Moving your website to a new platform can feel daunting. When you finally get over the mental hurdle of migration, you'll realize how many problems could have been easily solved.
1. no plug-in dependencies
On the surface, plug-ins market themselves as making your life easier. You want to add a registration form? There's a plug-in for that. You want to optimize your website for on-pageSEO ? There's a plug-in for that, too. You want to create a custom page with a drag-and-drop builder? There is a plug-in for that as well.
But the hard truth is: "more plug-ins, more problems".
Some plug-ins can add extra, bloated javascript code to your website, which poses some dangers you should be aware of.
Plug-ins can reveal security vulnerabilities.
Plug-ins need to be updated continuously. This means that you need to constantly take care of WordPress site maintenance. The more plugins you have, the more time you have to spend on updates. And if you don't keep up with the maintenance, the chances of a spammer or hacker attacking your site increases.
Unfortunately, there are people who scan WordPress websites looking for specific plug-ins in a website's code. If one of your plug-ins is out of date or has a data breach, hackers can use that plug-in as a gateway to your website.
Webflow takes a plugin-less approach. You need to optimize the on-pageSEO ? There are settings in Webflow for that. You want to create a fully custom landing page? If you can design it on paper, you can build it in Webflow. You need a registration form? Yes, Webflow Forms is the solution.
Plug-ins slow down your website.
Some plug-ins are designed to be "lightweight". By that I mean that the code is optimized for fast execution on a WordPress website. However, some plug-ins contain a bunch of overloaded javascript files that increase the load time of your web pages. If you have several such plug-ins, your website will be additionally slowed down.
The Webflow development team is constantly thinking about speed. That's why everything you design in Webflow is written with clean HTML, CSS and Javascript - so every feature is lightweight.
Plug-ins can break things.
Sometimes, when a plug-in needs to be updated, it can affect other functions of your website. An update can cost you a lot of time and energy to debug another area of your website. This is especially true if you have a fully customized WordPress website.
If a plug-in affects your website, it can be very unpleasant for the website visitors. If you are a web agency, it could mean losing the trust of a potential client. For a company, this can be disastrous.
With Webflow's plugin-less approach, you don't have to worry about updates or add-ons causing problems on your Webflow website.
Language variants
For language variants I use the interface of Weglot.
Weglot is so big that this interface can be used without security concerns. Of course, Weglot is not free and has recurring costs.
2. no need for 3rd party hosting.
If speed and security are important to you, you might spend a lot of time considering which hosting provider to choose.
Since there are so many hosting providers for WordPress websites, every third-party hosting service wants a piece of the pie. Some will sacrifice speed and reliability to give you a cheaper price. Others claim to be extremely fast and charge a fortune for it.
And some throttle your hosting speeds depending on how many users visit your website at any given time. None of these offers are ideal.
Webflow hosting is "serverless".
Webflow hosting is one of the main reasons I made the switch. Webflow's co-founder and CTO, Bryant Chou, designed Webflow hosting to be "serverless" and extremely fast. Webflow has an uptime of 99.99% and there is never a need to update anything on the server side of your website. Finally, no more fiddling with server control panels.
You can rest assured that you'll have secure, scalable, top-notch hosting for each and every Webflow site you create.
3. lower production costs.
Webflow helps reduce production costs by bridging the gap between design and development. Anyone with a basic understanding of how to use Webflow can create fully custom solutions that don't require traditional front-end development.
If you have a technical team developing a product, you can save tremendous time and money by taking most of the front-end web development off the team's hands.
No need for freelance web developers.
A colleague of mine who built websites with WordPress constantly had to hire a web developer to bring his designs to life or fix problems.
When a technical issue arose that was outside his area of expertise, whether it was because of a plug-in or his hosting server, he had to hire PHP developers for updates to solve it.
This not only cost money, but also time, which kept my colleague from serving his customers. You can always generate more money, but you can't generate more time.
More than just a template.
Webflow is based on the fundamental belief that if you can design something, you should be able to build it. If you don't know how to code, you've probably spent a lot of money on templates or landing page builder plug-ins.
My colleague spent an embarrassing amount of money on WordPress templates before switching to Webflow because he didn't know anything about web development and didn't see any other way to build his websites. Even if he had a top-notch looking template, he got tired of it and wanted to change aspects of the website design. But he didn't know how. So he bought another template. And the vicious cycle continued.
For the same reason, hoarding WordPress templates can lead to security issues, because WordPress templates (also called themes) need to be updated. And if you have multiple themes in one project, it's easy to forget to update them.
With Webflow, even if you're using a template from the template marketplace, it's easy to change the design so that it's fully customized to your brand - without requiring any updates. Since everything is built on the basics of HTML and CSS, you can easily transform your website visually.
4. I work autonomously with Webflow.
One of the biggest challenges in creating a WordPress project is having too many cooks in the kitchen. More people means more communication lines, which in turn means longer production times.
A separate service for web design, a separate service for web development, a separate service for hosting and managing a server, a separate service for add-ons (plugins) and so on. You know what it's all about.
Platforms like Webflow combine all this and give you more control over your website. All you need is a person who knows how to design in Webflow.
In Webflow it is much easier and faster to experiment.
Depending on so many services and people doesn't encourage a website owner to take risks with their website and experiment with new things, whether it's a new design, a new landing page, or a new user onboarding flow. After all, you know that getting something new up and running is going to take a lot of work and cost accordingly.
For this reason, platforms that focus on one person "doing it all" give me autonomy to grow and scale.
5. experience the power of code - without writing it.
I can work with Webflow without a development and technical team. This also means that as a web designer I am able to realize ideas I have only dreamed of.
The possibilities are endless, and Webflow's product and development teams are working hard to bring even more features to life.
Developing for the modern web.
Webflow has its roots in a desire to democratize and scale processes, tools, and access to media that were once available only to a small group of people.
You shouldn't let building and maintaining your website take up much of your cognitive load.
Things like setting up reminders to update plug-ins, slow website speeds, server errors, and development costs take away valuable time from what matters most - building your brand and connecting with potential customers.
By no means did I mean to say in this post that your success depends on what platform you use to build your website. You can create and manage a successful WordPress or Webflow website.
But each of them has its own hurdles. At the end of the day, you have to pick your battles, and I know which one I chose.
I'm at home with Webflow and have access to the code's capabilities. And at this point, the sky is the limit for what I can build for the web.
To my web design offer
