Why I still reach for Webflow

I've shipped production React for ten years. I still recommend Webflow to half my clients. The reason isn't nostalgia — it's operational speed, and a hard question most teams skip: who owns this site six months after launch?

The question that actually decides the stack

Not "which is more powerful" or "which is more modern." The question is who edits the site once I'm gone. A marketing team that can publish pages, edit copy, and A/B test without a deploy pipeline will out-learn a team waiting on engineering tickets every single time. The best stack is the one your team can actually operate.

Webflow: when the marketing team owns it

If a non-technical team needs to ship and iterate fast, Webflow wins. Visual editing, no deploy pipeline, and real performance and accessibility if you build it right. The trap is treating it as a toy — a sloppy Webflow build rots as fast as any other. A disciplined component system is what makes it last.

Next.js + Sanity: when engineering owns it

When the site is deeply custom, integrates with a product, or needs logic Webflow can't express, I reach for Next.js and a headless CMS. More power and control, and more responsibility — someone has to maintain a codebase and a deploy pipeline. Worth it when the site is a product surface, not just marketing.

AI-generated full-stack: when speed beats everything

For throwaway experiments, internal tools, and rapid prototypes, AI-generated full-stack code is now genuinely fast. I use it where being 80% right today beats perfect next week, and I do not use it where it becomes load-bearing without review — the same caution I apply to shipping AI code generally.