What Is Webflow? The Ultimate Webflow Overview [2025]

Webflow is one of the leading web building platforms today and a top choice for both small and enterprise-size businesses looking to build their brands online. 

Launched in 2013, it was not the first in line of drag-and-drop website development tools but since then has been gradually winning its market share as new features rolled out. It competes in the same space with Wix, Squarespace and WordPress but at the same time redefines how people with no technical background can build powerful and visually stunning websites. 

It has democratized access to professional web builder tools and has grown to offer so much more than a visually composable CMS. Today, Webflow offers a host of features, integration capabilities and a marketplace for Webflow apps that make it a go-to platform for the likes of Jasper, Upwork, TED and Vice who all adopted Webflow for their digital presence purposes.

As a certified Webflow agency, Foursets has been working with the platform since 2021. Now we give you the complete overview of Webflow features, capabilities and benefits so you can make a confident choice when it comes to your website creation. 

What Is Webflow?

According to Webflow’s own definition, Webflow is the first ever website experience platform. This focus on building website experiences beyond just websites reflects the company’s ambition to become an empowering tool for marketers, designers and content creators who no longer need writing code to support their brands’ attractive online presence.  

To get down to technicalities, the platform offers a visual-first approach to website development that automatically converts your design into HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You work in a completely visual canvas recreating your design pixel by pixel in a drag-and-drop interface and extending it with custom code if necessary. On top of the visual editor and full-fledged CMS, you get top-tier hosting, security and SEO capabilities included in every subscription plan. 

Webflow has shown a remarkable growth and development trajectory over the past 11+ years. Launching Webflow out of a dorm room in 2013, the team struggled to find its product-market fit initially. Fast forward to today and it’s leading the no-code movement with 15,000 websites being published with Webflow every hour. 

“When I was a designer, to me Webflow was a tool blurring the line between design and development. I liked that and went all in to learn it. I founded Foursets with the goal to make website management for our clients more accessible — and also less cumbersome than traditional tools.”

Nick Rybak, Founder & CEO, Foursets

What Is Webflow Used For?

The Webflow platform is versatile, and the sheer amount of businesses — more than 300,000 at the moment — is a testament to how multi-purpose and multi-industry it is. 

Above all, Webflow is a visual-first web development platform, meaning that it considerably lowers the entry barrier for those looking to set up their websites. Webflow is a go-to choice for businesses, creatives and individuals in need of a straightforward yet powerful website builder. Once you get over the notably steep learning curve, you’re free to build and manage your web presence with a host of accessible in-built tools that are also competitively priced.  

To sum up its capabilities, Webflow is used for: 

• Creating visually engaging websites in a fully visual canvas
• Crafting immersive digital experiences with the power of interactions and animations
• Managing content at scale thanks to the Webflow CMS
• Scaling content production and management across locales 
• Launching marketing lead generation campaigns
• Rapid prototyping and MVP development

What Types of Websites Can You Build with Webflow?

Webflow is a commercial web platform above all, so it works best for profit-generating businesses rather than individuals looking for basic self-publishing options. The breadth of Webflow features targets business needs, so you can tick all the boxes — from hosting and security compliance to CRM and Google Analytics integration, ecommerce functionality and multi-language localizations — all within one and the same solution. 

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Marketing websites for small to enterprise businesses

Webflow is a powerhouse of features allowing you to build highly interactive and 100% responsive websites for a variety of business purposes. What makes companies like BD Emerson adopt Webflow is that you can manage content at ease and optimize it for the web at the same time, converting your website visitors into paying customers and generating new revenue. 

The types of websites most appropriate for building with Webflow include:

• High-performing websites for SaaS products
• Corporate websites as a central brand platform
• Microsites for products and events
• Landing pages for marketing campaigns
• Programmatic SEO pages
• Niche websites tailored to specific business domains

“I found that Webflow works best for SMBs and enterprise projects with at least one in-house marketer on board. Microbusinesses might need to look elsewhere as Webflow can be too excessive for their needs.”

