Pricing & Addons

Community resources Product feedback
42

I agree that there are severe issues when it comes to transparency. Like i’d like to see all limitations when choosing a price plan. Selecting a “professional” plan seems fine for me but when I realize while creating a large project that I cant use more than 10 dynamic collections or more than 100 database entries per collection is really a shame.

As I know data hosting on servers, bandwith and granting a good usability for the online tool itself … costs a lot of money. Why not mixing that into your price plans?

→ Starter → 20 items per collection and so on… → base limitations
→ professional → 500 items per collection … → expanded limitations

As for the plans itself I think pricing is really okay. When planning on a financial basis a yearly fee of 32$ a month is really a good deal for that kind of software and features that you ll get. Before webflow there was not such a convienent way of building and creating powerful websites, ideas and/or comprehensive cms stuff as a non coder.

But, there needs to be more transparency. I dont want to search forums first in order to see what i ll get or what i can do with webflow (see limitations). It needs to be there. Then i can have a choice…

(Besides you realized that there is a client billing feature also for “starters” ?)

p.s. Please keep in mind that you people demand a lot of new features - just look at the “wish list forum”…and look what we ve got? Dont you think its fair enough to also pay for that as a professional? No offense…

Besides youre doing a wonderful job offering that tool with all these features to us. Caring about us within a wonderful community on this forum platform. Hope this threads gets no: “everything is bullshit” vibe but a constructive final solution … but on the other hand: you cant always satisfy everybody !!!

1 Like
43

Yup…the lack of transparency is a big issue to me.

I mean…there is a blog…why not write up a blog post about it instead of us just waking up one morning and the plan is just gone…that’s just good customer service.

I shouldn’t have to come to the forums to find this type of news out and search for an explanation. Regardless of the fact that it is being grandfathered in for those already on a plan.

A blog post would show that you care about the existing community and don’t take us for granted… AND that they at least thought about us and how it would effect us when making the decision.

Again…I love the product but that doesn’t mean there is no room to critique what is happening with it.

44

Okay, I am not happy at all. I first learned of Webflow last year and got extremely excited and signed up for the free tier just to learn Webflow. (I told myself I would upgrade when I had a project that I could use it on.)

When you had 5 tiers of service, I found great value in either the 2nd or 3rd tier. Sorry, I did the math at the time, but since the plans have changed, I couldn’t tell you which plan it was anymore. (I DO know that paying for a full year, you get two months free. Doing the math, it worked out to about $15-$18/mo.)

I’m working with a back-end developer on a new start-up site. In order to allow him to focus on the back-end work, I felt that I could probably use either Macaw, Webflow or some other solution to handle the front end dev work. Then I could export the code and pass it over. I don’t mind paying a monthly fee, but paying $35/mo is a huge jump. I supposed I could pay the annual fee, but at $420/yr that’s almost an Adobe Creative Cloud account! Factor in much of the functionality that is still not supported (file upload, great SVG support in buttons, lack of date picker, not to mention other things I have yet to uncover) and this cost is now starting to look prohibitive.

I will leave you with a little food for thought. With the old plan I was considering, I would likely have rebuilt my portfolio in Webflow and subscribed on an annual basis. You could likely have made a couple of hundred bucks off me each year. However, with the price increase at more than double what I was considering, that will likely not happen. I may subscribe for few months of the year and then scale back my plan.

You guys have a great product. It’s not perfect but I love your enthusiasm and I am excited to see what else you come up with. However, please reconsider the new pricing plans.

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45

On the bright side of things, I actually LOVE that Webflow seems to know their target market now, if they are indeed pushing for “professional” accounts. You may not agree on the price point, and if history is any indication its possible that it would be tweaked further down the road to help find a “sweet spot”.

At least their messaging doesn’t sound like “sign up now, anybody can do it!” like it used to be. I always thought that was counter-productive to helping the overall growth of Webflow. This is a product for people who at the very least know/understand how html/css works - and want to move away from the seemingly archaic & mundane process of working in a text editor to accomplish what is essentially a function of design (it’s kind of hard to argue that). We are getting content (html) onto a page, and styling it accordingly (css) to make it look like a thing that was designed. If you say opening a text editor to achieve that end result doesn’t sound a little bit dated then you probably have no interest in using this product anyways.

