In the ever-evolving digital landscape of 2025, branding agencies face a pivotal choice when building websites: stick with the veteran platform WordPress or embrace the rising star Webflow. The decision is more than technical; it’s about how agencies can best showcase brands online with speed, security, and style.
WordPress has long dominated the web (powering roughly 43% of all websites ), but Webflow’s no-code, design-driven approach is rapidly gaining favor (now used by about 0.8% of all websites, a growing share in the CMS market ).
Even large enterprises like Upwork and Lattice have “called the shot and switched to Webflow,” seeking something beyond what traditional setups offer for branding agencies focused on creative storytelling and performance. The Webflow vs. WordPress debate has never been more relevant.
Branding Meets Web Platforms: A powerful online presence today demands more than just clean code, requires a strategic brand identity paired with seamless web development. Top agencies understand that the website builder they choose can make or break that equation.
On one side, WordPress offers a time-tested content management system with endless plugins and themes; on the other, Webflow provides a modern visual design tool with built-in hosting and standards. The stakes are high: site performance, security, design flexibility, SEO, and speed all influence whether a brand stands out or falls flat.
No wonder forward-thinking studios like Blushush (UK) and Ohh My Brand (India) have embraced Webflow’s potential. Blushush, for example, is a branding agency that delivers bold, story-driven sites through Webflow development, anchoring each project in brand strategy and high-performance UX.
Ohh My Brand, a personal branding consultancy, likewise partnered with Webflow experts to build high-performing websites aligned with their clients’ narratives. These real-world moves underscore a broader shift in 2025 toward no-code tools that blend creativity with technical excellence.
Webflow vs. WordPress exemplifies two different approaches to web creation. In 2025, branding agencies are comparing these platforms closely to decide which aligns better with their needs and their clients’ expectations.
Webflow’s visual design freedom and WordPress’s expansive ecosystem each have their appeal; the ultimate choice can significantly impact site performance, security, SEO, and the ease of crafting a brand’s digital story.
So, which platform wins for branding agencies in 2025: Webflow or WordPress? Below, we’ll break down the comparison across the factors that matter most: performance, security, flexibility, SEO, and speed.
We’ll also highlight how agencies like Blushush and Ohh My Brand made their transitions, and offer insights for any agency contemplating a switch. By the end, you’ll have a clear picture of each platform’s strengths and weaknesses, and which one may give your agency (and the brands you represent) the competitive edge.
Before diving into the head-to-head comparison, it’s important to understand what sets WordPress and Webflow apart. Both are powerful in their way, but they take fundamentally different approaches to building and managing websites. Here’s a quick overview tailored to branding agencies:
Launched in 2003 as a blogging platform, WordPress grew into a full-fledged open-source CMS. It’s renowned for its flexibility and massive ecosystem. With over 60,000 plugins and thousands of themes available, WordPress can be extended to do almost anything, from e-commerce to forums to multilingual sites.
This extensibility made WordPress the default choice for many agencies over the past decade. Crucially, however, WordPress itself is just software; you need to install it on a web host, manage a database, and perform ongoing maintenance (updates, security patches, plugin compatibility checks).
For agencies, this means you have great power, but also greater responsibility to keep sites running smoothly. WordPress’s huge community and longevity mean there are abundant resources and tutorials, but also that it carries legacy baggage.
In 2025, WordPress still powers about 43% of all websites on the internet, a testament to its ubiquity, and around 60%+ of all sites that use any CMS. In short, it’s a platform every web professional knows, but its age and complexity are showing. WordPress is evolving (introducing the new Gutenberg block editor and even full-site editing capabilities), yet this evolution has been somewhat rocky.
As one developer quipped, “WordPress is in a hugely transitional phase, with full-site editing competing with page-builders and the legacy environment… documentation is terrible, and the temptation to just throw on a page-builder doesn’t go away”. In other words, WordPress is trying to modernize, but for many agencies, it remains a system of many moving parts, powerful, yes, but often cumbersome without significant developer effort.
Webflow emerged in 2013 as part of the “no-code” movement, offering a visual web design tool and CMS all in one. It’s a hosted SaaS platform; you design and manage your site in Webflow’s browser-based Designer, and Webflow’s servers handle the hosting, database, and all technical underpinnings.
For branding agencies, the key appeal is total design freedom with no coding required. Webflow gives you a blank canvas and granular control over HTML/CSS styles through a visual interface.
You can drag containers, div blocks, text, images, and style them with CSS properties in a sidebar, essentially hand-coding the site via a visual tool. Interactions and animations can be added without writing JavaScript, using Webflow’s built-in tools. The platform automatically outputs clean, semantic code and hosts it on a fast infrastructure.
Unlike WordPress, there’s no need to find a separate host or worry about installing updates. Webflow is an all-in-one managed platform. However, Webflow’s ecosystem is smaller: it has a template marketplace (around a few thousand templates) and a newly launched App Marketplace (~100+ apps as of 2025) for extending functionality.
If WordPress is an open sandbox with limitless plugins (and the chaos that can come with them), Webflow is a walled garden, limited in some ways, but extremely polished and optimized within those limits. As of 2025, Webflow is still a fraction of WordPress’s market share, used by roughly 0.8% of all websites (about 1.2% of CMS-driven sites).
Yet that small slice includes many high-profile adopters. Webflow hasn’t had a “big breakthrough” in awareness yet, but momentum is building. Major companies like SurferSEO, Bonsai, Upwork, and Lattice have switched from other platforms (including WordPress) to Webflow, validating its capability at even enterprise scale.
For agencies, Webflow represents a modern approach: design-driven development, where designers (not just developers) can take a project from concept to published website. This can drastically shorten production cycles and empower branding experts to realize their vision without translating everything into code.
In summary, WordPress offers unrivaled extensibility and a familiar content-centric workflow (great for blogs and complex sites), but at the cost of more maintenance and technical overhead. Webflow offers a streamlined, designer-friendly workflow with hosting and maintenance handled for you, but it imposes its own set of constraints (you work within Webflow’s visual builder and features).
Many agencies historically defaulted to WordPress because “that’s what everyone used.” Still, as we’ll explore, Webflow’s approach is proving to be a better fit for certain needs, especially when it comes to visual branding and performance. Let’s examine the head-to-head comparisons in the areas that matter most.
For any website, and especially for brand-oriented sites, performance is critical. A slow or frequently broken site can undermine even the best branding efforts. Here we’ll compare how WordPress and Webflow stack up in terms of site performance and their ability to handle growth and traffic (scalability).
Out of the box, a basic WordPress site can run quickly, but real-world WordPress setups often become slower over time as functionality is added. The WordPress ecosystem encourages using plugins for almost everything, SEO, contact forms, sliders, analytics, you name it.
The downside is that each plugin can introduce additional scripts, database queries, or processing on your pages. As one source vividly put it, “WordPress tends to take the scenic route, collecting souvenirs (plugins) along the way,” which can weigh a site down, whereas Webflow “sticks to the interstate” for a leaner journey.
In practical terms, a heavily customized WordPress site with many plugins or a bloated theme can suffer from slow load times and can struggle under high traffic unless carefully optimized.
Caching plugins (which generate static HTML versions of pages) are often essential to make WordPress sites faster for visitors. Ensuring good performance with WordPress thus requires technical tuning: choosing a fast host, using caching/CDN, optimizing images, and selectively picking lightweight plugins or custom coding parts of the site. It’s doable; countless WordPress sites perform well, but it’s not automatic.
Scalability can also be an issue on WordPress if using cheap shared hosting. A sudden spike in traffic (say your campaign goes viral) might crash a WordPress site that isn’t prepared for it, because each page request may be hitting the database or running PHP code.
High-scale WordPress deployments (like enterprise sites) mitigate this with robust hosting solutions, but that adds cost and complexity. In growing businesses, common pain points include marketing teams waiting on developers for updates, or plugins conflicting at the worst times under pressure. In short, WordPress can scale, but it often requires significant maintenance and infrastructure savvy to do it reliably.
Webflow, by contrast, takes a fundamentally different approach that tends to yield excellent performance by default. When you publish a site on Webflow, the platform generates static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for your pages and serves them via a global Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Webflow’s hosting runs on fast infrastructure (backed by Amazon Web Services and Fastly CDN, among others), so content is delivered from servers closest to your visitors. There’s no need for a separate caching plugin; it’s built into how Webflow serves content. Moreover, because Webflow doesn’t rely on dozens of third-party plugins for core features, there’s minimal bloat.
As one agency noted, Webflow’s all-in-one system means “you don’t have to rely on third-party add-ons” for most functionality, keeping sites lean and fast. In contrast to an unoptimized WordPress site that might make 100 database queries and load 20 scripts, a Webflow page might just be static files with a few well-optimized scripts for interactions. The result is often lightning-fast load times and high scores on Google’s Core Web Vitals out of the gate.
When it comes to handling traffic spikes, Webflow’s cloud-based approach shines as well. You’re essentially on a robust distributed hosting environment by default. Webflow sites have handled Super Bowl-level traffic, as the company claims, without breaking a sweat.
There’s no concept of your CMS “overloading” since pages are served statically (except for Webflow’s CMS content updates, which are cached globally once published). This means a branding campaign that suddenly draws in tens of thousands of visitors in an hour likely won’t bring down a Webflow site, the platform automatically scales to serve that traffic.