Nick Rybak, Founder & CEO, Webflow

Ecommerce websites

Webflow has a range of plans specifically for online stores. Depending on your tier, you get access to such functionality as:

• Product catalogs with 500-15,000 ecommerce items
• Unlimited sales volumes
• Customized shopping carts and checkout experiences
• Payment integrations with Apple Pay, web payments, PayPal, Stripe
• Integrations with Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, and Mailchimp
• Order, inventory and shipping management integrations via API or Webflow-authorized apps

Content-centric websites

Content creators love Webflow for the ease of publishing and managing content in a visual-first environment, let alone the rich visualizations and animations powered by GSAP. 

Content-centric websites that benefit from Webflow hosting and content management include:

• Blogs
• Media & entertainment websites
• E-learning platforms

Portfolio sites

Creatives choose Webflow to build their highly engaging and attention-grabbing portfolio websites. Photographers, video makers, web designers and developers can find it easy to set up their professional showcases on their own without breaking the bank. Of course, such websites won’t necessarily need the full functional scope offered by Webflow, but they’ll definitely find the right tools to build their portfolios.

Webflow Benefits: Why Choose It As Your Business Platform 

As a leader in the low-code movement, Webflow democratizes access to web development all the while giving businesses the tools to establish their powerful and competitive web presence. Let’s sum up the key value offerings of Webflow for business decision-makers.

Accessible to non-tech team

The central part of Webflow’s promise is that it makes website development and management accessible to marketers and designers, not only to developers. Once your site is launched and operating on your design system, your marketing team and content admins can work within the intuitive Webflow Editor or Page Building interfaces to create, edit and publish content without waiting endlessly on developers. With Webflow, marketers are no longer stuck and can take ownership of their business websites in their own hands. 

“You can easily manage your day-to-day Webflow site updates on your own, without relying on developers. Other Webflow benefits include a really convenient CMS, rapid web development and the ability to create websites that truly stand out among competitors.”

Anna Ryabova, Webflow Developer, Foursets

Fast and easy shipping of website updates

Because everything happens in a visual canvas using the drag-and-drop functionality and page templates, you can set up a new page in practically no time. Again, launching a Webflow-powered site takes some time and professional dev expertise, but once it’s live, you can manage it swiftly with no coding required. 

Creative freedom & customizability 

Developing a Webflow site, you can start either with a ready-made template or work from a blank canvas with the ability to customize every single element. While you can tweak fonts, colors, layouts, images and interactions, you can also add custom code to take your website experience to the next level.

“Webflow’s greatest value is in that it lowers the entry barrier for smaller businesses. For larger companies, it provides a scalable CMS at a competitive price while lowering maintenance costs.”

Nick Rybak, Founder & CEO, Foursets

SEO friendliness

Webflow boasts professional SEO tools that help you rank high in search engines. Clean semantic code, meta tags and meta descriptions management, XML sitemap generation, schema markups, mobile responsiveness and advanced web accessibility tools all make search engine optimization a much easier task for website managers.

Scalability

Webflow is a platform designed to grow with you. From one site plan to another, you can make use of the growing bandwidth, CMS items and collections, form submissions and team collaborators. This culminates in the Enterprise plan which is custom-quoted based on the scale of your website operations. 

Enterprise-grade security

All Webflow users have access to world-class security that comes with Webflow’s SOC2 Type II compliance, SSL certificates, integration with Stripe — a certified Level 1 Service Provider, and annual penetration testing run by the Webflow team to ensure a top-level security of their digital services.

Team collaboration

Webflow websites are designed for collaboration. The company recognizes that it takes a whole team of Webflow designers, marketers, developers and admins to pull it off, so the platform features granular roles & permissions, role-based access control and ability to invite guests. 