I love that an API is coming soon which will facilitate more collaborations with serious developers who’s skill set goes far beyond “web designer” or “html/css ninja” - allowing us to keep things neatly tucked away in Webflow, but integrate more dynamic/custom projects.

My idealistic or “pie in the sky” hopes for Webflow is they find a way to get some kind of validation or credibility within the more traditional circles of front-end, back-end, and full-stack dev community which will certainly help it pick up steam. Through the advancement/improvement of the designer, the CMS, an API, live access to the code?, github support, etc.

Maybe one day it won’t be a crazy idea to think that you can pop Webflow open to work on some kind of progressive web app with the ability to work from a mobile first approach, etc. In the end, we are just talking html/css (with a bit of javascript wizardry thrown in the mix because Webflow is awesome). I have no problem helping fund what I truly believe is the most sensible & revolutionary manner to make your html/css re-create some UI that was put together on a screen - by doing it visually, because it just makes sense.

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46

No worries guys. It is a free market…the competitors are coming. Unfortunatly that happens to myself as well. If they keep changing their price like that I will give my money to Pagecloud where I was before.

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48

Interesting discussion. Insert a small remark. Since then, I found webflow passed more than a year. All this time you’ve done a good job, but I also can’t use your service as a full-fledged product, and again forced to seek cms for perfect integration code from webflow. At the moment, stopped at the Bolt CMS.

The lack of features such as pagination and search the site (at the moment I can implement a search engine in my country, “yandex” and for free) one of the big disadvantages. While you are well advertised in their posts a variety of services for the integration of various capabilities, you are losing long term customers. You see, if I integrate all those services, how much it will cost per website per month? It is not profitable.

And found a recent change in the pricing policy, by accident, like most, I happily exhaled, because until you can stay on a personal plan and will be able to download code sites. Implement several needed features and you will be priceless! And while they are not, you just don’t have the right to compare myself with wordpress for example. A year later, again waiting for something, and time goes by!

49

Jumping in as a freelance web developer/small agency considering Webflow. I stumbled across Webflow a while ago and started to seriously consider it within the past week.

I don’t have any inherent issues with the pricing of the Professional plan. That said, the return of the Personal plan (with client billing and optional white label) would make it that much more appealing.

I also don’t have any inherent issues with the pricing of the static and CMS hosting plans under the Professional plan. I do however, feel that some other features are priced too high and additional static/CMS plans could be added.

I do feel the ‘white label’ charge per site ($5) and the extra collaborator charge ($6 each) are both way too high. The white label charge should be much lower; possibly even free for the paid plans (Pro & Team). It’s perplexing why substituting some logos and text would cost the same as a static hosting plan. The collaborator charge is also quite baffling. It can turn a blog/news site from a $10 plan into a $40 plan, just for having 5 additional contributors. That can very quickly price out potential clients simply for wanting to use existing infrastructure. Why does a single user account cost more than a static hosting plan?

I’d really like to see some additional hosting packages based off the ‘2 page free site’ model. I have a site that wouldn’t need more than 2 pages, but would use the CMS. A 2 page, custom domain, CMS plan for $5 would fit great. I also have a handful of small sites that wouldn’t need more than 2 pages, but would need a custom domain. A 2 page, custom domain static plan for, say $2, would work great here as well.

I’m currently on the fence about using Webflow due to some of these costs. The changes above (even with a theoretical return of a Personal plan) would make all the difference in securing myself/my business as a customer and would actually spur more growth of my business and entice me to purchase more services and built more sites, thus generating more income for Webflow. :slight_smile:

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50

As I continue to evaluate Webflow, it’s become increasingly tempting to “find a way” to figure out my reservations detailed above and just pay for a plan and dive in. At the same time, I keep coming across various quirks that put a halt to any of that.

One of my non-pricing related issues is that the CMS is a little too basic (others have stated they felt this way too) . I’d like for clients to be able to add, modify and remove simple content on pages (images, text, headings, etc). I have heard some reasoning behind the status-quo, but would still prefer to have that option available.

That got me thinking though – some clients/partners/co-workers I trust enough to allow access to the designer itself. I thought I’d just add them as a collaborator and give them ‘admin’ access. From the look of it, this isn’t possible – they can only have access to the editor. Even if it was, $6 per collaborator makes this uneconomical right away.

