You’ve probably heard Webflow mentioned alongside WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix as a website-building option. It’s received a lot of attention in design circles over the last few years, and if you’re researching website platforms for your business, it’s worth understanding what it actually is — and whether it’s the right choice for your specific situation.
This guide explains what Webflow is, who it’s genuinely best for, and how it compares to WordPress. I’ll give you an honest answer rather than a promotional one — including the cases where Webflow isn’t the right tool.
What is Webflow?
Webflow is a visual website builder and CMS (Content Management System) that allows designers to build websites without writing code. It sits in a category sometimes called “no-code” or “low-code” tools — though in practice, getting the most out of Webflow still requires a good working knowledge of HTML and CSS concepts, even if you’re not writing the code directly.
Where Webflow differs from platforms like Squarespace or Wix is in the level of design control it offers. Rather than drag-and-drop onto a fixed template grid, Webflow’s Designer gives you control over positioning, layout, spacing, typography, and animation at a granular level — working in a visual interface that maps closely to how CSS actually works. The output is genuinely clean, well-structured HTML and CSS rather than the bloated, table-based code that older visual builders produced.
Webflow also includes a CMS for managing dynamic content (blog posts, team members, case studies, product listings) and an ecommerce layer for selling products. It’s hosted — meaning Webflow manages the servers and infrastructure — and you pay a monthly or annual subscription.
Who Built Webflow and How Popular Is It?
Webflow was founded in San Francisco in 2013 and has grown steadily since. It has a strong following among freelance designers and design-led agencies — particularly those who want more visual design control than Squarespace but either can’t code or prefer not to. By 2024, Webflow claimed over 3.5 million users and is used to power somewhere around 2–3% of websites on the internet.
For context, WordPress powers over 40% of websites globally. Webflow is a meaningful player in the no-code design space but is not remotely comparable to WordPress in terms of scale, community, or ecosystem.
How Does Webflow Work?
Webflow has three main components that work together:
The Designer
The Designer is Webflow’s visual canvas — the environment where you build the website. It looks somewhat like a design tool (Figma users will find some familiar conventions) but it’s actually generating live HTML and CSS as you work. You set up layout using CSS Grid and Flexbox, control typography and spacing with visual controls, and build interactions and animations using a timeline-based interface.
The Designer is genuinely more powerful than Squarespace or Wix for design work. The learning curve is also steeper — significantly so. Someone with no design background or CSS knowledge will find it confusing. Someone with a solid design background and an understanding of web layout principles will find it productive.
The CMS
Webflow’s CMS lets you create custom content types — “Blog Posts,” “Team Members,” “Projects,” “Products” — with defined fields for each. You then design how those content types display using the Designer, binding dynamic fields to visual elements. It’s a genuinely well-designed CMS for content-heavy sites where the same design template needs to apply to many pages.
For a deeper explanation of what a CMS is and how it works generally, see my guide to what a CMS is.
Webflow Hosting
Webflow is a hosted platform — you don’t bring your own hosting. Webflow manages all the infrastructure and includes a CDN (Content Delivery Network) for fast global page delivery. The hosting is reliable and the performance is generally good. The trade-off is that you’re dependent on Webflow’s infrastructure and pricing.
Webflow Pricing
Webflow uses a tiered subscription model. As of 2026, the main plans for business websites are:
- Basic (£13/month): Static sites only — no CMS, no dynamic content. Suitable for simple landing pages.
- CMS (£20/month): Includes CMS functionality, up to 2,000 CMS items. Suitable for blogs and content-driven sites.
- Business (£30/month): Increased CMS limits (10,000 items), more form submissions, better performance.
- Ecommerce plans (£35–£200/month): Adding online store functionality.
These are hosting-only costs — they don’t include the cost of a designer to build your site on the platform. If you’re paying a Webflow designer to build your site, their fees are on top of the platform subscription.
Webflow vs WordPress: Which is Better for Small Businesses?
This is the question most business owners are actually asking when they research Webflow. Here’s an honest comparison.
Design Control
Webflow offers more granular visual design control out of the box than a standard WordPress install. A skilled Webflow designer can create highly polished, animation-rich designs efficiently. However, WordPress with a capable page builder (Elementor, Bricks, or custom theme development) can achieve equally sophisticated results — it just requires more technical knowledge to configure well.
Edge: Webflow for design-focused agencies building showcase websites. Negligible difference for most small business sites.
Content Management
WordPress is significantly more mature and flexible as a CMS. The WordPress admin interface is familiar, well-documented, and can be simplified or extended almost limitlessly. Webflow’s CMS is well-designed for what it does but has hard limits on CMS item counts and can feel constrained for larger content operations.
Edge: WordPress for most business owners managing their own content.
