Webflow or custom code for a SaaS website
Most SaaS companies need two things on the web: a marketing site that sells the product and the product itself. They have different owners and different lifecycles, so they rarely belong on the same stack. Here is how we choose for the marketing site.
Start with who edits the site
The first question is not technical. Who will change the pages after launch, and how often?
If a marketing team publishes landing pages, updates pricing, adds customer stories and runs a blog every week, Webflow is usually the right answer. Editors work in a visual interface, the CMS handles collections like posts, case studies and integrations, and nobody waits for a developer to change a headline.
If the site changes a few times a year and the people who change it already work in code, a static site in a Git repository is simpler. Every change is a commit, every commit deploys in seconds, and there is no subscription in between. That is why our own site is plain HTML, while most client sites we build are in Webflow.
What Webflow does well
Speed to launch. A designed site can go live in days, with hosting, SSL and a CDN included.
A real CMS. Collections, references between them and filtered lists cover most marketing needs: blog, changelog, case studies, team, integrations, job openings.
Editing without risk. Editors change content, the design system stays intact. Classes, components and variables keep pages consistent as the site grows.
Interactions. Scroll and hover animations are built visually, and custom code with GSAP fills the gaps when we need something the interface cannot do.
Where custom code wins
Product level interactivity. A pricing calculator with real logic, a live demo, data from your own API, a WebGL hero. Webflow can embed these, but past a certain size they are easier to build and test as a codebase.
Shared code with the product. When the marketing site and the app should share components, authentication or a design system in code, one stack saves duplicated work.
Full control over performance. Every script and every byte is yours to decide. For most marketing sites Webflow is fast enough; for heavy motion and media, control matters.
No platform limits. Item limits in the CMS, page counts and plan pricing stop being a factor.
The cost nobody puts in the brief
The cost of a website is mostly what happens after launch. Count the hours your team will spend asking for changes, the hours a developer will spend making them and the plan you pay for every month. A Webflow site with a good component system usually wins this comparison for a marketing team. A coded site wins when the team is technical and the site behaves more like software than like a brochure.
How we decide on a project
We ask four questions before choosing:
- Who edits the site, and how often?
- Does the site need logic or data from the product?
- How many content types will it have in a year?
- Who maintains it if we are not involved?
For most early and growing SaaS companies the answers point to Webflow for the marketing site and a separate stack for the app. We design both in one system, so the site and the product look like the same company.
If you are choosing for your own product, we are happy to look at it with you. Read more about our Webflow development and SaaS product design.