Why We Moved to Webflow After 7 Years of Using WordPress

After seven years of navigating the complexities and challenges of WordPress, our team embarked on a pivotal shift towards a more streamlined, dynamic, and visually engaging web development platform: Webflow.

Our approach has always been to focus on quality rather than quantity. While WordPress was a great platform to start with, as we grew, we learned the various pros and cons for us as an agency and for our clients.

This change from WordPress to Webflow is a strategic decision to provide our clients with more premium, secure websites with almost zero maintenance costs.

Our Evolution from WordPress to Webflow

Our journey with WordPress provided us with a strong foundation in digital creativity. Over the years, we have created an impressive portfolio of websites, each carefully designed to meet the specific needs of our clients.

The flexibility offered by WordPress's wide range of plugins and themes enabled us to experiment and innovate, allowing us to select the best plugins to improve our websites, making them more engaging and user-friendly. Our commitment to excellence has resulted in stunning, efficient websites that have consistently surpassed our clients' expectations.

At the core of our approach is putting our clients first. The same flexibility that made WordPress popular is also one of its weaknesses, creating a need for regular website maintenance, additional security, etc. We began searching for a platform that provided superior functionality, security, and ease of use.

Wouldn't it be amazing if there was a platform which doesn't require any maintenance? A platform where you don't have to worry about security?

Introducing Webflow....

Webflow offers an unprecedented level of flexibility and control, enabling us to create highly customised websites that truly reflect our clients' individuality, without the dependency on numerous third-party plugins and the hassle of constant updates.

This means not only reduced maintenance costs for our clients but also a more secure, reliable, and efficient online environment. Choosing Webflow allows us to give our clients the assurance that their digital assets are in good hands, ready for future growth.

Webflow's Enhanced Security

Using WordPress for website development often means relying heavily on third-party plugins to add functionality. These plugins can be useful, but they also bring potential security risks.

If a plugin isn't regularly updated or maintained, it can become a weak spot for hackers. The more plugins a website has, the greater the risk of being hacked, as outdated or poorly developed plugins are easy targets.

It's crucial to keep up with regular updates and security checks to reduce these risks, but the threat from using many plugins never fully goes away.

In contrast, Webflow offers a more secure approach by reducing the need for third-party plugins. Its built-in features and tools provide most of the functionality websites need, from animations to eCommerce, in a single, managed environment. This not only makes the development process smoother but also strengthens security.

As a result, our clients feel more secure, knowing their websites are less exposed to common security threats. This assurance allows business owners to concentrate on growing their businesses without worrying about website security.

Having discussed security, let's now turn our attention to website maintenance.

Simplifying Website Maintenance with Webflow

Understanding the issues our clients faced with WordPress, like constant updates and vulnerabilities from third-party plugins, this has created a need for regular website maintenance.

We offer a bespoke website maintenance service to ease these issues, specifically for managing WordPress websites with minimal effort from our clients. Our service includes regular updates, daily backups, security checks, and troubleshooting to keep websites running smoothly, secure, and up-to-date.

Whilst this is great for us since it helped us streamline our services, it creates an additional service that our clients feel the need to purchase. It's NOT required, but it's HIGHLY recommended.

In our effort to bring real value to our clients whilst sacrificing our own recurring revenue, we've started looking for better solutions.

With Webflow, we found that it significantly cuts, if not eliminates, these costs compared to traditional platforms. By moving our clients’ websites to Webflow, we've focused on saving them money rather than earning from website maintenance.

With Webflow's features and automatic updates, our clients now save over £1000 annually on maintenance fees they would pay with a WordPress website.

Having discussed the aspects of website maintenance and security, let's now examine the impact on website design.

Achieving Premium Design with Webflow

WordPress has long been a go-to platform for many due to its flexibility and the vast ecosystem of themes and plugins it offers. However, over time, we've observed its limitations, particularly when it comes to creating more complex and premium designs.

The necessity for third-party plugins to extend functionality or aesthetics often leads to bloated and slow websites. Additionally, WordPress' block-style design approach, while intuitive for basic layouts, falls short in allowing the seamless creation of sophisticated and custom designs. These challenges have prompted us to seek more efficient and innovative solutions for our client's web design needs.

Webflow emerges as a powerful ally in this scenario, granting us the full flexibility needed to craft more complex designs. It allows for the introduction of complex animations and interactions directly within the design process, without the need for extensive custom coding or reliance on numerous plugins. This capability not only streamlines the development process but significantly enriches the user experience.

By using Webflow, we design & develop websites to help our clients stand out against the competition, delivering unique value and a more premium online presence. This allows them to win more clients and accelerate their business growth.

This method not only improves the website's look but also its functionality, offering a smooth and engaging experience for visitors. Webflow allows us to achieve top-notch design results without heavily depending on third-party extensions.

But how will the client manage the website? Will they be able to edit it? Let's examine this.

Webflow’s User-Friendly Editor Mode

This feature is a big change from the complicated setups you might run into with sites like WordPress. With WordPress, you have tons of options to change things, but it can get really confusing and overwhelming, especially if you just want to update your content. There's also a risk you might mess up your site’s look or structure by accident, which can worry a lot of people.

On the other hand, Webflow's Editor Mode is super simple and safe. It lets clients easily change text or swap pictures without messing up the site’s design or how it works. This means they can keep their site looking good and working well without stressing about making mistakes.

We know it's important to not only give our clients the tools they need but also help them feel confident using them. That's why with every website we build, we also offer our clients a Website Training session.

Webflow combines flexibility and a strong platform with a user-friendly editor. This means our clients can quickly update their online stuff without worrying about technical problems.

Conclusion

In conclusion, focusing on security, website maintenance, and allowing us to push the web design bunderies by creating more premium websites, we find Webflow to be the best choice for our clients. It's not just the simplicity of updates or the clean design options; it's about providing a secure, dependable online space.

If you have a WordPress website and want to transition to Webflow, we can help. We also provide Pay Monthly Website packages, to make websites more affordable. So, if you're currently paying for website maintenance, that could easily cover a big chunk of a monthly instalment for a new website.