Webflow also boasts 99.99% uptime (per their SLAs and reports), and you won’t be dealing with random downtime due to a plugin crash or server misconfiguration. As one Webflow advocate put it, “say goodbye to the headaches of website downtime and hello to uninterrupted business operations” when using Webflow’s stable hosting.
Performance isn’t only about speed, it’s also about reliability and the maintenance required to keep the site performant. Here, Webflow has a clear advantage for agencies that don’t want to be in the “IT ops” business. WordPress demands continuous care: you must update the core software, update plugins and themes (nearly every week, there are new patches).
In one typical week of 2024, 181 new vulnerabilities were disclosed across 172 WordPress plugins and 9 themes, each requiring updates or fixes. If you neglect these, performance and security can degrade quickly. A plugin conflict or a PHP error can bring down a WordPress site or at least parts of its functionality, necessitating emergency fixes.
Many growing businesses find that their developers spend more time fixing WordPress issues than building new features, which is frustrating for agencies that want to focus on design and content. Webflow eliminates most of these concerns: the platform itself is maintained by Webflow. Updates roll out automatically on their end (often adding new features for you to use, rather than just patching holes).
There are no servers for you to manage, no PHP versions to worry about, and no plugin updates, since if you need a feature, it’s either built into Webflow or provided via a Webflow-vetted app integration. This translates to less downtime and fewer “ops” distractions. As one comparison noted, Webflow’s “robust infrastructure and reliable hosting” avoids the plugin conflicts WordPress is prone to, offering a secure and stable environment for sites to thrive.
Real-world outcomes reflect these differences. For example, the digital team at Rakuten SL migrated from a custom WordPress setup to Webflow and saw immediate performance gains: they cut update times from days to minutes (no more lengthy deployments for site changes), and noticed 27.9% more new users along with a 12.7% reduction in bounce rate post-migration.
More new users and lower bounce rates are likely tied to a faster, more reliable site experience. Similarly, DNSFilter’s marketing site moved hundreds of pages into Webflow in just 2 months and “eliminated development bottlenecks,” meaning the site could evolve quickly without breaking.
These cases underscore how improved site performance and agility go hand in hand; a faster site not only pleases users but also empowers marketing teams to iterate quickly (which we’ll discuss more under Speed and SEO).
WordPress is a powerful workhorse, but it can become a victim of its complexity. Performance will largely depend on your agency’s ability to optimize and maintain the system amid plugin bloat and traffic load.
Webflow, by design, delivers excellent performance out of the box with far less tweaking, and it scales effortlessly on its managed hosting. For branding agencies that may not have dedicated DevOps engineers, Webflow’s hassle-free performance is a major advantage. As one agency founder put it after switching, “I’m having infinitely more fun in Webflow than WordPress…
Every time I jump back into WordPress, my heart sinks a little, due in part to the slowness and maintenance issues. With Webflow, agencies can be confident that the platform will keep up with creative campaigns and high-traffic moments without needing constant care.
Hand in hand with performance is the question of security, and by extension, the maintenance burden to keep a site secure. Branding agencies must protect their clients’ sites (and reputations) from hacks or data breaches. Let’s compare how WordPress and Webflow fare in securing websites and what effort is required on the agency’s part.
WordPress’s popularity is a double-edged sword. On one side, it means any security vulnerability has a potentially huge impact (because so many sites run WordPress), making WordPress a prime target for hackers.
On the other side, a large community means that when issues are found, patches are often quickly available, but only if you apply them. The majority of WordPress security incidents happen through outdated software or vulnerable plugins/themes rather than the core itself.
With tens of thousands of plugins in the wild, not all are well-maintained. In 2024, for example, Wordfence (a security firm) reported dozens of new plugin vulnerabilities each week, some of them critical. A single insecure plugin (like a contact form or gallery plugin) can become an entry point for attackers to deface a site or inject malware. This means agencies managing WordPress sites must be vigilant: regular updates, security scans, and backups are mandatory.
Many agencies install security plugins like Wordfence or Sucuri to add firewalls and malware scanning to WordPress, which helps, but also adds more load and complexity.
By default, WordPress provides basic security features: user authentication with username/password, role management, and recommended practices like using SSL (HTTPS). However, it lacks many advanced protections out of the box.
For instance, WordPress does not include two-factor authentication by default, leaving logins more vulnerable unless you add a plugin or external service. Brute-force attacks on WordPress admin pages are common, so implementing things like login rate limiting or 2FA is up to the site owner.
Similarly, while WordPress supports HTTPS, you must obtain and install an SSL certificate via your host or a plugin; WordPress itself doesn’t manage certificates. Essentially, a WordPress site’s security is only as good as the diligence of the people maintaining it. If a branding agency has a solid dev team that follows best practices (harden the admin page, keep everything updated, use quality plugins, take backups, etc.), WordPress can be reasonably secure.
But the margin for error is thin: a lapse in updates or a single weak link can lead to a compromise. Because WordPress is open-source and ubiquitous, automated bots constantly scour WordPress sites for known vulnerabilities.
The result is that WordPress site owners often have to spend non-trivial time “hardening” their installations and cleaning up issues if hacks occur. This maintenance burden can eat into an agency’s productivity.
Webflow takes a far more centralized and proactive approach to security, one of the benefits of a closed platform. Since Webflow runs your site on their servers, they handle much of the security at an infrastructure level.
Immediately, this removes many common vulnerabilities: there’s no PHP code or MySQL database that an attacker can directly target for SQL injection, no third-party plugins that might have hidden backdoors, and no need for the agency to constantly patch software.
Webflow’s platform is secured and monitored by their team. Key security features include enterprise-grade hosting on AWS, SSL encryption by default (every Webflow site gets a free SSL certificate automatically), SOC 2 compliance (an audited security standard), and protection against DDoS attacks.
Webflow also introduced two-factor authentication for its user accounts, adding an extra layer when logging into the Webflow dashboard to edit a site. In essence, Webflow provides a locked-down environment where many of the vulnerabilities that plague typical CMS setups simply don’t exist.
As one expert described, using Webflow is akin to the Apple ecosystem vs the Android-like openness of WordPress; Webflow’s closed system means “the sort of things you would have to manage in WordPress are taken care of by Webflow”. You don’t need a suite of security plugins or custom server tweaks; the platform itself is designed to be secure by default.
From a maintenance perspective, this is a huge relief for agencies. With Webflow, there are no security patches you have to apply; Webflow’s engineers handle security updates to the platform continuously, and those updates benefit all users immediately.
There is also versioning and backup built in: Webflow automatically creates backups (site versions) whenever you make changes, and you can restore any earlier version with a click. This means if something ever did go wrong, recovering a clean site is
straightforward. Compare this to WordPress, where you must remember to set up a backup solution and test restores, or risk losing data if your site is hacked or a plugin update goes awry.
One caveat: because Webflow is a closed system, you can’t directly install arbitrary code on the server. This is mostly good for security, but it also means that if there ever were a platform-wide vulnerability (hypothetically), users would have to rely on Webflow to fix it (they could not patch it themselves).
So far, Webflow has an excellent security track record, and its centralized model means issues can be addressed universally very fast. Webflow also vets the third-party apps in their official marketplace, adding some assurance there.
Of course, users can still embed custom code or scripts into Webflow sites if needed, which introduces a bit of responsibility (for example, if you embed an insecure script, you could create a vulnerability even on Webflow). But as long as agencies use reputable embeds, the risk remains low.
For a branding agency, the implications are clear. If you build on WordPress, you or your client’s IT team must actively manage security, schedule updates, budget time for plugin patching, possibly pay for security tools, and be prepared for emergency fixes. If you build on Webflow, much of that is offloaded.
The agency can focus on design and content rather than being sysadmins. This also translates to what you can promise clients: uptime and safety. Webflow’s record allows agencies to confidently tout “enterprise-level security” and focus on the creative deliverables, whereas with WordPress an agency might need to offer a maintenance retainer just to keep things secure (indeed, many agencies charge ongoing fees for WordPress maintenance, which is telling of the work involved).
As the Swedish agency Good Guys noted, enterprise companies are switching to Webflow in part because maintenance costs drop, large businesses can spend up to $5k/month on various maintenance tasks for WordPress (hosting, tech support, plugin updates, security), which Webflow can drastically reduce by bundling everything into one platform.
A concrete example: consider SSL certificates and HTTPS. On WordPress, you might have to buy an SSL cert or use Let’s Encrypt, install it via your host, and use a plugin or manual config to force all links to HTTPS.
On Webflow, every site gets HTTPS automatically with a certificate, and it’s just always on, no mixed content issues, no renewals to worry about. Or take DDoS protection: a WordPress site might need a service like Cloudflare in front of it to absorb malicious traffic, whereas Webflow’s infrastructure already includes DDoS mitigation. These hidden benefits mean less risk of an unfortunate phone call to your agency about “why is our site down/hacked?”
That’s not to say WordPress cannot be secure; it powers some extremely high-profile sites that take security seriously. But those often have dedicated teams or managed hosting (like WordPress VIP or Kinsta, WP Engine, etc.) doing heavy lifting. For a typical agency-client scenario, Webflow offers peace of mind.
