r/web_design • u/ludinya • 1d ago
Is webflow enough or is coding *necessary*?
I'm just starting my journey to becoming a web designer and I watched a course. This course was 3 hours long but could've been shortened to ten minutes with the words - make a design in figma then transfer it to webflow and that's it, but it was filled with additional hours of yapping. Because as I understand it, without coding, this is basically the process of it more or less. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.
And my question is - should I now concentrate on mastering webflow and all the details, of which there are still many for creating a good site, or just start learning coding instead? Like, how possible is it to find any clients having mastered webflow and knowing minimal coding (while intuitively understanding how it works and not being a complete teapot in this)? Because as I understand it, with webflow you are still able to create a decent website, of course much less creativity and functionality than if you coded it from scratch, but still a website - and maybe a very good one if you are a good designer and can work with what you have, right?
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u/ShawnyMcKnight 1d ago
Webflow is one of those things that it's good enough until it isn't. As long as you have chill clients willing to restrain what they want to do with webflow, you are golden, but once you need that feature it can't do, especially if that requires wiring up to a backend, or something, it becomes far more complicated and you may have to start over outside of webflow.
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u/Fun_Appointment3381 1d ago
Here’s an example of something it can’t do: host any type of script. If you need to write any additional functionality into your page — which you will — you will have to figure out an external hosting solution or paste the script into little custom code blocks, which then don’t run until you publish the site. Really sucks for performance/version control/developer experience.
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u/PremiereBeats 21h ago
Also they pretty much own your website, if webflow shuts down you do t have a website, if you stop paying them you don’t have a website if you want to export the source code you created you have to pay them more on top of what you already paid to create it. Op should learn to code
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u/FalseRegister 1d ago
All web builders are like this
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u/ShawnyMcKnight 23h ago
At least with Wordpress or Drupal you still have full control of the code. But yeah, all commercially hosted web builders are like this.
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u/Pen-Pal-0 12h ago
Would you rather suggest hand-coding a website from scratch? Or stick to wordpress?
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u/ShawnyMcKnight 11h ago
I personally would but I'm in a different market. With webflow you can pump out a website in a day, where me it would take weeks minimum.
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u/Pen-Pal-0 10h ago
Do you still hand-code? And if you don't mind me asking, what industry are you in? 😀
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u/ShawnyMcKnight 5h ago
Yes, I handcode mostly. I’m a front end web developer and work in the insurance industry but I’m not tied to that.
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u/Pen-Pal-0 4h ago
What are the odds! I used to be in the insurance industry too!!
Cool if we stay in touch? 😀
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u/ShawnyMcKnight 2h ago
It’s a very common field, I don’t have any love for insurance but it’s who hired me.
Thanks for the offer of staying in touch but I’m okay. Insurance isn’t something I bond on.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/ShawnyMcKnight 1d ago
Well if they are already using webflow then it sounds like they are committed to it. I haven’t used webflow to know what it can and can’t do. I’ve just used other tools like it and often ran into issues when they wanted me to use some plugin or other component that it doesn’t have. Like, you can code in an html segment but it in but it can be janky.
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u/its_witty 1d ago
Just as an example - the more data you have to filter through, the more problems Webflow shows. It just wasn't built for that. Big e-commerce? Probably won't work well. Alternative to AirBnb? Probably won't work well. In general listing websites; the more dynamic data the more Webflow shows it was built mostly for simple static-like websites.
Everything that is on edge of being a SaaS will experience some problems with Webflow.
But there is more, of course. It's a cool tool, just not for everything.
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u/Rest_and_Digest 1d ago
Having even some elementary knowledge of e.g. CSS will always put you in a better position to fix problems or come up with solutions that aren't obvious in the builder. It's only easier to use if you understand what it's doing imo
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u/zephyr_zap 1d ago
I'll add to this. I started as a designer and eventually got around to learning front-end. Webpage builders are good for getting the job done but not a great way to learn. It is the lazy way out. And I have used them all - you name it.
They teach you to design your websites within the boundaries set by their tool set. Over the long run this limits the designer's imagination and alienates them from the underlying technical possibilities. Sure, you will be able to build websites quicker, but the designs will never 100% impress your clients and you will find yourself making endless unmaintainable hacks using these tools.
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u/DomWhittle 19h ago
Webflow is 95% just a UI wrapper around HTML and CSS. Learning Webflow layout and style properties is learning CSS.
Webflow is perfectly appropriate for many types of websites: marketing sites, portfolios etc.
I’m a designer and front end dev now working a lot in Webflow.
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u/Upacesky 1d ago
Though it's important to know your tools, please do think about how a website is not just a nice frontend, but the result of objectives rooted in business, marketing and sales. For me it's more about understanding the client's needs and answering them with a website.
Context is key: a high paced e-commerce needs thorough speed optimisation, a public figure needs visibility and great pictures, a local business needs tons of good reviews etc.
As a freelancer, I only use a design tool (like Figma) if budget allows for it, else I only make a rough wireframe and use the brand identity on top, designing as I build the website. Else it's literally doing the job twice on 2 different medium.
And with a 3 hours course, you're at the start of your Dunning-Kruger curve.
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u/Citrous_Oyster 1d ago
I build websites for small businesses using html and css. Life is much easier. Why do you feel like you need it? If you can code just code. I sell myself as a service and maintain the sites for my clients. They prefer that anyway. Don’t need a cms. I make about $18k a month doing that with recurring income. It’s pretty nice. And no platform or hosting fees or seats or packages or whatever. I’m in complete control of my own setup and costs and complete freedom to make whatever I wanna make without any plugins or security issues.
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u/chmod777 1d ago
What is enough?
Enough for designs that can be created in webflow? Sure.
What happens when a client doesnt want to use webflow? Or you need a solution that doesnt exist in webflow?
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u/its_witty 1d ago
Webflow is based on coding. You won't make much use of the tools without understanding at least the basics of CSS... and without the knowledge of semantics in HTML your website probably won't end up being accessible nor score good in SEO.
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u/Fun_Appointment3381 1d ago
Learning Webflow instead of web development is a bad idea. Webflow is a very limited tool and still has a steep learning curve, and often doesn’t support what you want to do. If you know how to build a website with code, you can hop in and use Webflow in the (small) set of cases where it makes sense. But, if you only know Webflow, you’re confining yourself to an ultra narrow subset of projects and never going to build anything truly excellent imho.
I think Webflow is basically a glorified tool for building interactive PDFs with basic SEO/ecom/publishing capabilities.
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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 1d ago
I said it before, but I think web development/design would be so much better if the design aspect (HTML/CSS) were done via drag and drop and you could use JavaScript for the scripting/logic. And of course, you could integrate a database and backend.
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u/CharcoalWalls 1d ago
Regardless of what builder you use, having a basic understanding of coding will go a long way
The good news is, if you at least have a basic understanding of it, you can tackle different things as they come and build up your own little repository of go-to solutions
With so many options online, it's also becoming easier to find those solutions quicker