Webflow has secured $76m in funding, are we going to see any improvements in your dev team?

@justin_c This is a good question and you should ask not only me about it, but also the OP and plenty of other people expressing their frustration with Webflow in this forum, in the Wishlist, in the Facebook page and elsewhere.

But since you are asking me, I’ll answer for myself.

(1) Webflow is a monopolist in terms of the UI and features they offer. They have spoiled a number of things in their UI and vital features are missing, but still, they are offering much more than anyone else on the market (unless I have missed something. If you know a better service, even at a higher price, I’d go there ASAP. Please PM me about it, I am completely serious. I have been researching the alternatives for quite a long time, though and I have not found an even close one yet :frowning: ).

(2) If I stay with Webflow and if Webflow eat up their egos, and do fix their wrongs, we both win. I shall continue to pay for Webflow and people working with me, too. Webflow will win by keeping our fees. I will win by being far more productive than I currently am. It’s a win-win.

If I abandon Webflow and switch to my earlier workflows, I’ll lose by becoming extremely inefficient. Webflow will lose the fees of a few people. Plus, if others follow my example, they’d lose some more fees. It’s a lose-lose.

(One detail here: if Webflow rely on their current funding or intend to get acquired in the near future, they do not lose indeed. Then it’s gonna be more of a win-lose for Webflow.)

If I continue using Webflow and if Webflow do not improve, it’s going to be a mild lose-lose. My workflow would still be inefficient. Not as inefficient as the one before Webflow, but still inefficient. And it’s going to be a mild lose for Webflow, as well, because earlier or later, other users would become disillusioned/ dissapointed and would start seeking some form of an alternative.

(3) And Webflow are already not taking full advantage of me as a customer:

  • I choose not to pay for their hosting plans, simply because I do not get the features and reliability, and even attitude, for the pricing they ask;
  • I have also given up on the idea of using Webflow for some larger projects, where I had intended to use it. It is simply too unreliable and limited;
  • Webflow has also lost potential customers in terms of developers that I have recommend it to. One started to like it but soon became frustrated with some glitches in the UI. Others consider it too limited;
  • as said above, I gave up on reporting bugs long ago. Webflow is losing my free contribution this way;
  • I used to be an ardent proponent of Webflow among freelancers I meet and in various online media. I am no longer doing that free word-of-mouth marketing for Webflow, because it longer shows the potential that it used to.

And believe it or not, that is the case not only with me. Webflow are already losing potential profit because of the way they perform. But they do not realize it, because the current paradigm in business, globally, is to measure only how many sales you have made and not how many you have missed to make alongside.

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I get what you’re after and I too would like to see these important features added more quickly, but the main issue is not per se development turnaround or “time”. It’s communication. Now do keep in mind the recent blog post about the upcoming features, which is very welcome. But I’m missing a centralized way of knowing what’s up.

I think WF is at a point where every new feature can break 50 existing things, that is pretty much a guarantee with software this complex. It’s really difficult to keep production quality, grow your team AND add existing features. I’ve worked super crunch on a couple of startups and I KNOW that this is super hard. Hell, we had trouble growing something 100 times smaller than webflow in a full year. The customers were there, but for every feature you add, you are denying 3 others - if that makes sense.

Add to that the very liquid state of front-end development and you’ve got a disaster recipe for building out too quickly. And yes, 3 years can be too quickly. There’s a reason tools like Photoshop or Maya are not changing at a visible pace anymore. And that reason is not just money. It’s complexity. You think Autodesk thinks Blender and C4D are a joke?

What frustrates people about the slow seeming progress of WF is that these things are possible in code, and have been for a long time. I think that’s why it is super important to communicate timeline because your product is always compared and mapped to the virtual realm of “everything is possible”. But give it a go and clone a create-react-app and see what WF is trying to evolve from/to.

You can’t really compare it to Contentful. That’s an API CMS. Build me a layout with contentful and compare it then. :slight_smile: Don’t even get me started on Adobe AEM or Salesforce. It should be telling I combine those in one sentence.

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That’s not how you talk to people about people. This is rude and you do it all the time.

no worries @vincent…this is a GOOD problem for Webflow :smile:

#Hope everyone in good health in this difficult situation :palms_up_together:

@Veronica in your perceptions that is rude, but do you think it’s true?

Interesting. What is it that you do, exactly?

Looking forward to you posting a link to your professional work or past projects/portfolio so we can get a better understanding of how to build a million dollar IP that’s better than Webflow.