As Webflow itself highlights, they sandbox the site’s back-end from unauthorized access, and any changes must go through the Webflow Editor/Designer interface (which is protected by login and 2FA). This drastically reduces the surface area for attacks compared to a general-purpose CMS, where any number of scripts or endpoints could be targets.
Maintenance ties into security because an up-to-date site is a secure site. Agencies that have moved to Webflow often cite focus as a benefit; they can spend time on design iterations rather than plugin updates.
For instance, the team at MMG Design (which switched from WordPress to Webflow) noted that in Webflow, “most functionality is in-built, and apps are being developed to add functionality whilst maintaining integrity and avoiding conflicts”, implying they no longer deal with the plugin update treadmill that WordPress had them on. This means fewer “site down” alerts at midnight and more predictable workloads.
To sum up, Security & Maintenance: WordPress demands constant vigilance, it’s like a powerful off-road vehicle that needs regular tuning and can attract thieves because everyone recognizes it. Webflow is like a locked sports car in a secure garage; it runs smoothly, and the security system is built in, but you trust the manufacturer (Webflow) for maintenance. For branding agencies that don’t specialize in web security, Webflow’s approach greatly lowers risk. As one Webflow user on a forum explained to a WordPress veteran asking about security, “there isn’t anything to tweak [in Webflow].
The things you would have to manage in WordPress are taken care of by Webflow”. That encapsulates it: Webflow handles the heavy lifting, whereas WordPress asks you to handle it (or pay someone else to). In 2025, with cyber threats ever present, having a platform that is secure by design is a huge win for agencies and their clients.
When it comes to design and flexibility, we touch the heart of what branding agencies care about most. This is about the creative freedom to realize a brand’s vision on the web, as well as the ability to extend the website with various features or custom code.
Both Webflow and WordPress claim to be flexible, but in practice, their philosophies differ. Let’s break this down into two aspects: visual design freedom and functional extensibility.
Branding agencies thrive on creating unique, memorable digital experiences that align with a brand’s identity. This often means breaking away from cookie-cutter templates and crafting custom layouts, interactions, and visual effects. Here, Webflow is arguably unmatched. Webflow was built for custom design. You start with a blank canvas or a base template and can change everything: layout grids, typography, colors, element positions, animations, you name it.
The platform’s style panel gives you control over CSS properties (margins, padding, flexbox, grid, shadows, etc.) through an intuitive UI, and any design that can be achieved with front-end code can usually be done in Webflow’s designer without writing code. Webflow’s ethos is “design without limits (or without code)”.
This means a skilled Webflow designer (who understands web fundamentals) can build a pixel-perfect realization of a Figma/Sketch design, or even design on the fly in the Webflow Designer, with full creative control. There are no mandatory themes or rigid templates; every component can be tailored. As a result, no two Webflow sites need to look the same, a fact Blushush Agency emphasizes: they avoid generic assets and craft sites with bold, expressive layouts so that “no two Blushush sites look the same, just as no two brands are the same”. That level of bespoke design is a big draw for branding agencies who want their work to stand out.
WordPress, conversely, started with a theme-based approach. When building a WordPress site, you typically either pick an existing theme or develop a custom theme.
Using an existing theme (even a premium one) often constrains you to that theme’s design options, unless you custom-code changes or use a page builder. In recent years, WordPress page builder plugins like Elementor, Divi, or WPBakery have become popular to give more drag-and-drop design flexibility, but they come with trade-offs (they can be heavy and sometimes limiting in their ways).
The new Gutenberg block editor in WordPress also aims to allow more flexible layouts using blocks, but it’s primarily focused on content layout, not full design freedom of headers/footers/animations, etc., and agencies report it’s not yet as intuitive or powerful for custom design as hoped.
Achieving a truly custom design in WordPress usually means hiring a front-end developer to write CSS/HTML and possibly JS for interactive elements, creating a child theme or custom theme from scratch. This requires coding (or at least a developer familiar with PHP and WordPress’s theme structure). For many branding agencies without an in-house hardcore developer, that meant settling for near-enough templates or spending extra budget on contracting developers to implement their designs.
Webflow essentially removes the dependency on a front-end developer for the design phase; the designer can do it themselves visually. As Creative Corner Studio notes, Webflow “excels in design freedom,” especially for designers with little to no coding experience, whereas achieving the same on WordPress would require the assistance of a developer.
The intuitive on-page editing in Webflow is a game-changer: you’re designing the real page in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get manner, which means the result is exactly as intended. Webflow also allows designers to push the envelope with interactions, e.g., parallax scroll effects, mouse hover animations, and Lottie animations, all through built-in tools. To do those on WordPress, one might need to find specific plugins or write custom JavaScript. In Webflow, it’s all contained in the designer UI.
That’s not to say WordPress cannot match a Webflow site in visual quality; it absolutely can if you have the right developers or the right combination of plugins. But the process is typically more complex and time-consuming.
One agency leader described that for a truly unique UI/UX on WordPress, you should “be prepared for a significant time investment” and likely use multiple add-ons. In short, WordPress’s real design freedom comes with coding or heavy plugin use, whereas Webflow’s design freedom is native and immediate.
For branding agencies, this often means Webflow lets them achieve their creative vision faster and without compromises. If a client’s brand guidelines call for an unconventional layout or interactive storytelling, the designer can build it directly in Webflow.
The result is a site that doesn’t look like a generic template, which is crucial for high-end branding work. Agencies like Ohh My Brand recognize this; while they focus on content, when it comes to the website, they partner with Webflow developers to ensure a high-performing, on-brand site rather than a template-y outcome.
Now, design aside, what about adding complex features or integrations? Historically, WordPress’s biggest strength is its extensibility via plugins. Need an e-commerce store? Install WooCommerce. Membership system? There’s a plugin. SEO optimization? Yoast plugin (almost a default at this point). Multilingual? WPML or Polylang plugin.
The WordPress Plugin Directory has ~60,000 options covering an enormous range of features. For an agency, this means that if a client asks, “Can we add an events calendar to our site?” or “We want a customer login portal,” you can often find an existing plugin that provides a solution. This is incredibly powerful; you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for common functionality.
However, the downside we touched on earlier is that each plugin is a potential point of bloat or conflict. Managing many plugins can become “tricky” as you must ensure they remain compatible with each other and with WordPress core. Using too many can slow down the site and complicate maintenance.
But undeniably, WordPress can do more things out-of-the-box than Webflow simply because of this vast library. If an agency’s clients often need specific complex features (say, a real estate listing system or an elaborate booking system), WordPress might cover that better.
Webflow’s philosophy is different: provide 80% of what most sites need built-in, and allow custom code or third-party integrations for the rest. Webflow has built-in features for galleries, sliders, forms (with basic submission handling or integration to email/Slack, etc.), light e-commerce (Webflow Ecommerce allows a store with physical products, though it’s not as robust as WooCommerce for very large catalogs), and recently memberships/user login in beta.
For many marketing websites or portfolio sites that branding agencies create, these built-in features suffice. Webflow’s CMS is quite flexible for creating collections of content (e.g., case studies, blog posts, team members), and you can reference content in dynamic templates. The need for plugins is minimized in Webflow’s approach, which keeps sites simpler and faster by default.
That said, if you do need to extend Webflow, there are a couple of routes: Custom code embeds: Webflow allows adding custom HTML/CSS/JS inside pages or in the site header/footer. So if you need a functionality that Webflow doesn’t support natively, you can often embed a widget or script from another service.
For example, if a client wants a multi-language site, Webflow doesn’t have a native multi-language CMS yet (though it has a new localization widget for different content by region ), so many Webflow users integrate third-party services like Weglot or use custom code solutions.
Similarly, if you need an advanced search or filtering, you might add a custom script or use an integration like Algolia, etc. This requires some coding knowledge, but often the Webflow community provides code solutions to common requests.
Webflow App Marketplace: In late 2022/2023, Webflow launched an official app marketplace where third-party developers can offer integrations (similar to plugins, but these are mostly integrations with external SaaS or add-ons that use Webflow’s API). As of 2025, there are apps for things like advanced forms, analytics, user login (Memberstack), and more than 100+ apps and growing.
While this is small compared to WordPress’s 60k, it covers many needs and is curated, meaning Webflow ensures a certain quality and security for these apps. Over time, this library is expanding. For instance, you can integrate HubSpot, Google Analytics, Zapier, Memberstack (for gated content or memberships), and many other tools through either built-in integration or a marketplace app.
The difference is control vs. convenience. WordPress, being open source, gives you ultimate control; you could even build custom plugins or modify the core. Webflow trades off some of that control for a guaranteed smooth experience. Most agencies find that for the typical scope of branding websites (marketing sites, landing pages, content marketing via blog, maybe light e-commerce or lead gen forms), Webflow’s capabilities are more than enough.
But if you have a niche requirement, WordPress might handle it natively, whereas Webflow might need a workaround. A prudent approach some agencies take is to use Webflow for the majority of projects, and if a project is clearly beyond Webflow’s sweet spot (for example, a huge e-commerce catalog or a content site with thousands of posts and complex categorization), they either stick with WordPress or another specialized solution.
