WordPress vs. Webflow: A Comprehensive Comparison (2025)

Daniel J. MountPublished May 10, 2025Last Modified May 27, 2025

Is Webflow the best WordPress alternative in 2025?

WordPress has been the dominant Content Management System (CMS) for over a decade. But its main corporate sponsor recently withdrew 98% of their contribution hours. So you might be wondering: Is WordPress still the right CMS for me? Or is it time to switch?

The biggest risk in switching to a new tool is when you put in weeks of work, only to realize later in the process that it can’t do something you absolutely need. Let’s avoid that with a comprehensive comparison of WordPress vs. Webflow, looking at 115 features across 19 categories.

The Big Picture

WordPress began as a blogging tool. And it’s really good at blogging. If you want more than that, you’ll probably need to dip into its ecosystem. But that ecosystem of plugins and themes can enable your website to do virtually anything you can imagine.

Webflow was founded in 2013 as an all-in-one service that includes the website builder and hosting. If you build a Webflow website, you’re hosting it with Webflow.

WordPress itself is free, though premium plugins and themes to add necessary functionality can start adding up quickly.

Webflow has a free starter plan, where you can build two pages on a webflow.io domain. If you want to use your own domain or build more than two pages, they have plans at $14/month, $23/month, and $39/month. For larger sites, they also have enterprise plans. The pricing is not public, but social media posts point toward costs in the mid-four-figures.

W3Techs’s list of top Content Management Systems has WordPress at #1, powering 43.5% of the internet, and Webflow at #7, powering 0.8% of the internet. But those numbers only tell part of the story. If you want to look at where the internet is going, look at marketing and web design agencies. I did an informal look through over 5,000 US agency websites. Roughly half use WordPress, but roughly 10%-15% use Webflow.

Based on what agencies are doing, I predict that Webflow will pass Joomla and Drupal to be a top-5 CMS fairly soon. And it could climb higher in the long term.

Webflow and WordPress have two of the most enthusiastic and passionate user bases on the internet. They’re both doing some things right. Which one is for you?

For you to know, you need to know which can meet your website’s core needs. That’s the question we’re answering here.

Credits

A few notes before we dive in:

  1. WordPress doesn’t have any publicity or media contact that I can find. Webflow does, and I contacted them with the full script to ask for comment a week ago. They have offered no comment as of the time of recording.
  2. This is part of an ongoing series comparing WordPress to other content management systems. If you find this one useful, please check out the previous episode on Statamic and subscribe to catch future episodes.

Content Management

Scheduling Posts and Pages

WordPress and Webflow both can schedule posts and pages in their core offering.

Scheduling Edits to a Post or Page

WordPress: No. But the PublishPress Revisions plugin adds this functionality for $69/year. I’ve used this plugin before and it gets the job done well, but its user interface has a steeper-than-average learning curve.

Webflow: Not available. Users can manually save an edit as a draft and manually publish it, but there is no automated process. The ScheduleFlow plugin offers a potential workaround to schedule publishing an entire site or a collection (similar to all posts in a custom post type). Its pricing is hidden to the public.

Scheduling Edits to Part of a Post or Page

WordPress: Not in core. Block Visibility enables this in Gutenberg, and Bricks Builder does enable you to set a condition to display content if a certain date is reached.

Webflow: Not available.

View history of revisions and restore a past version of a post/page

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: Not available for individual pages. There is a sitewide revision history that can be restored on a sitewide basis, but not on an individual page basis.

Custom content models (custom post types)

WordPress: Not in core. Plugins like Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) or Metabox add this functionality. ACF has a $49/year pro version, but the free version will satisfy many use cases.

Webflow: Yes, in core. Webflow Collections offer the ability to create different content model types. Each collection can have custom fields to define custom structures.

User roles and permissions so that different users can do different things

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: Yes. All Webflow customers can access three user types: Designer (full access), Editor (content edits only), and Commenter (offers feedback only). Enterprise users can access additional user types.

Editorial workflow approval process, so there can be a user type who can create content and submit it for another user to approve and publish

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: Kinda. It is possible to set up a user with the ability to draft content without publishing it. But there isn’t a built-in way to submit that draft for approval by another user type or specific user.

