6 years ago from Lucas Espin, Product Designer
does anyone know how good webflow is? is it slow or limited in what you can do? I'm not looking to make any big sites I would use it more for my portfolio or maybe a mom and pop shop type business.
It's incredible, especially when it comes to building sites using Flexbox. The exported code is really clean and well-formatted, although it does come with some fluffy external files (some CSS, but their JS is pretty packed), which is something they're working on reducing.
At the company I'm at, I use Webflow to build out individual sections of the site, and then export that in snippets that I integrate into our codebase and then adjust by hand. It's saved me many hours of devtime.
would I be able to just save the website files and host them on my own or do I need to use their hosting services for the site? (like squarespace)
You can host the exported code on your own host. I not only use my own hosting but I also take the html and integrate Perch CMS to get away from paying the hefty CMS hosting fees at Webflow. It's a pretty streamlined process.
Do you have any resources on how I could accomplish this?
Perch has some great resources on their website. Easy to follow videos as well as documentation and an active forum. Getting Started with Perch
I basically export my final code from Webflow and setup a local environment with the help of Mamp Pro to do all my Perch CMS integration development. Here is some documentation on how to work with Perch locally.
Hope this helps.
In Uvee Agency we have completed more than 40-50 projects for clients since 2015. So yes, Webflow is damn good for building websites and services. Check out our last projects for example (it's all in russian):
IMO, it's a great product, great support. As Jonathon mentioned their pricing structure has changed so many time over the past year or so. I'd say register for a free account and try it out. You get to use all of the build features as you would with a subscription.
For me, a designer who knows a bit of code but not enough to consistently and efficiently build fully fledged websites – it's perfect. Since using it (over 6 months or so now) I feel like it's helped me grasp some aspects of HTML/CSS that I wasn't 100% comfortable with, such as flexbox.
Good luck :-)
It is absolutely incredible. It is pretty robust and much faster than coding. Using a notepad to code is like using a hammer and nails whereas Webflow is like using a nailgun.
I built www.digitalforge.tv/old-home in Webflow in 5-10 hours. A site like this with the interactions, back-end, and CMS that Webflow has would take me weeks to hand-code
Looks great! Are you using the Webflow CMS or did you export the code to use with another CMS?
Using the Webflow CMS!
I've found that it's really good for marketing sites or landing page-type sites. The animation and interaction capabilities are really robust and can save a ton of time vs designing and then coding by hand.
I could also see it being a really good tool to replace Photoshop or Sketch for live mockups of a site design.
I did recently try to create static HTML for a site and then export the code to use with Wordpress and found it really messy. Especially when you have to dive deeper into the frontend code.
Editing the code it exports was difficult and the workflow was complex (ie, make change in Webflow, re-export .zip file of code, add to dev environment, etc.) but maybe there's a better way to do it.
The only thing that holds me back is the pricing model.
I wish they would offer designer as a standalone product—perhaps like sketch with a yearly cost to upgrade. I would purchase it in a heartbeat. You could export as many sites as you want.
If you wanted Webflow to host or use their CMS, you'd have to pay month-to-month.
Its got so much potential. Where it breaks down for me is in the odd pricing structure. But the tool itsself is amazing. You can even build in a CMS, which also means you can potentially build a DN or Dribble.
Which part do you find odd? Just curious
CMS is a separate charge, plans are limited by form submissions, custom domain is an additional charge. I've shared my feelings on pricing with the team. I'm sure they will figure something out.
I see what you mean. Separate charge for CMS makes sense I guess, if you look at it from the other way like "I don't need a CMS, so I get a discount". But the form submission limitation is sort of bananas.
For the CMS one I would prefer unlocking it for ALL my sites not per website.
I think that it's easier to build site in webflow from scratch than trying to modify themes on any existing platform like squarespace. I used it and free AWS hosting (should come with prime) for my portfolio www.grabelnikov.com
nice site man! I finally tried it out and did my portfolio site with it as well lucasespin.com
I've built quite a few website with it. I've had similar experiences to the commenter that John linked to. Overall, I find I'm building website much faster with it. I've also used it to build a framework then exported the code and integrated it with Wordpress. I do wish they had a gallery style component, similar to advanced custom field's gallery plug in. I'm sure they'll get to it eventually. My website was built using webflow: http://nathanielperales.com
do you have any links that can teach me how to take a webflow site and make it wordpress?
Just hunt around the help section of the site, there's a million video tutorials
think squarespace or wix - whatever they can do, webflow can do too. Maybe better, depending on what you need. But it does not replace solid webdesign or -development. Please don't forget that.
Webflow isn't meant to replace web design or development. Quite the opposite. It's supposed to help you become better at it.
Imagine having a tool that'll help you do something like rebuild Apple.com homepage within 2 hours and have all the basic HTML and CSS already written out for you and responsive: https://webflow.com/workshop/rebuilding-apples-homepage
You can't really do that by hand-coding.
good point!
For a simple website it might be too much. I made a quick comparison between a few site builders, some of them are easier to use and require no coding experience at all. At all I said. :-)
www.quora.com/Are-there-any-websites-similar-to-Wix-that-dont-use-Flash/answer/Andrei-Potorac
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