A Webflow-certified agency, DigiHotshot, put it well: with Webflow, you get “no plugin chaos, ever” and a site that “scales as you grow (without breaking)”, implying that avoiding the plugin overload leads to more stable growth. Meanwhile, if you truly need a feature not in Webflow, you might be looking at a custom solution regardless of platform (or using WordPress with heavy plugins that themselves might have limitations).
Flexibility also extends to how easily clients or team members can manage content on the site. WordPress has a long history as a user-friendly CMS for editors; it started as a blogging tool, after all. Editors log into a WP Admin dashboard, create posts, manage media, categories, etc. WordPress supports unlimited user accounts with roles (Admin, Editor, Author, etc.) out of the box.
This makes WordPress very attractive if you have, say, a team of writers or marketers updating the site regularly. You could have 10, 20, or 50 users all with their logins contributing content, without extra licensing cost. The block editor (Gutenberg) introduced a more visual way to layout content in posts, which many find intuitive for blogging.
Additionally, WordPress’s interface for content is separate from design, which means non-technical editors can safely add blog posts or edit text without accidentally breaking the design, especially if they have limited roles.
This separation can be comforting: Creative Corner’s blogger mentions how on a large WordPress blog, they work with ~15 freelance writers, each with their own login, all creating and editing posts simultaneously with no issues.
Webflow’s content editor (called Webflow Editor) is more limited in multi-user scenarios. Webflow allows inviting content editors who can edit site text and CMS items through the live site interface, which is great for small teams, but Webflow charges for additional Editor seats beyond a couple of free ones.
By default, a Webflow site plan comes with 1 or 2 free editors (depending on plan), and beyond that, you pay (around $15 per month per seat) for “limited” Editor seats. So if your client has a whole newsroom of 10 writers, Webflow could become pricey or impractical for that kind of use.
Also, Webflow’s editor, while user-friendly (you click on the page and edit text or CMS items in a sidebar), is not as fully featured as WordPress for things like managing large taxonomies or scheduling posts (Webflow lacks a native post scheduling feature as of 2025).
For many branding sites, heavy blogging isn’t the main focus, so this might not matter. But if part of your branding strategy for clients is content marketing with frequent posts, WordPress still shines as a content workhorse. It even has built-in comments for blog posts (Webflow does not have a native comments system; you’d need Disqus or similar integration if you want comments on articles).
For agencies, another aspect of flexibility is how easily the platform lets multiple team members collaborate. Webflow recently introduced Workspaces and features like real-time collaboration (multiple team members can work in the Designer simultaneously on an Enterprise plan, and others can leave comments, similar to Google Docs style editing).
Webflow also offers page branching on higher plans, allowing a designer to fork a page, make changes, and merge them later, which is great for teams iterating on designs without affecting the live site.
Additionally, Webflow allows two free guest seats for external collaborators on every workspace, which is handy if an agency wants to invite a freelancer or client temporarily to review or edit something without extra cost. By contrast, WordPress collaboration is more old-school; multiple people can be logged in and editing different content, but if two people try to edit the same page/post, one might lock the other out.
There’s no built-in concept of branching or merging design changes; you typically do staging sites or rely on version control outside of WordPress for code. For agencies juggling a team of designers and developers, Webflow’s collaborative tools can streamline workflow and reduce the “friction” of sharing login credentials or merging code changes.
In summary, under Design & Flexibility, Webflow gives branding agencies unparalleled visual design freedom and a streamlined way to build custom sites without writing code. It covers most functional needs out of the box and ensures those features work seamlessly together (no plugin conflicts).
It’s ideal when the priority is a unique, cutting-edge design delivered efficiently. However, it imposes some limits on ultra-complex features, large team content editing, and requires paying for additional functionality or editors if needed.
WordPress offers ultimate flexibility in terms of features and integrations. If you need something, “there’s a plugin for that”. It’s battle-tested for content-heavy sites and multi-contributor scenarios.
But achieving the same level of custom design polish usually demands more time and possibly coding. And each plugin or customization can add maintenance overhead. For agencies that frequently need to extend websites in unconventional ways, WordPress can be a robust toolbox (with the understanding that you must manage that toolbox).
For most branding agencies in 2025, the calculus is leaning towards Webflow for typical projects: agencies are finding that they can say “yes” to creative ideas more readily with Webflow since they’re not constrained by a theme or budget for custom coding each fancy effect.
As Flow Ninja, a Webflow specialist, put it: Webflow’s visual interface offers complete control over layout and design, letting you drag and drop elements and style them, “all without ... ever seeing [the code]”. This empowers the creative team directly.
Meanwhile, if a client’s needs exceed Webflow’s scope, an agency might keep WordPress in its arsenal for those specific use cases. It’s not always either/or; some agencies maintain both capabilities. But given how much Webflow can accomplish, many are transitioning the bulk of their work there, enjoying the freedom and watching the “flexibility vs. complexity” scale tip in their favor.
A website’s success isn’t just in how it looks or functions; it must also attract visitors and rank well on search engines. For branding agencies, delivering a site that can be easily found (and shows the brand in the best light on Google) is a key value-add. Both WordPress and Webflow tout strong SEO capabilities. Here we’ll compare how they handle on-page SEO, technical SEO, and the overall impact on search performance.
WordPress has a long-standing reputation for being SEO-friendly. One big reason is the wealth of SEO plugins available, the most famous being Yoast SEO (along with alternatives like All in One SEO, RankMath, etc.).
These plugins make it very straightforward to manage important on-page SEO elements on WordPress. For instance, Yoast adds fields in the post editor where you can set a custom meta title and meta description for each page/post, and it gives real-time feedback (green/ yellow/red lights) on how well your content is optimized for a focus keyword.
It checks things like keyword usage, readability, internal links, alt text on images, etc., providing a guided approach for content. This kind of SEO coaching is very marketer-friendly; it’s like having a checklist for each blog post to ensure it’s optimized.
WordPress also easily handles blog-specific SEO needs: things like organizing posts by categories/tags (which create archive pages that can rank), enabling comments (user-generated content can sometimes help SEO), and scheduling fresh content regularly.
From a technical SEO perspective, WordPress can be optimized to do all the right things: you can get plugins to generate XML sitemaps (Yoast does this, or WordPress core now has basic sitemap functionality too), edit your robots.txt, set up redirects (with plugins like Redirection), and more.
It’s all possible, though not all is native; you often rely on plugins or the host for certain things. The flip side of the plugin approach is potential backend clutter. As noted, having multiple plugins can slow the site or complicate the backend, which can indirectly affect SEO (site speed is a ranking factor, and a cluttered backend might slow down content updates). So WordPress SEO is powerful, but requires mindful management of plugins and performance.
One advantage WordPress has for SEO is its content-centric nature; it’s easy to publish new content regularly (which search engines love) and to mass-manage SEO for large content sites. For example, if you have 1000 blog posts, WordPress with an SEO plugin can allow bulk editing of SEO metadata, or auto generate certain things. Also, since WordPress has been around forever, SEO professionals are very familiar with it, and there are a ton of resources on optimizing WordPress sites specifically.
Webflow approached SEO with the intent of baking in best practices into the platform. Right away, Webflow has clean, semantic code output, which means the HTML structure of Webflow sites is usually very tidy (no extraneous nested divs or inline styles that might come from WYSIWYG site builders).
This clean code can help search engines parse content easily. Webflow allows setting all the essential SEO fields: you can edit the title tag, meta description, Open Graph tags, etc., for each page and CMS item. You can also define template-based meta tags for CMS collections (e.g., automatically include a blog post’s title and category in the meta title).
Many of these tasks are automated: Zapier’s review of Webflow noted that “a lot of the SEO performance is automatically generated using dynamic settings”, you set a pattern for titles, descriptions, etc., and Webflow applies it consistently. Webflow also generates an XML sitemap for you and lets you easily set 301 redirects via a simple interface (great for when you redesign a site and need to redirect old URLs to new ones).
One of Webflow’s biggest SEO advantages is speed and structure, as highlighted by an agency comparison: “When it comes to Webflow vs WordPress for SEO, Webflow has an edge in speed and structure, while WordPress offers flexibility with plugins like Yoast”.
Because Webflow sites tend to load faster (thanks to minified code, CDN hosting, and no unnecessary scripts), they often achieve better Core Web Vitals scores. Google has incorporated Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS, metrics of loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability) into its ranking algorithm as part of the Page Experience update.
So a Webflow site can tick those boxes more easily, potentially giving it a slight boost in SEO. Moreover, Webflow’s integrated hosting means you don’t have variability in server response times; it’s optimized for scalability and uptime. Googlebot also appreciates sites that are consistently fast and available.
Webflow doesn’t require any plugins for SEO; it’s all built-in, which keeps the backend simpler and pages leaner. As Creative Corner pointed out, Webflow’s “streamlined approach keeps the backend clean, leading to faster-loading websites and improved search rankings”.
Essentially, you won’t have the scenario of “I installed 5 plugins to help SEO, but now my site is slow,” that sometimes happens on WordPress. Instead, Webflow gives you the tools and the speed by default.
That said, Webflow’s SEO tooling, while solid, is not as hand-holding as Yoast. Webflow won’t, for example, score your content’s keyword density or suggest internal links. It assumes the user (or the agency) knows what they’re doing in terms of writing SEO-friendly content.