Ok, I’ve seen mention of Teams. Can I create a team for a specific website and give people (1-3) access that way? Unfortunately not in any sort of economical way. The only ‘Team’ options start at $84/month for 100 sites and 2 users. There is no real solution for a team setup for a single site.

If collaborators could have Designer/admin access and weren’t $6/user, there wouldn’t be a need for a single-site team setup.

If the CMS allowed a little more flexibility for editing content, there wouldn’t be a need to give a collaborator Designer/admin access.

Webflow is a great product. Many people here have expressed dissatisfaction about various aspects of pricing (plans, white-label, etc). A few have shown support. Webflow has the right to change plans and pricing to whatever they want and (potential) customers have the right to not choose / leave / join the platform. That said, when you’re a platform in which people build their business on top of, it’s arguable you have an obligation to your customers. If they do well, you do well. As a web developer, I can choose to raise my prices X amount. Some clients will stay, some will leave because I’m too expensive and now their plans and structure have been thrown into disarray because of my choice. What I can do instead, is work with my clients to find a solution(s) that work not only for myself, but as many clients as possible (this is actually what I’ll be doing if I move to Webflow).

From my experiences over the past few days, everyone I’ve interacted with at Webflow have been nothing but helpful (even if my ‘issues’ haven’t been solved) – I do think there should be a bit more of a dialogue on pricing though. Even though no one is being forced to change plans, it sounds like many people were still taken off guard. Quite a few others have expressed dissatisfaction at the high cost of what we perceive to be simple features (white label/replacing logos – contributors).

I really hope Webflow takes these suggestions to heart. I hope they make financial sense and I hope that if enacted, they lead to a flourishing Webflow.

1 Like
51

This pricing discussion is not that hard.

  1. Webflow has never been clear / open about the roadmap of future updates, neither on pricing. [Don’t smarten the competition]
  2. Price increases are always met with huge resistance. Just as the last time when the CMS arrived. There were subtle changes to the price plans after massive complaints by the forum’s most active users. Still, not everyone seems happy.
  3. Now Webflow has increased price plans for everybody that wants a new plan, without adding a major feature such as the CMS. This thread is one of the results.
  4. So, either Webflow hasn’t learned from last time. Or they don’t care and just go ahead with experimenting and face the results. Or… (see below)
  5. Let’s face it: It’s a vendor-lock-in SaaS-product if you use all features. And there’s no competitor that offers a similar top-quality product. So, what are you going to do? :slight_smile:

What surprises me is that nobody thinks WHY prices increase
This is on their homepage: “Over 380,000 designers have built over 450,000 sites”. With some basic deduction, you can say that there are around 350K-360K Free plans, making 1 site each. Then there’s 20K-30K others that make the other 100K sites.

Following that logic, Webflow has around 20K paying users. That means that the current user base has around 90-95% free users, and 5-10% paying users. That small 5-10% has to pay for the other 90-95% using the Webflow designer as well. And all the WF company cost.

And this calculation is a best case scenario. Reason with me: I’m on a pro plan and made over 20 sites. If I’m the average user, then there’s under 5K pro-plan users. (Since, 5K times 20 is larger than the difference between 380K designers and 450K sites) Fortunately there are also personal accounts, so my estimation is that there are around 10K-15K paying users. If WF makes on average $20 for each paying user a month, that’s only 200K - 300K of revenue each month. Good luck making a profitable business from that amount.

Don’t forget Webflow is a startup as well. Not an early stage startup, but a startup for sure. In the end, they’re going to have to make money. Because, if my calculations are somewhat in the right direction, their 2.9 mio funding is going to run out sometime. And I rather have a superior platform that allows me to make websites for the next 10 years, than another promising business going bankrupt because their users expected everything for bottom dollar.

PS. If my reasoning is correct, than there’s something in the works,… can you see?

2 Likes
52

@Diu finally an attempt for a more thoughtful discussion, beyond the historical “we just changed prices without notice”, on Webflow’s behalf and “prices are so high that it hardly makes it sustainable for my business to use Webflow”, on customers’ behalf…

Well, it is out of question that Webflow needs to become profitable at some point of time. The thing is, which is the correct model for that - few high-paying customers (that is, a boutique business model) or plenty of average paying customers?

In order to resolve this, I’d suggest that we ask a few questions:

  • is Webflow the kind of platform whose value is determined by the number of its users (e.g. just like social networks)?;

  • Does Webflow intend to profit on subscriptions or profit on commission fees from marketplaces (themes, widgets, etc) or some mix of both?;

  • is Webflow meant to take Wordpress’ market share? (If not, then whose market share should it take when it becomes profitable?)

