Kekw, great point, lol
2 Likes
Hey Chris, yeah, it’s a big problem for us as well.
Webflow wasn’t very clear on it either- they way the messages and videos are worded, it looks like Bonsai replaces Webflow’s client billing by externalizing the existing client billing services, and retaining the essential setup that already exists. That is not the case- Webflow is going to bill us, the designers, directly, for hosting of client websites that we’ve built. It’s then up to us to setup ongoing billing to recover that from clients, and deal with failed payments, expired cards, etc manually with Webflow.
The whole reason we chose Webflow is because we want to focus entirely on design, and- I cannot emphasize this enough- we do not want to be a hosting company. We want to build the sites, and revised them when requested, and… that’s it. it’s what we do.
Here’s where this change bites us so far-
- It means that we either eat the CC and Bonsai charges, or increase the hosting rates to clients which is unfair to them.
- Taxes! In our market, we now have to add 15% service tax to the hosting since we’ll now be billing clients domestically. Also unfair to our clients.
- We don’t have any way to handle auto-shutdown of clients that have lapsed payment, cards expired, etc. I.e. Bonsai isn’t actually integrating with Webflow hosting in any way. It’s just billing, and it’s up to us to handle billing problems as they arise. This means we’ll lose money paying for hosting that we can’t recover- and/or we have to dedicate staff to watch all of the hosting payments and manually chase them down. Both solutions mean lost money for us.
We really liked that Webflow had solved these crucial problems for designers, and offered a decent editor & CRM feature for clients to self-update websites. We’ve banked heavily on that and currently have about 20 clients using Webflow billing.
Is anyone aware of a better hosting service that works well for Webflow sites, which bills clients directly, and offers a CMS & editor? If not, it might be time to get that started, and solve some of the other hosting issues as well-
- Delivering image assets from the hosted domain for proper SEO
- Allowing uploaded script files
- Possibly even NPM support for developers
- A membership system, for membership sites.
17 Likes
I never thought I’d say this, but I haven’t tried out Editor X and it’s looking a bit more promising. At least it has a partner program, rewarding us for using their platform, something Webflow has never done. Every single client I bring to Shopify, I get a payout for as well. Same with Accessibe. Now that I think about it, Webflow really doesn’t care about their designers and developers who actually bring users / clients to their platform. smh 
I’ve been such an advocate and excited user of this platform because I, sincerely thought it was the best. This is truly heartbreaking and I feel completely taken advantage of. Webflow is going to lose a lot of it’s longtime users for pulling this. I’m with everyone else. I just don’t trust them anymore. They really don’t care about our needs.
11 Likes
I am also very disappointed with the way this seems to be going. Wondering about editor X and also if anyone has experienced webydo?
Seems the strategic focus has shifted to enterprise customers.
2 Likes
This also sums up a lot of what I am thinking.
As I said elsewhere I think it is a signal along with other recent decisions to focus on corporates at the expense of the freelance audience.
2 Likes
100% Mike.
Looks like Webflow has moved on and it is not interested in certain people.
At least if you actually use Bonsai it might make some sense for you, irrespective of discount or not.
For others where we use billing software and Bonsai makes no sense whatsoever, this is just a distraction from the main event. The loss of a feature, with no benefit other than more vague promises.
Now for some reason I recall when our government closed small local Emergency Room departments and said it would invest the money in new state of the art centralised units. Well, they closed the local departments alright. End of.
1 Like
Never thought I would say it after building a site in WIX for a client a couple years ago and absolutely hating it, but I am actively looking at Editor X now.
Multilingual - Free
Memberships - Free
WIX payments - no fees
Built in CRM
Built in client billing
and the list goes on.
I do like Webflow better, but I don’t know if its enough to keep me using it amidst these changes, increased expenses, and lack of features that my clients continually request. Its a hard sell for clients to be told we can do those things with third party apps and increased monthly costs while Editor X offers it all for free. Clients don’t care whether or not Webflow is a better design tool (which I believe it is) they just look at the final product and what it costs.