Media management

Organize media library into folders

WordPress: Not in core. HappyFiles ($59/one-time) adds this feature.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Organize media library with tagging

WordPress: Not in core. Media Library Assistant (free) adds this feature.

Webflow: Not available. Collections, similar to a custom post type, can be managed by tags, but not individual assets (media items).

Automatic image optimization on upload, converting to webp or avif and compressing

WordPress: Not in core. ShortPixel ($99.90/year) offers this feature.

Webflow: Yes, in core (responsive images, image conversion).

Batch optimize old images, converting to webp or avif and compressing

WordPress: Not in core. ShortPixel ($99.90/year) offers this feature.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Automatically replace one image with another in every instance where it’s used across a website

WordPress: Not in core. Enable Media Replace, a free plugin from ShortPixel, offers this feature.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Adaptive Images (automatically delivering correct image sizes for different screen sizes for better performance)

WordPress: Not in core. ShortPixel’s Adaptive Images plugin offers this feature.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Forms

Built-in default form builder

WordPress: Not in core. Two good options are Gravity Forms ($59/year for basic features, $259/year for all features) or WSForm ($59/year for basic features, $249/year for all features). There are a few free plugin options, but they’re limited enough that this is probably the #1 most likely feature that even small WordPress sites will need a premium plugin.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Conditional Logic (form fields that appear depending on something that happened in a previous form field)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Webflow used to have this feature in Webflow Logic, but is taking this feature away. They disabled making new forms with Webflow Logic on January 31, 2025. All existing forms that have conditional logic will lose this functionality on June 27, 2025.

Several third-party addons, Inputflow and Flow Form, add this functionality. They are both premium services whose pricing is not publicly visible.

Integrations to automatically send entries to third-party email providers like Mailchimp and Constant Contact

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Webflow: Mailchimp offers a direct integration, free with its subscription (step-by-step tutorial). Webflow forms can integrate with Zapier, which in turn integrates with many of the leading third-party email providers.

Integrations to automatically send entries to customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Salesforce or Hubspot

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Webflow: Hubspot offers a direct integration. Other CRM integrations are possible via Zapier.

Payment forms integrated with PayPal

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Webflow: Webflow eCommerce functionality integrates with PayPal; however, its regular forms do not support making purchases through PayPal.

Payment forms integrated with Stripe

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Webflow: Webflow eCommerce functionality integrates with Stripe; however, its regular forms do not support making purchases through Stripe.

Multi-page forms

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Webflow: Not in core. Several third-party addons, Inputflow and Flow Form, add this functionality. They are both premium services whose pricing is not publicly visible.

Multi-step, multi-user complex workflow forms

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms plus Gravity Flow (an additional $299/year). WSForm can’t do this one.

Webflow: Not in core. A Webflow site that needs this functionality would need to rely on external form services like Jotflow or Formstack that support being embedded on any site via iFrame.

Design

Drag and drop page builder

WordPress: Yes, kinda. WordPress has a page builder in core, commonly known as Gutenberg. But its functionality is limited enough that a high percentage of WordPress-based sites use a more fully-featured page builder. The most popular is Elementor ($84/year). Two of the best are Bricks Builder ($79/year) and the upcoming Etch.

Webflow: Yes. Not only does Webflow have a drag and drop page builder, it’s one of the best out there. It might be the most highly-acclaimed page builder out there right now; and it’s a clear point of inspiration for a number of other page builders.

Drag and drop page builder with fully visual option where you can see what the page looks like as you build it

WordPress: Yes, kinda. Gutenberg’s builder view is similar but not identical to the end result. Elementor, Bricks, and Etch are all fully visual page builders.

Webflow: Yes, one of the best out there.

Drag and drop page builder enabling complex layouts and all CSS features

WordPress: No. Gutenberg has enough limitations that users who need complex layouts end up using a page builder like Elementor, Bricks, or Etch, unless they want to do a considerable amount of custom development.

Webflow: Yes, one of the best out there. The style panel has inputs for almost all CSS features—including transforms, filters, shadows, z-index.

