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Building a website from scratch is hard, especially for those who don’t do it all day, every day. Instead, amateurs, enthusiasts, and scrappy businesses alike often decide to go the simpler route — implementing a template, rather than creating every part of the site on their own.
If you’re interested in building a site with Webflow but you don’t know where to start or how to make your vision a reality, keep reading for our tips that will make your build a bit easier, as well as a few of our favorite Webflow templates.
Before you choose your template, you need to determine which platform you’d like to build your site on.
As a Webflow agency, Edgar Allan is pretty partial to the Webflow platform. We could go on and on about what we love about it, but we really do believe that it’s the most powerful tool on the market for building no-code and low-code websites that are easy to implement and keep running.
Webflow has a ton of template options — over 1,000. But even with that incredible amount of choices, other tools, like WordPress, have a still-wider variety of template options. (WordPress calls their templates “themes,” and there are an overwhelming 31,000 to choose from.)
So, should you use Webflow templates when you build your site?
It depends. Webflow may have a limited range of templates available for implementation in comparison to platforms like WordPress and Wix, but once you get into the builder, you also have a lot more freedom. After you learn the basics of Webflow, it’s easy to customize templates to fit your needs or even build your site from scratch.
Webflow also makes it easy to build from and integrate cloneables, which are basically function-specific templates built by and shared out to the Webflow community. And that community, by the way, is one of Webflow’s greatest assets — it’s one that was built around sharing and implementing the best tools that the platform has to offer. This also means that if you’re looking for something specific, like a slider or an animation, chances are that someone has already made it, and they’ve given it to the community for free.
However, if you don’t know your way around Webflow already and you’re just looking to get a site up and running as quickly as possible, or if you’re looking for a specific type of template, Webflow may not be your best option. We think that it’s worth the investment, especially if you think you’ll be updating your site semi-regularly or need a CMS.
What are the limitations of Webflow’s templates?
Templates are great; they give you a leg up and allow anyone to build a site with minimal issues. However, they have some limitations. Because they’re designed to be widely applicable, if you are building a site for a specific industry or have specific design needs, they might fall short of what you’re looking for. However, this is true of any template, including those from WordPress. At Edgar Allan, for example, we don’t use Webflow’s templates, because we typically work user and content-first — starting with our clients’ specific experience needs rather than choosing a set of frames to build around.
Instead, we prefer using building blocks, like our tool Knockout. Knockout is our Figma to Webflow framework that makes it easy to bring site designs directly from Figma into the Webflow builder. But while it’s easy, and we think that anyone can learn it, having some background knowledge of how to build in Webflow will certainly accelerate the project.
If you really want to use a Webflow template, though, here are some of our favorites. As a bonus, all of them include CMS capabilities.
Some of our favorite free Webflow templates:
Propel — a straightforward template for any kind of business
Uncommon — a sleek template great for portfolios
Chomp — an e-commerce template with a focus on food and commerce capabilities
Tokyo — a simple blog template
Some of our favorite paid Webflow templates:
Zephyr — a beautiful agency or portfolio template with e-commerce capabilities
Porto — a bold template for any kind of creative business site
Procyon — a fun podcast site template that could also work for any other creative venture
Techpool X — a SaaS-y template with e-commerce capabilities
Edgar Allan is a brand- and content-focused Webflow agency. To learn more about what we do, check out our blog, or keep reading the rest of our series on Webflow templates and how to implement them.
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