brryant

Webflow Ecommerce - Build custom ecommerce stores visually

Webflow Ecommerce is an entirely visual way to build and launch online stores — combined with built-in marketing tools to build an audience, promote your store, and grow your business on the Webflow platform.

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brryant
Hey ProductHunt! I'm stoked to give you all a first look at Webflow Ecommerce, something the team has been working hard on for over a year. We've built this on top of Webflow's powerful platform (like the Designer, the CMS, and our globally distributed hosting infrastructure), and added a powerful Ecommerce engine on top. The result is a powerful ecommerce platform that has first party support for the core workflows of modern merchants, like shipping, taxes, order fulfillment, Instagram Shopping, Zapier, and much much more. How is this different than Shopify? Well, we’re addressing the biggest gap right now in the ecommerce landscape: businesses need to move fast, without being held back by code, or long developer turnarounds. With Webflow Ecommerce, you can customize your entire checkout experience, perfect your add-to-cart widget, and integrate your store into your blog (or vice versa), all without touching a line of code. (All for the same price as Shopify's entry level plan, of $29/mo) Let us know what you think!
brryant
@tonymaguire90 that's correct! our roadmap is jacked, but so is our team 💪🏽. Stay tuned!
Justin Kwong
@bryantchou Been loving the beta ecommerce features and am a fan of the customization (e.g checkout pages) that Shopify doesn’t offer. Curious how you see the use of plugins or apps as a part of Webflow ecommerce’s future? Both seem to be a large value prop/defensible moat for Wordpress and Shopify respectively.
Lachlan Kirkwood
@tonymaguire90 @bryantchou Great product! Any plans on allowing users to build affiliate stores e.g. a store that doesn't own any stock and re-directs users who select a product to a third-party website? Have been looking for a solution to this for quite a while now!
brryant
@justinckwong plugins and making WF more extensible is definitely in the future of our platform. However we've taken the approach of building in first-party support for many of the core use cases people have for their online stores, all included in the cost of Webflow's base subscription. Such as: - visual design & development (compare: Shogun $19/mo) - Instagram Shopping, FB integration (see our integration in action here: https://webflow.com/feature/face... vs. several paid Instagram plugins) We aim to provide an even better customer experience than a plugin ecosystem, while ensuring it all plays nicely with each other, while maintaining super-snappy end customer performance. Plugins traditionally bog down your online store if incorrectly built or installed. It's an integrated approach vs. a modular one. To use an analogy: Webflow : Apple :: Wordpress : Windows
brryant
@tonymaguire90 @lachlankirkwood yup! you can definitely build an affiliate site using the Webflow CMS. Lots of great examples of CMS powered sites here: https://webflow.com/discover
Ryan Hoover
I have a lot of admiration for what Shopify has built. They've established a foothold in this space and their marketplace platform has created tremendous defensibility. That said, I can see a subset of the ecommerce market gravitate toward Webflow for its deeper customization. I'm curious, do you have any sites using Webflow Ecommerce yet that you can share, @bryantchou?
brryant
@rrhoover spot on — several brands have moved their ecomm experience over to Webflow exactly for the need for deeper customization without the need for developers. Here are just a few: https://www.artikel.store/ https://www.simple.city/ https://www.hetkinen.com/ and one of my favorites so far: https://www.rolling.flowers/
JD Crabtree
@bryantchou @rrhoover Curious which platform they are seeing most shops transition from
Pablo Stanley

Easy to use Great integrations Flexibility to do whatever you want Great defaults that guide you through your experience The learning material is fantastic I feel like I'm under control

Pros:

Ease Learning material Integrations Power Flexibility OMG!

Cons:

I wish there was an automated way to help you name your products with Vlad's classic puns. Lol.

Vlad Magdalin
> I wish there was an automated way to help you name your products with Vlad's classic puns. Obviously, this is the next most important thing we're going to work on! 😍
Alex Tokmakchiev

Multi-layered product that allows you to go as deep as you want. I've built and launched simple sites on Webflow in a day, and for others I've spent weeks meticulously building amazing animations and powering them with CMS.