CSS Framework to set and later change CSS settings on a sitewide basis

WordPress: No. Bricks Builder and Etch both integrate with Automatic.css ($79/year).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Pre-built modules like accordions, heroes, news layouts, and image portfolios

WordPress: Not in core. Elementor has their own; Bricks and Etch have several options, one of which is Frames.

Webflow: Yes, basic pre-built modules in core. Users who want more pre-build modules can access premium libraries like Relume, Flowbase, Untitled UI, and Landing Folio.

Fonts: Upload custom files

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: Yes, in core. Webflow accepts custom fonts in the TTF, OTF, WOFF, and WOFF2 formats, but not in the EOT and SVG formats.

Fonts: Add external font via CSS font-face declaration

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Figma integration

WordPress: Not in core. Figma to WordPress ($79/year) integrates Figma designs with WordPress blocks. Frames for Figma integrates Figma designs into Bricks and Etch.

Webflow: Yes. Webflow offers a free, official Figma to Webflow plugin. It allows you to import your Figma designs into Webflow, preserving layers, typography styles, auto layout, images and backgrounds, and shadows and borders.

eCommerce

eCommerce options available

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce (free core with paid plugins of its own) is the most common eCommerce solution for WordPress. NorthCommerce ($499 one-time fee) is a new and promising alternative.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

PayPal integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has a free PayPal integration (transaction fees apply).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Stripe integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has a free Stripe integration (transaction fees apply).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Square Payment Gateway integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has a free Square integration (transaction fees apply).

Webflow: Not in core. Available through the premium add-on Foxy.io (pricing starts at $25/month plus 20¢/transaction after the first 100 transactions).

Authorize.net integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has an Authorize.net integration (transaction fees apply).

Webflow: Not in core. Available through the premium add-on Foxy.io (pricing starts at $25/month plus 20¢/transaction after the first 100 transactions).

Google Pay integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooPayments (free) for WooCommerce can enable this.

Webflow: Yes, in core; Google Pay payments can be made through Webflow’s Stripe integration.

Apple Pay integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooPayments (free) for WooCommerce can enable this.

Webflow: Yes, in core. Apple Pay payments can be made through Webflow’s Stripe integration.

Amazon Pay integration

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via Amazon Pay for WooCommerce (free).

Webflow: Not in core. Available through the premium add-on Foxy.io (pricing starts at $25/month plus 20¢/transaction after the first 100 transactions).

Sales tax calculation

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via WooCommerce Tax (free).

Webflow: Yes, in core. Webflow calculates sales tax and VAT for the United States, Canada, the European Union, and Australia. They plan to add more regions in the future.

Sales tax collection

WordPress: Not available.

Webflow: Yes, in core. Webflow can collect the sales tax and VAT for the regions I just mentioned. But it’s your responsibility to file and pay the taxes.

UPS / USPS calculations & labels

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce via WooCommerce Shipping (free).

Webflow: Not in core. Available through the premium service Shippo (free for up to 30 labels/month; $19/month for up to 10,000 labels/month).

Digital Downloads

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce core. If you’re only selling digital downloads and not physical items, you might choose Easy Digital Downloads ($199/year) instead.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Digital Downloads from Amazon S3

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce via Amazon S3 Storage for WooCommerce ($89/year).

Webflow: Not in core. Available through the premium Onlizer service (plans start at $19/month).

Inventory Management

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Subscription capabilities

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via WooCommerce Subscriptions ($279/year). If you’re only selling subscriptions to digital downloads and not physical items, you might choose Easy Digital Downloads ($199/year) instead.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Google Analytics events

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via Google Analytics Pro for WooCommerce ($79/year).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Facebook Pixel integration

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in Facebook for WooCommerce (free).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Bookings & Reservations

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in WooCommerce Bookings ($249/year).

Webflow: Not in core. Available through third-party services like FlowBookings (pricing not public) and Booking for Webflow from Common Ninja (plans starting at free).

Paid Memberships

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in WooCommerce Memberships ($199/year).