Thank’s in advance!

@NewInBoston The original post is not about me. Please, do not hijack the thread.

Indeed, how selfish of me- I didn’t realize Veronica was the original post. Thank you for helping keep the thread on track.

Amidst wistful notions

to revive his parched heart,

  he craves to be ladled with ardent spirit,
     
     and cradled... in the tulip of no-code forever.
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@NewInBoston congrats on being the first to unlock this badge!
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@NewInBoston the original post is exactly the original post - about why it takes so long for Webflow to develop essential features.

Please, do not turn this discussion into a kindergarten. It is not about personal stuff. You can PM me as much bullshit as you like or open up a new topic on the forum, but the discussion here is about Webflow’s slow development. Personal attacks are immature.

Sir, that isn’t a perception, that is rude. And the author of the thread is rude too when he compares devs to snails. I am very sorry but this is 2 important things:

  1. education, and you’re a grown man I am so sorry for you that I have to tell you this: you simply don’t talk to people like this, this is disrespectful. Even if you allow others to talk to you this way.

  2. strategy: you’re never going to obtain anything from people in life if you talk to them like this, if you demand, if you think there are occasions in life where you can simply “demand” things.

Great example of “slow dev Ricochets” - blog pagelist (One of the most basic pages):

Popular patterns:

1/5. Category post count ==> missing:
image

2/5. Search posts (Not the entire site) missing:
image

3/5, Archive posts by month/year missing:
image

4/5. Numeric pagination missing:

5/5. Nested categories -or- tags inside blog pagelist missing

client X hire some UI designer - and this is the design/UI the customer approved?.. Now what? (He simply chooses WordPress).

During most sales meeting (Or calls), the customer will ask “What the difference between Webflow and WordPress?” (OR why wb and not WP) - this is really a problem.

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@Veronica do you have anything (meaningful) to say about why Webflow take so long to develop crucial features?

Also, would you be so kind to reveal us what strategy does work for making Webflow deliver the quality and the no code capabilities that they promise?

Sure, demanding may not work, but what do you think may work?

Obviously kind words and patience have not brought us any result yet. And obviously sugary attitude has let Webflow freely fool around with all sorts of useless stuff (which does consume tons of man hours) and adventurous forays into premature extensions of scope.

Same sugary attitude has let Webflow treat us with utter nonchalance and disrespect, when it comes to users quite not happy with their UI changes.

Are you blind to see all this?

We all lose from this. Your needed multilanguage feature is nowhere near the horizon. You lose, too. And for God’s sake, Webflow, if not losing, do not win from this.

PS: I already mentioned it, but you seem not to take notice. Please, hurry up and inform Accel that they are never going to obtain anything from Webflow if they demand things! LOL Vlad says in Facebook, in a comment below the official announcement for getting that funding, “In fact, these investors don’t even have any rights to “demand” anything even if they wanted to.” Would you believe any investor would put money without any power leverage? :slight_smile: Relying on kindness and patience, alone?

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What frustrates people about the slow seeming progress of WF is that these things are possible in code, and have been for a long time.

Yes, and the fact that many of the requested features, with the ease of use of Webflow’s front end, feel like they could be so easily achieved. For examples the Collections system UX is so good it feels like it could allow much more complex operations like with advanced DBs. But it’s just not there yet (and I’m frustrated :crazy_face:)

When I read some of the comments I smile because I’ve faced similar problems with website software. Once you get comfortable with something then, suddenly and unexpectedly, something changes and you are forced a few steps backward. It sucks. I was using a drag and drop website builder and got pretty good with it. Then other problems appeared and I asked for the company to look at it and told them what I needed. That didn’t turn out as I expected.

I’m now using templates that I convert into websites for my clients. It’s much slower because I have to get to grips with some coding and CSS. I also understand that the guys at Webflow are doing their best to improve things for you. I’ve found that there is no magic wand when it comes to creating websites and often you have to get to learn new things - I am still learning every day.

The only way forward for me is to sacrifice some of my time to learning more about coding and also practicing regularly so that I can master things that were impossible in the past. What I see in Webflow amazes me. My software can’t match their capabilities. I have to figure things out for myself. So, be happy with what you can do and give them a break.

