Webflow claims to be a powerful platform for website creation. But is it really the case? To date, what can you create with WebFlow and what are the limits of the "no code" website creation tool?

Read our detailed opinion on the issue.

Why use Webflow?

Webflow is a website creation tool. Famous for its visual interface "the designer", which offers advanced features in terms of design. But in which precise case can we choose to use Webflow?

• Marketing website: company showcase, presentation of services, etc.
• Landing page creation: quickly create a landing page to test a product or a new market
• (Small) E-commerce site: you can create a functional online shop with Webflow if you sell a low volume of products
• Blog: the platform has a powerful CMS for content management with the ability to integrate multiple editors

The Webflow interface is very advanced and allows you to create websites with beautiful lay outs. The CMS function helps you to manage your online shops dynamically, or your SEO optimised blogs without technical complexity.

Example of a project created with Webflow!

Here is an example of a project with advanced functionality made with Weblow and Make. We developed a form for Greenly, calculating the carbon footprint of their customers in real time by answering questions in a multi-step form. Depending on your answers, a calculation of your score is made, and sends you to a personalized landing page with your evaluation.

The limits of creation with Webflow

Webflow is therefore not lagging behind in terms of front-end, quite the contrary. However, it still has many limitations on the back-end. For example...

• A limit of 10,000 collection items: this limit is an obstacle to the creation of large e-commerce sites, for example
• Next generation" image formats are not accepted: images in WebP format for example cannot be integrated into your Webflow projects

How to go further?

There are several ways to work around the native limitations of Webflow software:

• With the integration of tools like Airtable, Zapier, Make or Memberstack
• Custom code integration: if you know how to code, you can add code; if you don't know how to do something, look in specialized forums or blogs, you will find code snippets shared by the "no-code" community 😉
• Waiting! Webflow offers very frequently, new features of their tools and they have a strong inclination for innovation. An example? Here are two big releases that are planned soon:

1. Logic: an automation system integrated into your site that will allow you to send the data from all forms directly into a database.
2. Membership: create a members-only area on your site. Without the need for additional tools like Memberstack. This will allow you to create your own marketplace with private pages for example (available soon!).

Webflow has its own limitations, which is understandable and can fortunately be compensated for by using third party applications. Note: The dangers when integrating tools like Airtable are that the content will not be SEO optimised and will require a lot of configuration to get everything working properly. A far cry from the "no-code" mentality if you want your website to be accessible and manageable by your teams from a single interface!

Conclusion

Webflow is a complete and highly optimized tool for the front-end. It is perfectly suited for a website with marketing objectives with a highly customized design.

The tool still has limitations on the back-end, but Webflow is a fast-growing software, which invests a lot in the development of its tool, and its community. You can therefore expect to see the current limitations disappear soon. We are convinced of it!