Limitations of Webflow in 2022
Webflow has come a long way since beeing founded in 2013. Starting as a super simple website builder, it’s now the tool of choice for some of the biggest companies and award winning web designers — and there’s definitely a good reason for it.
However, even if it’s regarded as a leader in the no-code movement, there are still quite a few limitations that one should be aware of before deciding to use it.
This article attempts to explain some of the most critical limitations of Webflow as of January 2022.
Please note that I’m not in anyway trying to bash down on Webflow as a product, but instead trying to showcase features that just aren’t implemented yet, and/or should be improved.
This could hopefully save you or your company some time if you’re unsure wether to start using Webflow as your tool of choice.
All listed limitations are sourced by my own experience as an avid user of Webflow for the past 3–4 years, as well as common complaints found online.
Please note that this article features a few affiliate links that will give me a small commission for each Webflow subscription sold. I will however not try to “sell” you on Webflow, and will keep everything as non-biased as possible.
Support for multilingual websites
This is probably the most requested feature that hasn’t been implemented yet— being able to create multilingual websites (multi language websites).
While researching this missing feature, you might notice that it’s the most popular request on Webflow’s official wishlist. It was requested all the way back in 2017, and has since then been tagged as “reviewed”, whatever that means.
As of August 2021, a reply from “Admin” explains that it’s currently “being planned”, but more information surrounding this can’t be found.
Being able to build websites that features multiple languages is essential for quite a few developers around the world, since dual- or even triple language sites are very commonly requested by clients.
Current solutions
Since no “official” native solution exists, many developers have turned to third party solutions, or really hacky solutions inside Webflow. Both of these are not optimal for SEO purposes, as well as for client ease-of-use.
On top of that, using third party solutions will make the price tag of maintaining your websites even higher than the already quite pricey solution that is Webflow.
Read more about multilinguality in Webflow
https://blog.weglot.com/webflow-tutorial-multilingual
GDPR compliance & cookie management
Ever since the new laws surrounding user data were approved by the EU, there has been a lot of talk about how developers can stay compliant.
According to this forum thread, any user data collected (by forms or otherwise) has to be correctly taken care of.
I’ll be honest, the laws are quite confusing and it’s hard to know exactly what to do in order to stay 100% compliant, especially using a closed off tool such as Webflow in which you can’t be certain where the user’s data might end up.
Is it okay if Webflow’s CDN servers are located in the US? Where is form data being sent? Does Webflow keep track of visitors IP adresses?
While I can’t offer a complete solution to this, feel free to further read about how to stay compliant.
And if you’re using any third party tool that might use cookies (like Google Analytics etc.), Finsweet has developed the perfect cookie consent tool for you to use in Webflow.
The CMS
Webflow’s CMS is probably the cleanest way I’ve experienced of working with various types of content on websites. It’s easy to use and super customizable.
With that said, there are still some features missing that definitely would further improve it.
No “real” pagination
With “real pagination”, I mean pagination of content that shows each page in numbers. Right now, we’re stuck with only “next” and “previous” button components.
Strange rich text components
When developing any type of collection page (pages based on content in a CMS collection), we’re often times using a “rich text” element.
This element uses pre-defined styles of headers, text and images for all rendered elements, without any possible way of customizing its styles on specific pages.
Content writing inside the designer
When writing content for the Webflow CMS, you’re most likely using Webflow’s editor — which is great.
However, if you for some reason decide to write content for the CMS inside the designer, it’s a terrible experience. It may look something like this.
Not very beautiful.
Read more about these (missing) features
https://www.finsweet.com/sweet-text/webflow-rich-text-multiple-content-styles-in-cms
Working with dynamic data (API’s etc.)
Imagine you want to display the current weather in your city on your website. In order to do this, you would need to fetch the current weather data from somewhere. This is most commonly done using a rest API.
These API’s often requires some type of authorization, probably an API key. This key should be hidden, since others might abuse if if accessed freely.
Usually when developing websites and web applications manually, you would use something called ENV variables — hidden variables that only you as a developer knows the content of. These are accessed on the server side.
However, since Webflow only allows for custom client side (front-end) code, this isn’t possible. Instead, you basically have no choice but to expose your sensitive variables in the front-end code.
Current solutions
There are however a couple of solutions that developers currently are using to battle this problem:
- Using third party no-code tools such as Zapier
- Programming your own API-wrappers that are able to run server side code
- Pushing data into your CMS collection through Webflow’s API
As usual when working with no-code tools, Zapier definitely makes things like these really easy to do. However, it’s a quite pricey tool and will once again cost you a monthly fee that increases as your websites’ traffic increases.