For agencies that provide SEO copywriting as a service, this isn’t an issue; they can do that analysis outside the platform. But for a client who is used to the guidance of a plugin like Yoast, switching to Webflow might feel like losing a bit of crutch.
However, many SEO professionals argue that those content analysis tools are conveniences, not necessities; what matters is the result, which Webflow can produce just as well (if not better due to speed).
Both platforms allow adding things like JSON-LD structured data (schema.org markup for rich snippets). In WordPress, you might use a plugin or add it to your theme. In Webflow, you can directly paste JSON-LD scripts in the page head or use the CMS to populate dynamic structured data. So advanced SEO implementations are possible in both, with a slight learning curve either way.
One interesting data point comes from an MMG Design analysis: they cited a study by SEO Tribunal that found “websites built on Webflow have seen an average increase in organic traffic by a staggering 74% compared to WordPress sites”.
While that number should be taken with a grain of salt (context of the study matters), it aligns with anecdotal evidence that sites moving to Webflow often experience improved SEO metrics, likely due to performance improvements and perhaps cleaner site architecture.
Google’s emphasis on site speed is noted: “Google themselves have emphasized the importance of site speed in SEO rankings, making Webflow’s speedy performance a game-changer”. If a branding agency migrates a client from a sluggish WordPress site to a snappy Webflow site, they might well see better rankings and more organic traffic simply because of better page experience and faster load times.
Another aspect is mobile-friendliness. Webflow is inherently responsive (you design for desktop, tablet, and mobile views in the designer, and it outputs responsive code). WordPress sites can be responsive too, but if a theme isn’t well-optimized or a plugin adds non-responsive elements, you might have issues.
Since mobile usability is also an SEO factor, Webflow’s strong responsive design tools ensure your site passes Google’s mobile-friendly tests with flying colors. Of course, most modern WordPress themes are responsive too, but again, it comes down to consistency and ease of achieving a good outcome.
For content-heavy sites, WordPress’s ease of blogging can encourage a robust content strategy, which helps SEO. Agencies might consider this: if the site will have a blog that is a centerpiece of SEO strategy with daily or weekly posts, WordPress provides a very comfortable environment for content teams.
Webflow’s CMS can handle blogs (and many Webflow sites do have blogs), but managing hundreds of posts is slightly less convenient in Webflow’s Editor compared to WordPress’s dedicated Posts interface with filtering, bulk actions, etc. If an agency’s service includes ongoing content marketing for a client, they might weigh this factor.
On the flip side, many Webflow-built sites have excellent SEO because the agencies optimize content manually and leverage Webflow’s speed. Ohh My Brand, for instance, takes an “SEO-first approach” in their personal branding work, and reports that most of their client content lands on page one of search results, proof that with the right strategy, a Webflow site can dominate Google just as well.
Another consideration: technical SEO issues like 404 errors, duplicate content, etc. In WordPress, these can creep in if plugins misbehave or if the site structure isn’t carefully managed (for example, tag pages, author pages creating duplicates, etc., which SEO plugins usually help mitigate). In Webflow, since you design the structure, it’s a bit harder to create accidental duplicates (there’s no auto-generated archive pages unless you set them up).
Webflow also lets you set canonical URLs for CMS items easily if needed. So both can be made equally SEO-sound, but Webflow’s simplicity can sometimes mean fewer opportunities to mess up.
At the end of the day, both platforms can achieve top-tier SEO results, but they get there differently. WordPress gives you more granular tools (via plugins) and is very content-editor friendly; Webflow provides a lean, performance-optimized foundation that may give you an edge in technical SEO out of the box.
Many agencies have reported that after switching to Webflow, their sites saw improved search rankings, mainly because the new site was faster and often came with a refresh of content structure.
For instance, a Forrester study noted businesses that switched saw significant SEO and traffic gains as part of a broader improvement . Also, Webflow’s ability to quickly build landing pages can aid SEO, if you want to target many keywords with specific pages, an agile Webflow team can spin those up faster than a traditional dev cycle on WordPress.
SEO Verdict: If an agency’s priority is giving content writers every convenience (like SEO plugins with analysis, a familiar blogging interface, unlimited user roles), WordPress might edge out.
If the priority is maximum site performance and not having to worry about technical SEO under the hood, Webflow holds an advantage. In practice, many find Webflow’s SEO features sufficient and appreciate that you don’t need to install 5 plugins to cover basics, it’s already done, so you can focus on content and on building backlinks, etc.
As one comprehensive review concluded, Webflow puts SEO front and center with built-in tools, whereas WordPress’s strength is augmented by plugins like Yoast; Webflow wins on speed and clean structure, which are huge for SEO today.
For branding agencies, delivering a site that ranks well is often part of the package. Both platforms can serve that goal. However, if you’ve ever dealt with a slow WordPress site that hurt a client’s Core Web Vitals or a plugin that accidentally deindexed the site (yes, it happens), the appeal of Webflow’s simplicity and speed becomes clear.
Given Google’s trajectory (favoring better user experience), Webflow’s default optimizations give it a strong case in the SEO department. In 2025, an agency might confidently say: “We choose Webflow because it helps ensure your site is fast and technically sound for SEO from day one, and we’ll craft high-quality content on top of that.” That combination can indeed beat the competition.
While we’ve touched on performance generally and its impact on SEO, it’s worth zeroing in on page speed itself, a factor so important that it deserves its discussion. For branding agencies, page speed is part of user experience: a fast site keeps visitors engaged and reflects well on the brand’s competence.
A slow site, on the other hand, frustrates users and can dilute even the strongest brand message (nobody likes waiting for a beautifully designed page to load). Let’s compare how Webflow and WordPress measure up on page load speed and overall user experience.
Studies have shown that even a 1-second delay in page load can decrease conversions significantly. Users have become increasingly impatient; if a page takes more than a few seconds to load, they might abandon it. Google’s data indicates that bounce rates spike as pages get slower.
For branding agencies, this is critical: all the effort put into design and content can be wasted if users leave before the page even displays properly. Also, with much traffic coming from mobile devices on varying networks, having a lightweight, optimized site is key to reaching users on the go.
Out-of-the-box, a plain WordPress site (with a basic theme and no plugins) can load very fast. WordPress isn’t inherently slow. The challenge is that real sites usually have many elements, high-resolution images, multiple plugins, analytics scripts, etc. Each additional plugin or script can increase the page payload or slow down processing. For example, many WordPress sites use a combination of a theme + a visual page builder + plugins; this stack can result in large CSS and JS files being loaded, even for simple pages.
It’s not uncommon for a WordPress homepage built with popular page builders to be 2-4 MB in size and make 100+ HTTP requests, which on a mid-range mobile phone over 3G could take several seconds to fully load. To combat this, performance optimization on WordPress becomes a project of its own: enabling caching, compressing images (often via a plugin), concatenating/minifying CSS and JS (via plugins or build processes), using a CDN for assets, etc.
In skilled hands, a WordPress site can be tuned to load quickly, and indeed many are. But for an agency, achieving consistently fast load times across all projects means you need a disciplined approach (e.g., maybe you have a go-to lightweight theme or you custom-build themes, avoid slow plugins, and configure caching on every site).
It’s work that repeats for each project. The truth is, not all agencies invested that time historically, which is why you’ll find plenty of sluggish WordPress sites out there.
To WordPress’s credit, the ecosystem has responded with performance-focused solutions: there are now performance audit plugins, hosts that provide built-in caching (like WP Engine, etc.), and WordPress core itself improved a bit (for instance, WordPress 5.9+ introduced some speed improvements, and the new block themes can be faster).
But statistics still showed, as of early 2023, that only around 30-40% of WordPress sites passed Google’s Core Web Vitals for good performance on mobile, which, while improving, lags behind some other platforms. The reason is often that non-expert site owners overload their sites.
Agencies, being experts, can avoid that, but if speed is a priority, they must plan for it from the start on WordPress (choose the right stack and optimize).
Webflow’s platform was designed with performance in mind. When you publish a site on Webflow, it automatically does a lot: HTML, CSS, and JS files are minified (whitespace removed, code bundled efficiently). Webflow automatically generates responsive image variants for you.
That is, if you upload a large image, Webflow will create several scaled versions and serve the appropriate size for different devices (using modern HTML srcset techniques). This ensures mobile devices aren’t downloading a huge desktop-sized image unnecessarily.
On WordPress, achieving the same would require either manual image handling or plugins (though WordPress does some responsive images by default now, but Webflow’s implementation is quite effective).
Webflow sites leverage a globally distributed CDN, meaning assets load from servers closest to the user, reducing latency. Because there are no extraneous plugins, the amount of JavaScript running is typically only what’s needed for Webflow’s features (e.g., interactions) and perhaps one or two small third-party snippets (analytics, etc.).
Webflow’s native JS library (for interactions, etc.) is well-optimized and only included if you use those features.
All this translates to Webflow sites often scoring high on tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix by default. It’s common to see a freshly built Webflow marketing site hit a 90+ score on mobile PageSpeed without special tweaks.
That “good performance by default” is a big boon for agencies, it means less time spent on grunt work like optimizing caching rules or image compression, and more time on the creative aspects.
To illustrate, MMG Design reported that sites on Webflow (versus their older WordPress counterparts) had “lightning-fast load times,” and this directly contributed to better SEO and user engagement.