Webflow: This used to be available in core through User Accounts. But that feature is being removed this year. New sites already cannot set up subscriptions through User Accounts in core, and this functionality will stop working on existing sites on January 29, 2026. Webflow has set up migration paths with third-party services Outseta and Memberstack.

Complex Discounts

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in Product Dynamic Pricing and Discounts for WooCommerce ($99/year).

Webflow: Webflow offers basic discounts in core. More complex discounts are available through the premium add-on Foxy.io (pricing starts at $25/month plus 20¢/transaction after the first 100 transactions).

PDF invoices

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce (free).

Webflow: Not in core. This can be achieved through a multi-step workaround, like connecting to Invoice Ninja (plans start at free) via Zapier (plans also start at free).

International customers can switch currencies

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in Currency Switcher for WooCommerce ($99/year).

Webflow: Partial support in core; Webflow allows you to display pricing in your users’ native currencies. But this is not a currency switcher. And some customers will want that; suppose, for instance, a tourist or foreign exchange student temporarily in another country wanted to set up a recurring transaction in their homeland’s currency. True currency switching is available through the premium add-on Foxy.io (pricing starts at $25/month plus 20¢/transaction after the first 100 transactions).

Accessibility

Out of the box default WCAG 2.2 AA compliance

WordPress: Yes, in core. Accessibility in the ecosystem is more hit and miss. There are some tools that have really focused on it (like Gravity Forms, Bricks Builder, and Etch) and others that are more problematic.

Webflow: Out of the box, they at least make it possible. Their builder creates clean, semantic code and offers some basic audit tools. They also care enough about accessibility to offer a top-level landing page highlighting their accessibility features and tools and an accessibility checklist summarizing WCAG guidelines, highlighting how and where to achieve compliance in Webflow.

Tools to achieve full WCAG 2.2 AA compliance on complex landing pages

WordPress: Not in core. Most elements in Bricks Builder lend themselves to building a fully WCAG 2.2 AA-compliant complex landing page.

Webflow: Yes, in core. (See previous answer for more details.)

Built-in accessibility prompts in the editor for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance fails

WordPress: Not in core. This can be achieved through Equalize Digital’s Accessibility Checker (free version with $229/year pro version).

Webflow: Partial. There are accessibility auditing tools built into the editor covering some of the most commonly failed features.

Built-in accessibility scanning/audits for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance

WordPress: Not in core. This can be achieved through Equalize Digital’s Accessibility Checker (free version with $229/year pro version).

Webflow: Partial. There are accessibility auditing tools built into the editor covering some of the most commonly failed features.

Privacy

WordPress: Yes, limited. Complianz (€59/year) builds more comprehensive privacy policies.

Webflow: Not in core. Enzuzo (starting at $84/year) offers a GDPR/CCPA-compliant privacy policy generator. Termageddon ($119/year) can also be used with Webflow.

WordPress: Not in core. Put another way, WordPress core does not enable ways to make an entire WordPress site including its themes and plugins GDPR and CCPA compliant. Complianz (€59/year) enables more comprehensive compliance with these and several other privacy laws across the world.

Webflow: Webflow is a GDPR-and-CCPA-compliant data processor, but doesn’t offer features helping individual websites achieve their own compliance in its core offering. Enzuzo (starting at $84/year) helps websites achieve GDPR/CCPA compliance.

WordPress: Not in core. There are plenty of cookie consent plugins for WordPress; Complianz (€59/year) is one of the best because of how it enables compliance with many other privacy-related laws.

Webflow: Not in core. Finsweet offers a GDPR-compliant Cookie Consent solution for Webflow with plans starting at $10/year.

Multi-lingual

Webflow’s site editor is only available in English. WordPress has a clear edge for admin editing in other languages with its editor available in dozens of languages, including full support for English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, Bengali, Portuguese, and Russian, and partial support for the rest of the top 10: Hindi, Modern Standard Arabic, and Urdu.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: English

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: Yes.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Mandarin Chinese

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: No.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Hindi

WordPress: Not fully. WordPress has partial Hindi support but not a complete, up-to-date site editor translation.

Webflow: No.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Spanish

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: No.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: French

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: No.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Modern Standard Arabic

WordPress: Not fully. WordPress has partial Modern Standard Arabic support but not a complete, up-to-date site editor translation.

