We build everything in Next.js — but Webflow genuinely wins for some use cases. Here's the honest breakdown.
You need a marketing site with a content team that needs visual control, a fast MVP timeline, and no complex custom logic.
You have complex logic, custom integrations, performance requirements, or you don't want to be on a platform you can't exit cleanly.
Webflow sites can score well on Lighthouse for simple pages. The editor adds some JavaScript overhead, and complex animations or CMS-heavy pages can lower scores. You're constrained by what Webflow outputs — there's a ceiling you can't break through without leaving the platform.
Next.js gives you full control over what ships to the browser. Server-side rendering, static generation, image optimisation, and edge caching are all configurable. Our target LCP is under 1.2 seconds. King Double Glazing went from 13.1s to 1.2s after rebuilding on Next.js.
Webflow hosts your site. Your content lives in their CMS. Your design is in their visual editor. If Webflow raises prices, changes their terms, or discontinues a feature, your options are: pay up, or rebuild from scratch.
This isn't a hypothetical — Webflow has raised prices and changed tier features before. It's the normal trajectory for a VC-backed SaaS platform.
A Next.js site is code. It lives in a Git repository you own. It can be hosted anywhere — Vercel, AWS, Cloudflare, your own server. If you want to change hosting providers, you can. If you want to hand the codebase to a different developer, you can.
We hand over the full repository at the end of every project. The work is yours.
On a simple marketing site, Webflow can score well on Core Web Vitals. The ceiling is lower — you're constrained by what Webflow outputs — but for a site without complex interactions, the gap may not matter in practice. For sites where LCP is a competitive SEO factor, or where you need a sub-1-second load time, Next.js gives you more control.
Webflow charges per site on an ongoing basis — a recurring monthly platform fee, plus agency or freelancer time to build it. A Next.js site has a higher one-time build cost but near-zero ongoing platform fees (Vercel's free tier covers most small business sites). Over three years, the total cost is often similar or lower for custom. Book a call and we'll put a real number on your specific build.
Webflow's editor is genuinely good for non-technical users. If your content team needs daily publishing autonomy, it's a real advantage. Our Next.js builds use headless CMS options (TinaCMS, Sanity) that give editors a clean interface — it's not quite as drag-and-drop as Webflow, but it's designed around what your editors actually need to change.
We don't. If you're a design agency that prefers Webflow as your delivery tool, that's fine for your clients — but it's not how we work. Our builds are in Next.js with TypeScript. If you need a development partner who works in Next.js for design handoffs, we can discuss how that looks.