We have always struggled with Squarespace, Wix, et al. They are restrictive to our design methodology and have serious accessibility and performance problems. The code they produce and send to the user can be dramatically complex and difficult to read.

In recent years, Webflow has emerged as a premier site-builder tool, and it works much better with Cantilever’s development methodology. It is a much more advanced and robust tool – harder for novices, but better for experts like us. It is now a firm favorite in our growing toolkit of no-code software. For more information please check out Cantilever’s No-Code Approach

For starters, when building a Webflow site, we have full access to the HTML markup. We are in control of what is delivered to the user. Webflow acts like a GUI for writing code more than an abstraction layer on top if it, so engineers familiar with CSS and HTML principles can execute most of the strategies they would have wanted to use in a custom build. It also allows us to set ARIA roles, custom attributes, and so on.

Webflow has a clean, simple CMS we can install so that admins can configure content easily, and non-technical users can indeed hop into the templates and make simple changes themselves, with a little bit of training. It also has a barebones eCommerce package you can add to a site to support simple transactions.

Most importantly, Webflow can be used either to build a site from scratch, or with a theme. The themes available are pretty decent looking, and can be huge time savers for clients with especially tight budgets. They are likely to have accessibility problems which we must solve. But unlike with Squarespace templates, we have full control to nuke components and build new things from scratch.

Webflow is far from perfect and can feel frustrating to engineers who are used to building things from scratch. However, for small businesses who want a robust but simple site, it’s a great option.

We have only just started our Webflow practice and look forward to evolving it as we build our portfolio. As we get better and better at taking advantage of its features and the efficiencies of using it, we will start to build more and more robust sites on it, integrating even more other tools to create fantastic custom software for clients in much less time than would have previously been required.

Some Webflow Sites We’ve Done

Webflow Resources