Why we don’t use Webflow for our marketing websites
Webflow developers are unhappy
I'm seeing more and more lifelong Webflow developers and customers who have been previously keen about webflow, to start switching to other tools and expressing their dissatisfaction with the product
If I were to consider switching from a headless CMS, it would be because the alternative platform is just so good that it would be a no brainer. But if the current customers are unhappy and will ultimately provide a worse experience to my customers, that leaves me with little desire to do this to my clients.
Uncertainty in pricing
One of my biggest beefs with Webflow is just how shady they are with their pricing model. Time and time again I've seen unhappy users posting how Webflow has moved them over to the enterprise plan just because of increased bandwidth, meaning that they have to pay at minimum $15k per year.
And if you do happen to have a big enough audience and complain, a PR person from webflow will contact them, offer them a deal and they will delete the post. But what happens if you are a small business and don't have the same reach as some of the bigger influencers?
And yes, there are price changes in the headless CMS world as well. However, I've been using Prismic and Storyblok as my go to platforms over the last 6 years and I haven't received an angry email from an old or current customer who has unreasonable price hike. Furthermore, all the websites who used to be on the free or cheapest plan are still paying that. You mainly change your plan if you need more seats.
You still need a developer
Webflow tries so hard to say otherwise within their sales and marketing, but the reality is that you still need a developer who will build your website and maintain it afterwards. If you don't, things start to break when you try to update it.
Designs can get messy over time
To this point, if you don't have a developer at hand, I've noticed time and time again the clients who don't have previous knowledge in web development try to change aspects of their website, which usually results in a layout issue.
This usually doesn't happen in headless CMS websites - the page sections and templates are built in stone and need to be changed via code, so it's much harder for a client to mess up the website.
When your website needs something extra
If you are building a website using code, the sky is the limit for what you can do. A few examples of things we needed to build for various websites over the years:
- custom multi-step calculator
- a user dashboard for clients
- Hubspot form integration and custom tracking
- Querying data from other sources such as Airtable, Google Sheets and HR tools for job listings
- Complex filtering of data
- Search for venues based on postcode and distance
Most of these things can be done in Webflow as well, but usually you need some kind of a hack to get it to work or you need to pay for a third-party tool to make it work. Webflow has an app store for integrations which reminds me of the Wordpress plugin ecosystem.
Vendor lock-in
If you are on Webflow, you are left on the company's mercy in case they decide to increase their pricing, remove a feature you need or introduce a bug that will last for days on end. Actually, the latter happened back in July which left most customers not being to update and work on their website.
One of the good things about headless CMS is that if you are unhappy with your headless CMS, you can export your content then import it into another CMS, update your queries in code and still keep most of the code untouched. You can also change your hosting provider (for example, from Vercel to Cloudflare). With Webflow, you need to use Webflow until you completely separate from the platform, which will mean a complete website rebuild.
Final note
Webflow isn’t necessarily bad”. If you need a quick marketing site, a one-off landing page, or want to prototype an idea fast, Webflow can save you days of design and development time. Its visual editor, template ecosystem, and animation tools are good - and for small teams or early-stage startups, this might be more important than scalability.
But as soon as you need to scale, integrate, or future-proof your content - that’s where the trade-offs start to show. Webflow was built for beautiful pages, not structured systems. And at Honey & Jam, we build systems — websites that can grow, adapt, and integrate with your business for years to come.
So yes, use Webflow for quick wins. But when you’re ready to build something long-term, something that connects deeply with your product, your data, and your marketing stack - that’s where a headless approach shines.