PS: somewhat offtopic, but again, why do really Webflow’s prices increase (in manner they do)? Well, what about this guess - Webflow are simply pressed by investors to show some, per milestone, “traction” and they just rush to push some lever in panic and confusion…

53

Very valid questions @uzzer!

From what I see is that the global trend is to build up a large user base first, then make it profitable. However, social networks can sell information about users, whereas I doubt if Webflow has much valuable user data for other companies.

Your second questions points towards a revenue model that hasn’t been explored (out in the open) by Webflow yet. It is suggested several times in the forums, but the ability to connect/buy widgets that offer additional functionality, would be a very welcome feature. As far as the Marketplace model, I’m a bit less enthousiastic. My fear is that Webflow focusses on Design only, forgetting that function is what differentiates the current static website model (even with CMS) from a more dynamic business website/app.

If more options will be added to actually do something with user input, you could make your own blog, app, shop, calculator, dashboard or portal. If that’s what in store, then yes, it’s going after the Wordpress market share. If it’s going to be look-at-this-fancy-website only, perhaps with some eCommerce functionality, Webflow will nibble on SquareSpace, and Shopify perhaps. I expect Google to come up with basic websites sooner than later, possibly in a way similar to The Grid, attacking Webflow in its flank.

54

I do think some people (myself included) have thought about it and considered it in their responses. It wasn’t technically a price increase, just a removal of a cheaper plan – but whatever people consider it, it could have been explained better/with more forewarning.

[quote=“Diu, post:51, topic:32875”]
And I rather have a superior platform that allows me to make websites for the next 10 years, than another promising business going bankrupt because their users expected everything for bottom dollar.[/quote]

I agree and I don’t think most people are asking for ‘bottom dollar’. Webflow bills itself as an all-in-one solution. One for “enterprises, agencies, startups, and freelancers”. Arguably, some of their pricing choices don’t seem to encompass the spirit of this. As a freelancer/small agency, I’ve stated that I can make the Webflow plans and hosting pricing work for 95% of the sites that I would build on the platform. The last 5% to make it an all-in-one solution is where I and, seemingly, others take some issue.

Personally, I’ve experienced first hand how, albeit in a different industry, a lower price/easier access can spur more business and greater overall profits. Not to say that the exact same situation would apply here, but personally, my suggested plans and addon price adjustments would mean I do more on Webflow and, ultimately, pay more to Webflow as a result.

Say I have 13 sites I’d like to bring to Webflow. A few of these sites are simple 1-2 page, low traffic and don’t make sense (either feature or budget wise) at $5/month. At the status-quo pricing, I wouldn’t/wouldn’t be able to bring these sites to Webflow (and in general, move to Webflow overall). At the suggested pricing detailed in my post above, I would be able to bring these and other sites and it would result in a higher overall bill.

As @uzzer mentions, there are two big models. Few high-paying customers or plenty of average paying customers. Most of the very successful solutions (website and otherwise) have done so by making themselves more accessible. I would like to think if Webflow did the same, they’d see more success as well.

That all said, I’m just one person who builds websites. I don’t manage the financials of a SaaS offering or even begin to understand the finder details of revenue forecast consequences (good or bad) of making prices higher or lower. I can only share what will allow me to be more successful and result in a higher bill to Webflow. I would like to think other’s situations would match mine and the changes would result in Webflow making more money.

3 Likes
55

Webflow has been a live-saver for me and i’ll always remain with it. But i believe Webflow will revert the prices since it was stated at the beginning that they are “TESTING” the plans presently. So let’s all chill.

What i would want webflow to do is to create a kind of business development coaching for we designers to get high paying clients, because its going to be a win-win. Webflow needs designers on its platform to keep on paying so they earn profit, and some of us find it hard to get clients on a consistent basis. Wouldn’t it be better if webflow can come out with some staffs to help some designers on the platform grow their business in a very PRACTICAL WAY? With this idea, i wouldnt mind abandoning my legacy personal plan and go all the way to the Team Plan :grinning: . Actually i’m serious

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56

Totally agree with you.