If you’re a programmer, feel free to follow my guide in which I show you how you can program your own API-wrapper and deploy them through a firebase function. While this solution works, it’s still not able to defend against others accessing possible sensitive data (it just hides your API keys).
Mobile first development
Ever since smartphones got popular, some developers have preferred to work in a mobile-first approach. This means starting off developing designs through a mobile breakpoint instead of a desktop breakpoint.
Unfortunately Webflow doesn’t allow us to do that. It follows a set pattern that starts with the main desktop breakpoint, from which all other breakpoints inherits their styles.
Read more about mobile first development in Webflow
https://discourse.webflow.com/t/is-mobile-first-design-possible-in-webflow-yes/60703/2
Private cloneables
When sharing a Webflow project with other users, you currently have two options:
- Transfer a copy of the project directly to another Webflow user manually
- Make the project public, allowing all other Webflow users to clone and use it under a non-changeable open license
So what happens if you have a template or component that you‘d only like to share with a specific group of people such as your agency or team?
Well, you can’t. And that’s a problem.
If you would like to see this feature being implemented, feel free to upvote my current wishlist request for private cloneables.
https://wishlist.webflow.com/ideas/WEBFLOW-I-4437
Audio & other file types
Webflow allows for quite a few asset file types, while some seem to have been forgotten. The missing file types are mainly audio files (mp3, wav) and newer image file types such as webP.
In order to use audio files in Webflow, you would have to host them elsewhere. Dropbox & Google Drive are possible current solutions.
https://wishlist.webflow.com/ideas/WEBFLOW-I-1042
Hidden assets
There has been talk of developers wanting to develop sites that features hidden files & assets (for example PDF ebooks). These are of course supposed to be hidden and not accessed by unauthorized users.
However, a few users have reported that all assets uploaded through Webflow have been indexed by Google through their assigned CDN URL, only to be exposed to anyone curious enough to do a quick Google search.
This means that it’s definitely not safe to upload any kind of sensitive files in Webflow at the moment.
https://discourse.webflow.com/t/prevent-webflow-content-from-being-indexed/111577
The infamous code editor
Anyone who write custom code inside the Webflow designer probably agrees with this point — the code editor featured in the designer is just not good.
If you’re used to clear color coding, smooth intendations and maybe code suggestions, you will be very frustrated when using it.
My workaround is usually to write my code inside my chosen IDE (VSCode), only to copy & paste it into the designer, publish the page and watch the changes in action.
Symbols / components
If you’re a front-end developer using any of the common Javascript frameworks, a Webflow symbol is basically a reusable component. These are commonly used for headers, footers and any kind of common section.
So what’s the problem? Well, let me give you an example.
Let’s say you’re creating a navigation bar with a transparent background and white colored links that sits on a dark hero section on your front page.
What if you want to reuse this component on another page that has a white hero section?
Well, the obvious answer would be for you to be able to set some kind of dynamic variables for the symbol’s background color. But you can’t.
Instead you have to unlink the symbol, change its background color and transform it into a new symbol, cluttering your symbols navigator with duplicates of slightly modified symbols.
There are however a feature called overrides that’s meant to be used in cases like these. However, none of these overrides allows you to change a symbols styling.
https://university.webflow.com/lesson/symbols
Ecommerce functionality
I’ll be honest, I’m definitely not an ecommerce developer and haven’t used the ecommerce features more than just testing them out.
I have however researched them a bit. And there’s complaints. A lot of complaints.
Some users suggests not using the ecommerce features yet, and instead just sticking to other platforms such as Shopify. They feel like there’s so many missing features that the whole system isn’t ready for production use yet.
I can’t confirm or deny this, but you should definitely take a minute to read about this limitation.
https://discourse.webflow.com/c/design-help/ecommerce/41
Forms & email settings
A really strange thing about collecting form submission in Webflow is that you’re only able to use one specific email address to collect data from all forms on a website.
These submissions are however accessible through your websites project settings, but the table used to display the data is hardly readable for larger forms.
There are however third party solutions to this limitation as well, most commonly solved in a traditional no-code way using Zapier.
I have however also written another guide on how you’re able to program your own form submission API hosted inside a Firebase cloud function, which can be further developed to catch form submissions and send them out to separate email addresses.
https://university.webflow.com/integrations/zapier
Conclusion
So there it is. Some of the most critical limitations of Webflow as of January 2022.
If you’re new to Webflow, make absolutely sure that it supports whatever project you’re about to develop. Most of the missing features have workarounds, but these depend on the budget and/or programming skills you and/or your client has.
Thanks for reading.
/Robin G. 🤙
