The only way out of this category
Four of the seven platforms in our comparison are one-way doors: build on Wix, Squarespace, Framer or Hostinger and what you built stays there. WordPress.com is portable because it runs WordPress, and Shopify hands back theme files and a product CSV. Webflow is the only one that will give you the front end of the site itself, and it is the reason it holds our specialist pick despite the steepest learning curve here and a price that is not the price.
It scores 7.4 under how we rate.
Two Webflow ladders, and you need both
This is the part that decides whether the entry price means anything, and it is easy to read past.
Site plans carry the site. Basic is $15 a month billed yearly, $180 for twelve months, and is the cheapest that connects a custom domain and removes the Made in Webflow badge. CMS is $300 and is the tier most real sites end up on, because the entry plan has no CMS at all.
Workspace plans carry the people and the tooling. Core is $228 a year, paid on top.
Ecommerce is a third ladder starting at $348 with a two percent transaction fee, which the tiers above it remove.
Add the two you actually need and Webflow stops looking like the mid-table entry it appears to be. A CMS site plan with a workspace on top is $300 plus $228, which is more than Shopify charges for a store.
And no domain is included at any tier, which Wix, WordPress.com and Framer all manage.
What export actually gives you
Now the thing this page is really about.
Code export is on the workspace plans, not the site plan. So a Webflow site you can walk away from costs $180 plus $228, and that is before the CMS tier most sites need.
And what you get for it is partial. Webflow states that dynamic content, meaning CMS items and pages, cannot be exported. You leave with clean semantic HTML and CSS for your static pages. Your blog posts, your product entries, your case studies, everything that lives in the CMS, stays behind.
We are not calling that a scandal. Exporting a CMS is a genuinely hard problem and no other platform here solves it either, mostly by not offering export at all. What we are saying is that "Webflow lets you export your site" is a sentence doing more work than it has earned, and if the exit route is why you are choosing Webflow, price it properly and understand what comes through the door with you.
The learning curve is the product
Webflow does not hide the CSS box model. It puts a visual interface on it, which means learning Webflow is largely learning how the web lays things out.
For a designer that is the whole appeal. You stop fighting a builder's idea of a page and start building the page. For somebody with no web background it is a wall, and there is no template rescue the way there is at Squarespace, because the templates assume you can drive the tool underneath them.
It scores lowest of the seven on usability for that reason, and the score is describing a trade rather than a defect. In return you get a proper CMS, a staging environment, output that is clean and fast, and the largest professional freelancer pool of any platform here except WordPress.
That last point is worth more than it sounds. The reason agencies standardise on Webflow is not the editor, it is that a client site built in Webflow can be handed to somebody else who also knows Webflow. Framer is closing that gap and has not closed it.
The free Starter plan is a webflow.io subdomain that keeps the Made in Webflow badge, two static pages and 1 GB of bandwidth. Like every free plan in this comparison it is a way to try the tool, and unlike Framer's it is small enough that you will hit the edges in an afternoon.
Who should buy it
Designers, agencies and anyone building for clients, and nobody else. Budget the workspace plan from day one rather than discovering it in month three, and take the CMS site plan rather than Basic if the site has any content that repeats, which is most sites.
Two ways to get this wrong. Choosing it on the entry price, which is not what you will pay. And choosing it for the exit route without asking what your CMS content is worth to you, because that is the half that stays behind.
Prices, plan contents and the code export terms on this page were read from the vendor pricing page on .