Webflow: No. (It is able to display front-end content in right-to-left, though, which is useful for creating sites in Modern Standard Arabic.)

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Bengali

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: No.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Portuguese

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: No.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Russian

WordPress: Yes.

Webflow: No.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Urdu

WordPress: Not fully. WordPress has partial Urdu support but not a complete, up-to-date site editor translation.

Webflow: No.

Out-of-the-box features to build multilingual websites

WordPress: Not in core. There are several good plugins for this, including WPML (€99/year).

Webflow: It’s sort of included in core. Webflow offers Webflow Localization, which is a service directly from them that they support themselves. But there is an additional fee beyond the base fee for core services: $9/language/month for small sites in up to 3 languages, $29/language/month for mid-sized sites in up to ten languages, and pricing hidden for larger sites or more languages.

Translate entire site automatically through AI

WordPress: Not in core. WPML (€99/year) offers this (with additional fees for the AI translation).

Webflow: Included in Webflow Localization, using Weglot, Linguise, Linguana, and several other options.

Translate entire site automatically through ChatGPT

WordPress: Not in core. WPML (€99/year) offers this (with additional fees for the AI translation).

Webflow: Not available.

Ability to stylize language switcher

WordPress: Not in core. WPML (€99/year) offers this (with additional fees for the AI translation).

Webflow: Included in Webflow Localization.

SEO

Sitemap generation

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Ability to add meta title and description

WordPress: No. Available via a number of plugins, like Yoast, RankMath, and SEOPress (the free versions work for all three).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Schema Markup (e.g. recipe, job postings)

WordPress: Not in core. Available in RankMath (pro version, $95.88/year).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Built-in basic SEO audit tools (missing or poorly structured data)

WordPress: Not in core. Available in RankMath (pro version, $95.88/year).

Webflow: Yes, in core, limited. Webflow’s built-in audit tool can scan landing pages for basic fails like alt text, heading order, or non-descriptive links. But it does not scan for more complex issues and, as I understand, has less or no coverage for content pages and CMS collection items (like WordPress’s custom post types.)

Built-in advanced SEO audit tools (keyword optimization, readability, search intent)

WordPress: Not in core. Available within the admin in the Ahrefs SEO plugin (some features for free, more for $99/month).

Webflow: Not in core. Available through Letterdrop (pricing not public) or Semflow (plans starting at $14/month).

In-admin Google Ranking tracker

WordPress: Not in core. Available within the admin in the Ahrefs SEO plugin (some features for free, more for $99/month).

Webflow: Not in core. (Users of Ahrefs and similar tools can track Google rankings but would need to do it in Ahrefs’ admin instead of in their site’s.)

Backups

Full-site offsite backups

WordPress: Not in core. Available through UpdraftPlus ($70/year) or VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Webflow: Not in core. Webflow has backups built in, but only to Webflow’s own servers, not to offsite storage.

Full-site offsite backups to your storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through UpdraftPlus ($70/year).

Webflow: Not available. A manual workaround allows exporting site content as HTML, CSS, Javascript, and CSV files into a zip folder and manually uploading it to your own storage.

Incremental backups (only back up what’s changed)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through UpdraftPlus ($70/year) or VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Webflow: Not available. Webflow comes with full site backups of each restore point, not incremental backups.

One-click full site restore from backup

WordPress: Not in core. Available through VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

One-click full site incremental restore from backup, only restoring what broke

WordPress: Not in core. Available through VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Webflow: Not available, since Webflow backups are full-site-only.

Learning Management Systems (Course Building)

Learning Management System: Course Builder

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Webflow: Not in core. Webflow used to offer a tool called Webflow Memberships. They renamed it to Webflow User Accounts. But, most recently, they have announced that they are removing the tool and that any sites still using that feature on January 29, 2026 will have that portion of their functionality stop working.

Webflow users who want to offer courses will tend to need to assemble a collection of tools, like Memberstack (plans starting $300/year) or Outseta (plans starting $444/year) for member account management. They might need to integrate these tools with Webflow CMS via Zapier to manage course availability to new members. They would integrate videos and quizzes manually via third-party tools. And they could track user progress through Jetboost (plans starting $228/year).

