AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
I once 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. Throughout my freelance career building landing pages for SaaS and ecommerce businesses, I've seen this pattern repeatedly: managers focusing on the wrong priorities while their conversion rates stagnate.
After 7 years and countless platform migrations, I've learned that your website isn't just a presence—it's a marketing laboratory. Yet most teams get stuck in endless debates about copy tweaks while ignoring the fundamental infrastructure that enables rapid testing.
The truth? Your platform choice determines whether your marketing team can iterate at startup speed or wait weeks for developer intervention. Through dozens of client projects, I've discovered the real differences between website platforms that matter for business growth.
Here's what you'll learn from my platform battles:
Why the "best" platform depends entirely on your team structure
The hidden costs that kill marketing velocity
My decision framework after testing both platforms extensively
When to choose each platform (and when to avoid both)
Real migration results from actual client projects
Traditional wisdom
What every agency has already heard
Walk into any design agency and you'll hear the same platform debates. The industry has settled on familiar talking points that sound logical but miss the real business impact.
The Design-First Argument: "Framer gives us unlimited creative freedom. We can build exactly what we envision without platform constraints." This sounds compelling until you realize most businesses don't need unlimited creativity—they need results.
The CMS Power Play: "Webflow's CMS is enterprise-grade. You can manage thousands of pages with complex relationships." True, but most marketing sites have 20 pages max. You're paying for capabilities you'll never use.
The Learning Curve Logic: "Framer is easier for designers to pick up because it feels like Figma." This ignores the critical question: who's actually maintaining the site after launch?
The Performance Promises: Both platforms claim superior speed and SEO capabilities. In practice, these differences are negligible compared to content strategy and user experience decisions.
These conventional comparisons treat websites like digital art projects. They focus on capabilities and features while ignoring the human systems that make websites successful. The real question isn't what each platform can do—it's what your team can actually execute with them.
This surface-level analysis leads to expensive mistakes. Teams choose platforms based on demo presentations rather than understanding how these tools fit into their actual workflows and growth strategies.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The breakthrough moment came during a particularly frustrating client project. A B2B SaaS startup had hired me to help them increase their website update velocity. They were losing opportunities because competitors were shipping landing pages faster.
Their setup was classic agency overkill: a beautiful custom WordPress site that required developer intervention for every change. The marketing team would submit tickets for simple copy updates, wait two weeks for deployment, then discover the changes didn't perform as expected. By the time they could iterate, the campaign window had closed.
My first instinct was WordPress optimization—better workflow, staging environments, more efficient handoffs. But after mapping their actual process, I realized we were solving the wrong problem.
The issue wasn't technical efficiency. It was organizational ownership. The marketing team needed direct control over their primary tool, not a more efficient way to submit requests to developers.
This led me to experiment with no-code solutions. I started with Webflow because of its CMS reputation, then discovered Framer when working with design-heavy clients. What I found challenged everything I thought I knew about platform selection.
The conventional wisdom focuses on platform capabilities. But after migrating dozens of sites, I discovered that platform choice is actually a team structure decision disguised as a technical decision.
The real differentiator wasn't features—it was which platform aligned with how teams actually work and who owns website success in the organization.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Through multiple client migrations and extensive testing, I developed a framework that prioritizes team dynamics over technical specifications. Here's the systematic approach I now use for platform selection:
Step 1: Audit Your Team Reality
I start every project by mapping who actually touches the website. Not the org chart version—the reality version. Marketing teams that claim they "just need basic edits" often require complex landing page variations for different campaigns. Design teams that want "creative freedom" sometimes lack the time for ongoing maintenance.
Step 2: The Velocity Test
I run a simple exercise: How quickly can your team ship a new landing page from concept to live? If the answer involves multiple departments and takes more than a week, you have a velocity problem that platform choice can solve.
Step 3: The Framer Decision Tree
Choose Framer when design differentiation is your competitive advantage. I recommend it for agencies, design-forward SaaS companies, and businesses where visual storytelling drives conversions. The learning curve is real, but manageable if you have dedicated design resources.
The sweet spot: Companies that need to go from concept to live in days, not weeks. Framer excels when you're testing bold creative concepts and need rapid iteration cycles.
Step 4: The Webflow Framework
Choose Webflow when you're building beyond 20+ pages and need robust content management. I use it for content-heavy sites, resource libraries, and businesses that treat their website as a comprehensive information hub.
The key insight: Webflow's strength isn't just CMS capability—it's creating sustainable systems that scale without breaking. Perfect for businesses that view their website as long-term infrastructure rather than a testing playground.
Step 5: Migration Execution
For actual migrations, I follow a specific sequence: content audit, team training, staged migration, and velocity measurement. The goal isn't just moving content—it's proving improved business outcomes within 90 days.
Team Structure
Map who actually owns website success in your organization, not the official hierarchy
Migration ROI
Measure velocity improvements and business outcomes, not just technical capabilities
Design Investment
Framer requires ongoing design resources; Webflow needs systems thinking
Platform Longevity
Choose based on 2-year team growth plans, not current technical requirements
The results speak for themselves. After implementing this framework across multiple client projects, the patterns became clear:
Velocity Improvements: Teams switching to the right platform consistently reduced their page shipping time from 2+ weeks to 2-5 days. This wasn't just efficiency—it enabled entire new marketing strategies that relied on rapid testing.
Team Ownership: The most successful migrations happened when we aligned platform capabilities with team strengths. Design-heavy teams thrived with Framer's flexibility. Systems-oriented teams leveraged Webflow's structure for scale.
Business Impact: One B2B SaaS client increased their landing page conversion rate by 40% simply because they could test variations fast enough to find what worked. The platform didn't make them better marketers—it removed the friction that prevented good marketing.
Unexpected Outcomes: The biggest surprise was how platform choice affected team confidence. When marketers could execute their ideas directly, they became more experimental and data-driven. When designers had proper creative tools, they pushed boundaries that improved brand perception.
These weren't just technical wins—they were organizational transformations that happened because we matched tools to actual human workflows.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After 7 years of platform migrations, here are the lessons that matter:
Team structure beats technical features every time. The "best" platform is the one your team will actually use effectively, not the one with the most impressive demo.
Velocity is a competitive advantage. In fast-moving markets, the ability to ship and iterate quickly often matters more than perfect execution.
Platform choice is reversible. Don't get paralyzed by the decision. Most content can be migrated if you choose wrong—but velocity lost to indecision can't be recovered.
Training investment is non-negotiable. Both platforms require real learning time. Budget for proper onboarding or your migration will fail regardless of platform choice.
SEO differences are overblown. Both platforms can perform well technically. Your content strategy and execution matter far more than platform SEO capabilities.
Future team growth should guide decisions. Choose based on where your team will be in 2 years, not where they are today.
Migration timing affects adoption. Launch during slower periods when teams can focus on learning new workflows without campaign pressure.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies looking to implement this approach:
Audit your current page shipping velocity and identify bottlenecks
Choose Framer if design differentiation drives conversions
Choose Webflow for content-heavy sites with multiple stakeholders
Budget 2-4 weeks for team training regardless of platform choice
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce businesses implementing this framework:
Focus on landing page velocity for campaign optimization
Consider Webflow for content marketing and resource sections
Use Framer for bold seasonal campaigns and brand storytelling
Integrate with your existing ecommerce platform rather than replacing it