The Tweet that Ended Webflow for Pixelgeek

A sign of the times. It's time to move on. Said by the one and only Pixel Geek. Command AI. He tweeted this screenshot. Uh, apparently one of his clients removing him from the workspace. I think here the idea is that the client is moving away from Webflow. Something that is has been happening both in the Web Flow and the framework community. We've seen tweets like this and people here are kind of like they they feel it. They feel it. So web flow is at least in the way that it was it seems like it's fading away. I'm not sure like some clients are moving away from web flow. That is for sure. This is all happening while we still have source which is a different conversation. So this is something really interesting I think we we wanted to talk about on one side the old web flow should you like build your website on the old web flow for some cases I would still say yes if you want to have like this visual management system like you can look at the pages you have the components and everything if you want to manage your site in a like s like systematic way, it's quite still useful. But is it as fast as you know building with AI and Astro? Probably not, right? And it seems like the code quality is becoming less and less important. As long as you get the basics right, you know, the UI looks good, it's consistent, it's performant, who cares how do you call your CSS classes? Yeah. So all of this Yeah. All of this is happening with and it's happening quite fast. This one from Nelson is quite dramatic because actually like he's one of the reasons I started using Web Flow. I remember in 2019 I guess it was he had this video with Rayar and there there was this Web Flow versus WordPress thing and I you know like everybody else it was so fun like looking back at the community like people actually cared and they were like so particular about like features and like what to use and what not to use. Anyway, uh that's that's how I uh got engaged with the community and I I watched his videos for a long time and it's quite sad to see that he's like kind of like heartbroken moving on moving away from Web Flow because it seems like that's kind of like the trend. I think the biggest letdown from Web Flow Conf was I think everyone was going into it rightly so and we'll get into why rightly so expecting that Web Flow would redefine uh building websites in the agentic age using their tool right they they definitely teased that um and when it came to it turned out to be this marketing tool and after watching Ran's video and reflecting on my initial responses it made sense that that's what they would do. They would build a tool that plugs into websites and no matter how sorry whether it's Astro, whether it's React, whether it's HTML, whatever, they're now the marketing system that plugs into the web flow because the building mechanism has been solved by AI. We don't need any new tools. And they just basically put their hands up and said, "Look, we're not going to touch that cuz we don't we have nothing to add here from a building standpoint." So, and I said it, we're going to have a mass Web Flow exodus and this is kind of evidence of that that PE builders are choosing to leave Web Flow and it makes sense because it's not a tool for them anymore. It's not a platform that speaks to builders anymore. So, that's kind of where I'm like slightly not surprised that Pixel Geek is leaving because I think everyone's going to leave. It doesn't mean to say that they aren't going to be asked to work within the realms of web flow. There might be some we haven't we haven't touched source yet. So there might be some little aspects of source that we need to work into our website to make sure it plugs into the web flow CMS or plugs into certain features that they're going to add. I don't know what. Uh but ultimately we as builders we're not concerned with web flow anymore. This is this is going to be the business and the marketers that are concerned with web flow because it's their tool. I don't to to be very clear I know we often sound very dramatic because you know that's what also catches our attention like we see it on Twitter we see it different places the dramatic things that happen but at the end of the day I look at my clients and I can't u migrate all of my clients to new places but I definitely do have some clients quite a few of them who have migrated away from web so that the shift is happening. It's real. I'm sensing it in my own business. Yeah. Well, and and you know, the other thing that came to mind whilst you were talking about uh Pixel Geek's tweet is going back to your mates's crazy€,000 Open AI bill. You still you a a agents are great for those who know how but you still do have people who require a safe infrastructure to work within where it's very much it's not magic to them. You know we always said that web flow gave you superpowers. Well now you know it's not so superpowery but it's still going to be a superpower to many people cuz they can physically move things around and what they see in the canvas is going to be the thing that post. They haven't got to worry about hosting. They haven't got to worry about security. They haven't got to worry about XY Z. So, Web Flow do need to, as Timothy Rick said, do need to keep hold of this UI aspect of Web Flow. Um, I agree because there are many people who just Yeah, they cuz anyone who tries to build a website agentically, well, they need to sort their own hosting out, they need to sort their own CMS out. They don't know all of this sort of stuff. So, that's where the web flow traditional thing is. And finally, as well, you never know, Web Flow might just be sitting tight and seeing where the tools go to when it comes to building websites or having a UI with um uh aentically built websites like Instatic, like Stacky, and they might turn around be like, "Right, it seems to be established now. We're going to take a stab at it." and that they'll build that into source or it might be part of source but it's just not a selling feature. It's not as it doesn't blow you away as you know it's not a red redefinition of how we build it. It's just it's just a logical next step which you know if you if you use source of the rest of the infrastructures on a web flow website you can now just tweak your website using their tweak pane you know. Yeah, I I think Web Flow was never like supposed to and they never did make like actual money money from us uh like developers, agency owners and so on. We like I'm paying them a,000 bucks a year. It's not little. Uh I might reduce it this year. Not cancel it, but reduce it this year. Um, but at the end of the day, I think they still have some like enough clients giving them the cash flow from the hosted websites to be able to sit tight basically what you said to see, okay, where is this going? Why? Because we haven't figured out. Like, nobody has figured out. Like, you look at Replet and Lovable, they all have their own big problems. It's like I cannot go to those solutions and just use them and be fine. I can't use claw code and build a website. I can build a website, build an amazing website, but what do I do with it later? It's easy to for me uh to deal with that website, but for my clients, I still need to to figure whole lot on and uh I I need to figure a lot out for the hosting, for how they access it and so on. I can definitely build like you know whatever dashboards that I need but I'm pretty sure there is still some need for something more robust. Uh but how will it look like? We don't know. Nobody has figured it out. So this is part of a larger conversation on my show Command AI which we stream live every single week. We discuss the news and all things related to AI in the world of design and web. Catch us next week and join in the banter. Command AI.