Active community

Being around since 2013, Webflow has amassed a devoted community of 85,000+ Webflow experts and consultants. In addition to their Webflow University, support center and global network of certified partners, you as a Webflow client can truly benefit from all-round assistance.

Webflow Features: What Makes This Platform Stand Out 

In response to market demand and facing tough competition from other innovative low-code web builders, Webflow keeps innovating. At the moment, its capabilities allow both developers and non-tech team members to create visually appealing website experiences, all with a strong underlying layer of features for marketing experimentation, lightning-speed page building, conversion optimization, analytics and team collaboration. 

Webflow pulls together its key capabilities as a website experience platform into three major groups: 

• Build: including tools to design responsive, high-performing web pages in a visual canvas, create reusable components, invite content creators to manage website updates in the Edit mode, craft interactions and animations, and build on-brand pages out of pre-built design-approved blocks. 

• Manage: including CMS, hosting, localization and security functionality. 
• Optimize: including Webflow’s latest integrated add-ons such as Analyze and Optimize, in addition to extensive SEO functionality.

Webflow constantly rolls out new features, culminating in a yearly Webflow Conf where the product’s major updates are unveiled publicly. The latest additions to the Webflow family of products are Analyze, Optimize and AI Assistant with extensive genAI capabilities that permeate their web building and content management tools. 

• Webflow Analyze gives you advanced in-built audience analytics that shows how your visual design and website are performing with real users. 
• Webflow Optimize is an in-built tool enabling you to set up web content variations and A/B tests natively integrated in Webflow. It also unlocks website personalization (contextual, behavioral, firmographic and demographic as well as based on Webflow Analyze data).
• AI Optimize is a subset of Webflow Optimize for real-time marketing. It operates on predictive AI natively integrated into Webflow, learns from user behavior and takes action based on what variation performs best. 
• AI Assistant is Webflow’s own generative AI design and content creation tool that allows you to build web page sections and write content as you go, all based on your brand’s design system and tone of voice.

Now let’s look at all the powerful features that help Webflow successfully compete with other website builders. 

Webflow Development Features

Web development with Webflow happens in a browser-based interface rather than a coding console. It’s truly a visual approach and a departure from old-days custom web programming. 

Web development features in Weblow include the following: 

• Visual-first development in a drag-and-drop environment where design is automatically converted into clean semantic code (HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript), with the possibility to implement custom code for added functionality.
• Staging and admin: Paid Workspace plans come with webflow.io staging sites, user roles & permissions, and code export features. Upgrading to Enterprise allows teams to use branching and collaborate on a single site or page simultaneously without pushing any unwanted changes to production.
• Hosting: Webflow provides top-tier hosting with unlimited backups for all plans, powered by AWS and Fastly.
• Security: all plans come with two-factor authentication and DDoS protection; Enterprise plan users also get access to single sign-ons, custom security headers, custom SSL certificates and private staging. 
• API integrations: Webflow supports API integrations to extend the site with advanced features, connect corporate systems and manage CMS, forms and e-commerce features programmatically at scale. 
• Scalability: Webflow’s site plans cap at 10,000 CMS items and 100 GB bandwidth, with more available at the Enterprise level. Webflow is highly scalable to support fast-growing sites and offers traffic surge protection and agreement-based uptime. 

Webflow Design Features

The Webflow Designer mode allows designing and building responsive web pages right on the canvas. Again, being a visual-first platform, it demands no coding knowledge unless you’re looking to implement custom components. This is what it has to offer in terms of design features:

• Complete design freedom: Designers have control over layouts, typography, fonts, interactions, animations, images, faithfully recreating their Figma designs without compromising the flexibility and quality of the final output.
• Advanced animations without coding: You can make use of GSAP, seamless LottieFiles integration and the advanced range of animations triggered by user behavior, all without having to write a line of code.
• Design systems: You can set up your own on-brand design system through variables and reusable components.
• Design approvals: Available for Enterprise customers, design approvals is a workflow that allows publishing only vetted updates that are verified by the team’s approvers.  
• Generative page design: You can use AI Assistant to create page sections in line with your brand’s design system as well as create AI-generated content and edit it on the canvas.