I really hope Webflow considers reversing these changes. Otherwise, I am mostly like moving on and will be moving my client websites over to another platform.
10 Likes
So wait a minute, now that you are transitioning away from client billing, what should we do in the meantime? Do you seriously want us to manually handle every client payment?
To say that Bonsai automate the proces, is not really the case. It just send out invoices and most businesses already have some kind of accounting program, they use to handle invoices and stuff, so what does Bonsai do extra?
As I can see right now, you remove a great feature, which really does remove a great pain point for many designers. And replaces with a worse user experience for both your own clients and their clients.
I really hope you find a fix for it. Because sure, you could maybe say that the whole automation of client billing, is not as critical as let say the designer, so asking you existing clients to pay a little more to keep that ease of mind, could maybe be worthwhile loosing a couple of customers over, in exchange for freeing up more developers. But not even giving people a way of automating this process is really something that gives me a bad taste in my mouth.
4 Likes
THANK. YOU. This. All of this. Each and every bit of this.
This is what I’ve been shouting from the rooftops. Thank you for taking the time to type all of this out - not that Webflow has shown a history of listening to it’s users recently.
2 Likes
Yeah, i’ve got a bit of a head start because I already use the tool - but I have not interest or time in also now having to hound down people if and when their cards decline. There’s no way to tie the Webflow Website to the Subscription cost now, so if they don’t pay, then I just lost the money on their account and I have to manually shut it down and eat the cost. Not to mention pass more fees on to my end customer.
I get that people wanted “more features” out of it, but at the end of the day removing it entirely creates a huge problem for those of us without the budget to hire additional admin employees to manage this stuff for us.
5 Likes
Yep. I hear you. It’s a lose either way.
For me the trust issue is the shakiest part of all of this.
The management of it from webflow unfortunately feels tin-eared and a little condescending once again.
It is the downside I guess of webflow’s superpower — which has been marketing and selling a particular view of the company. When it all rings hollow, and sounds just like spin, people can get very upset with webflow, because they feel cheated and that trust has been broken.
It will be interesting to see what develops in the next few months.
I’m going to hold off on new sites on the platform at the very least until I see some of those really essential items on the wish list actioned, which have at this point been sitting there for years.
3 Likes
Bildr: https://www.bildr.com/
Uiflow: https://www.uiflow.com/
Are the two tools I’m looking at intensely. Unfortunately with a lot of the other no-code, visual web builders - like Editor X - there is no direct control over the CSS. I refuse to work with a tool that doesn’t give me control over the CSS properties. I’m not 100% sure Uiflow does this yet, still exploring, but Bildr is extremely powerful (though has a steep learning curve).
I don’t feel valued at all as a customer on this platform. I don’t feel like the Webflow team is working in my best interest as a freelancer. I’m unhappy with the pace features are released.
The space is primed for a Webflow competitor, and I’m more than ready for it.
3 Likes
Missed opportunity. Should have added “Phase out client billing” to the wishlist. This never would have happened.
This is admittedly crazy, but I’m half hoping an entity like Adobe or similar can deliver or take over at this point. They have the infrastructure and the capability. They would (probably) not be as egregiously dismissive to basic updates (i.e., wishlist) and at this point with the price increases and more on the horizon (you will be paying for memberships and logic if those ever materialize; don’t even pretend that won’t happen), I’d take the leap to pay for even the potential of features being added instead of removed.
7 Likes
Another important point is also the fact that as far as I can see, the process of needing to ask the clients for the money via in invoice and then pay the webflow hosting for them out of your own account, makes you as a webflow designer end up pay up to 25% in VAT(in denmark) for doing something that before was both easier and now also way cheaper. And thats on top of the added transactions cost and subscriptions fees used.
