The platform a site is built on shapes what it can do for years afterwards: how far the design can go, who can update it and how easily it can grow. I’ve built sites by hand in HTML and CSS, and on content management systems of several kinds. Webflow is one of the main ways I build sites for clients, alongside custom builds, and DesignChief has been a Webflow Certified Partner since April 2022. This is why, and where it fits.
A visual canvas over real code
Webflow is a visual website builder with a content management system (CMS) and hosting built in. You design on a visual canvas, and underneath it writes HTML and CSS with the same structure a developer would write by hand. That’s what sets it apart for me. It respects how websites are actually built, so a designer can work visually without losing control of the result.
It has templates, but its real strength is custom design. Every site I build in it is designed for its own brand rather than adapted from a theme.
Content that repeats, such as articles, projects or team members, lives in CMS collections. Each collection has the fields its content needs, and the pages are designed around those fields, so a new entry takes on the design as soon as it’s added.
A CMS clients actually use
I designed and hand-coded websites before content management systems were standard. When they arrived, the promise was that clients could update their own sites without calling a developer. In my experience, few did. The tools were complicated, there was a lot to learn and people were wary of breaking something, so updates came back to the developer anyway.
Webflow changed that for the clients I work with. Its editor lets people change text and images on the page itself, and add new articles, projects or pages through simple forms that match the content. Because the design lives in the components and the collections, an editor can change the content without touching the layout. My clients update their Webflow sites far more often than they did the CMS sites I built before, and with better results.
Where it fits in how I work
Webflow is flexible about where it comes into a project. It can be the final build of a finished design, or it can come in earlier, for a responsive prototype that’s close to the real thing, or to test how the CMS content should be structured.
Most of my Webflow builds start from Undercoat, DesignChief’s own Webflow starter. It gives every project a consistent structure, reusable components and sensible defaults, so the time goes on the brand-specific design and content rather than rebuilding the basics. Undercoat gives a site a reliable foundation. The design still comes from the brand and the decisions behind it.
What it handles, and where another route fits better
Most of what a brand-led site needs comes as standard: the CMS, forms, hosting and good control over the search basics, such as page titles, descriptions and redirects. Where something isn’t built in, there are integrations with other tools, and custom code can be added to the whole site or to a single page, so a site can go as far as it needs to.
There are trade-offs worth knowing. Webflow styles a site desktop first. The desktop layout is the starting point, and smaller screens adjust it. Many designers would rather start from the phone, and while it doesn’t stop a site working well on every screen, it shapes how the work is done.
Some sites are better built another way. A shop belongs on a dedicated commerce platform, which I connect to the site where it’s needed. A site that works more like an application, or that runs closely with other business systems, can be better as a custom build, and I build those too. As I explain in the Website design guide, the platform should follow from what the site needs.
Why it works for brand-led sites
For a brand-led site, Webflow comes close to the control of hand-coded development while giving clients an editor they’re happy to use. The site that launches is the one that was designed, and the people who run it can keep it up to date themselves. That balance is why it’s a strong choice for many brand-led sites, and why I keep building in it alongside custom builds.