Webflow Pricing and CMS Limitations

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1

I’m trying to understand a few things with regards Webflow pricing options and possible Webflow CMS limitations for a project and wondered if anyone is able to provide clarification…

Website Requirements

  1. An e-commerce website (it needs to accept payments).

  2. Hosted using a custom domain (i.e. not on a Webflow subdomain).

  3. Client won’t have or need access to the CMS or backend.

  4. Site needs to allow form upload of image files into Webflow CMS (quantity of files as yet unknown from a currently unknown number of sources).

  5. Custom branded (ideally but unsure if essential) form emails.

My Assumptions
I need both an Account Plan and a Site Plan to meet the above requirements?

Account Plan Required
This will be one project requiring more than two static pages but less than 100.

Assumptions
The Lite Plan would be suitable (if I’m willing to accept Webflow branding on form emails), the Pro Plan would be required to remove the Webflow branding?

I’m limited to 50 CMS items regardless of Lite or Pro plan, I’m assuming this means a max of 50 rows/records across all Collections?

Site Plan Required
I would need an e-commerce Site Plan to accommodate payments?

This is where I am now confused… Assume I go for the Lite Account Plan (as it seems to suit my needs).

Questions

  1. The Lite Account Plan restricts me to 50 CMS collection items yet CMS and Business Site Plans allow for 2k and 10k collection items respectively, so I assume the Site Plan expands the Account Plan, as in you effectively have access to 50 for testing when setting up your site but this increases once you have purchased a Site Plan?

  2. Is there any way to do real-world testing using thousands of records with an Account Plan prior to purchasing a Site Plan bearing in mind the discrepancy between the number of CMS items allowed?

  3. Under the e-commerce plans the Standard Plan has a limit of 500 items, the Plus Plan 1,000 items (which it says includes all e-commerce products, variants, categories and CMS items). I’m clearly not understanding the relationship between ‘Items’ shown in the e-commerce Plans vs the Site Plans, is anyone able to elaborate and explain what this means in practice?

  4. How does the integrated CMS for Blogs included with the e-commerce Site Plan differ (if at all) from the CMS with the other Site Plans?

  5. Is the non-inclusion of unbranded emails in the Standard e-commerce Site Plan different to the allowance of white labelling with regards form emails in the Pro Account Plan?

  6. My biggest overall question is around the limitations of the CMS items/records, is this limited to 10,000 regardless of Site Plan? This is potentially the biggest ‘hurdle’ as to whether or not I can use Webflow for this project. There will be an unknown number of image uploads (with a maximum file size per image) from an unknown number of different sources/users all needing to be stored as individual records in the Webflow CMS. It is quite possible that this could exceed 10k so I need to understand whether or not this is a fixed limit or one that can be expanded should the need arise?

  7. I’d also like to know which criteria are used to trip Site Plans, e.g. say I have the Standard Site Plan (which includes all the features of the CMS Site Plan), my monthly visits are still below 100k but my form submissions go over 1k /mo would that automatically tip me into needing the Plus e-commerce Site Plan?

  8. It is highly likely that form submissions would be quiet for the majority of the year but then a high volume would fall into a single month, would this be taken into account on an average over the year basis or again would a surge in one month trigger the need to upgrade the plan if it exceeded the volume of the plan? I’m aware there is a $1 per 100 extra submissions on each plan but just trying to understand as the number of submissions is impossible to know at this stage?

Apologies for the lengthy post but any clarity would be gratefully received.

2

You can send your pre sales questions to info@webflow.com.

3

Thanks Jeff, have done just that… :slight_smile:

4

I am exploring using Webflow for e-commerce, but after a few months, I would advise you to stay away from it.

It is not a functional option and has way too many limitations. Here are a few off the top of my head:

  1. No slider integration for e-commerce products
  2. Lightbox issues with mobile (no zoom, no ability to remove swipe gestures in favor of buttons/arrows, zooming actually breaks the light-box and they have known about this issue for years and not fixed it)
  3. **Printful integration doesn’t have a shipping speed option (Printful has basically stated that they don’t recommend webflow as their API integration/capabilities are severely lacking).
  4. Their compression algorithm/script is not functional for products as it often over compresses images and leads to bad-quality product images.
  5. You have to insert custom code for basic filtration.
  6. No customer accounts (don’t listen to them saying it is on the way).
  7. Their plans are more expensive than other solutions that are far superior.
  8. There is a reason they only Showcase their example store and not make it cloneable.
5

Hi Jake,

Thanks for your feedback… I’m particularly interested to understand which other solutions you’ve found that you feel are far superior and why you feel that to be the case if you’re willing to share?

6

In terms of payment and marketing integrations, Shopify is by far the better option. There is definitely some customization restrictions (e.g., no svg images allowed), but you can pay for page builders that get you close to Webflow’s capabilities (pagefly and I believe the other main one is Shogun).

Even Editor X is catching up and is more e-commerce friendly. I used to use Wordpress but got annoyed keeping up with all the plugins. If your store is as big as you say it is, Wordpress will work and you can use a faster theme (I believe Oxygen is the fastest).

If you look through the forums for people asking about updates to Webflow, they just say it is on the wishlist and as in progress. Compare that to something like Editor X which shows all the progress they have made, and the difference is night and day.

The other issue is Webflow’s support, but just go back in the forums and you will see all the problems they have.

7

Welcome to the Community, @NoCodeBaby!

While you wait for a response from Webflow on the more specific limitation requests/guidance I figured I’d chime in with some insight.

@Jake_Arredondo makes some appropriate notes on the more nuanced limitations, but personally I don’t believe it’s fair to say that it’s “not a functional option” and it really depends on the needs of your client.

