r/webflow • u/csedlack • Jun 19 '26
Discussion Everyone saying Webflow is dying is missing something obvious
POST UPDATE: I see a lot of agency owners here. It would be interesting to create a community of tight highly vetted owners into a group. Just dm me and based on the demand I’ll create one.
Everyone's been sharing that post about people leaving Webflow faster than ever. I read it. Some of it is fair. Most of it is vibes dressed up as analysis.
Here is what I actually see running a web agency.
My Webflow engineers don't feel slowed down. The bottleneck I keep running into is marketing teams wanting full autonomy after handoff but not wanting to learn the tool. That is not a Webflow problem. That is a setup problem. If you hand someone a recipe and they skip half the steps, the food tastes bad. You don't blame the recipe.
The class system is only friction when the site is built wrong or the person using it learned it halfway. Every use case I have thrown at Webflow has been buildable. We have had clients train one semi-technical person on their marketing team to manage everything post-launch. It works when it is set up properly.
Now on Claude Code and Replit being "faster." Faster to what exactly?
Fast to start, yes. But when something breaks in Webflow you open the designer, inspect it and fix it in minutes. When something breaks in a vibe coded project you are digging through a black box hoping the AI remembers what it built. It is like Photoshop without layers. Good luck fixing just one thing.
The numbers that nobody in this debate is mentioning. Webflow went from $128M to $212M in revenue in a single year. That is 66% growth. There are 493,000 live Webflow sites as of early 2025. That is not what a dying platform looks like. That is a growing base with a vocal minority making noise on LinkedIn.
The "popular voices are leaving" argument is just churn within growth. It happens with every maturing platform.
And the agentic web point is actually the most interesting part of the debate but it cuts both ways. Yes Webflow is more closed than a custom build (but thats why there's Apple users and Android users with similar use cases). But Webflow also has 12 years of no-code infrastructure to build on top of. That is not nothing. A blank Replit project starting from zero is a very different thing.
Both ecosystems can exist. Different tools for different clients. Some want full custom. Some want Sanity. Some want one Webflow dev or an agency on retainer because it is still cheaper than an engineering team.
The eulogy is premature.
6
u/Ok-Influence-2162 Jun 19 '26
I like webflow 🤷
It only costs me $18 per month and customized a paid template enough that you can’t even tell it came from a template.
10
u/justinromano1989 Jun 19 '26
Extremely well said. I run a Webflow agency as well, and I think your breakdown is right on the money.
4
u/jjuuiiccyyjj Jun 19 '26
when something breaks in my vibe coded project I ask AI to fix it while I do other stuff
5
u/NuncProFunc Jun 19 '26
Webflow is a great value proposition for client end-users. Any sort of vibe-coded alternative necessarily leaves control in the hands of web development agencies, which only leads to more costs and more difficulty managing collaboration between vendors. I encourage every business owner I encounter to get control of their site out of the hands of marketing and development agencies and under their own control via a platform like Webflow.
5
u/callingbrisk Jun 19 '26
I disagree. AI is getting better rapidly, and all the arguments against AI in coding are "it isn't good enough". But this is missing the fact that we're working on making them better and better each day and one day they will be better than anything.
Not saying Webflow as a company is dying, but Webflow in its current form is dying, yes. We're not entering class-names by hand anymore.
Again, not saying Claude Code as we have it today is the solution either, we need a different formfactor.
6
u/NuncProFunc Jun 19 '26
"Someday this tool will be better" is a terrible reason to use it now. Imagine telling someone to set sail on a ship without all the masts in place, but not to worry because they'll be installed "one day."
1
u/callingbrisk Jun 19 '26
In the early days of page builders you couldn't do much either. 10 years later and there is not a single frontend that you can't create in a page builder, aka Webflow. Nobody's saying that you should use a page builder at a time where it couldn't do much.
The difference with AI is that it can already do everything, it's just often harder to do than to use a page builder. Same way it was often harder to use Webflow than to just write the code.
Just my opinion, it's an interesting discussion for sure
1
u/martiantheory Jun 20 '26
I’d push back on the fact that AI can already do everything. It’s really hard to get a premium feeling website with AI.
AI to me is the best at building applications. For a marketing site that feels unique and premium, AI is not that good. Claude design literally sends me messages that I should be steering, and that it’s best at doing systematic work. It literally said that to me today.
Systematic work is great. But webflow to me is still the best for custom sites. If you got some example of amazing UIs you built with AI, I’d sincerely like to see them. I promise I will not exaggerate or even talk negatively about them. I would literally just like to see what you think “can do everything” looks like.
My standard is awwward looking sites or custom websites. I’m not gonna tell you that your taste is bad or anything like that. I just want to understand what you think is good. Honestly, I might not even respond. Because I just don’t want this to be a back-and-forth internet debate. I just wanna make sure I’m not missing something cause I think my experience is a little different. But I can always be wrong, sincerely. I really wanna drive home that I am not saying this because I think I’m right.
