UXPin vs. Webflow

UXPin is an excellent resource for creating website and app flows and to better help our clients understand how their websites and apps will function. It also gives them a visual reference and some real-life application. It can be difficult for clients to truly understand how a website or an app flows from one page or screen to another via a phone call or web conference. UXPin helps us to illustrate these flows in a hands-on, visual format. UXPin also helps our clients understand the purpose of a sitemap. We used to send our clients a sitemap in an outline format. While many understood that the top-level items on the outline were the main navigation of their website and other items were child pages, several did not. We have found that using UXPin to show the main level navigation, how in-page navigation and child pages (drop-down menus from the main navigation) work has been an integral step in getting approval on sitemaps.

Incentivized

Since the purpose in my case is to build a small professional looking site to present project outcomes and other research, I can create custom fields and design experimentations. Webflow builds sites that are super professional, with many amazing templates that don't look cheap. Additionally, I can test responsive layouts. Apart from this, I used 1-2 static pages to illustrate key findings for example what a multilingual site could look like with screenshots without needing CMS in free version, which are all the valuable skills to acquire. Compared to WordPress, Webflow is expensive with limited free features, although it has really cool additional features that will make the site I build stand out.

Incentivized

• Smart elements are super nice because they allow me to create complicated features that will appear on every page. When the client wants to change something it is very easy to do so in one place.
• Working on grid is important to me. Having the ability to change and manipulate that grid in UXPin is just what I need.
• There are tons of add on features like Font Awesome icons and prebuilt stuff that not only looks great, but also just lets me get ideas across fast without committing to what the final design is going to look like.
• I love the ability to edit things if I want. I can control several details, but it's not too overwhelming. They include various font options from Google fonts as well. You can design as much or as little as you want. The interface doesn't get in the way. It's there if you want it but has a simplicity that is nice.
• Having a link on a live webpage is a necessity. As soon as you make changes, they are live. No more worrying about which is the latest version.
• I'm a photoshop user so it has a few keyboard commands that are familiar like hold 'alt', click and drag to duplicate is nice!

Incentivized

• Saves time- because I don't have to do double entry of content.
• It saves money. I like that it is an all-in-one system, so I don't have to host elsewhere.
• Flexibility - Webflow provides me with a lot of flexibility in my webpage design, allowing me to adjust pages as needed, depending on the content types.

Incentivized

• No search and replace for fonts (missing or just to replace).
• Tool is built for design/dev teams but does not integrate content teams in well.
• If you are not careful you can get lost in designing interactions when you should be just creating building blocks - don’t over animate!!!
• There is currently no “scrub” or click-drag interaction which limits touch capability testing/concepts.
• Editing adaptive versions of designs is very time consuming, edits to not ripple through from master viewport size. All updates are manual, even when creating an adaptive version.
• When a library item is updated, it can revert changes you have made unknowingly.
• Video integration is limited to online video host aggregators such as IMGR, YouTube, and Vimeo.
• Not a ton of info for a designer on how to use the expressions effectively.
• Prototypes with a lot of interactions can get slow, especially on computers with a lot of security software. It’s best to work with UXPin to figure out what is blocking APIs, and JS.

• Brand recognition is still behind WordPress, which can make it a challenging sell for clients looking to play it safe in their CMS decision.
• The CMS is ideal for smaller datasets, but higher content sites introduce some minor challenges.
• Alignment between designers and developers is key prior to implementation. The flexibility of the platform requires careful planning to avoid over-engineering.

Incentivized

We'll definitely continue to use UXPin. Right now it provides us with everything we need in order to deliver quality projects to our clients. If at any point in time, UXPin doesn't provide us with what we need, we'll start vetting other software out there that may be similar. My guess is that UXPin will continue to make updates and improvements so we'll likely stick with it for quite some time.

Incentivized

It's the perfect balance of GUI and code control

Incentivized

Webflow is very easy for a beginner to get started with and achieve good results, but to achieve an expert level of understanding requires experience and some web development knowledge. HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript knowledge aren't required to use Webflow, but an expert will know BEM class naming patterns, be able to create reusable elements and design systems, and add 3rd party integrations that require custom code.

Incentivized

In my experience, their customer service is an absolute joke, I tried reaching out to them they took forever. I had to keep following up with them as if they never received it in the first place. It’s a new platform, so guidance is needed. Tried the university they offer, in my opinion, it is completely useless, I would just completely move on from this website.

In my opinion, it is horrible, the rendering takes forever. I have the newest MacBook and the platform will still lag and slow down on me. I’m not a developer, I am a designer which makes it worst because I am using the features they are providing not extra coding features. In my opinion, it is a horrible platform really, stay away.

As far as I know, my teams have only had to use the UXPin support once. The experience went really well. We just needed a bit of assistance with using the Documentation feature. UXPin's support was quick and helped my team in a matter of minutes. We will definitely reach out to their support without hesitation in the future.

Incentivized

I haven't had to engage them from a support perspective; however, there is a considerable user community for tips/ideas/troubleshooting and the like. I believe the Pro plan supports additional resources but we didn't find that the cost justified the outcome. Overall the need for support has been relatively minor.

Incentivized

Adobe XD is so much more than UXPin, with Adobe Cloud you can easily share designs as well. We used Adobe XD before changing to UXPin. At first UXPin seems so advanced and helpful, but don't get fooled. You're heavily limited in the long run, and after all the training and implementation of UXPin (both app-wise for IT but also training designers etc) it is not worth your time.

A lot more design control and easier to create a custom site, and then also to scale that site going forward. There's a lot about WordPress I miss, though, when it comes to managing a blog—user permissions, SEO control, edit HTML version of posts.

Incentivized

I feel it doesn’t perform the way it’s supposed to and it doesn’t have any beneficial factors to it. In my opinion, there is no reason to use a platform like this when Wix and Shopify, and WordPress exist. I believe Webflow is a platform that shouldn’t exist and it’s only popular because of the hype it received. I tried it and hate it completely.

• Saving money by using one tool for lo-fi wireframing, high fidelity wireframing, prototyping, and user testing, rather than four separate tools.
• The ability to create and use team libraries enables us to create visually consistent designs with less effort than creating every single design from scratch, which allows us to save considerable time (and therefore money!)
• In-platform collaboration saves our team a lot of time and energy. With everything in one place (wireframes, prototypes, user feedback, collaboration comments), we can all be on the same page about the design workflow and pinpoint discussion points that are based on up-to-date designs.

Incentivized

• Webflow vast marketing makes it easy for me to sell the product
• Webflow has been growing so much in recent year that more and more clients ask for it, and the demand is only increasing.
• Big companies understand the power of Webflow and big companies tend to have a large budget for their web projects.

Incentivized