Pros:

- Full control over how your site looks and behaves. - Responsive from the box. - Always up to date. Recently added support for CSS Grid.

Cons:

- Might be a bit overwhelming for someone who's never build a website or doesn't understand how HTML/CSS work in theory.

Martin Lindner
PH limits reviews to 140 characters, so: Pros - complete control over design, including checkout & cart - easy to learn for designers - decent integrations at launch - decent features at launch - everything that is positiv about Webflow in general Cons - missing some features, some of which are underway (PayPal checkout, coupons & discounts, customer accounts) - cheapest plan is more expensive than Shopify, if you use Shopify Payments - no report feature, weak store management, weak shipping fulfillment (good enough for smaller shops) - $29 plan requires Webflow-branded emails, not professional - "staff" accounts can to anything, no different permissions etc. - legal issues in some countries (in some countries you need a "conformation step" before you place your order, also in Germany you need to agree with a checkbox to standard business terms, I don't think this is possible in Webflow) - english-only backend (tough to convince non-english speaking clients, esp. in Europe) - no multi language feature for the shops themselves - very weird 50k/200k sales volume limit - why? There are already transaction fees that lead you to the right plan... Complete control over design is very important to me and because of that I really want to like this. Some cons don't even annoy me that much. Not every client needs all the bells and whistles that Shopify offers. Some cons just rub me the wrong way, like Webflow branded emails even though you pay $29 or staff accounts with no difference in permissions. Other things are straight up deal breakers: legal and GDPR issues that Shopify handles very well, english-only backend (is this really so hard?).
Ilias Ism
@mplindner Yup, very weird pricing and a bit misleading in their comparison: https://webflow.com/ecommerce#co... because you need a Pro account plan at $42/mo to disable white labeling on the site. If you want white-label e-mail receipts or if you have high-ticket sales you'll need a $74/mo site license. So for a simple single site, you're already getting started at $116/mo.
Dream Buildrs

good idea as far as the features but if the business model is based on the platform they cant compete. just the simplicity of launching a store through the other platforms is better. webflow must be trying to target ecommerce store designers, not ecommerce business owners.

Pros:

good idea

Cons:

design is way to complicated for the average user, would take forever to go live

Philip Lester
Webflow is definitely a game changer. The only company to crack the code on visual web dev. I’m sure your e-commerce product is no exception. Keep it up dudes.
Fred Cutler
@dreamtenphil1 Thrive themes has also cracked the code on visual Web Dev
Craig Hanna
@dreamtenphil1 and cohesion DX8 in the Drupal space
Jorge Dieguez
I love Webflow. They always amaze me on the flexibility of the tool. I would love to start using this for e-commerce , however, we need more options regarding payment gateways, specially for those living abroad (2CheckOut, PayU, etc). Please add these soon so I can start using this! haha
brryant
@jorge_dieguez paypal is a WIP, and do let us know what other payment options you'd like to see here! https://wishlist.webflow.com/ide...
Jorge Dieguez
@bryantchou Thank you! PayPal is not the best for some countries though, but I'll make sure to leave my suggestions on the Wishlist.
Brendon Rell
Very exciting, have been looking forward to this. Will give it a shot!
Brendon Rell
Will just add that I hope there is further optimization for basic browser performance. Not everyone is running a brand new machine, and I find that some Webflow sites - including the landing page for this product - are somewhat janky and don't scroll smoothly, which is never an issue on other platforms in my experience. Fancy animations etc. are nice but they seem to overload browser performance.
Tony Chan
We absolutely LOVE WebFlow! It's been a great tool as a ever changing startup. The improvements over the past year has been phenomenal and has helped us easily build and manage a website for own company without any dev work required. Great work guys on the new release. A great release from a great product.
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