The only real alternative is to off load every project to their own separate account and then pray to god(or who else will listen) that the fact that you now open the float gates for your clients to change everything, will not end up costing you a shitload of extra time fixing their mistakes.
Ffs the consequences of this decision get worse and worse the more I think about.
7 Likes
This move is absolutely INSANE. Webflow idea is based on modularity. You can’t simply remove such a crucial feature which was one of the promises for many users to adopt this platform and a feature of such importance for a lot of users’ workflows.
Webflow saved my career, I’m completely in love with this platform, but this move is unacceptable from a user perspective (and I don’t even use client billing myself). It deeply undermines the trust in this company and makes me wanna look to Editor X.
Webflow: you are giving a slap in the face to all the freelancers that contributed to your growth and not only that: you are seriously messing up with designers’ business. Maybe you want to focus on big companies instead of freelancers? Because it seems so.
Designers organize their business around what this platform offers, how can you suddenly take that away?
6 Likes
Hello all,
I just want to report back on some of my findings from looking at Bonsai to replace client billing.
For a bit of background, I am British but I live in Ontario, Canada. All my client billing projects are for clients based in the UK. Previously with client billing, I had no issue with currency as the client paid themselves for Webflow in USD.
I’m not worrying about tax as businesses can claim it back. My worry is to prevent having to increase clients’ costs due to Foreign Exchange (FX) rates or myself losing out on fluctuating FX.
I was managing my paperwork and expenses manually so thought perhaps Bonsai would be worth a try considering the introductory offer from Webflow—there are some pretty neat features, particularly around contracts for freelancers. It asks you what currency you want to use when you set it up. I figured that local clients can continue to pay me by bank transfer. I still have UK bank accounts so can also accept GBP transfers. Therefore I decided to set up Bonsai in USD as that is what I would primarily be using its payment features for—automating Webflow hosting collections.
I created a dedicated USD bank account to handle the receipt of USD from Bonsai. Unfortunately, when I went to enter it into their system today, Bonsai thinks it was a CAD bank account because I’m in Canada and will convert funds with an FX charge to CAD.
Where I am going with this: Bonsai is not suitable as a solution to replace client billing for anyone based outside the USA.
Personally, I think I will automate the subscription payment within Stripe which allows me to have both a CAD and USD account connected (btw Bonsai Payments is built using Stripe so shouldn’t be a reason why it couldn’t do the same). Unfortunately, it won’t be so easy to pass on the transaction cost but I will create a formula for myself to calculate. If I use stripe within Bonsai, I believe it still brings the payment into the platform and they charge an extra platform fee % adding even more unnecessary costs to the customer.
I’m now waiting to hear back from support to see if I can convert my Bonsai to CAD, but based on my interactions about payments, I imagine the answer will be that it is not possible.
Anyone else who is affected by client billing based outside the USA without access to a USD account, I feel for you. For those that do have access, if you have any other ideas on how to automate collection with minimal additional cost passed on to the client, please do let me know.
7 Likes
Exactly my thoughts!
2 Likes
Totally agree, this seems like the most practical solution and don’t know why it wasn’t like this from the beginning. My clients just want me to sort it out with as little involvement from them as possible, so I will need to bill clients directly and keep their sites on my dashboard. But the inevitable “What happens if you fall off your perch” will need to be addressed.
Agree that client billing felt strange - couldn’t understand the whole white label thing. I implemented it as I thought it was best practice, at great trouble and expense as I am in a non-Stripe country.
1 Like
Didn’t think this many would people would respond to this thread but clearly we are an unhappy bunch. Not sure if its worth the time, but I created another thread to express what might be reasonable solutions to these changes. Will Webflow listen? Have no idea. But I figured its worth a try. Would love to hear on that thread what others have to say.
3 Likes
Further to my previous post about Bonsai:
It’s been two days since I was in contact with their support and I’m still waiting for them to answer several questions. @Cameron_Pocock from their team was responding relatively frequently but then he just stopped responding for two days.