Learning Management System: Quiz Builder

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Webflow: Not in core. There are plenty of quiz-building tools available for Webflow, but they would have to be integrated into a custom solution with custom development.

Learning Management System: Gamification (leaderboards and points)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Webflow: Not available.

Learning Management System: Scheduled release (drip) of lessons based on days since a course started

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Webflow: Not in core. Workarounds may be possible through Zapier connecting Webflow with a membership software tool.

Learning Management System: Scheduled release (drip) of lessons based on date of the calendar

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Webflow: Not in core. Workarounds may be possible through Zapier connecting Webflow with a membership software tool.

Learning Management System: Paid courses

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Webflow: Not in core. It’s possible to connect several tools together through custom development to offer paid courses.

Learning Management System: Multi-lingual courses

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Webflow: Not in core. Workarounds may be possible through integrating the tools mentioned above with a multilingual translation tool.

Learning Management System: Analytics to identify struggling learners

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year) plus the ProPanel extension ($99/year).

Webflow: Not available without custom development.

Learning Management System: Two-way communication with students for coaching

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year) plus the Notes extension ($49/year).

Webflow: Not available without custom development.

Performance

Lazy Loading

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Code Minification

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Easy CDN integration

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Excellent default Core Web Vitals Statistics

No plugin produces excellent Core Web Vitals by itself. The user needs to follow best practices in creating and optimizing the content. But the right technical optimizations will give users a much better head start in Core Web Vitals compliance.

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Webflow: Webflow’s clean code and other performance optimizations give users a head start toward passing Core Web Vitals thresholds. But Webflow doesn’t offer Core Web Vitals-focused auditing tools to highlight what needs to be done to pass.

Excellent built-in caching options

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Optimizing for Largest Contentful Paint with rules for it to load as fast as possible

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Webflow: Yes, in core.

Gzip/Brotli compression

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year). (Often handled by the web host.)

Webflow: Not available.

Visual Regression

Before and after scans after core or plugin updates to detect unwanted changes

WordPress: Not in core. Some hosts (including WPEngine and Flywheel) include this with hosting. Otherwise, Visual Regression Tests $90/year).

Webflow: Not in core. Webflow users who want visual regression will often work outside of the admin with a third-party service.

Before and after scans after core or plugin updates to detect unwanted changes, with automatic rollback if something unintended changed

WordPress: Not in core. Some hosts (including WPEngine and Flywheel) include this with hosting. Otherwise, Visual Regression Tests $90/year).

Webflow: Not in core.

Security

2-factor authentication for user login

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Webflow: Available in core.

Vulnerability and Malware Scanning

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Webflow: Limited. Webflow runs internal code and application vulernability scanning. But this is not user-facing, so users do not have the ability to scan their own sites for vulnerabilities. Users will often use third-party tools like Sucuri.

Firewall for real-time detection of cross-site-scripting (XSS) and other threats

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Webflow: Available in core.

Ability to blacklist all IPs except approved IPs from login

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Webflow: Not in core. It can be accessed through a third-party workaround from miniOrange (pricing not public).

Ability to restrict country blocks of IPs from login

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Webflow: Not in core. It can be accessed through integrating with Cloudflare or through a third-party workaround from miniOrange (pricing not public).

Compliance

This category contains apples-to-oranges comparisons, since WordPress is software that can be run on thousands of different hosts, while Webflow’s services include hosting. Thus if Webflow’s hosting services do not cover a particular kind of compliance, that kind of compliance cannot be done within Webflow. On the other hand, if one particular WordPress host does not offer a particular sort of compliance, it’s quite easy to move to another host who does.

PCI Compliance

WordPress: Dependent on the host. Many WordPress hosts offer PCI-compliant WordPress hosting.

Webflow: Yes.

GDPR Compliance

WordPress: Dependent on the host. Many WordPress hosts offer GDPR-compliant hosting plans.

Webflow: Webflow is somewhere between largely and completely GDPR-compliant. The main challenge for some EU customers, especially those in Germany, is that Webflow websites are all hosted in the United States. There isn’t an option to choose between US-based and EU-based hosting.

