[aparsons]

If I had a dollar for every WYSIWYG web dev tool that bit the dust, I'd be able to single-handedly finance this round. Before the downvotes: I get it. Webflow is a nice tool. So was Dreamweaver when it appeared. And everything in between. This is an iterative process, with once tool better than the previous. Maybe Webflow will be the one to make non-trivial WYSIWYG work - but after having used it, I'm not betting on it. Their price point is also a little high for small teams, but that is less relevant to my main gripe here.

[ChefboyOG]

To be clear, non-trivial WYSIWYG already works.

Wix and Shopify are both publicly traded companies, while Automattic and Squarespace are both planning 2021 IPOs. Wix shares have gone from roughly ~$17 in 2013 to ~$257 today, while Shopify has gone from ~$20 a share in 2016 to ~$1,184 today. Automattic's flagship platform—Wordpress—is responsible for over a third of all sites on the web, and Squarespace was generating over $300 million in revenue back in 2017.

Webflow has roughly zero chance of replacing frontend developers, but the "everyone who needs a website and doesn't want to hire a frontend team" market is pretty large and has been for a longtime.

What makes Webflow interesting to me, and where it is a gamble, is where it stands on the spectrum of developer-friendliness to "can kind of use a computer"-friendliness. They seem to be betting on a change in the market, particularly around the emergence (or rapid growth) of a certain demographic: people who are familiar with web technologies (HTML/CSS/JS etc.) but who don't want to muck around in them directly to build a site—the "know enough to be dangerous" crowd, if I had to give it a name.

I don't know if that will work out exactly, and I personally don't really find it helpful, but it's interesting. At the very least, I personally know a lot of teams building non-SaaS products (infra tools etc.) that use Webflow for their frontend.

[vegannet]

I’ve used Webflow directly and seen it used within companies: although not perfect, my assessment is that they’ve bridged the gap between WYSIWYG and website builder. They’ve got room for improvement but they’re definitely on the right path, I’d bet on Webflow — if you look to how Wordpress is used in most companies, Webflow is all the good parts.

[verdverm]

Having used it and subscribed, after their last round. I will not be renewing. Cost is too high for a such a buggy product that continues to not implement features. So little as improved or changed. The most frustrating thing for me is how they deal with different screen sizes and overrides. They made CSS worse, it is beyond frustrating.

[gherkinnn]

Webflow has been around for a long time though. They're doing something right.

There was an explosion of these tools back in 2012. Products like Easel[0] and Macaw[1] came and went. Webflow is still here.

0 - http://easel.io (link is dead, I know)

1 - http://macaw.co

[cmenge]

I haven't used it, but I do share your skepticism. I ended up rebuilding the last website that was exported from it because it was horribly slow on mobile, despite it being an extremely simple site.

[MattGaiser]

I think they could be fine if companies were flexible. Too often a tool with finite options is chosen and then the people who selected the tool want all sorts of things it was not designed to do.