“What got me into Webflow? I was inspired by eye-catching websites full of rich unusual animations that you just wanted to explore. These were made with Webflow, and I knew I wanted to create websites like this and be part of such interesting projects.”

Anna Ryabova, Webflow Developer, Foursets

Webflow Editor Features

Webflow Editor is a dedicated space within Webflow where non-tech team members such as marketers and content managers can easily create, update and publish content either directly on-page or within the CMS.  

• Content management: Users can edit content visually on the website page or work within the Webflow CMS in the intuitive interface that requires no coding expertise. 
• Search engine optimization tools: Users can set metadata and image alt texts to improve search engine visibility and rankings.
• Role-based access: Users are assigned their respective roles in the Editor limiting or granting them access to certain features. 
• Staging and publishing: Users can stage certain items for publishing and push all staged updates to production in one click. 

Webflow CMS Features

Weblow CMS (content management system) makes it easy to create, change and publish items grouped in CMS collections. This CMS is visual-first and composable, meaning you can add, tweak and work with your dynamic content within the interface or the CMS fields of the Webflow Editor. 

• Dynamic content creation: Users can create CMS collections — customized templates for content of the same category, such as blog posts, case study pages, etc. — and streamline the creation of new pages that will follow the preset design automatically. These templates support custom fields, in-line text editing, bulk editing, content filtering and sorting, as well as content duplication. 
• Multimedia content embeds: CMS content supports embedded images, videos and code snippets.
• Bulk content management: Content updates can be done in bulk when you change a template. Webflow CMS also supports programmatic content management via APIs.

Webflow SEO Features

As noted above, Webflow has everything you need to create an SEO-competitive website out of the box. With its advanced content management and customization capabilities, you can achieve high search engine rankings more easily than with custom-coded websites, for example. 

Webflow SEO features include:

• XML sitemap generation
• Unique meta titles and meta descriptions
• Heading hierarchy 
• Canonical and alt tags
• Correct error codes and redirects setup
• Mobile responsiveness
• Fast page load speed 
• Schema markups
• High-performance hosting and CDN (content delivery network)
• Built-in SSL

All this contributes to a seamless user experience, remarkable site performance that meets Core Web Vitals benchmarks and satisfying search engine results. 

Webflow Templates

Webflow templates are an easy and cost-efficient way to get started on your website with no need to develop it from scratch. The beauty of such templates is that they are still fully customizable, so you implement your custom designs and make sure the resulting website is on-brand. 

Why go for a template instead of developing the website yourself? Well, it’s simply cheaper than custom development while saving you a lot of time. There are free templates, and the price for others rarely goes above $150 while your team can spare their time on the foundational work and get straight to adjusting the ready-made site to your design and content.  

When choosing a Webflow template, pay attention to how it matches the purpose of your website — whether it’s an ecommerce, blogging or business platform. Then check out their features to minimize extra work on adding custom functionality, such as responsive design, CMS support, animations and SEO-friendliness. 

Related: Webflow templates by Foursets

But will you still need to hire Webflow developers and designers? If your goal is to build a unique and powerful digital platform for your business, then it’s a resounding yes. Your Webflow development team will be able to take the template up a notch, implement your brand’s design system, integrate extra tools you need in your operations, and optimize the website for top performance in search. 

Webflow Pricing

Webflow is competitively priced compared to other players in the field, such as WordPres and Squarespace. Businesses of all sizes might find it fitting their budgets. Let’s look at the offered plans closely.

Webflow’s pricing is broken into Site plans (for building individual websites) and Workspace plans (for team collaboration, corporate teams and agencies). Each Site plan comes with the Starter Workspace plan which can be then expanded if you require so.