HIPAA Compliance (patient medical information)

WordPress: Dependent on the host. Most hosts are not HIPAA-compliant, but they exist; HIPAA Vault offers HIPAA-compliant WordPress hosting.

Webflow: Not available.

FERPA Compliance (student academic information)

WordPress: Dependent on the host. Most hosts have not considered whether they are FERPA-compliant, but some are. In particular, since HIPAA is a more stringent threshold, there is a decent possibility that a host that is HIPAA-compliant is also FERPA-compliant.

Webflow: Appears to not be available; not mentioned anywhere in their compliance offerings.

Lock-in

Ability to export to formats that several other content management systems can import

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Webflow: Webflow allows exporting and importing content into/from CSV files. This allows some speed boost over a manual copy/paste method. But it is far more limited than the import/export options that some other CMS tools offer.

Webflow also allows exporting a site’s HTML, CSS, and Javascript. This could then be hosted on a server configured to load static websites, and updated manually.

Other than manual code export, Webflow does not support importing or exporting templates, layouts, or dynamic content relationships.

Ability to import from formats that several other content management systems can export

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Webflow: Limited; see above.

Developer Features

Availability to access CMS features via API

WordPress: Yes, through the REST API in core.

Webflow: Yes, in core. The API allows you to create, read, update, or delete CMS Collections and items within them.

Local development enviroment options

WordPress: Not in core. Available in LocalWP (free).

Webflow: Not available; Webflow is a cloud-based tool.

Ability to integrate with headless front-ends

WordPress: Not fully in core; REST API can be used but has limitations. Developers who build headless front-ends often use WP GraphQL (free).

Webflow: Partial support in core. Webflow allows content to be accessed through API but does not decouple that content from the presentation layer, a standard feature of true headless website builders.

Scalability for massive traffic spikes

WordPress: Not in core. A considerable amount of caching and other optimizations has to happen at the plugin and hosting level.

Webflow: Yes, at least partial. Webflow’s infrastructure can handle moderate traffic spikes. If a website on a Basic, CMS, or Business plan exceeds its bandwidth for a month, Webflow allows this. But if the website exceeds its bandwidth limits for two consecutive months, it is automatically upgraded to a higher plan. Some users have reported being unexpectedly upgraded from a business plan ($468/year) to an enterprise plan (thousands of dollars per year) with minimal time to rebuild in a different platform.

Scalability for massive websites

WordPress: Not in core. Its database starts to slow the site down dramatically in sites with millions of posts, pages, or custom post types. Custom development work will usually be required to set up database sharding.

Webflow: Webflow’s enterprise option is built to handle websites with 100,000 items (pages, posts, custom post types, store items). Websites larger than this would likely need dedicated enterprise, headless, and/or custom solutions.

Community

Number of third-party add-ons

WordPress: 59,000 plugins in official directory, plus hundreds of premium plugins that aren’t listed there.

Webflow: Webflow has over 300 apps in its official directory. But the number only tells part of the story, since there are high-quality apps available for many of the use cases listed above.

Largest YouTube channels with consistent how-to content

WordPress: There is an excellent educational community around WordPress on YouTube.

Official brand channels include:

Independent creators include:

Webflow: Webflow’s official YouTube channel is roughly double the size of WordPress’s, at 212,000 subscribers and 754 videos.

Webflow has one of the largest communities of independent creators on YouTube. Channels include:

Up-to-date, detailed official documentation

WordPress: Yes, the official WordPress documentation is fairly extensive and detailed, though it is not equally up-to-date and equally detailed in all areas.

Webflow: Yes. Webflow’s users consider Webflow University one of its greatest strengths.

Direct support from official team behind tool

WordPress: No.

Webflow: Yes.

Learning Curve

What is the onboarding process like?

WordPress: It is fairly easy to onboard onto core WordPress. Some hosts have it pre-installed, and the admin user interface is fairly easy to learn. But for users who need advanced features, it can take a long time to learn all the leading tools in the ecosystem, and to develop reasons to prefer one set of tools to another.

