Webflow positioning? what do you use webflow for exactly?

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Hi Community.

I love Webflow, Im pro Webflow, I’ve told everyone about it.

It’s not about getting things out of the door asap, just larger sites have more to do on them. And sometimes due to nobody’s fault at all, requests need doing asap, maybe an opportunity in the market or a reactive rebrand.

And as far as I can see only one designer or developer can work on a project at one time leading to large projects dragging.

Which makes me think Webflow can only be used on sites that require less things doing on them (smaller sites).

Ive discussed this for years with wf and there are some workarounds like using the editor or copy and pasting from other user accounts, but none ever really work, and to be a bit candid; this is my job, my company, I need straightforward processes to follow.

We have stopped using all other CMS’s over the years and lost some clients because of some missing functions. So i’m currently at this understanding -

Sites have 3 sectors or so I believe:

Mid to large sites that require collaboration for functions and speed of delivery - most cms’s (not always but often impossible with one person)

microsite to small sites - builders like SS/wix (hosting and general cost half the price)

Small sites and brands that need much more design and functions - Webflow

but going off my logic Webflow now only covers 1/3 of what our company can use WF for and we’re not a huge agency that wants multiple CMS’s to manage and keep current on.

But then I hit a wall, because a small business is watching costs and their hosting is now over $300 double that of their previous supplier which was perfectly reasonable for their needs. (sometimes someone needs a smart car for the city and not a merc)

This isn’t a rant, webflow is an industry changer and i love it, but i’m not after more ways I can convince my clients to spend more or explain why we have a longer lead time. I’m just finding myself in a spot and questioning the tools positioning and purpose for my business use.

Webflow is perfect for certain people. But has anyone else found themselves in this spot? And maybe have some angles I haven’t thought about? I know life isn’t perfect and there is no 1 tool for all jobs, its just as a designer I need to be constantly using the tools I use to stay in a good automatic rhythm, and jumping between 3 cms’s plus typography and design software can lead to loosing that speed and momentum if I don’t use them regularly, and if not I would have a larger team with different requirements.

My main question being, what do you use webflow for exactly?

Thanks for reading,

G

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I understand your point on the designer limitations, outside of Enterprise plans.
However, we actually find it fairly easy to split site builds without any serious bottlenecks.

The key is to limit the designer access primarily to one lead designer, and everyone else involved in the build does their work outside of the designer.

  • The primary designer ( one person ) uses Figma and the Webflow designer to do layouts and UX work like interactions.
  • Data team- prepares all data, designs the schema, loads it using the API or prepared CSVs.
  • Media team- images, stock photos, Lotties, after effects, video prep, 3js
  • Programmers- split into three main concerns;
    • Client-side JS is all built in a github repo in typescript and integrated into the site by CDN
    • Server-side work is typically done as a reverse proxy, also primarily in typescript, also in a github repo. Serverless functions are built similarly but usually Netlify or Xano.
    • Automations work depends on the specifics of the integration. We mix Make, n8n, and Pipedream, depending

So while there’s technically a bottleneck at the designer level, it doesn’t seem to restrict our build speed because the rest of the team is unhindered and running in parallel.

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Thanks a lot for this detailed reply, I’d considered using github as breaking a recent flow of js into 3 blocks to avoid the 10000 character limit felt a bit wrong. also logging off and managing 2 other devs to do the work was a bit nuts, this actually answers a lot of questions, including what level of job to use wf on.

Will be checking out your other mentions too, Thanks a lot for this, lots for me to get my teeth into!!!

G

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That’s actually what started me down that path for the code separation.
Once you learn the framework and Typescript, there’s just no going back, it’s much too powerful.

I’ve gone so far as to build a reverse proxy that swaps out the code references so that I can have live dev test and prod environment at all times for each site. A bit of infrastructure changes everything.