Site plans are further divided into General and Ecommerce plans, with the latter including features from the General tiers and augmenting them with extra functionality for online stores. The prices below are for monthly billing. Discounts of up to 22% are offered for those opting for annual billing.  

• Free Starter plan: ideal for testing out Webflow and checking if it suits your needs and is friendly enough in terms of your available expertise.
• Basic plan ($18/month): ideal when you need a simple website with no CMS capabilities yet with a custom domain name. 
• CMS plan ($29/month): you get a full-fledged CMS with up to 2,000 CMS items and 50GB bandwidth. 
• Business plan ($49/month): you upgrade to 100GB bandwidth, advanced CMS with up to 10,000 CMS items and 300 static CMS pages. 
• Enterprise plan (custom pricing): the maximum capabilities available to large-scale enterprises with advanced content management, collaboration, scalability and security features.

Webflow Ecommerce plans range from $42 to $235 a month and include Site, CMS and Business plan features accordingly, while also offering product item management, CMS items, payment integration, and more functionality tailored to online stores.

Workspace plans include Starter (free), Core ($19/month per seat), Growth ($49/month per seat) and Enterprise (custom pricing) plans and provide a range of features for collaboration and project management based on the size of your team and scale of content operations.  

You can further buy add-ons such Webflow Analyze, Optimize and Localize available for all plans. 

Types of Webflow Specialists to Hire for Your Website Project

Webflow is a low-code platform that requires no coding expertise to get started, that’s true. If you’re looking to set up a professional digital presence, though, you can either take the harder route of doing everything yourself (what with the learning curve and web design skills still crucial) or ask a Webflow expert to do the heavy lifting for you. 

Recognizing this need for professional Webflow consultants, designers and developers, Webflow has developed an impressive network of 1,300+ certified partners. Foursets is proud to be named one of them, and here’s our take on the roles required on any Webflow implementation project. 

• Project manager: the expert applying their ‘magic glue’ to keep the project on track at all times.
• UI/UX designer: the one responsible for creating the design mockups to be translated into a Webflow-powered website.
• Graphic designer: the one creating all the branded imagery and your overall visual style to embody in your website.
• Webflow developer: the expert with Webflow and frontend development expertise translating design mockups into the actual web pages and integrating custom code if necessary.
• Content strategist: the one overlooking content creation and publishing on the new Webflow website in line with your general marketing strategy. 
• SEO specialist: the one responsible for optimizing the Webflow website for search and making its content rank successfully in search engine results pages. 

Other optional roles which might bring value to your project are:

• Quality assurance (testing) engineer
• Marketing manager
• Ecommerce manager
• Customer support specialist

How Webflow Compares to Other Platforms

Let’s see how Webflow measures up to its market competitors, namely other top website building and CMS platforms.

Webflow vs WordPress

WordPress has been around since 2003 so it’s a much more popular platform than Webflow. Still, Webflow offers a more modern approach to website development and management. It’s a drag-and-drop visual interface versus a traditional CMS that relies heavily on third-party plugins for customization. Webflow also comes with integrated hosting while you’ll have to host your WordPress site separately. 

Read more in our Webflow vs WordPress comparison.

Webflow vs Squarespace

Squarespace is more accessible to beginners, with an intuitive drag-and-drop visual editor that requires no coding knowledge whatsoever. However, working in Squarespace means you’re confined to your chosen template and can’t go beyond it in terms of advanced customization. Webflow gives you much more creative freedom, let alone its next-level security, CMS and SEO capabilities.

Read more in our Webflow vs Squarespace comparison.

Webflow vs Wix

Ideal for beginners looking to set up simpler websites, Wix offers a user-friendly way to build up your online presence. It’s also more affordable and is packed with AI-powered design features. At the same time, if you’re looking for a more professional website with extensive customization options to support your business, Webflow is still a way to go. 

