Very well said. Logic, membership and eCommerce are half-baked and the reason the uptake is poor. Extrapolating these common features from ther platform will prove to be a long term mistake (especially logic and memberships).
For me, Webflow was a way of becoming independent of programmers. The No-Code approach was a leap in the dark in 2021, but the way Webflow implemented it at the time allowed me to learn a lot quickly and turn it into great results.
For me, Webflow was also a product that I could easily explain to my customers. They were often frustrated with WordPress and were fed up with updates, plugins, incompatibilities, dependencies etc.
For my customers, Webflow meant: one price, no recurring maintenance costs, everything works. They were happy!
I loved the platform because it allowed me to expand my service portfolio and provide my customers with holistic support.
Now my customers are frustrated again and rightly annoyed because I can’t keep my promise. Prices are regularly adjusted or products/services are cut back so that you now have to pay extra for features that were originally included.
Question: Why do you remove the “password protection” for staging in the Freelancer Plan? Can we now only develop publicly? If you want to work “undisturbed” without disclosing your development (to crawlers/Google), I would now have to pay $230 more. Just for password protection? Really?
Instead of making the product more stable and more mature, reading and understanding the wish list carefully, new features have been implemented half-heartedly over the last few years. Features that were met with little enthusiasm because they were obviously implemented poorly and with little thought and not developed further.
(BTW: To this day you still can’t manage to write the website name in the renewal mail…)
And I’m actually very, very glad that I didn’t rely on “Memberships” for two projects! It’s actually sad to have to say that.
I’m still not a programmer and never want to be one. And with the help of the great community here, I always manage to solve small and large problems.
But now you have to be a programmer to understand and use your product. I wouldn’t start again with Webflow now.
The product and pricing structure alone is now so complex that you have to take half a day to understand it. The implementation of “Workspaces” was not particularly clever even back then.
Why can’t you just want to be and remain an awesome and “cool” product? One that works 100%.
Why always “more”, always more complex, always more expensive – and move away from your base?
You are obviously now rebuilding the platform for large companies. Companies that can easily afford programmers and don’t really need No-code.
But I am. And probably many others here as well.
With 15 paid plans, I’m certainly a small number. But this much is certain: there won’t be any more.
Like Istvan, I now also have a bookmark folder ‘Webflow Alternatives’. I can no longer explain to my (future) customers what the bottom line is about the advantages of Webflow.
For me, Webflow has become unpredictable and is no longer a solid and reliable platform for long-term projects.
7 Likes
Removing basic user account functionality and requiring a third-party integration feels like a step backward. User accounts are a fundamental feature for many websites, and it’s surprising to see such a crucial capability moved out of Webflow’s core offering.
For small businesses and creators, this change creates unnecessary complexity. A better approach would be to keep essential functionalities within the platform and provide advanced features through third-party integrations for those who need them.
I hope Webflow reconsiders this decision and focuses on maintaining the platform’s accessibility and usability for all users. Let’s continue advocating for a solution that supports the entire community.
5 Likes
I’m 100% in the same situation as Sancho.
It’s like renting an all-inclusive apartment and suddenly the landlord shows up saying, “Hey guys, next week we’re turning off the heating and taking away the radiators.”
“Uh… but I need heating for my apartment, it was included from the start, otherwise I wouldn’t have chosen this place.”
“Oh, don’t worry, my buddy Larry is a heating technician, he does good work. You can buy radiators from him, install them yourself, and pay him for the heating service.”
“Oh… so you’re lowering the rent since you’re no longer providing heating?”
“Uh… no, no, the rent stays the same.”
“Oh, okay… Thanks, Webflow, super cool.”
13 Likes
I’ve a quick question about how the new “client seats” will work with Freelancer plans.
I can see that Agency plans can assign “site specific roles” which makes perfect sense but this feature is not available for Freelancer plans.
