from Hacker News

No-code platform Webflow (YC) raises $140M at a $2.1B valuation

by brryant on 1/13/21, 5:15 PM with 19 comments

  • by aparsons on 1/13/21, 5:32 PM

    If I had a dollar for every WYSIWYG web dev tool that bit the dust, I'd be able to single-handedly finance this round. Before the downvotes: I get it. Webflow is a nice tool. So was Dreamweaver when it appeared. And everything in between. This is an iterative process, with once tool better than the previous. Maybe Webflow will be the one to make non-trivial WYSIWYG work - but after having used it, I'm not betting on it. Their price point is also a little high for small teams, but that is less relevant to my main gripe here.

  • by mchusma on 1/13/21, 7:18 PM

    We have been assessing migrating from our own Hugo based site to webflow, so that our designers and business folks can more easily make edits and spin up landing pages, etc.

    The main hangups right now are lack of transparent pricing around overages (it's "call for pricing") and we currently use AVIF and AV1 and those do not appear to be supported by webflow. I also think paid support tiers would be extremely helpful, like AWS. I'm actually happy to pay for good support straight from the company.

    If anyone from webflow is listening, these are my main current requests.

  • by mguerville on 1/13/21, 7:27 PM

    I am happyu to see this crowd calling webflow for what it is, a WYSIWYG editor, I'm a non technical but tech savvy person and I've built simple sites (some with basic "app" like functionalities) in the past using Squarespace, Wix, Wordpress, and my current favorite: Tilda. Only in the past 18 months has everyone starting to call Webflow "no-code" and I felt like I must have been missing something.

    Thunkable, Adalo, Bubble, those are no-code tools Webflow, Carrd (which I like but is also touted as no-code platform when it's basically a landing page builder) and in different categories Notion or Airtable... they're great tools but it feels misleading to call these "no code platforms"

  • by singhrac on 1/13/21, 7:29 PM

    I used Webflow extensively for a startup a few years ago where I did front-end development and a few non-technical people were trying to write out content pages (e.g. FAQ, features, etc.).

    Honestly the whole experience was very underwhelming, but it might have been the team, not the product. Because there weren't components, it was hard to keep a consistent styling. And because the non-technical people didn't have a design sense, I ended up having to "clean" their work, then translate to CSS manually. I guess it was neat to try to explore example ideas, but a lot of those weren't translatable into "responsive" web pages (do people still do that anymore?).

  • by sebg on 1/13/21, 6:09 PM

    The story of how they got into YC is an interesting one => https://webflow.com/blog/the-story-of-how-webflow-and-y-comb...

  • by chafik-bel on 1/13/21, 8:42 PM

    I believe that no-code is the right solution in some areas like building quickly a website for those who don't want to hire a developer. I have another use-case in the cloud management which is a product I developed https://www.brainboard.co that generates Terraform code from a drawing and I think no-code will be present in more and more domains.

  • by zed88 on 1/13/21, 10:38 PM

    After watching Vlad's interview on this week in startup, I think the product deserves more success.His story is inspiring.

    https://youtu.be/pkJPxDgUGMA

  • by CedarMills on 1/13/21, 6:55 PM

    I really like Webflow. It felt what Squarespace should have always been.

  • by sgt on 1/13/21, 7:22 PM

    How do they compare with e.g JourneyApps?