SEO Performance
Webflow produces clean, semantic HTML — which is better than the output of Wix or older Squarespace versions. However, WordPress with Yoast or Rank Math, proper permalink configuration, and good caching gives you more comprehensive SEO control. The WordPress ecosystem for SEO plugins, schema markup, and technical optimisation is unmatched.
Edge: WordPress for businesses where organic search traffic is a priority.
Ecosystem and Plugins
WordPress has 59,000+ plugins covering every conceivable functionality requirement — booking systems, membership platforms, LMS, CRM integrations, payment gateways, marketing automation, and more. Webflow’s ecosystem of third-party integrations is growing but significantly smaller. For anything beyond a standard website with a blog, WordPress’s extensibility is a major practical advantage.
Edge: WordPress — not close.
Ownership and Portability
WordPress is open-source software you install on your own hosting. You own your code, your content, and your data. You can move hosts at any time. Any competent WordPress developer can work on your site.
Webflow is a hosted SaaS platform. You don’t own the platform. If Webflow changes pricing, discontinues a feature, or ceases trading, you have limited recourse. Migrating away from Webflow is possible but involves exporting your content and rebuilding the design elsewhere. Your site is only as portable as Webflow allows.
Edge: WordPress for long-term ownership and flexibility.
Developer Availability
There are millions of WordPress developers worldwide. Finding someone to maintain, extend, or take over a WordPress site is straightforward. Webflow specialists are a much smaller pool — which means higher rates, less competition, and more dependency on a specific type of developer.
Edge: WordPress for practical future-proofing.
Cost
A WordPress site on shared hosting costs £5–£15/month for hosting. Webflow’s monthly fees start at £13 for a basic site and reach £30–£200 for CMS or ecommerce. Over three to five years, Webflow’s platform fees represent a meaningful cost that WordPress hosting doesn’t.
Edge: WordPress for total cost of ownership.
When is Webflow Actually the Right Choice?
I’ll be direct: for most small business clients in the UK — service businesses, restaurants, professional practices, retailers — WordPress is the better choice. The ownership model, the ecosystem, the SEO tools, and the developer availability all point strongly towards WordPress for businesses that want a site that will serve them well over the next five to ten years.
Webflow genuinely makes sense in a narrower set of scenarios:
- Design-led agencies building their own portfolio site — where the website is a showcase of design craft and animation capability, and the agency has in-house Webflow expertise.
- Startups launching an MVP marketing site quickly — where a skilled Webflow designer is already on the team and speed of iteration matters more than long-term platform ownership.
- Projects where animation and interaction richness is the primary requirement — product launches, campaign microsites, and creative showcases where WordPress’s animation capabilities don’t match the brief.
For a straightforward business website — services, contact, blog, maybe ecommerce — WordPress delivers better outcomes at lower long-term cost with more future flexibility.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Webflow free?
Webflow has a free plan that lets you build a site on a Webflow subdomain (yoursite.webflow.io) and is useful for learning the platform. Publishing to a custom domain requires a paid plan starting at £13/month. CMS functionality and ecommerce require higher-tier plans.
Is Webflow good for SEO?
Webflow produces clean, semantic HTML which is a solid SEO foundation. It supports custom meta tags, canonical URLs, Open Graph tags, and basic schema markup. For most simple sites, the SEO fundamentals are well-covered. Where it falls short compared to WordPress is in the depth of SEO plugin tooling, schema markup flexibility, and the breadth of technical SEO controls available to experienced practitioners.
Can I build an ecommerce store on Webflow?
Yes. Webflow has an ecommerce layer that handles product pages, cart, checkout, and payment processing. It works well for small product catalogues. For larger catalogues, complex product variants, or deep inventory management requirements, WooCommerce on WordPress or Shopify offer more mature solutions.
Do I need to know how to code to use Webflow?
Not technically, but you need to understand CSS layout concepts — flexbox, grid, box model, positioning — to use Webflow productively. It’s closer to “visual CSS” than true no-code. Business owners without any design or development background will typically find Webflow confusing to use for content management, even on a site that was built by a professional Webflow designer.
Webflow vs WordPress: which should I choose?
For most small businesses, WordPress. It gives you full ownership, the largest plugin and developer ecosystem, better long-term SEO tools, and lower total cost of ownership. Webflow is the right choice for design-led agencies and studios building showcase websites where animation richness and design control are the primary requirements — and where in-house Webflow expertise already exists.
Thinking About Your Next Website?
Every website I build uses WordPress — because for small business clients it’s the platform that delivers the best combination of design quality, long-term flexibility, SEO performance, and ownership. You never get locked into a monthly platform subscription, and any competent WordPress developer can pick up where I left off if you ever need to work with someone else.
If you’re comparing platforms and want to see what a well-built WordPress site looks like, I offer a free, no-obligation homepage mockup based on your business before you commit to anything. Or get in touch to talk through your options.