Does that mean that these client seats will have access to my entire workspace (albeit only for editing)? I hope I am misunderstanding this as it wouldn’t be practical.
Many thanks,
Dave
Memberstack is an outstanding product that has existed long before Webflow offered any similar native functionality. In fact, Webflow has never quite measured up to what Memberstack has offered. I have no clue why Webflow has chosen to deprecate User Accounts from the native product. Personally, I think it’s a mistake. That being said, you can’t blame Memberstack for that decision. Their post here is not tone-deaf at all… it’s timely. For all those who have projects in production that are currently dependant on this functionality that Webflow is sunsetting, he is telling those users they have a path of some continuity. That is much better than the cliff those users would be facing if they said nothing. I never stopped recommending Memberstack because while Webflow has never really put an all-in effort into getting member sites dialed in right, Memberstack has kept on advancing and supporting their product. I don’t think there is anything wrong with reaching out to users that are facing a dead-end with Webflow and offering them a bridge that let’s them stay in the Webflow ecosystem and keep their member-based content rolling.
2 Likes
I think its more the principle. I get Memberstack is good in all and I love how many people are walking ads in this forum, but at the end of the day why should I roll over and accept it. Sometimes you need a simple login system thats not starting at $29 a month on top of webflow pricing.
Puts on my tinfoil hat I think memberstack and webflow are in cahoots. Memberstack probably was loosing money from webflow accounts and since they are “partners,” webflow removes accounts, since its “impacting their focus on their core product.”
The announcement that the users feature is being discontinued, along with the inability to add new users after January 2025, feels abrupt and frustrating.
As a designer managing multiple Webflow websites with memberships and hundreds of users, this feature was a key factor in moving my clients to Webflow. Now, my clients are understandably upset about incurring additional monthly costs for a capability that was previously included as a core feature.
This creates a significant challenge, as I now have only a month and a half to migrate everything to a third-party solution. I strongly urge you to reconsider discontinuing user accounts. If that’s not possible, please extend the timeline to give us more time for the transition—at least delaying the moratorium on new users until after April.
Not only do I need to move my clients to a third-party membership tool with added costs, but I also have to redesign their websites to account for content visibility changes based on member logins. This places an undue burden on both designers and clients.
2 Likes
I have a few questions:
-
Based on the Webflow Customer FAQ page, the following price changes for the Workspace plans were calculated. Can you confirm if these are correct? Or am I missing something:
• Core Workspace Plan:+40.48%
• Growth Workspace Plan:-18.75%
• Freelancer Workspace Plan:+58.33%
• Agency Workspace Plan:+5.36% -
If these calculations are correct, what justifies a price increase of +58.33% for the Freelancer Workspace Plan? Slight price changes are normal when a product’s functionality is changing, but this increase is surprisingly high.
-
The price of an average small customer project can be compared as follows:
• Old: Workspace Starter Plan $0 + CMS Hosting $29/mo – 3 editor roles included = $29/mo
• New: Workspace Starter Plan $0 + CMS Hosting $29/mo + (1 free) 2x $19/mo per Limited Seat = $67/mo
Is this accurate?
I would appreciate some clarity on this.
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Hi Aron,
Thank you for the reply. I appreciate you sharing the insight into the decision making.
However as it currently stands, this is a really bad idea. The message that you’re sending to the community and to all of your customers is that, if you deem them unworthy, you don’t mind pulling a plug on core features that your user base (even a small portion as you mentioned) has been relying on for many projects.
I think this is a very valid question to ask at this point: Why should your customers invest in any built-in features? Analyze, Optimize, Localization, or even Ecommerce? If they could all be at risk of just being pulled away from us one day and cause massive disruption on potentially hundreds of thousands of sites.
You’ve clearly demonstrated you guys are willing to do that with this announcement.
Honestly, my takeaway from your announcement is that I should always go for well-established 3rd-party integrations, as Webflow’s native ones aren’t to be relied on to always be around.
