Webflow or WordPress: who owns the site after launch

The question I get asked most when a client is choosing a platform isn't really "which tool is more powerful." It's dressed up that way, but underneath it's a different question: who logs in and makes changes after I leave.

WordPress has an answer for almost anything — there's a plugin for it, usually several. That flexibility is real, and it's also the source of most of the pain I see later: plugin conflicts nobody remembers installing, security patches that pile up until someone gets a scary email, a hosting bill that gets inherited by whoever's cheapest to hire next. The ecosystem is powerful precisely because it's unmanaged, and unmanaged things need someone paying attention to them indefinitely.

Webflow trades that flexibility for a visual editor that a non-technical team can actually use without breaking anything. For a lot of clients, that's the whole ballgame — the person updating the homepage isn't a developer and shouldn't need to become one. The cost is heavier lock-in and a monthly fee that scales with traffic and CMS items, which stings more the bigger the site gets.

My rule of thumb by now: if there's a person on the client's team — existing or about to be hired — who's going to touch the content weekly, Webflow's editor pays for itself almost immediately. If the site is mostly static and someone down the line is going to want a developer to extend it freely and cheaply, WordPress's ecosystem wins even with its maintenance tax.

Either way, the deliverable was never really the website. It's whoever can confidently open the editor a year from now without calling me first.