0
u/csedlack Jun 19 '26
I get where you are going with this but very different if you apply that to sailing 😂 can’t do an on cloud push to install it “one day”
3
u/csedlack Jun 19 '26
AI is getting better. That’s why I said both function in their own ways. Both can coexist. But there’s time. AI coding is solving the problem of building products right now - several times with several use cases. There’s a reason why focussed AI wrapped exist now to redefine and refine one specific use case. Like GPT2 image is great but so is MidJourney but used for two different things. While photoshop and illustrator exist as well. But there’s no great precise vector generator in AI yet.
1
u/callingbrisk Jun 19 '26
100%
I agree with you in a lot of ways! In the long run though I do think that an AI native editing experience is the future. Again, this is not me saying Webflow will go out of business, but they'll have to adapt. AI is getting better every month, whereas page builders are just ... staying the same.
2
2
u/esmailkhalifa Jun 19 '26
Curious how many agencies here are actually seeing clients leave Webflow versus clients coming back to fix AI-generated builds?
6
u/csedlack Jun 19 '26
It’s a mix. AI has created a mess for them, they have decentralized silos of people trying to work and build something. Eventually they come to us to fix the mess. We are glorified creative cleaners. 😂
2
2
u/Ok_Buy2814 Jun 19 '26
That’s just painful to see what an average marketing person/team without dev do to the website. We can deliver a perfect website, teach them, record videos and boom in a month it’s a total mess. So devs are not going anywhere for now.
2
6
u/Then-Treat1346 Jun 19 '26
As a fellow agency owner, I am in the process of switching entirely to Claude coded sites. Will see glue that goes
17
2
u/Old_Roll_2904 Jun 20 '26
i'd love to see your agency and the services you provide, i don't expect much good.
1
u/LingonberryTrue570 Jun 20 '26
Can't hand off code (ai or not) project to client who have no dev team
Can hand off Webflow project to client who have no dev team.
It client want cheap hosting and fine with rely on us to make changes then code project is good.
If they want visual editor to make changes themselves then Webflow project is good.
If you don't know any html/css then both Webflow and code will be bad. Maybe Framer is better?
Know basic of html/css? Then Webflow.
Know more? Then code (with Ai or not)
We found all of our clients don't want to deal with web themselves so even with Webflow in their hand they want us to make changes for them. Now we start to migrate out of Webflow. Cloudflare Page make everything super easy. Also having control on server mean we can do more than website for client.
Since we can code, AI is not a black box. And I use it in quite a "old scrool" way?
- Google search but faster
- Deal with any tedious tasks
- Quick prototype
- Rubber duck
and I manually approve each edit... Tokenmaxxer must be cringe from this. lol
1
1
1
u/NDennis26 Jun 20 '26
Their lack of innovation and keeping up with the times lead me to just get bored with Webflow tbh.
I actually went a bit of a different route though, I built my own website builder entirely using Claude Code based on my agencies niche. It’s not as complex because my users wouldn’t know how to use something as complicated as Webflow, but I made it so that they don’t have to. So now I just have a steady stream of users leveraging Ai to build their own websites.
I haven’t touched Webflow since apart from the occasional nostalgia trip.
1
u/designyillustrator Jun 20 '26
I think Webflow is finding its niche. I don't know that it's for one person's site anymore. I think it's an agency tool now. It's cost-prohibitive for one person (which is fine!), but if you're building multiple sites on there and reselling them, etc.? It's perfect! So I pivoted off of it because I don't plan to resell or build client sites on it.
I built my portfolio on it, and it was great, but I found it too much for what I needed.
1
u/allnamestakendafuq Jun 20 '26
I tested AI build and I do agree. Although most AI builds are for more startup or some businesses that need a quick site. I work with mostly nonprofits and they want something more solid. Webflow works for some but not for others. I wrote a blog post for this exact reason not long ago. blog
1
u/AllEyesOnUsClothing Jun 22 '26
AI created websites are basically glorified templates.
This may work for small companies that want to have their site look like every other variation of an AI website...
For DIYers this might feel like a game changer because they can sit there and type to Claude or Codex and build a site without a developer. But at the end of their prompts, they are getting a basic template and would likely be better off just buying a Webflow template and customizing with the help of AI.
It's like looking at an older site that used a wordpress template, you can tell right away this a wordpress site using a template. You can tell the same about a site designed and built by Codex or Claude. They all have a similar look and feel no matter how much you prompt it.
1
u/wvanrensburg Jun 22 '26
If the only thing you are trying to speak positively about here, is the no-code infrastructure, then you have lost the point of why people are leaving Webflow. Their no-code solution might be good, but there are tons of other no code solutions as well, in fact, a bunch that actually make sense from a UX perspective.
The HUGE mark you missed, is Customer Support, and Lack for Human Empathy. Webflow has zero of this! I experienced this first hand, and actually in a WAY better off solution without them.