And on top of that, the pricing of site plans is staying the same, while now containing fewer features than before.
6 Likes
Hey Dave - you’ll have access to client seats on your freelancer workspace plan — this allows you to assign limited seats to specific sites in your workspace.
This means that your client will only. have access to the sites you assign them to 
hope this helps!
Webflow,
This highly relevant question from @LeonBenkovic needs to be answered so we can plan for the changes.
Will Analyze, Optimize, Localization, or Ecommerce be deprecated?
Since yesterday, I can’t help but worry about the direction things are heading.
- When their investors demand better figures, will they disable features like custom code in a future update unless I pay an additional $50/month, or perhaps remove it entirely?
- Or why stop there: you could restrict animations too unless you pay more, or invent something like “Animator’s Seat”.
Guys, these examples, while they look silly, they are 100% legitimate.
As @LeonBenkovic says, “You’ve clearly demonstrated you guys are willing to do that with this announcement.”.
Since this announcement, I do not trust your platform
Hi Emily,
That’s perfect. Thanks for the info.
Best,
Dave
Also just found this video by Pixelgeek for anyone who wants a clear breakdown of how things will work with seats / workspaces / plans
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That really makes me laugh. The fact that he needs 15 Lego Figures to explain and demonstrate how things work, seems to be proof that things have really gotten extremely complex with Webflow’s pricing.
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Webflow’s pricing has never made sense to me, and has always seemed like it was designed to extract as much money from customers as possible. It is a business after all, but the issue is that the pricing doesn’t show much respect to customers.
First I have to pay just to use the software, then I have to pay for hosting, and the plan limitations again seem a little arbitrary and hostile.
I found Webflow after Adobe purchased the Business Catalyst all-in-one platform, ran it into the ground, and killed it. Webflow was the only thing close, but BC had a simple pricing plan. The platform was free to use, and they made their money from hosting - AND they left room for developers to upcharge and make a profit on the hosting. Webflow doesn’t seem to factor devs into the pricing at all.
If you want to see a company that truly understands who their customer is, look at HighLevel. They make all these amazing tools available to their customers (Agencies, Devs, etc) and charges minimal fees, which lets the customer mark it up. They understand that if they make it enticing to agencies, they will create tons of new clients and pay for usage. On top of that you don’t make a feature suggestion that gets ignored for 3 years. They watch the wishlist votes and act on them quickly. The pace at which new features come out is mindboggling. If their website builder could match WF’s I’d abandon ship in a heartbeat.
I had such high hopes for WF but the pricing shenanigans and feature removals are getting to be too much. I suspect this is where hungry companies like Webstudio can make some inroads. Offer a great tool and a fair pricing model that doesn’t simply cater to enterprise. Their product isn’t mature yet but it’s super flexible and fairly priced.
Webflow is such a great builder and CMS, but I’m actively looking to move all my client projects in the coming year.
4 Likes
Hostile is the correct word.
As an example, they’ve removed password protection, justifying it with the usual corporate jargon about ‘better suiting agencies’—but let’s be honest, this move is aimed at forcing freelancers, whose clients often require anonymity until a project is live, to upgrade to an agency plan. It’s a calculated, exploitative decision that disregards the needs of independent professionals. This company has revealed its priorities, and unfortunately, they don’t align with supporting their broader user base.
I will launch my digital publishing startup with Webflow, as I built it and it is ready, but it will be moved somewhere else in the coming months. Once I have extra resources, I will hire someone and ask to replicate what I built here and implement somewhere else.
1 Like
Great post. And the trust bit at the end is a massive thing. When they next roll-out their latest fancy idea (nobody wanted) who will trust it will still be a ‘thing’ in 18 months time.
A total lack of direction, it kinda feels like Webflow has lost its soul.
Very well said. Summed up my feelings perfectly - and I have 150+paid plans and am on around 40+ other Workspaces.
Really not sure what I should do.