We love Webflow (it’s what this site was built on), but we don’t recommend it for eCommerce businesses. While Webflow is great for building blazing fast websites that look good, Webflow’s eCommerce functionality (inventory management, dashboarding, plugins etc.) doesn’t come close to matching our recommended tool Shopify. Webflow also has a somewhat steep learning curve. Be prepared to learn the fundamentals of HTML and CSS through their excellently done video tutorials if you plan on designing your site yourself.
Read our full guide on: eCommerce Platforms 🛒
Best for: Small ($0-$10M), Medium ($10-50M revenue) size companies.
Webflow is a great tool for designing great looking and fast websites, but it isn't ideal for eCommerce.
Webflow's founding story is a testament to perseverance. Its founder Vlad Magdalin attempted to launch the company three separate times before finally succeeding. In 2012, Vlad Magdalin, Sergie Magdalin, and Bryant Chou embarked on the journey of creating Webflow, a visual website builder aimed at empowering individuals to design professional websites without the need for extensive coding knowledge. The early days were marked by challenges, including a rejection from Y Combinator in 2012, but the founders remained undeterred, continuing to build and improve Webflow. Despite facing financial struggles and accumulating significant credit card debt, the team's dedication led to a successful Hacker News launch, which garnered over 20,000 signups and played a pivotal role in securing entry into Y Combinator and raising significant capital.
Over the years, Webflow's focus on the design community and its commitment to building a self-sustaining, profitable business led to its remarkable growth, with over 250,000 users and a valuation of $4 billion.
There are tons of things to love about Webflow.
Excellent Visual Builder
Of all the website builders, Webflow offers the most advanced visual builder. It offers drag-and-drop elements that make it easy to build complex designs.
Extensive Customization Ability
Webflow enables complete customization of websites, unlike many other content management systems (CMS), making the process hassle-free.
SEO-Friendly
Webflow's websites are designed to be search engine optimized, ensuring easy discoverability and higher ranking in search results.
Reliable Hosting
Webflow provides powerful hosting with minimal downtime, ensuring quick website loading and accessibility for visitors.
With all of these benefits, it might be tempting to use it as your eCommerce platform, however, we don’t recommend it.
Lack of eCommerce specific functionality
Webflow was not designed specifically for eCommerce so lacks many of the features of eCommerce specific competitors like Shopify or WooCommerce. It doesn’t have a robust inventory management system, it can’t generate automatic purchase confirmation emails, it will be difficult to host large product catalogs etc. The list of things it can’t do for eCommerce is long. You will spend a lot of time and effort on workarounds.
Lack of eCommerce integrations
Compared to its eCommerce specific competitors, Webflow has many fewer integrations with other tools. The app ecosystem for eCommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce is extremely robust. By choosing those platforms you will ensure that the core of your business will work well with every other part of your business. Shopify will integrate with your accounting software, email marketing software, reviews software, SMS marketing software. The list goes in. If you use Webflow you will be forced to use integration tools like Zapier or Make (fka Integromat) rather than using the out-of-the-box integrations with Shopify.
Webflow offers a range of pricing plans tailored to different needs, providing flexibility and scalability for users. Here is a summary of Webflow's pricing plans:
Starter Plan:
Basic Plan:
CMS Plan:
Business Plan:
Ecommerce Plans:
Enterprise Plan:
SMB eCommerce Platforms
Enterprise eCommerce Platforms
What is Webflow?
Webflow is a tool that helps people design and host websites.
Can Webflow integrate with Shopify?
No. Webflow does not have a built-in Shopify integration, and you will have to use some tedious workarounds if you want to use Webflow for your front end and Shopify for your back end.
Is Webflow good for SEO?
Webflow is great for SEO. Its pages load quickly which is a ranking factor in SEO. It gives you the ability to customize your headings, page titles, meta descriptions, open graph images etc. which will all help your SEO. The main drawback to Webflow from an SEO perspective is that there are fewer plugins that will help your SEO (like Yoast for Wordpress).
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