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Looking for Information, Documentation, and Roadmap on Webflow Architecture

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#1

Hi Everyone,

I am very new to Webflow, and I was hoping to get some information and documentation on how Webflow’s architecture is designed. I have a couple of goals in mind as I primarily deal with large and enterprise customers, and my first step before jumping in head-first is to get some feedback and knowledge transfer on where to start looking.

  1. Can I extend the CMS and create my own custom Widgets and Modules?
  2. Can Webflow be used in a decoupled manner with other systems?
  3. Is it possible to integrate and build connectors from other solutions?
  4. Does Webflow follow MACH principles? (Microservice, API-first, Cloud, Headless)
  5. Is there a roadmap listed anywhere?

Any help here would be amazing,
Have a great one,
Stephen

#2

Okay, we can scratch question 5 as I found the roadmap which is called “Wishlist”. I still would love a timeline overview feature roadmap, but I definitely see the benefit here.

#3

Regarding the wishlist: There is an update and some kind of roadmap for 2021.

To your questions:

  1. I think it is not possible to enhance the CMS since Webflow is a low-code platform. If you need features, the Wishlist is your best bet (but prepare to wait years at the moment). Maybe there will be a plugin system in the future …

  2. and 3. There is an API, but I don‘t know if it fits your needs. Also, you can add custom code in the designer to do all kind of JavaScript stuff.

  1. This question is better answered by staff, but with the API it should be possible to run Webflow in some kind of headless fashion.

And to my knowledge, Webflow uses AWS under the hood and scales automatically.

#4

Thanks for this very thorough answer @crstn. This is the information I was looking for.

  1. It would make me extremely excited if we could extend the platform, even if we have to do it through a middleware environment! :smiley:

  2. Now that I have the API documentation, I am going to try to see if I can pull in some commerce data from a commerce engine like Commercetools, and a couple of other systems to see what happens. My ultimate goal is to see if I can import product logic through maybe, not sure yet, a “token”, and see if that product data will display based on the API pull, in the fields I use. Next would be CDP data, and then finally see if I can make a simple push/pull from a marketing platform.

  3. From the 5 minutes looking at the documentation, It does seem that there is no way for me to build any component logic right into Webflow. That would be a high-priority in my opinion if you want to take over large and enterprise customers in the future, from competing CMS’s.

  4. Price is reasonable. Not sure how it works in a staging to production environment though? Curious if I can choose which AWS regions I want localized. Curious about the APAC boots-on-the-ground footprint. Oh, and can I access AWS app’s to work on top of this? (Well my brain just got triggered, I guess I need to just contact them!)

  5. Roadmap is always hard for any CMS vendor, but I do like the wishlist module they created. Sitecore’s CMS roadmap is usually on point on how they present it to partners and customers. (But on the hush-hush, Sitecore’s not a true-cloud platform, so they can’t just go live with updates, which is why they can push the roadmap the way they do it)

Thanks again,
Stephen

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