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57

We really want everyone to succeed. This is why I run the Webflow workshops every Tuesday to help you all get better at using the platform as well as learn from the Pros:

https://webflow.com/workshop/what-should-you-have-in-your-portfolio
https://webflow.com/workshop/how-to-sell-stakeholders-on-ux-research
https://webflow.com/workshop/getting-started-in-the-web-design-industry

Also, our Content Strategist, John W. is always pumping out great advice on our blog:

ALSO! We produced a free e-book:

As you can see, we truly care about the Web Design community and want you all to do what you love doing.

But I’ll stop the conversation on the topic here since we are getting off-topic. If you want to discuss this further, post a new thread :slight_smile:

Cheers

1 Like
58

It´s very bad news that Webflow removed Personal plan and abandoned a lot of small professionals around the world like me.

It is difficult to start a partnership with Webflow without confidence and without knowing what to expect ahead. Especially when we dedicate several days to learn to use the tool and depend on it to serve our customers.

For me, the advantage of the monthly subscription is the ability to downgrade to free plan when you have no new clients or you go on vacations. Otherwise, It would be better to sign the annual and pay less. But the professional plan price is prohibitive for me.

The webflow team told me I can be grandfathered into the Personal plan, but can´t cancel anymore. It´s a deal breaker for me. I recently started creating websites and chose Webflow to do this. I only have one website client for now and was planning to announce the website development service to get more customers. Now I have to rethink the strategy because I can no longer trust Webflow.

Hope you can reconsider this decision.

1 Like
59

I don’t understand. Where is the new prices and new plans? I can only find the same old…

60

The prices and plans are generally the same, they just removed the $20 Personal Plan, so you go from $0/month to $35 (if paid annually) or $42 (if paid monthly) and nothing in-between.

3 Likes
61

Evaluation continues. More discoveries occur.

I’m doing research into how the charge appears on my client’s statement when I used Client Billing. That brings me to the Client Billing help doc where I discover that there’s also a fee for billing clients:

This is because we apply a 10% platform fee from this amount to cover the credit card processing fees and to help with the costs of maintaining Client Billing for you.

I understanding needing to cover the CC costs, but 10%? Stripe (and similar offerings) are around 2.9% + 30¢ and you usually see discounts for bigger volumes. 10% only barely (it’s still 1.1% too high) makes sense on a $5 static plan being billed at cost and I’m guessing most of the sites using Client Billing aren’t billed at cost/that low. I’d wager that if Stripe’s fee was 10%, nobody would have seriously considered them.

— I want to add a note here. Part of the 10% fee is to cover the costs of ‘maintaining Client Billing for you’. Without any further explanation, I’d wager most people assume this setup is pretty automated, which is why the cost seems high.

On top of a $35/42 cost for a ‘Professional’ account, we also have:

10% on Client Billing charges
$6 per contributor per site (no change between Starter & Pro/Team)
$5 per site to White Label ($10 if on the Starter plan – hints this is changing?)

$5 for Static Hosting ($15 for Starter Plan)
$10 for CMS Hosting ($20 for Starter Plan)

I suspect some of these charges are ways for the ‘free’ accounts to pay some (the higher prices for Starter plans seem to back this up) and for paying accounts, I feel the hosting costs are pretty reasonable (I just feel a few more ‘limited’ 2-page site packages would help fill out our options). The other costs though (White Label, contributor, high fee for Client Billing), I feel really only end up hurting/pricing out the ‘small guys’ even though Webflow advertises itself as a solution for them. Charging for them on the free plan makes more sense, but I feel the charges and fees should be reduced or eliminated for accounts already subscribed and paying Webflow.

Now sure, I’m just one dude being very vocal about all this and Webflow can do whatever it wants, but with the current setup I (and I’d wager many others) just can’t justify the prices and Webflow looses out on customers/revenue as a result. I do appreciate the fact that Webflow is letting us know they’re evaluating pricing options. Maybe all of these issues will be addressed or maybe they won’t. As someone who would be looking to build their business on Webflow though, the uncertainty about the pricing in the future just makes the decision harder.

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62

Desire to participate in the conversation, I hope these reviews are perceived. Are a beginner in the business of creating web sites, and I think it would be possible to introduce the plan to just emerging designers. I have left a personal plan and 20 sites I don’t need for example. Last time, increased competition with resources ready sites, they have a very low price and I am very “shrank”, when forming their price policy. But still you need to invest in seo, it is advisable… So it’s not easy.