@Finsweet makes some super awesome, free plugins for Webflow that—while involving a bit of custom code—are fairly easy to implement thanks to their awesome documentation and SweetJS service.

While there are most certainly missing features within Webflow’s base components, there are tons of tools to help fill in the gaps. Slick is a great option for turning a list of content into a robust slider component, and Webflow themselves even made a recent tutorial on adding magnification functionality for images that works on mobile.

In terms of pricing, Webflow’s lowest tier ecommerce is similarly priced with Shopify (which is a great platform—it’s what I use in addition to Webflow myself) however like many other platforms it can easily balloon in price thanks to the cost of apps so pricing can fluctuate wildly. Customer accounts are wildly beneficial for lots of clients, and it’s true that these are here (yet) but Webflow has said they expect beta access to start at the end of the year.

If you’d prefer to take advantage of the power of Webflow design capabilites (which I believe is leagues beyond a lot of other alternatives) and the benefits of Shopify, you can always look into something like the Udesly Adapter:

Like I mentioned above, it’s important that with any project you discuss the clients needs and choose a platform based on their needs. While I’d love to introduce more clients to Webflow, sometimes they need functionality that just isn’t currently offered.

Hopefully that gives you a bit more information and good luck in finding something that works our for you both :+1:

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8

I do agree with everything that has been said. In terms of design, nothing currently beats Webflow. The issue is that the CMS is far too complicated for the average user and if your site’s main job is to sell, you don’t want your site to be weighed down by designs anyway.

*Webflow is still lacking customer accounts meaning recurring buys are a pain, as the customer has to re-input their credit card info.

  • You are still having to insert custom code for basic things as a filter.

  • Webflow has made little-to-know posted updates on what they have accomplished. Go into their release notes and you will see how few there are.

  • There is also no multi-language option and as far as we know, it will never happen. So if you want to expand globally, you are going to have to switch platforms anyway.

I do love webflow; I have spent a few hundred hours figuring out/building an e-commerce site to test it. My site- https://www.ppebikinis.com/ is still in progress, but I love how the product page(s) have turned out (e.g., Canada)

But Webflow’s e-commerce is still limited. Category pages will take forever to create if you want basic filtering (I am still working on mine but feel free to see the issues I am experiencing (Our Store)

I truly think the CMS is powerful but its downfall is its ease of use. Additionally, look at Webflow’s e-commerce store. They didn’t even bother to fix the bug where the shirt doesn’t change color until you select the size.

Go to this product page (I make websites tee — The Webflow Merch Store) and click “white” first. You have to select a size for the color to change because Webflow never fixed a known error on their e-commerce platform. To fix this, you have to dig through the forums where one person posted the solution.

9

I certainly agree with that sentiment having taught myself to hand code (up to a point) and also having used web builders such as Elementor inside WP. I’m really not a big fan of WP despite all it can do. Webflow was like a breath of fresh air after working on projects in WP.

I have likewise spent many many hours working my way through the Webflow tutorials (which are the best I’ve seen anywhere) but haven’t yet looked into any Webflow Integrations so thanks for the links @mikeyevin, I’ll definitely take a close look at @Finsweet and others that may help, to see whether they could allow me to do what I potentially need to do with regards the Webflow CMS limitations.

I have to say I personally don’t find the Webflow CMS too complicated but I do get for someone with little or no knowledge of how a CMS works it would be. In my particular instance, it would be myself managing the CMS so I’m not too worried about that for this particular project but I would want to feel confident in its abilities for other client based projects.

My main concern is investing time, money and resources into Webflow to build my e-commerce site only to find out further down the road that its limitations mean I have to start over with something else.

Having said that, based on their Series B Funding statement where they say…

A big part of moving faster means bringing on the right people, which will enable us to invest more into product development, scalability, performance, security, accessibility, customer support, and so much more.

Hopefully, this means we will see just that moving forward though it is difficult to plan without knowing when these things will actually become a reality. A realistic roadmap would be great and would certainly have the potential to influence the decision-making process in terms of which platform to use but equally, I do understand publishing a roadmap isn’t always practical or sensible.

I want to believe in Webflow as I love working with it (as a visual designer) so I’m hoping the future is bright and that their $140m is invested wisely to grow the business/product and address current issues people have with it…

I’m going to work my way through the @Finsweet tutorials and see whether that gives me the assurances I need for my current project.

Thanks for everyone’s feedback, very insightful and helpful…

10

Hi all.
Josh from Foxy here. Our seamless Webflow integration gives you the best of both worlds: powerful ecommerce inside of your Webflow site.

  • Manage products 100% with Webflow CMS
  • Sell any type of product (one-offs, subscriptions, digital, donations etc.)
  • Customer accounts
  • Embeddable customer portal
  • 100+ gateway integrations
  • Multi-currency
  • Multi-lingual
  • Live and custom shipping rates
  • Manual and auto-tax calculations
  • Hundreds of Foxy + Webflow users
  • Fast and friendly support from a team who knows Webflow

More info can be found here. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or need help getting started: hello@foxy.io

Thanks,
Josh

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11

I was just about to say check out foxy.io Then saw Josh’s reply. 100% the best customer support I’ve ever experienced. Also worth mentioning too that you can test for free until you go live. I’ve given them a fair few headaches with oddball client requests and they always do everything they can to make it all happen.

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12

also webflow ecommerce doesn’t support payment gateways outside US preferred systems
which means only paypall or credit card options

which is a nono for EU market

Stripe does offer EU specific gateways but webflow doesn’t implement them.

Foxy does allow more interesting payment options.

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