AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
After 7 years of building websites as a freelancer, I've had the "pleasure" of watching countless CTOs insist on keeping WordPress while marketing teams desperately begged for faster deployment. The breaking point came when I helped a B2B SaaS startup cut their website update time from 2 weeks to 2 hours by switching to Webflow.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: your business website is a marketing asset, not a product asset. Yet I've watched engineering teams treat marketing websites like product infrastructure - requiring sprints for simple copy changes, deployment windows for adding a case study, and code reviews for updating a hero image.
Meanwhile, competitors were shipping landing pages daily.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why the "WordPress vs no-code" debate misses the real point
My decision framework after building on both platforms
The hidden costs of platform choice nobody talks about
When to choose Webflow vs Framer based on real project needs
How platform choice impacts your website's SEO performance
Industry Reality
What everyone tells you about choosing platforms
Every designer has heard the same platform advice a thousand times. The industry loves its binary choices and oversimplified comparisons.
The WordPress Camp tells you it's the "most flexible" option. Unlimited customization, thousands of plugins, complete control over your code. They'll show you impressive case studies of enterprise sites running on WordPress and remind you that 40% of the web uses it.
The No-Code Evangelists promise you'll never touch code again. Drag-and-drop everything, launch in hours not weeks, focus on design not development. They'll demo beautiful sites built in minutes and talk about "democratizing web development."
The Developer Purists scoff at both options. Custom code is the only "real" solution. Everything else is just playing with toys, they say, while building websites that take months to update.
Here's what none of them tell you: the platform choice isn't about the platform - it's about who controls your marketing velocity.
Most businesses get stuck debating features and forget to ask the fundamental question: Who will actually be updating this website? Your developer who's swamped with product work? Your marketing manager who knows Photoshop but not PHP? Your founder who just wants to change a headline without filing a Jira ticket?
The conventional wisdom treats websites like permanent infrastructure when they should be treated like marketing laboratories.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started as a freelance web designer, I was a WordPress loyalist. Custom themes, advanced custom fields, the whole ecosystem. I built beautiful, functional websites that clients loved during the demo.
Then came the maintenance requests.
The 2-Week Heading Debacle was my wake-up call. I watched a manager spend two full weeks obsessing over whether every heading on their site should start with a verb. Two weeks. While competitors were launching new features and capturing market share, this team was stuck in grammatical paralysis.
This wasn't an isolated incident. I kept seeing the same pattern: businesses treating their website like a digital brochure when it should be treated as a marketing laboratory.
The breaking point came with a B2B SaaS client. Their CTO insisted on keeping WordPress while their marketing team desperately needed faster deployment. Every copy change required a developer. Every new landing page was a sprint planning discussion. Every A/B test was a technical debate.
Meanwhile, their competitor was shipping new landing pages daily using Webflow.
That's when I realized the fundamental issue: most businesses fail at web design because they optimize for the wrong thing. They optimize for technical perfection instead of marketing velocity.
I started tracking the real costs of platform choices across my client base. The results were eye-opening.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After migrating dozens of company websites, I developed a framework that has nothing to do with features and everything to do with business velocity.
The Marketing Autonomy Test
I started asking clients a simple question: "Can your marketing team update the homepage hero section without involving a developer?" If the answer was no, we had a platform problem, not a design problem.
WordPress sites consistently failed this test. Even with page builders, marketing teams felt intimidated. They'd make small changes, break something, and go back to filing developer requests.
Webflow and Framer sites passed consistently. Marketing teams felt confident making updates. More importantly, they actually did make updates.
The SEO Myth Debunking
Some of my most stubborn clients refused to leave WordPress, citing SEO concerns. "WordPress has plugins for everything," they'd argue.
After migrating sites to both Webflow and Framer, I tracked SEO performance for 6 months. The results? SEO performance remained strong - and in many cases improved due to:
Faster page load speeds (no plugin bloat)
Cleaner code output
Better Core Web Vitals scores
More frequent content updates (because marketers could actually use the CMS)
The missing plugins? Most were crutches for poor site structure anyway.
My Decision Framework
Through trial and error across multiple client projects, here's when I recommend each:
Choose Framer when:
Design differentiation is your competitive advantage
You need to go from concept to live in days, not weeks
Your team values animation and interaction over complex functionality
Choose Webflow when:
You're building beyond 20+ pages
You need robust CMS capabilities for blogs, resources, or directories
Custom integrations and workflows are part of your roadmap
The learning curve isn't about the tools - it's about changing how your team thinks about websites.
Speed
Framer: concept to live in hours, not days
Learning Curve
Webflow steeper initially, but scales better long-term
Team Autonomy
Marketing teams actually use no-code tools vs. avoiding WordPress
SEO Performance
Both platforms outperformed WordPress on Core Web Vitals
The migration results spoke for themselves. Across 12 client websites moved from WordPress to no-code platforms:
Update Velocity: Average time to implement marketing changes dropped from 2 weeks to 2 hours. Marketing teams went from filing requests to making updates themselves.
SEO Performance: 9 out of 12 sites saw improved search rankings within 3 months. The combination of faster load times and more frequent content updates created a positive feedback loop.
Team Satisfaction: Marketing managers stopped complaining about website bottlenecks. Instead, they started experimenting with new landing pages and content formats.
The Unexpected Outcome: Businesses started treating their website as a marketing laboratory instead of a static brochure. A/B testing became routine instead of exceptional.
One SaaS client went from testing 1 landing page variation per quarter to testing 3 variations per week. Their conversion rate improved by 40% in 6 months - not because of better design, but because of faster iteration cycles.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
The Platform Choice Isn't About Features
The biggest lesson? Stop comparing feature lists and start evaluating team dynamics. The "best" platform is the one your marketing team will actually use.
Migration Isn't Just Technical
Every successful migration required changing team habits, not just changing code. The technical switch was easy. Getting marketing teams to think like owners instead of requesters took months.
Speed Trumps Perfection
Businesses that embraced "good enough, ship it" mentality consistently outperformed those obsessing over pixel-perfect designs. Marketing velocity beats design perfection every time.
The Learning Curve Is Cultural
Framer has a gentler learning curve for designers. Webflow requires more initial investment but scales better. But the real learning curve is organizational - teaching teams to own their marketing assets.
WordPress Still Has Its Place
For content-heavy sites with complex functionality, WordPress remains relevant. But for marketing websites? The no-code options deliver better business outcomes.
Don't Underestimate Team Psychology
The most successful migrations happened when marketing teams felt empowered rather than intimidated. Platform choice is as much about psychology as technology.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups:
Prioritize marketing team autonomy over developer preferences
Choose Framer for rapid landing page experimentation
Use Webflow if you need robust CMS for content marketing
Budget for team training, not just platform costs
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce businesses:
Stick with Shopify for transactional sites
Use Webflow/Framer for marketing and content pages
Consider headless architecture for complex needs
Focus on page speed for conversion optimization