Webflow vs Shopify

The key difference between Webflow and Shopify is that the latter is exclusively an ecommerce web building platform. Webflow does have ecommerce features and can successfully support online stores, but it’s also much more than that. Shopify offers robust product management capabilities yet Webflow lets you customize your storefront and every other page for more effective user conversion. 

How Does Webflow Work? Starting Your Own Project

As a certified Webflow design and development agency, Foursets has taken many clients from all walks of business through a Webflow project setup. Here’s some brief walkthrough for you:

1. Plan your website

Deciding on your project goals is key at this stage and can spare you much rework and headache later on. Answer the questions of what you want to achieve with your website, what resources you have available, what the ideal timeline for project delivery is, and whether you’re up for breaking it down to iterations instead of going all in. Book a consultation and we’ll help you craft a detailed project plan so you don’t have to go through it alone. 

2. Website design

If you have no website at the moment or want to completely revamp your current one, you’ll need website design. Look at the references and your competitors’ websites, collect your requirements and pass them on to a professional UI/UX designer. We can help at this stage as well, so feel free to get in touch for design advice and execution. 

3. Buy a Webflow plan 

Even though Webflow offers a free plan, you’ll need a paid one to unlock all the professional web development features, custom domain name, and CMS functionality if required. When turning to a Webflow agency, you can buy a plan through them, as well as buy a template if you want to speed up your website development process. ‍

4. Implement your design and customizations

Work with your web developer to transfer the design to a Webflow environment and set up all the customizations and settings. At this stage, you have full control over how you want your website to look, as Webflow doesn’t limit your creativity in this regard. If your Webflow expert is proficient enough to implement custom code and advanced behavior-based interactions, all the better. If not, you can always trust Foursets with taking your ideas to production. ‍

5. Test and optimize SEO and performance

This step is essential if you want your website to perform great in search and show high user engagement rates. It’s important that your website has high loading speed, Core Web Vitals metrics in the green zone, optimized headings and metadata as well as all key parameters that help search engine bots crawl and index your content. When in doubt, consult Foursets on how to pull it off in the best possible way. 

6. Launch and support

Once you’re happy with the final website, you can launch it to production. No work ends here as you’ll still need to maintain its continuous performance and keep up content management activities. Delegate it to a team of Foursets professionals so you can focus on what matters most — growing your business. 

Wrap-up

Was this guide helpful in introducing you to Webflow? We know the topic might be a bit overwhelming for beginners, but the more information you have when choosing a web platform for your business, the better. 

If you have any questions left, feel free to contact us at Foursets for a personalized consultation regarding your web development needs and how Webflow can meet them. 

Get expert help with your Webflow website from Foursets

We’re a full-cycle web development agency and a proud Webflow partner ready to take you through your website project with zero stress and maximum impact. Get in touch with us today.

FAQ

What is Webflow? 

Webflow is a visual-first web building platform that also comes with CMS and custom development capabilities. Businesses worldwide use it to build their digital presence and generate new customers. 

What does Webflow do?

Webflow is a powerful ecosystem of tools that is used primarily for website development and optimization. It offers a range of tools for website design, content management, hosting, SEO and ecommerce. 

What’s the Webflow meaning beyond web development? 

Beyond web development, Webflow can become a huge enabler of your digital marketing. It’s built to meet marketers’ needs in setting up a professional and SEO-friendly business platform with advanced lead generation, analytics and experimentation toolkit. This explains why more and more enterprise-level clients choose Webflow as their go-to platform. 

Can beginners use Webflow?

Absolutely. Despite a steep learning curve, Webflow still offers plenty of educational materials to get started. For a large-scale professional website, though, it’s recommended to engage certified Webflow experts to avoid pitfalls.

How much does it cost to develop a Webflow website? 

If you look at the Webflow partners’ pricing, many projects start as low as $3,000 and can go up to six-figure prices depending on the scale of your project. Get in touch with Foursets for a custom quote. 

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