Currently, I work with the Freelancer plan, but for the past few months, I have four projects that are about to go live. The first issue I encounter is that to connect a project to a custom domain or with CMS, I have to create a new space or have the client purchase the service at a cost of $24 per month (if billed annually), and then transfer the project to them.
As of today, I find myself with these scenarios:
Having my client sign up and manage the subscription themselves is a problem.
If I have many clients, I must have access to different accounts (because the client will make the payment), which is also problematic.
Having to pay the same as my client is another issue.
As a designer, I should offer them access to their website for content editing but not for design, which I will handle. Therefore, I believe there should be a more economical option.
I’m not the only person who thinks that Webflow’s plans are somewhat confusing. I had to contact support to get clarification.
I’m nobody to change a business model, but from a user’s perspective, it’s one of the few things that Webflow should improve.
@jselva - They used to have client billing where they would handle the billing for each project directly to the client and you were in complete control. For some stupid reason they pulled the plug on it and as a result we are stuck with the current options. I decided to move most of my clients off Webflow as the new model did not fit with my needs. I know I was not the only one. So either you work with the limitations or migrate to another solution that gives you what you need. Client billing is not coming back as far as I can tell.
I’ve run into the same issue. We ran $15k/year in hosting through Webflow but since client billing was removed, we’ve had to reduce that to a handful of sites, mostly our own.
Just to clarify though, there are two viable options for hosting a client site today on Webflow;
You pay for them, and you bill them. This has a lot of issues, and unnecessary overhead costs like admin and local taxes, but it’s an option for some. The advantage is you control the site and you can limit their access to the editor.
You setup a free workspace for them, with their card, and invite yourself. You migrate their site there, and they pay for the hosting only, not the workspace. Advantage here is that you’re not in the billing loop, as they pay Webflow directly. That costs less for them, since you have no billing overhead ( system fees, CC fees, taxes, admin ) Disadvantage is extra setup for the client, a real risk of them breaking their own site, and ( if you have a lot of clients ), navigating through 100 workspaces is not ideal. The UX is gradually improving though.
in our case, of 50 clients, only 1 was really capable of setting up and running their own workspace properly, so we have about 9 clients on approach #1, 1 on approach #2 and 40 that we’ve migrated off of Webflow hosting due to the billing complications.
Super unfortunate, but it is what it is. Funny thing is that 85% of the reason we chose Webflow to begin with was the client billing feature, because we didn’t want to be in the hosting business. But guess what… now we are.
Most of my client’s go onto a website management subscription where I also include the Webflow hosting. This was only problematic if the client wished to transfer their site out of my workspace. I’d have to cancel the current hosting, then request a credit from Webflow support.
With the recent ability to transfer site plans within a workspace, if a site is being transferred out of my workspace, I generally transfer the site plan to another project, and charge the client a transfer fee to setup their new workspace which includes payment of a one month site plan to get their site live on the custom domain. Lastly, I remove my payment card from the client’s site so they can add their card before the renewal is due - Webflow shows the biggest red banner ever to prompt them for a payment method!