Another agency example: Aloa, a tech company, switched to Webflow and noted that eliminating the bloat of WordPress (especially custom plugins) made their site significantly faster and more efficient . They pointed out that Webflow’s elimination of plugin bloat improved performance greatly .
Mobile Performance: Webflow ensures designs are responsive, but also its performance optimizations carry over to mobile. Fast mobile load times are crucial since mobile networks can be slow or inconsistent.
Webflow’s approach of serving smaller images to mobile and the lean code helps achieve faster First Contentful Paint and Largest Contentful Paint times on phones. WordPress sites can also be responsive and fast on mobile, but if not optimized, things like heavy sliders or large scripts can drag on a low-end smartphone. With Webflow, agencies have fine control; they can even turn off certain animations or large sections on mobile views if they are not needed, thus delivering a tailored, efficient experience per device.
One challenge in web design is balancing visual richness with performance. Fancy animations, high-res videos, and custom fonts can increase load times. Branding agencies often push the envelope on visuals. So, how do the platforms handle that trade-off?
On Webflow, since you can directly implement animations (using Webflow Interactions), you can fine-tune them so they don’t hurt performance (e.g., using efficient CSS transforms, triggering animations on scroll in a way that doesn’t jank).
Webflow’s animations run on the client side and are quite optimized, but if overused, any animation can still affect thedevice'se CPU. The good thing is, an agency can test and adjust all within Webflow. Also, Webflow hosting can handle background videos well by using HTML5 video with appropriate compression that you upload. It’s in your control to compress assets.
On WordPress, many times agencies rely on third-party sliders or animation libraries that might not be as optimized, and because they’re black boxes (plugin code), you have less control. It might require custom dev work to achieve the same fine-tuning.
However, if an agency has capable front-end devs, they can achieve equal outcomes (for instance, using GSAP or custom code on WordPress to do animations could match Webflow Interaction’s smoothness). It’s just more custom effort vs Webflow’s built-in abilities.
Additionally, Webflow automatically enables things like Brotli or Gzip compression for files, uses HTTP/2 for parallel loading, and can take advantage of modern image formats like WebP when available. WordPress sites can do all these too, but it’s contingent on the host and plugins (for example, using a caching plugin that serves WebP images, etc.).
Anecdotally, many agencies have seen that moving to Webflow cut their page load times dramatically. For example, a site that took ~5 seconds to fully load on WordPress might come down to ~2 seconds on Webflow after a well-executed rebuild, purely because of eliminating overhead. Those seconds matter. Users feel the difference.
One more consideration is how easy it is to keep the site fast as you update it. WordPress sites can gradually slow as more plugins/content get added unless someone is keeping an eye on performance. A marketing team might install a new plugin for pop-ups, not realizing it loads a huge script on every page.
Webflow’s environment is more controlled: only those with Designer access (usually developers/designers) can implement site-wide changes, and they are likely to be conscious of performance. Content editors in Webflow can’t suddenly add a 5MB image that isn’t being optimized. Even if they add a big image, Webflow will create smaller versions for different devices automatically.
This means speed is less likely to degrade unintentionally on Webflow. In WordPress, an enthusiastic client might upload huge images not compressed, or add a heavy plugin, and site speed suffers. Of course, agencies often train clients on best practices, but the built-in safety nets in Webflow help here.
To quantify speed and UX, we can look at Core Web Vitals (CWV: Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift). Webflow sites, being static and well-structured, often have excellent LCP and CLS (no unexpected layout shifts because the design is set, and content loads quickly).
WordPress sites can achieve good CWV, but as mentioned, less consistently across the web. Google’s CrUX data (Chrome User Experience Report) in 2024 showed overall web improvement, but platforms like Webflow and Squarespace had higher percentages of sites meeting CWV than WordPress, likely due to default optimizations.
In one analysis by an SEO tool, Webflow had a higher ratio of sites with “good” CWV compared to WordPress, though WordPress was improving due to efforts by its community.
For a branding agency, being able to confidently deliver a site that meets Google’s Page Experience standards is a plus. You can say to a client, “Your new site will not only look great but also load in a snap, passing all of Google’s Core Web Vitals, which means better UX and potentially better SEO.” Webflow makes that promise easier to keep without additional services like NitroPack or custom code optimization.
In conclusion, on Speed: Webflow wins on ease of achieving fast page loads and maintaining them. It gives you performance on a silver platter. WordPress can be equally fast if optimized, but that optimization is an extra layer of work and expertise.
Many agencies are honest about this: if they want a guaranteed fast site without needing a performance engineer, they lean towards Webflow. The performance gains translate to happier users and better conversions. Remember, branding isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s also about how the user feels interacting with the brand’s site.
A fast, smooth site makes a brand feel more premium and trustworthy (subconsciously, users associate speed with professionalism). As a case in point, after switching to Webflow, one brand saw an increase in conversion rate to 4.8% (nearly double that of their old WordPress site at 2.5%), attributed to the improved user experience and design.
Speed was a factor in that equation. Faster pages = more people sticking around to see the call to action, thus more conversions.
Therefore, when weighing WordPress vs Webflow for page speed in 2025, Webflow provides a head start. For agencies, this means less worrying about page speed test scores and more confidence that the beautiful site they built isn’t secretly frustrating users with slowness.
It’s a competitive edge in pitching to clients, too, being able to cite that the Webflow-built sites often achieve X% better load times or that businesses saw tangible improvements after increasing speed. Ultimately, a winner in page speed contributes to the overall win in user experience and satisfaction, which is what branding is all about.
Nothing illustrates the platform comparison better than real-world examples. Several branding and web agencies have made the leap from WordPress to Webflow in recent years, citing the benefits we’ve discussed. Let’s look at a couple of notable cases, Blushush Agency and Ohh My Brand, and how and why they transitioned to Webflow, as well as insights from others who have switched.
“Bold Brand Builders with a Webflow Edge”: Blushush is a London-based boutique agency co-founded by Sahil Gandhi (known as “The Brand Professor”). They started as a branding-focused studio and integrated Webflow development to bring those brands to life online.
Originally, like many agencies, Blushush could have used WordPress to build client sites, but they chose Webflow as their core development platform. This transition allowed them to turn their deep branding strategies into high impact websites more efficiently. Blushush approaches each project with a clear framework anchored in brand storytelling, and they insist on high-performance Webflow builds to support that narrative.
The result? Each site they produce is backed by SEO fundamentals and conversion best practices, but also dripping with custom design that embodies the client’s personality. By using Webflow, Blushush avoids the templated look that can come from generic WordPress themes, aligning with their tagline, “Forget Boring.”
The agency quickly gained attention for transforming early-stage startups and scaling brands through this blend of strategy and Webflow execution. Because Webflow enables quick iterations, Blushush can run brand workshops, then rapidly prototype and launch the website without a lengthy dev cycle.
One can infer that Blushush likely started with WordPress in the early days (as most did), but as soon as Webflow matured enough, they jumped in, finding it more suitable for their design-led ethos. Sahil Gandhi even mentioned in a Forbes piece that merging brand strategy with modern Webflow development lets them create sites that are not just functional but unforgettable.
That encapsulates why they transitioned: Webflow empowers them to craft unforgettable digital brand experiences without getting bogged down in the technical quagmire that WordPress can be. It’s a competitive edge; their clients get websites that look world-class and perform beautifully, and Blushush spends less time on maintenance and more on creative work.
Personal Branding Meets Webflow: Ohh My Brand is another fascinating example. Led by Bhavik Sarkhedi, this agency focuses on personal branding for executives and founders.
They produce content (LinkedIn optimization, ghostwritten articles, PR, etc.) and realized that their clients also needed personal websites that showcase their brand. Initially, Ohh My Brand wasn’t a web development agency per se, and they could have sent clients off to a WordPress developer.
Instead, they decided to embrace Webflow by partnering with Webflow specialists (like Blushush or others) to deliver those websites as part of a seamless branding package. This effectively means Ohh My Brand “transitioned from likely advising clients on maybe simple WordPress sites to actively delivering Webflow sites. The reason is clear: their whole philosophy is about authenticity, credibility, and visibility.
They want sites that are tightly aligned with a client’s reputation strategy and that elevate credibility . To them, Webflow was the solution to get high-performing, custom personal brand sites without the headache of managing WordPress projects (which would be outside their main expertise). In 2024-2025, Ohh My Brand even launched comprehensive packages combining digital presence and storytelling, with Webflow websites as a key component.
By doing so, they keep everything in-house and of high quality. Their clients benefit from having a modern Webflow site that loads fast (important for busy execs’ audience), is secure (important if these individuals are high-profile), and is exactly on-brand.
The implicit story is that agencies like Ohh My Brand saw that to give their clients the best, they should standardize on a platform that won’t tarnish the brand with slow speed or cookie-cutter looks.
Webflow checked those boxes. Even though Ohh My Brand wasn’t a “web dev” agency originally, Webflow’s relative ease allowed them to integrate it into their offerings smoothly via collaboration with Webflow experts. This is a trend: agencies whose core might be design or content are empowered by Webflow to also deliver top-tier websites without becoming full-stack development shops.
It’s not just these two. Across the industry: A Reddit thread from a year ago asked, “Anyone work at an agency that switched to Webflow from WordPress?” and the responses were telling. One agency developer said, “We switched and it was the best idea ever… [Webflow is] waaay more flexible than WordPress. I typically design in Figma and then translate the design into [Webflow]… it gives me so much freedom.
