I’ve spent the last four years building sites in Webflow and custom code. The question I get most often from clients is some version of “which is better?” The answer is that it’s the wrong question. The right question is which one fits your situation.
Let me try to give you the framework we use when we’re deciding, rather than a list of feature comparisons you can find anywhere.
What Webflow actually is
Webflow is a visual development tool. This is different from a website builder like Squarespace or Wix. In Webflow, you’re still making real CSS and HTML decisions — the tool just lets you make them visually rather than in a text editor. A developer who knows Webflow well can build things that are indistinguishable from custom-coded sites to the end user.
The CMS is where Webflow is particularly useful for most of our clients. You can build a CMS structure where a non-technical content editor can add a new project to a portfolio, write a blog post, or update a team member’s profile without touching any code and without accidentally breaking the design.
What custom build actually means
When people say “custom build” they usually mean HTML, CSS, and JavaScript without a platform managing the output — or a custom framework like Next.js or Astro for sites with more complex requirements. Sometimes they mean WordPress with a custom theme, though we’ve moved away from recommending WordPress for new projects unless there’s a strong reason.
Custom builds give you complete control. There is no platform making decisions about how your CSS is structured, how your images are handled, or what JavaScript runs on every page load. If you need something that doesn’t exist in Webflow’s component library, you build it.
Where Webflow wins
Webflow wins on maintainability for non-technical teams. The CMS is genuinely good, and the Editor interface — the simplified view your content team uses — is well-designed. A marketing lead who has never touched code can update content in Webflow without needing to call a developer.
It also wins on speed of iteration during the design phase. Because design and build happen in the same tool, changes to the design can be tested in a real browser as they’re being made rather than going through a design-to-developer handoff loop. For projects where the design needs to be refined based on seeing it live, this matters.
And it wins on hosting and infrastructure. Webflow’s hosting is fast, reliable, and comes with SSL, CDN, and automatic image optimisation built in. You don’t need to manage a server or worry about deployment.
Where custom build wins
Custom builds win on complex interactions and custom functionality. If your site needs a product configurator, a filterable database of several thousand items, a custom animation system, or deep integration with a third-party API, Webflow will either not support it or will require workarounds that introduce complexity and fragility.
They also win on performance for very content-heavy sites. Webflow adds some overhead that you don’t have in a well-optimised custom build. For most sites this is negligible. For a site with a very large number of pages or complex dynamic content, it can become meaningful.
And they win on longevity. A site built in clean HTML and CSS with a well-structured JavaScript layer can be maintained and updated indefinitely without platform dependency. Webflow is a company, and while it’s well-established, your site’s functionality is ultimately dependent on their decisions about the platform.
The questions that actually determine the answer
Rather than starting from the tools, we start from three questions:
- Who is maintaining this after launch? If it’s a non-technical team who needs to update content regularly, Webflow’s CMS is probably the right answer. If it’s a development team who are comfortable in a codebase, the maintenance argument for Webflow weakens.
- How complex is the functionality? Most marketing sites, portfolio sites, and B2B company sites have straightforward functionality that Webflow handles easily. If there are requirements that go beyond what Webflow supports natively, that’s a signal toward a custom build.
- What is the budget and timeline? Webflow builds are generally faster and less expensive than equivalent custom builds, because the infrastructure and design system components already exist. If the budget is constrained or the timeline is tight, Webflow is usually the right starting point.
We’ve never recommended a custom build to a client because it was more impressive. We recommend it when the specific requirements of the project actually need it. Most of the time, they don’t.
What we use and why
For the majority of our projects — marketing sites, portfolio sites, service business websites — we build in Webflow. The maintainability advantage for non-technical teams is significant, the performance is more than adequate, and the development time is faster which keeps projects within budget.
For projects with complex functionality requirements, or for clients who have an existing development team and want a codebase they can own and extend, we build in custom HTML/CSS/JS or Next.js depending on the requirements.
The decision is always project-specific. If you’re trying to figure out which is right for your situation, that’s worth a conversation.