What if Webflow just... stops?

@nderic Even though we’ve raised some funding early on in our journey as a company, I’m happy to say that we’ve retained 100% of the control of the company - and we’re not reliant on or beholden to any investors :slight_smile:

Webflow is a very stable and growing business (we can operate for decades without any additional outside investment), in very large part because of this awesome community and our wonderful and loyal customers who choose to place their trust in our hands. We take this responsibility very seriously, and our goal is to build a company that is around many decades from now which empowering tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people to create for the web.

We’re not looking for any quick flip or exit (believe me, we’ve had plenty of opportunities), because we feel that would fundamentally reduce the long term future potential of what we’re trying to build. And since we’re able to finance our operations, significantly expand our platform’s capabilities (Ecommerce, etc), and do all that on our own terms by partnering with our community and customers – why wouldn’t we? Very few businesses are able to be in the position we are in, and it’s not a privilege we take for granted.

In other words, Webflow is not going anywhere, so you’ll have to put up with us for a long time to come!
:wink: :sunglasses:

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Wow, forgot I started this topic. Thank you all so much for your answers!

Personally, I trust Webflow and I truly believe in the way they work. As soon as I have the chance and get some clients, I’ll upgrade my account. I was just curious about this specific scenario. Thank you for clearing things up :slight_smile:

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@Robobo - Yep, you got mail ! (lots) :grin:

#mathewpmunger :smile: @matthewpmunger

@MattBott :smile: I agree

So, it looks like the export doesn’t include CMS content. Is that right? As a gaming journalism site with a couple of hundred articles, if the worst were to happen and Webflow folded/got bought out/etc. how would we get all of this content off our Webflow site?

I know the CEO has said that this won’t happen, but then look at what happened to Jan after Facebook bought out WhatsApp. All the best intentions go down the pan when a board makes your work life more difficult than you can realistically expect to cope with.

Hi Matt, just thought I’d let you know we’re a BC partner and we’ve worked with one of the original founders of BC/Good Barry to build a replacement that can handle the more complex sites: Features - Siteglide

We couldn’t find anything that offers WebApps with Secure Zones for example. So we built it…

Anyway, just wanted to point it out. There are quite a few other things that have come out of EOL so maybe worth joining the BC Facebook group if you’re not already in there.

We’ll be releasing a CMS export feature in the near future

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This fall or year must be the most feature packed in Webflow history :grinning:

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I am very positive the “big players” know everything about Webflow and are throwing in the towel on competing for us, it is simply to late!

That is why people have backup copies and backups of backups.

How do people currently back up their CMS content?

I was actually only implying having a copy of all of your content in order to make it easy to re-upload.
I believe in Webflow you can download a .csv file of your data base BUT I have not been using Webflow CMS. Someone here on the forum will Give you a better answer.
In Word Press you would download the database that the site is built on, and the site. Webflow does have an export site. (?Download database ???)
A developer knowing more code than I could probably build /save your database.
Both in Muse and in Webflow I have only made use of the export code function. (Which I backup at least in two locations.)

Export the collection data, save the CSV to someplace you backup. From there you could do anything you want.

I understand your point, but if you are already coding small edits why not just change the image links, and doesn’t your hosting provider have email and email form solutions? Even if your hosting provider doesn’t provide a c panel there still should be solutions.

I agree with mikeyevin that Webflow forces you to think like a developer and the fact that Webflow exports clean code, should make it possible for any front end developer to take over maintaining the site should Webflow actually go out of business (not at all likely imho).
Also you could copy what “small” changes you have been making to make it easy to re-make them after exporting new Webflow code.

I understand your point, but if you are already coding small edits why not just change the image links, and doesn’t your hosting provider have email and email form solutions? Even if your hosting provider doesn’t provide a c panel there still should be solutions.

Of course small edits are fine. Happy to do this but this would apply to 5% of the sites I do. It gets a lot more complicated with things like lightbox galleries, forms, or nav changes on multiple page sites where I’m used to using server side include components. Also, if I export a site and start making manual updates and then if I have to go back to webflow at a later stage to make any significant feature or layout changes, I’ll be creating all sorts of content version control headaches.

I was hoping to move all my Business Catalyst clients to Webflow but for many of them its just not a viable option… unless I host with Webflow but the increase in hosting fees is too hard a sell.

@MattBott - I had a few clients that were on the BC platform and discovered WF as part of the options for migration without having to resort to custom code completely. Webflow has been a nice fit for some. For the projects that needed features that webflow could not provide. I migrated them to processwire. 100% in control of the presentation layer and no limits on IA structures. So it may be a good match for clients that don’t fit here.

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Thank you. I will check out processwire

I totally get you. Hosting with WF is high dollar. Also no reseller plan.

As an observation at the end of the summer in terms of brand experience something feels off, different positioning, it feels like the tool is moving in an opposite direction to where it should/could go.