The fee wasn’t the big problem… every time I jump back into WordPress, my heart sinks a bit.” They acknowledged WordPress is in a transitional phase and just found Webflow a breath of fresh air. This kind of enthusiasm is common once agencies leap, the workflow and outcome improve, and rarely do they want to go back.
Forrester’s study (commissioned by Webflow) found that companies switching to Webflow achieved a 332% ROI over three years, a 94% faster development cycle, and significantly reduced ongoing cost. While those numbers are more targeted at enterprises, they apply to agencies delivering projects. Faster dev cycles mean agencies can take on more projects or spend more time on strategy instead of laborious coding. ROI and cost savings can be passed to clients or improve agency margins. An 80% boost in team efficiency was noted, too, showing how internal processes in agencies can be streamlined when using Webflow as the main tool.
Good Guys, a Swedish agency, shared reasons why even enterprise-size companies are moving to Webflow. They highlight reduced maintenance costs and the fact that big names (SurferSEO, Upwork, etc.) have switched. This gives agencies confidence that Webflow is “enterprise-ready” and not just for small sites.
Another case: DigiHotshot, a Webflow Enterprise Partner, mentioned they’ve helped 14 brands break free from WordPress, and they emphasize that with Webflow, you get to “launch new pages in 72 hours (not weeks), marketing teams work independently, no plugin chaos, scales as you grow”.
This speaks to agency pain points: time-to-market and marketing autonomy. In WordPress, launching a new page might involve a developer if the page needs a custom layout. In Webflow, a designer or marketer (with some training) can often duplicate a layout and create a new page quickly. That agility is crucial, especially for agencies that offer retainer services or ongoing site iterations.
One reason some agencies hesitated in the past to switch was the learning curve of a new tool. WordPress was familiar. However, in recent years, Webflow has invested in education (Webflow University, etc.), and many designers find Webflow’s logic intuitive once they understand the box model and CSS.
Agencies like N4 Studio openly discuss how their team (being mostly designers) prefers Webflow because it aligns with their skillset, whereas doing the same in WordPress requires more developer intervention. Essentially, the composition of agency teams is often more design-heavy, and Webflow plays to that strength.
Agencies that have moved clients’ sites to Webflow report very positive client feedback. For instance, the marketing team at Rakuten SL (post-migration) was thrilled that they could now update content in minutes instead of submitting tickets to IT.
Similarly, smaller branding clients often love that the new Webflow site “just works” – they don’t have to worry about their site getting hacked or needing plugin updates. Blushush’s clients pair their Webflow sites with performance marketing, knowing the site can handle campaigns without crashing. That reliability is a selling point.
It’s worth noting that transitioning from WordPress to Webflow does require planning. Content migration must be done carefully (Webflow has CSV import for CMS, but things like blog posts with images and rich text require some setup). Agencies like MMG Design advise that it’s possible to migrate, “you just have to do it correctly”.
Typically, that means setting up 301 redirects from old WP URLs to new Webflow URLs (to preserve SEO), ensuring all content is carried over, and possibly retraining clients on the new Editor interface. However, these are one-time effort,s and the long-term gains are worth it.
Some agencies adopt a strategy of “gradual transition”: for example, they might start building all new client sites in Webflow, while maintaining existing WordPress sites until a redesign opportunity comes. This was echoed by a Reddit commenter who suggested using WordPress for certain smaller legacy clients but Webflow for all new projects. Over time, the agency’s portfolio shifts to mostly Webflow.
In essence, the case studies and anecdotes paint a clear picture: agencies that switched to Webflow rarely regret it. They often experience improved efficiency, happier designers, and satisfied clients.
Blushush and Ohh My Brand are prime examples of agencies leveraging Webflow to deliver on their branding promises. They are part of a larger movement in the digital agency world recognizing that the old way (WordPress for everything) isn’t always the best, especially when excellence in design and performance is required.
For any agency reading this in 2025, these stories are encouraging. They show that the switch is not only feasible but beneficial. And importantly, they dispel the myth that Webflow is only for simple sites. If enterprises and high-profile branding agencies can use Webflow for complex, mission-critical sites, it’s robust enough for a wide range of projects.
The key takeaway from these case studies: Webflow has proven its value in real agency environments, enhancing their branding capabilities while alleviating technical burdens.
After examining the features, comparisons, and real examples, the big question for many is: Should we (as a branding/creative agency) switch from WordPress to Webflow? The answer will vary by agency, but here are key insights and considerations to help you make that decision:
Consider the composition of your team. Are they primarily designers and content creators, or do you have a large development staff proficient in PHP? If you’re design-centric, Webflow will likely supercharge your workflow. It enables designers to build fully realized websites without handing off to a developer for coding the theme.
This can cut production time dramatically (recall that Forrester found development cycles can be 94% faster after switching to Webflow ). On the flip side, if your agency has invested heavily in WordPress/PHP expertise and has complex custom development workflows, there may be a learning curve to retraining on Webflow. That said, many development-oriented agencies are still switching to Webflow for applicable projects, instead focusing their coding skills on integrating Webflow with other systems via APIs or custom code when needed. Evaluate how a tool like Webflow fits your current process; for many, it streamlines handoffs (design to dev) into a single unified process.
Audit the typical projects you do. Are they mostly marketing websites, brand microsites, corporate sites, portfolios, etc., with emphasis on visual design and content? If yes, these are Webflow’s sweet spot. Webflow can handle those brilliantly while delivering superior performance and easier maintenance.
If some of your projects involve advanced web applications, large e-commerce or community features (forums, user accounts with complex interactions), you might still need WordPress or another platform for those specific cases (or embed external solutions into Webflow).
For instance, if a client needs a multi-thousand SKU e-commerce store with intricate filtering, WooCommerce (or Shopify) might be more appropriate than Webflow’s simpler e-commerce. However, those cases for branding agencies are relatively few; often, a branding agency might handle the main site and brand experience, while an external shop or tool handles the complex app part. Webflow can integrate with Shopify Buy buttons, etc., if needed. So, consider switching the majority of projects to Webflow, while keeping a toolbox of other solutions for niche demands.
If you find that on WordPress, you’re often constrained by budget from executing the custom design you want (because custom coding it in WordPress is expensive), Webflow can be a game-changer. It enables custom designs within shorter time frames, meaning you can deliver a truly unique design without blowing the budget.
This can let you upsell more creative designs to clients since you’re not saying, “We’ll need 3 extra weeks of coding to do that.” As Blushush demonstrated, you can have both bold design and efficient execution with Webflow. This can differentiate your agency in the market as one that delivers one-of-a-kind sites quickly.
Ask yourself how much time and money are spent on maintaining client WordPress sites. Do you have to apply updates frequently, fix hacked sites occasionally, or troubleshoot plugin conflicts? These are hidden costs (and stress) that don’t directly add value to the client’s brand.
Webflow removes most of that overhead, no constant updates, virtually zero hacks if clients don’t mess with custom code, and Webflow’s support to lean on if something goes wrong on their end. Good Guys agency pointed out that small businesses might ignore maintenance costs, but enterprises see it adding up to tens of thousands per year.
If you could save that for your clients (or for yourselves), that money/effort can be redirected to strategy, content, or new projects. Additionally, if you offer hosting/maintenance plans, switching to Webflow could simplify your offerings; you might just resell Webflow hosting or have clients pay Webflow directly, freeing you from being the “webmaster on call” for technical issues. Many agencies happily step away from being server admins once on Webflow.
In your pitches to clients, do you emphasize delivering fast, SEO optimized sites? If so, consider which platform helps you keep that promise with less trial-and-error. With WordPress, achieving top performance often requires an experienced developer or specific stack (e.g., building headless or using static generators for WP).
With Webflow, even a small team can reliably produce a fast site. The SEO advantages of speed and structure in Webflow are real. If a client has been burned by a slow WordPress site in the past, moving to Webflow can be a revelation for them.
From an account management perspective, it reduces the risk of awkward conversations later about “why is my site slow?”, a client comment that agencies dread. Using Webflow is almost a guarantee that site speed will be excellent as long as you follow best practices (which Webflow encourages anyway).
Think about the future, both for your clients and your agency. If your clients plan to scale up their content or global reach, how will each platform cope? WordPress can scale content endlessly, but performance may dip unless carefully optimized. Webflow currently has some hard limits (for example, Webflow CMS has item limits, e.g., 10,000 items per collection on some plans, which is plenty for most but not all use cases).
Also, Webflow imposes page limits depending on plan (which rarely is an issue unless it’s a huge site). These are things to check against your largest projects. For 99% of branding sites, Webflow’s limits are a non-issue. As for your agency’s growth, adopting Webflow might open new service offerings (like retainer-based iterative design improvements, since making changes in Webflow is quick, or offering Webflow training to client teams).
It might also expand your talent pool; you could hire great designers who don’t code, and they can still build websites, which wasn’t possible in the WordPress-only days. There’s also a marketing advantage: being a “Webflow Certified Agency” or advertising expertise in Webflow can attract clients who specifically want that modern approach.