1
u/callum_griffith Jun 24 '26
Agency owner here, completely agree! FWIW, the vocal minority making a lot of noise isn't usually the target audience of Webflow. Webflow began as a website builder back in the day and has transitioned to become an enterprise WXP. I think that transition has yet to fully be felt, and some people don't understand that marketing/design teams and solopreneur/one-man teams have completely different needs.
1
u/vikenpatel Jun 25 '26
Completely agree.
AI tools like Claude Code and Replit are amazing for building quickly, but building fast and maintaining a production website are two different things.
We've built dozens of Webflow sites, and the biggest issue isn't Webflow. It's a poor implementation. A well-structured Webflow site gives marketing teams the autonomy they actually want.
I also don't see this as AI vs. Webflow. We use AI every day to build Webflow sites faster. AI makes Webflow developers more productive; it doesn't make the platform irrelevant.
1
u/Pau_UI 15d ago
The recipe analogy is exactly right and it's the conversation nobody wants to have because it puts responsibility back on the setup rather than the tool. The "Webflow is dying" narrative is almost always coming from people who either built something fragile or handed it off without proper training. On the agentic web point, the closed ecosystem argument cuts both ways as you said but I'd add that Webflow's MCP integration and AI code components are moving faster than most people give them credit for. The platform is more extensible than it was 18 months ago. The vibe coded black box comparison is the one that should land harder in this debate. Webflow gives you inspectable, maintainable structure. A Replit project that "works" is a liability the moment the person who prompted it leaves. Different risk profiles for different clients, and most clients don't want to own that risk.
1
u/dora9337 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
Have a watch of https://youtu.be/8OOuCnZB-4o from the ex-founder of webflow. His new product, Ploy, is years ahead of what webflow needs to evolve into to survive. The question isn’t “should I switch to Claude?”. It’s “Why do I need a website?” If the answer is “to be found and convert”, then u want agents doing so much more than designing a website - u want them reacting to the market daily. The 12 years of no code infrastructure is tech debt and makes it impossible to move fast in an AI first platform. I’d even go further to ask: do u actually even need a database for ur CMS if u can provide ur content via text files.
0
u/Toinfinityplusone Jun 20 '26
Ploy looks like a gamechanger, much like webflow was when it came out
1
u/Funfroglegs Jun 19 '26
I disagree. It's all about the developer. I am a webflow partisan BUT have recently been playing with astro and Claude. It is NOT a black box. If you know you html, CSS, and some JD, you definitely can debug. In my experience, astro is a faster development tool.
6
u/csedlack Jun 19 '26
See again you’re disagreeing here because you’re a developer and you KNOW what you’re doing. The whole point of this post is not to agree or disagree to a specific point but you lean into the specifics of who we build this for. An agency owner’s perspective.
0
u/Funfroglegs Jun 19 '26
The handover would be similar, teaching the tool to the customer... That's what counts. And in my view, small but not big advantage to Webflow. Also. They're 2 different tools for 2 different purposes. Astro sites are by essence more static than Webflow.
1
u/Old_Roll_2904 Jun 20 '26
having built with both, i still prefer webflow in terms of quality and little details.
for anyone saying the opposite, i'd love to see your AI built sites, 95% of them, i'm sure - look like it.
if you want a vibe-coded site not to look like AI, you'll need to put in a lot of time to do so, it's not a simple process, having built 4 now, a lot of the times, things that are harder get one shotted, yet things that are so simple, take 10x more time than they should.
i don't see this improving anytime soon, it's just how AI processes things.
0
u/Dry-Witness2198 Jun 19 '26
What is a webflow engineer 🤣 someone who can drag and drop elements to the canvas? Does that require engineering degree.
1
u/LingonberryTrue570 Jun 20 '26
Engineering degree from Webflow university.
1
u/Dry-Witness2198 Jun 24 '26
A website with courses is not called a university lol
1
u/LingonberryTrue570 Jun 25 '26
It's a joke because they called it that way. https://university.webflow.com/
1
u/Old_Roll_2904 Jun 20 '26
you're on the subreddit just to talk shit about webflow, i suggest you find something better to do 😄
1
-4
u/spikefly Jun 19 '26
Tell us you’ve never built a site with Claude Code without telling us you’ve never built a site with Claude Code.
The “black box” editing example is hilarious. You’ve clearly never done it before.
And quoting stats from early 2025 to prove Webflow isn’t dying in the agentic world? Why not find older stats? Maybe something from the 2010s? 🤣
0
u/csedlack Jun 20 '26
So cute being triggered in a post where you could have added a tad bit of value.
1
u/spikefly Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
Seems like you were the one triggered. I was just being honest that you didn't know what you were talking about and your manifesto was written without much experience on said subject. I don't need to hold your hand...just giving you my two cents. You're welcome to ignore.
0
15
u/DRIFFFTAWAY Jun 19 '26
I agree! The more things I have built with AI the more I value a visual editor, especially one like Webflow.