Webflow's pitch is compelling: build a professional site without writing code, launch in days, let your marketing team edit content without filing tickets. For a lot of companies, that pitch is completely true.
Then year two arrives.
The sticker price is €23–€39/month (Business plan). What you don't see upfront:
Licensing stack at scale:
A Series A company using Webflow seriously pays €150–€500/month just in platform fees. Over three years that's €5,400–€18,000 — before any developer touches the site.
Compare that to a custom Next.js site hosted on Vercel: €20–€50/month in hosting, one-time build cost, zero platform lock-in.
The promise: your marketing team edits content without involving developers.
The reality: they can edit text in CMS items. But changing the layout of a section? Adding a new page type? Changing the hero animation? That requires someone with Webflow Designer access and training.
Non-developers can maintain content. They cannot maintain design. The moment your marketing team needs something that isn't a text swap, you're back to paying a Webflow specialist.
Custom code requires a developer too — but you're not also paying €40–€300/month for the privilege of needing one.
We've worked with founders who chose Webflow for good reasons and hit the same walls:
The animation ceiling. Webflow's Interactions panel covers 80% of scroll animations. The remaining 20% — parallax effects, canvas animations, complex SVG sequences — require custom code injected into the page. At that point you're paying for Webflow hosting and a developer.
The API ceiling. Webflow's CMS is not a backend. You can fetch content via their API, but any custom data logic — user-specific content, real-time pricing, personalised pages — requires middleware or a complete backend. Now you have two systems to maintain.
The migration ceiling. This is the one nobody talks about. When you outgrow Webflow — and most companies that grow do — your content, images, and structure don't export cleanly. Webflow's export is static HTML/CSS, not structured content. You're not migrating; you're rewriting.
Custom code has its own failure modes. A poorly scoped custom project delivers late, over-budget, and under-tested. A Webflow site launched in two weeks beats a half-finished Next.js build every time.
Custom code is the wrong call when:
For clients who need Webflow's editorial speed but can't accept its ceilings, we build a hybrid: Webflow for content management (acting as a headless CMS), custom Next.js for the frontend.
You get:
The trade-off: higher upfront cost (we're building two systems that talk to each other). Worth it for companies who are going to be running this site for three or more years.
| If... | Choose |
|---|---|
| You're pre-revenue and need to launch this week | Webflow |
| Your marketing team is non-technical | Webflow (accept the limitations) |
| You need A/B testing on a budget | Webflow |
| You're planning to grow the site significantly | Custom code |
| You have custom UI requirements | Custom code |
| You need >2 languages with custom routing | Custom code |
| You're building anything adjacent to a product | Custom code |
| You want to own the infrastructure | Custom code |
When a client asks us for a "simple" marketing site, our first question is: what does simple mean in 18 months?
If the answer is "still five static pages," Webflow is fine. If the answer involves blog posts, landing page variations, country-specific content, or any dynamic user data — we build custom. The one-time premium pays for itself within 18 months in avoided platform fees and avoided rewrites.
We don't have a Webflow partnership. We don't make money on Webflow subscriptions. When we recommend it, we mean it.
Already on Webflow and thinking about migrating? Start a conversation — we'll tell you honestly whether a migration makes sense for your situation and what it would cost.
We take on a small number of projects each quarter. Tell us what you're building.