Evaluate your clients’ needs to update content. Are they hands-on, or do they rely on you for changes? If they are very hands-on and used to WordPress’s dashboard, you’ll need to educate them on Webflow’s Editor. Many find Webflow Editor simple (click and edit on the live page), but it is a change.
Additionally, if clients have many content contributors, factor in the cost of Webflow Editor seats or consider whether multi-user editing is a significant requirement. If one of your clients is a publication with dozens of authors, you might decide to keep that one on WordPress, but still move corporate/marketing sites to Webflow.
In many cases, agencies continue to handle content updates as part of a service, so Webflow Editor’s limitations aren’t a problem; the agency just makes the changes in Designer or Editor themselves. On the other hand, some clients love Webflow Editor’s inline editing; it’s very intuitive for editing copy or swapping an image, arguably more so than WordPress’s back-end form fields. So, assess how this fits your client profile.
Webflow hosting is not free; each project will have an ongoing hosting fee (ranging from ~$16/month for a standard CMS site to higher for Business or Enterprise plans). In WordPress, you could host multiple small sites on one server cheaply, which is attractive for budget-sensitive clients.
However, those cheap setups often compromise performance and security. Many agencies choose to bundle hosting costs into their packages or simply explain that Webflow’s hosting is an investment in reliability (often still cheaper than a managed WordPress host + maintenance hours).
Also, remember the ROI argument: Webflow’s higher productivity might mean you can do the same project in fewer hours, which offsets the hosting fee in the long run. Some agencies pass the hosting fee directly to clients and pitch it as equivalent to using a premium managed host, with the added benefit that they (the agency) won’t charge extra maintenance since Webflow is managed. This can be a net neutral or savings for clients.
Ensure to structure your pricing to account for Webflow costs and maybe highlight to clients how those costs come with tangible benefits (CDN, security, support, etc.) that they’d otherwise have to pay for separately on WordPress.
If you decide to switch, have a plan. You don’t necessarily need to migrate every old client site immediately (unless you want to). A smart approach is to start building new projects on Webflow to gain experience. Internally, perhaps train your team using Webflow’s excellent online courses.
Some agencies do an “internal project” first, for example, redesign your agency website in Webflow as a pilot. This is low-risk and helps your team master the platform. Ohh My Brand’s website itself is an example of Webflow in action for their brand, which undoubtedly helps them showcase to clients (if you’re selling Webflow sites, having your site on Webflow demonstrates confidence in it).
Once comfortable, you can selectively propose a migration to key clients, especially those who would benefit the most (maybe the ones complaining about slow site speed or difficult editing). Webflow even has a WordPress-to-Webflow migration guide and community support. Ensure migrations include setting up all necessary 301 redirects and communicating clearly to clients why the change is beneficial.
Switching doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing. Many successful agencies have a hybrid approach; they predominantly use Webflow, but if a project clearly demands WordPress (or if a client insists on it), they have the know-how to deliver that as well.
There’s no harm in keeping WordPress in your toolkit for those fringe scenarios. Over time, as Webflow’s capabilities expand (the app marketplace is growing, membership features improving, etc.), the need for WordPress will likely shrink further. But having flexibility means you’re not turning away business that Webflow can’t handle.
That said, given the trajectory, more and more agencies find they can convert even previously complex sites to Webflow by rethinking solutions (for example, using integrations for things they used to do with WP plugins).
In summary, most indicators suggest that Webflow is a win for branding agencies. The switch is a strategic move to deliver better outcomes and operate more efficiently. As one agency head framed it: Why spend time wrestling with technical issues and cookie-cutter templates (WordPress’s realm) when you could be crafting standout brand experiences (Webflow’s realm)?
With Webflow, the technology fades into the background, and the creative and strategic work takes center stage, which is exactly what branding agencies want.
Agencies that have switched often turn into advocates: they enjoy the platform, their clients are happier with the results, and they feel more in control of the entire web creation process. If your goal is to be known as an agency that delivers beautiful, fast, reliable brand websites, then embracing Webflow aligns perfectly with that mission.
Of course, evaluate your unique situation, but don’t be afraid of change. As 2025 unfolds, the trend is clear: code-heavy web development for standard sites is on the decline, and smart visual development (with the ability to sprinkle custom code when needed) is on the rise.
Webflow is at the forefront of that movement. Switching now could put your agency ahead of the curve, much like early adopters Blushush and Ohh My Brand, who are already reaping the benefits.
After this extensive comparison, it’s time to answer the titular question: Webflow vs WordPress for Branding Agencies: Which One Wins in 2025?
Considering performance, security, flexibility, SEO, and speed, Webflow emerges as the winner for most branding agencies in the current landscape. Webflow offers a potent mix of design freedom, built-in performance optimizations, and a low-maintenance workflow that aligns perfectly with the needs of agencies focused on creative branding and fast results.
It empowers agencies to build bespoke, high-performing websites that wow clients and end-users alike, all while minimizing technical headaches. As we’ve seen, agencies that switched to Webflow have been able to deliver sites that look better, load faster, and convert higher than many of their old WordPress builds, and they do it in less time.
That’s not to say WordPress is “dead” or without merit. WordPress is a powerhouse and still the right choice in certain scenarios, especially if a project demands extensive plugin-supported features or if a client has an existing WordPress ecosystem they’re committed to. WordPress’s vast community and plugin library remain its strengths, and for pure content-heavy blogging, it’s still a very comfortable platform.
If an agency has workflows finely tuned to WordPress and enjoys reliable outcomes, there may be no urgent need to abandon it completely. However, for the typical mandate of a branding agency, to create a distinctive, high-impact web presence that tells a brand story, Webflow has proven to be the superior tool in 2025. It simply lets you do more, faster, and with fewer trade-offs in quality or security.
To encapsulate the findings:
Performance: Webflow wins with globally cached static delivery and no bloat, ensuring fast load times and stable scaling for traffic spikes. WordPress can match it only with careful optimization and hosting, which requires extra effort .
Security: Webflow’s closed, managed environment means top-notch security out-of-the-box (SSL, 2FA, SOC 2, etc.), with no regular patching needed by the agency. WordPress’s openness gives flexibility, but at the cost of constant vigilance and potential vulnerabilities (numerous plugin exploits each year ). For agencies not specializing in cybersecurity, Webflow provides peace of mind that client sites are safe.
Flexibility & Design: Webflow empowers creative teams to build any design they envision, code-free, and integrate modern interactions easily. It covers most functional needs internally and allows curated extensions via its app marketplace. WordPress offers ultimate extensibility via plugins and custom code, but that flexibility comes with complexity. For branding sites, the need is usually less about exotic functions and more about custom visuals and reliability. Webflow delivers that in spades. Agencies found Webflow “way more flexible” in terms of design freedom and had more fun using it.
SEO: Both can be SEO powerhouses, but Webflow’s inherent speed and clean structure give it an edge in technical SEO (Core Web Vitals, etc.). WordPress offers great SEO plugins for content optimization (Yoast), which some content teams love. Yet, many Webflow sites have seen remarkable organic growth post-switch due to improved speed and user experience. With Webflow, agencies can ensure the site is technically sound for SEO by default and then focus on content strategy to drive rankings.
Speed: In head-to-head page load speed, Webflow sites tend to outperform similar WordPress sites because of lean code and global CDN. Fast load times enhance user experience and conversion, critical for brand engagement. The faster dev cycle on Webflow also means speed in delivering projects, not just pages. WordPress can achieve fast pages, too, but it demands extra optimization effort that agencies might prefer to invest elsewhere.
Perhaps the most telling evidence of who “wins” is to see what forward-thinking agencies are doing: as highlighted, many top branding agencies (big and small) are adopting Webflow and not looking back. They’re doing so because it helps them create better work and run a smoother business. As an agency owner or decision-maker, that’s hard to ignore.
One might say: the platform that “wins” is the one that helps your agency deliver the best results with the least friction. In 2025, Webflow will be the platform for a large subset of agency projects. It lets you keep your promise to clients of delivering a modern, fast, secure website that embodies their brand, without the caveats of “provided we install these 10 plugins and hope nothing breaks.”
It’s not just about Webflow vs WordPress as tools; it’s about a shift in how websites are built, moving from heavy backend management to agile visual development, from generic templates to custom creations, from periodic big redevelopments to continuous, nimble improvements.
To conclude, branding agencies should strongly consider Webflow as their go-to choice moving forward. It wins on the criteria we examined and aligns with the direction of the web (faster, cleaner, no code/low-code).
WordPress is and will remain an important platform, but for agencies striving to be on the cutting edge of design and digital brand experiences, Webflow is the ticket to impressing clients and staying ahead of the competition. As the web heads into a new era, the agencies that adapt will thrive, and adopting Webflow could very well be the adaptation that sets your agency apart.
In the “Webflow vs WordPress” showdown, for branding agencies in 2025, Webflow takes the crown. The verdict is clear: it’s time to ride the no-code wave and let your creativity (and your clients’ brands) flourish on a platform built for the future. Your designers will thank you, your developers (if any) will be relieved to focus on higher-value tasks, and your clients will love the results.
In the end, delivering outstanding brand experiences is what it’s all about, and whichever tool enables that best is the rightful winner. Right now, that looks like Webflow.
Just drop us line on info@empyrealinfotech.com or just say HI in chat box, We would love to hear from you.