Webflow: Webflow is among the easiest-to-learn professional website building tools. Their investment in training through Webflow University helps. And their intentional curation of apps helps users identify the right tools for their use case.

How easy is it for a beginner to find the best option(s) for each of these features?

WordPress: It’s hard. I’ve been working with WordPress virtually every day for nineteen years, and I was more than a decade in before I was really comfortable with understanding all the major players in the ecosystem and having solid reasons to prefer one over the other.

Webflow: It takes time to learn any ecosystem, but Webflow has among the best paths to mastery of any CMS.

Official Comparisons

Webflow offers an official Webflow vs. WordPress comparison. WordPress doesn’t offer an official comparison on its official website.

So is WordPress or Webflow better?

It depends on who you are and what you need. Let’s compare it for ten use types.

Beginners who need ease of use and a clearly marked pathway to key features

WordPress and Webflow are both beginner-friendly. Your decision would come down to whether you prefer (with WordPress) an open-source platform where you own your website and its data but the learning curve to mastery is higher versus (with Webflow) a hosted software-as-a-service solution that contains everything you need for a basic site and a more clear learning curve to growing into more advanced features.

  • WordPress example tools and costs: WordPress core (free), Yoast or RankMath (both free) for SEO, and a small managed hosting plan like $300/year at Rocket.net. Total cost: $300/year.
  • Webflow example tools and costs: Webflow Basic ($168/year) contains all features needed for most basic websites.

Small brochure business websites that need basic functionality and affordability

WordPress and Webflow are equally good options.

Small eCommerce sites that sell physical items

Webflow has a clear edge in ease of use. WordPress offers greater customizability for advanced and unusual cases.

Content publishers like blogs and news websites

WordPress and Webflow are both excellent options. WordPress is, at its core, designed for blogs and news, so it has a small edge with features like built-in content approval workflows.

Educational sites with courses/learning management

WordPress + Learndash has a clear edge.

Mutilingual sites

WordPress has an edge on the backend, giving you the ability to manage your content in many native languages. Webflow has an advantage on the front-end, where tools to present content in multiple languages are built right in (where WordPress needs an additional plugin).

Marketers who need no-code, highly customizable drag and drop visual page builders and form builders

WordPress + Bricks and Webflow are two of the best options out there.

Controversial websites

WordPress has a clear edge. It is an open source-based tools where you own your data and choose your hosting. For hosted, closed-source platforms like Webflow, Shopify, and Squarespace, a single entity can make a decision which cannot be appealed to end your website and force you to begin website development from scratch on a different platform.

Highly regulated industries (HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FERPA, other forms of security and compliance)

WordPress has a clear advantage here. While Webflow does offer PCI-compliant financial transactions, it does not support HIPAA or FERPA compliant hosting, leaving organizations that need this with no choice but to go with WordPress or a third alternative.

Enterprise websites

For websites with up to 100,000 posts, pages, and store items, WordPress and Webflow are both excellent options. But Webflow taps out at about that point, while WordPress, with some custom development work, is able to scale to power websites which are orders of magnitude larger.

Agencies with 100 small and medium business clients

WordPress and Webflow are the top two content management systems used by US-based web design agencies. And that’s for good reason. WordPress is the best agency option if you care more about owning your own data, virtually unlimited extensability, and the ability to do practically any feature you could imagine. Webflow is the best agency option if you care about learning curves (both your own and your clients’) and having your tool and your hosting unified and with unified support.

Final Thoughts

I really like Webflow. If I ever moved out of the open-source space, at this point I think it’s almost certain I would go with Webflow.

That said, I have built or prepared project proposals for several websites that Webflow couldn’t handle. Some of these were due to feature limitations, but at least one was a website on track for around 200,000 items that would have cost many thousands of dollars to host with Webflow but which hums along just fine on a $100/month plan with Rocket.net.

But Webflow is definitely an option to keep watching. It has a dedicated user base and one of the best ecosystems out there. It’s currently #7 on W3Techs’ list of most-used content management systems. But I think it will be top 5 soon. And if WordPress is ever unseated at the top spot, it would be my guess at this point that Webflow would be the tool that did it.