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Hi :star_struck:

I used WordPress since more than 10 years, honestly Webflow allow me to produce website at light speed! I am very happy to really work at all design point directly, not wasting too much time to install the CMS, test plugins, bla bla bla :crazy_face:

Yes some basic functions are missing, but the tool is growing …
I am patiently waiting updates :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I hope Webflow will be more important and be available in french (for some users and clients) and will be iPad compatible :crazy_face:

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Here’s another shining example of the frustration we’re talking about:

A potentially critical bug that loads in hundreds of kilobytes of unwanted and unused fonts without telling the user why - potentially slowing the site initial load by 30 per cent - and instead of it being fixed after a year from the bug was reported, it’s being referred to as a “feature”, flying in the face of their own published “best practises” post about the issue. That’s simply not acceptable from a serious product like Webflow.

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This is my post (i forgot this hh).

This is why, sometimes when I find a bug or issue I feel like it’s a waste of time to report this issue on Webflow forum (or as a wishlist idea/feature).

For example, a lot of my clients adds mega-size images to blog posts or collections (There is no way to really address this issue = Decrease site speed).

Any point to add feature request of some Editor upload images manager - Compress, Optimize images tool (Useful for 99.999% of the clients and even for devs) -or- even minimal validator (Some way to send error when clients adding 4000px width image). The short answer is NO.

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Hey everyone, I am the CEO of Webflow, and I wanted to personally respond here to the original post and to some of the replies.

No, this is not me saying that anything that is on the wishlist should be made by Webflow. It’s asking you to actually respond to what the community is saying (which can be by implementing these features, or simply by acknowledging them - the most popular items I am referring to, not every single request.

@liamemery You’re right – we need to do a better job of being transparent and accurate on our Wishlist. I won’t make any excuses, it’s a fact that we can do better here.

The original intent with the Wishlist was to provide this kind of transparency and give our community a voice into our product development process. As we grew, we faced more challenges trying to build more ambitious features that were often much more complex than before, given these features had to work on top of existing functionality. As a result, some had to be deprioritized after we had initially marked them as “In Development” on the Wishlist. We saw how disappointing this was for our community, and so we started erring on the side of caution and only updating the status once we were basically ready for launch. One recent example is actually something you listed that the community has been waiting for: nested collection lists. This feature was actually in development over the last 6 months and recently shipped (woo!). However, it was categorized (rather inaccurately) as “In Backlog” the entire time. Another example that @Fonsume mentioned was coupons for Ecommerce, which is now available in beta.

However, it’s clear that there are better ways to communicate these kinds of setbacks without limiting transparency for our community and valued customers. Our thriving community has expanded exponentially over the last several years, and so have expectations for what we should build next. While we want to live up to those expectations, we hope our community recognizes that building such a powerful product for such a diverse audience will also come with tradeoffs – and there will be times when we’ll need to prioritize some long-term investments that might not be at the very top of the Wishlist.

Speaking of long term investments, I want to address the funding topic mentioned in the subject of this thread. We primarily raised additional capital in order to ensure Webflow’s longevity for decades (and we’re especially glad to have done so in times of uncertainty like today). We don’t plan to deploy even the majority of that capital immediately – we’re still focusing on thoughtfully growing our team and our business to ensure that everyone relying on Webflow will have ultimate confidence that we’ll always be around and always keep improving. Our (awesome and supportive) investors have functionally zero control of our business, all the speculation about acquisition or decay is simply unfounded – I think I’m at risk of sounding like a broken record at this point in assuring you all that we’re in this for the long haul.

So… next steps. Luckily, Webflow’s product development and roadmap definition process is maturing quite a bit lately, so this is a timely conversation. We recently had Jiaona Zhang join our team as our VP of Product, and we’ve been working hard to get laser focused on not only working on the products/improvements that will be most impactful (which includes “invisible” investments like performance improvements that don’t come with fancy launch announcements), but also doing a much better job in keeping you all informed of how things are going.

While our team has been very active in informing everyone about what we’ve been shipping, we will do a better job of providing updates on what things are in flight on the Wishlist. You will soon start to see much more accurate and active updates on there. One small teaser is that for “user login and membership functionality” (the top rated item on there), we are already in very active development with internal goals to ship the first set of functionality within the next 2 quarters. We’re still figuring out how to best provide that information on the Wishlist, so please bear with us.

I know there is a lot mentioned in this thread, and I wanted to make sure you knew that I read every word. While I can’t address every point that was brought up, I hope you take away this main point on the original post – we need to a much better job of increasing transparency and accuracy on the Wishlist, and we will.

(Since this thread has gone in so many directions and it’s hard to keep track of all the topics here, I’m going to lock it after my response.)

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