Why I no longer recommend Webflow or WordPress to small businesses

“All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong.”
— Stewart Brand, 1994

“Do you do WordPress or Webflow?” The question often comes up in the first few minutes of a call, sometimes before we've even talked about the business. It's a fair one: you've heard about one from a friend, about the other from an article, and you want to know which camp you're stepping into. For a long time, I'd have answered Webflow without a second thought, certified partner badge and all.

The problem is that choosing a platform commits you for years. It decides who can edit a piece of text without help, what every change will cost, and what you can take with you the day you want to switch providers.

I'm still a certified Webflow partner, and yet I now build almost exclusively on Astro and Sanity. It's not a contradiction, it's an adaptation: AI-assisted development has changed the maths for small businesses, and my answer has changed with it.

Webflow or WordPress, which should a small business choose today?

For years, the honest answer was a trade-off. WordPress offered a huge ecosystem, at the cost of plugins to maintain. Webflow offered a visual editor and managed hosting, at the cost of depending on its platform. A custom site offered complete freedom, at the cost of a developer for every structural change.

Custom was too expensive to evolve

That last cost is what tipped the balance. For a small business whose team doesn't code, every new section or new page type went through a developer, with a quote and a lead time. Webflow avoided that dependency at the price of another, and it's worth asking what you really own when your site lives with a third party : the code, the content, the domain, or just a subscription.

That calculation has changed. I work every day with Claude Code and Cursor, agents that write code from my instructions. A structural change that used to justify a quote is now handled much faster, and the cost that made Webflow indispensable has dropped sharply.

A provider recommends what they can deliver

Still, be wary of a provider who swears by a single tool, me included. An agency that works with only one platform will recommend it whatever your project, because it's the only one it knows how to deliver. Always ask why this tool, and who it wouldn't suit. My answer comes down to the three steps that follow.

Give your team an editor, not a design tool

The first question isn't technical. Who on your team will post a news item, adjust a price or add a project? In a small business, it's rarely a designer. It's someone who wants a text field and a “Publish” button, without being able to break anything along the way.

Separate content from layout

That's exactly what Sanity does: your team fills in fields designed for each type of content, and the layout stays protected in the code. Webflow's visual editor, by contrast, hands over control of the page structure itself. That's a strength for a team that builds its own pages, and a complication for one that only wants to publish.

So Webflow still makes perfect sense for a large company, with a marketing team that builds its own campaign pages. I've delivered several projects on Webflow, from a Lausanne branding agency to a Munich construction-management company. For a small business that posts a few news items and occasionally adjusts a price, it's often more tool than the job needs.

List what your site will need to do in three years

The second question looks beyond launch. Three languages? Hundreds of pages generated from data? A connection to your CRM, a booking tool, a catalogue? Every foreseeable need weighs on the choice, because changing foundations midway means rebuilding.

Choose a foundation that follows your needs

My own site is a case in point. Three languages, city pages produced from data files, schemas generated by script for every article, more than 170 redirects managed in a single file: that's the kind of logic a custom foundation like Astro, with Sanity for content, handles without contortions.

For a small business, the same architecture still means going through a developer to change the structure. The difference is that this step no longer costs what it used to: with AI agents, adding a language or a page type goes much faster than before, and the content stays in your team's hands.

My clients in Valais trace this shift. A photographer in Sierre moved from a WordPress theme to Webflow; Sierretakeuil, Sierre's integration platform, relies on Sanity for its content; Baobab Energy, which started from a Wix template, went through Webflow before migrating to Astro and Sanity. Its journey sums up mine quite well.

Price the maintenance before you price the launch

The third question is the one asked least: what will this site cost in two years? Not the hosting, which you can read off an invoice, but the updates, the security patches, the plugins that have become incompatible and the hours spent working out why the form no longer works.

Rule out WordPress for any new site

That's why I no longer build any site on WordPress, and I won't. Its ecosystem is huge, but every plugin is one more part to update, monitor and replace the day its author abandons it. For a small business without a technical team, it's a debt that grows quietly.

Webflow takes care of updates, but you pay for that in other ways: a platform subscription, features designed for larger teams, and a site you can't move without effort. An Astro site, on the other hand, serves ready-made pages, with no plugins to update, and Sanity hosts the content.

Let's be honest about the downside: on a custom foundation, you depend on a developer for the structure, whether that's me or someone else. And if your current site already runs on a stack nobody dares update, a well-prepared redesign with migration , redirects included, can cost less than the years of patching that lie ahead.

My answer changed with the tools, not the questions I ask

These three questions (who edits, what needs to evolve, what maintenance costs) are the same as a few years ago. It's the answers that have moved, because AI agents have knocked down the main argument against custom builds for a small business: the cost of each change.

Own your site, whatever the tool

Whatever you choose, one rule doesn't change: you must own your site. In practice, it comes down to three things:

• the domain name in your name;
• admin access to the CMS and the code repository;
• documentation so another provider can take over.

That's the foundation of any honest web development , and it's what makes your dependence on me reversible.

It's also why I make this recommendation in the first week, before you've paid anything. If your project belongs to a large team that really needs Webflow, or if I'm not the right person for it, better to know before the quote than after the mockup.

Ready to choose a foundation built for your business, not for the tool?

I didn't change my mind out of weariness, but because the tools have changed what a small business can afford. Webflow remains an excellent tool for those who need it, WordPress is no longer a choice I defend, and custom is no longer a luxury. The right choice is the one you'll still be able to defend in three years.

👉 Torn between several platforms for your next site? Contact me