Does Webflow offer email accounts/hosting as part of their Site/Account Plans?

Noob to webflow, but not to web design, and would like to introduce new clients to webflow. I notice saas hosting by default, but cannot find any information regards email hosting. Can someone point me to a page, document, etc that describes the default position regards email hosting. I am hoping new clients can have the website plus their email hosted with webflow—is that possible? I’d prefer that instead of paying another email provider.
Thanks for any help you can provide me.
cheers
Darryl


Here is my site Read-Only: LINK
(how to share your site Read-Only link)

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Hey Darryl!

Welcome to the community! :slight_smile:

At this moment, Webflow does not provide any sort of email hosting as a part of their packages. After a quick search of the Features Wishlist, I couldn’t really find anything to suggest that this would be something that is added in the future either. Webflow is more focused on developing a world-renowned No-Code product more than anything.

Personally, I would suggest you take a look at either Office 365 or Google Workspace (formerly Google Suites, Google Apps). These are both great tools that I have used myself to get branded email addresses.

If you’re wanting to simplify their billing so that they only pay one bill for their hosting, you could also just add in the cost of the Email Hosting to their Webflow bill by using Client Billing. You can find more information on how to do that here.

Hope my suggestions help you out! If you have any further questions, or need clarification on something I said, I would be happy to help more! :slight_smile:

Gday Tyler

thanks so much for your prompt and detailed reply, that’s a great feeling of welcome to the community support.

I tend not to bill my clients for any web or email hosting, I usually set the relationship up directly between the client and the provider.

Usually they will have already bought a domain name, but not yet set up email.

It seems like the best approach would be as you mentioned, email hosting with another Saas, or alternatively they could be set up for a hosted email with the domain name registrar (but I’ve found the spam management to be inefficient and a hidden cost).

Thanks for clarifying that the feature list also does not have this on the roadmap… helps me understand the focus of the tool, much appreciated.

I’m looking forward to digging into my first couple of projects.

You’ve given me food for thought about the billing. If I do still want to take the approach of the client owning the account, not me, I will have to have them present when I start a singular site for them, and add all their details, their card details, etc.

I will add myself as a tech admin, should that be possible, and still allow me full controls of the build/production of the website.

Is that an approach others in the community take as well? Having been in the web industry for 20+ years I’ve always preferred to subtract myself from the clients billing and account ownerships.

cheers
Darryl

Rose,

Not sure why your content was flagged as I think is is a genuinely good question. Let me see how I can explain this in a way that makes sense…:

While Webflow offers “Hosting,” really all they are offers users is a place to house their website that is built using the Webflow Designer. When you purchase hosting with a hosting provider such as IONIS, GoDaddy, or namecheap, etc. you’re paying for basically a file server. That file server allows you to host whatever content you want, be it in the form of HTML, CSS, JS, etc. documents, as well as images, videos, and the like.

With WYSIWYG editors (which yes, in this regard I would coin Webflow as one) such as Webflow, Wix, or Weebly, you don’t really have access to that full file server. You can only create content and host it within the constraints of the application (for example, Webflow lets you host content through their asset manager, but limits it to just certain file types that can be used within the Designer).

With this in mind, services whose main product is hosting services (be it server-side or client-side) like GoDaddy and 1and1 are going to rely heavily on add-ons like domains and email accounts to upsell their products. In the case of WYSIWYG editors, their main focus is going to be to provide the best possible user-experience and features for users who are building the front-end and back-end of their websites.

This would be the same reason why Webflow doesn’t offer an option to purchase a domain directly from them, as their current team and focus doesn’t account for maintaining such a service.

Hope this made sense. I know I can be all over the place with my thoughts sometimes haha :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey Darryl!

I definitely get what you’re saying, as I know maintaining client’s sites long-term can be a headache for sure. My personal take on this, in regards to Webflow, would be this:

  1. Utilizing the “Client Billing” feature allows you to be, for the most part, hands off with the billing side of the job. The client inputs their card information, and is billed monthly/annually for the amount of the respective plan to host their site. This also gives you the ability to maintain integrity of the site and possibly prevent the client from making a substantial error when trying to edit the site themselves by restricting their access.

  2. This leads me into another great part of Webflow: The Editor. Webflow’s CMS plan and above give the site owner access to designate site editors, which have a limited ability to change the content of the site (such as text, some colors, photos, etc.), without actually being able to change the structure and design of the site. You can learn more about the Webflow Editor here.

All in all, I would really say that it is up to personal preference on how you decide to handle this. Transferring the site to the client is definitely a viable option, but may cause you further headaches down the road if an issue arises. On the flip side, utilizing Client billing and the Webflow Editor may require a bit of additional training for your clients on getting them used to everything.

Let me know if you need anymore information on this! :slight_smile:

Thank you Tyler, I can see this system is all very well thought out, and different to how I’ve worked before. To follow the Client Billing approach, does that mean I have to sign up as an agency first? Then have their project under my agency status, but with the direct ‘client billing’ option for them.

No sir! Access to Client Billing is controlled by your Account Plan. And even the “Starter” account plan (which is free) includes access to Client Billing. All you have to do is go into your project settings and you can set it up. Here is a link to the Webflow University article for more info!