of functional websites that Webflow allows. We believe that $16 a month for a web design professional is a small cost for the value that it brings them (and the value that it will continue to bring them as we add more and more features). Of course for those who arenā€™t designers or professionals by trade and would like to use Webflow for side projects or to learn how to build websites - we think thatā€™s a price point that is reasonable.

As for what happens to your projects after you downgrade your plan - your projects will stay there but they will not be accessible. So if you made 13 sites and then downgraded to Free plan - you will be able to edit 1 project because thatā€™s what is allowed under the Free plan and the rest cannot be accessed unless you upgrade. If you downgrade to Personal plan then you can access 10 of your projects while the other 3 are inaccessible.

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I have 2 sites available in my free plan and can refer people for up to 5 more correct? So the 10 sites would drop down to 7 correct? What about unlimited pages instead of just 2? Are those included in the plan and what will happen to those pages if the subscription lapses?

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I moved 2 posts to a new topic: I want more elements (search, slider)

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Good question! Itā€™s not built in yet, but you will probably only be able to access 2 pages if you downgrade to free plan. Thatā€™s subject to change (weā€™re still figuring it out).

Unlimited export for Free plan may become limited to 5 a month or something like that, but Iā€™m not sure when we will make that change.

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That would be a shame. I really love the platform but to get usable features, it really isnā€™t cost effective for freelancers. Not with adobe edge reflow coming out along with Muse and tools like that. I want so much to be behind your company but i think your pricing model is far too expensive to catch on. Any designer will use up 10 websites in the personal plan in a matter of months. Which leaves only the professional plan. The 35 a month fee is astronomically high for what you are getting. Maybe if it included hosting, email, amd other options would it be worth it. I will keep an eye on the changes to the plans and when or if one becomes affordable for me, i will jump on it immediately.

I believe in what you guys are doing, i just think the business model is asking a bit much considering there are still so many features missing

I truly hope that us early adopterā€™s accounts could sumhow remain as they are even if you roll out a 5 export a month limit to new accounts.

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@DFink We totally understand. We believe we are very different from Edge Reflow and especially Muse. The benefit of being on a Paid plan is that we wonā€™t be increasing the price as we add those features that are missing. Weā€™d rather keep the price the same and increase value than continue to increase prices on our customers.

Thanks for your support and your feedback!

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Just for my two cents, and not to say anyone else is ā€˜wrongā€™, this is just my personal feeling on it all.

For me, it took just one phenomenally awesome design process in the space of one evening for me to immediately and enthusiastically sign up for the top plan, which was $49 per month at the time and is now $42.

The reason for me was that Webflow halved my production time, which instantly means I can use it to double my output and hence my revenue.

Iā€™ve only been a user for a short time and Iā€™ve already made a profit against my expenditure, and I did so really quite easily.

Technically, I could have signed up to one of the lower plans and still done everything I needed to. But I voluntarily elected to go for the highest plan partly because I want to keep all my designs accessible, but partly because I want to support Webflow as much as possible.

Great tools need great cashflow to continue to be great. I donā€™t want to ever see Webflow have to take any hits on progress due to cashflow issues, so Iā€™m only too happy to contribute as much as I can to see it thrive. For that reason, I would not actually want to see it go cheaper.

On the Creative Cloud note, I actually downloaded trials of the relevant software just a couple of nights ago, evaluating whether it would be worth my while to perhaps use them in conjunction with Webflow, or in place of Webflow for certain use cases.

Iā€™ve been using Dreamweaver for over ten years, and yet after around an hour of playing with the latest version I shut it down, saying to my partner ā€œThis is rubbish compared to Webflowā€. For me, while Dreamweaver might have more technical power in certain respects, for straight up responsive web design it absolutely cannot compete with the smoothness, speed, and intuitive ease of use Webflow offers.

Next to Webflow, I found the CC tools to be clunky, slow, fiddly, messy and all around inferior.

And I think that speaks volumes as to the vision and technical proficiency of the Webflow team. I personally feel you have run rings around one of the biggest most established companies in the space with a far superior product.

I also know there are more updates in the pipeline, and especially once they come out, Webflow will in my mind be the number one tool on the market for web design.

Webflow for design, plus Sublime Text 2 for after export edits, is an absolutely killer combination that I could not be more happy with.

For my vote, donā€™t change anything, just keep up the amazing work!

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Looking to find a tool that would ā€œdo it allā€ in a way, since most clients want simple sites with basic functionality that would transfer to multiple devices and not elaborate online properties, I came across Webflow and was very happy . . . but, unfortunately the pricing plans and limitation on exports as well as some important (for me) missing features make it difficult to adopt.

For example, the absence of a drag and drop interface is very disappointing. The Adobe tools have it and Easel has it too (you guys should also look at Easelā€™s pricing plans to see what the competition is doing). But I digress.

Does the development team have a clear plan as to the addition of other features (drag and drop, image sliders, blogs, etc.) and available plans? Need to choose a platform and need to do it soon!

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@kezzb Thanks so much for your encouragement and support! Our goal is to make Webflow better and faster so that you shave off even more time and generate more revenue.

@patmav thanks for your feedback! Weā€™re working on these core features that you are waiting for. So hold tight! Also, what do you mean by drag and drop?

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My opinion: if you are a professional web designer and you get paid like one you should be ok with the prices because if you are getting paid for one website from $300 - $4000 you have the money to pay for this easy to use great tool ( and itā€™s going to be the very best with what is coming ) so now itā€™s time to help webflow team out with what you can and you know that the future is going to be great for this tool and you as a web designer

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I agree, if i were making $300-4000 on a website I would pay for a plan. And Iā€™d also quit my job! Getting started as a freelancer and gaining a client base is not easy and sometimes you have to charge a bit less than the competition to get your foot in the door and gain trust and also to build your portfolio. I have been a print designer for over 10 years but only recently seriously started doing web again.

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I get what you are saying Dfink I was there too when I stared, but I wish I head a tool like this back then, even if you get payed $100 for one website then you still need to pay webflow because in the end this is going to give you a working and responsive web site in a short time, and if you do a good job you get payed from the next website you designā€¦if the client is happy he/she will bring you more clients.

And my opinion on what you should chargeā€¦even if you are just getting started you should not get payed $100 for a website designā€¦itā€™s very very low and you will never do a good job at it because you are not happy working on it. You will benefit much more if that time you spend making websites for $100, just do one or two for webflow library and get a free month, you can make and build you portfolio doing site for webflow and you know they are going to be good because they are designed your way and not clients why, and in 2 mouths when you have 4 great website or templates in your portfolio you can charge more $300 on your next client because they can see what you can do when you are happy.

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@thesergie what I mean by ā€œdrag and dropā€ is being able to arrange elements on a page by grabbing the actual element and moving it around on the actual canvas. Like you would with a picture or text box on pretty much every piece of design software.

For me, and again, this is just my own opinion and they way I work, it is soooo much easier and faster to be able to drag and drop something where I see it fit rather than go through the process of ā€œOK, I want to move the logo further to the right and further down, which margins do I need to go drag on the UI again?ā€ instead of just grabbing the logo and positioning it where I want it. Hope I am making sense.