Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Webflow to Builder.io
We are the Webflow to Builder.io migration experts
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Challenges with Webflow
Key pain points
Now for the part Webflow doesn't put on their homepage. Pricing escalates fast. The $23/month CMS plan sounds reasonable until you pass 2,000 items and get forced onto the $39/month Business plan, and enterprise contracts run $60,000+ a year for high-traffic sites. The CMS editor is the other pain point everyone loves to hate. Tiny text fields, awkward formatting, and the occasional "why did hitting save unpublish my article?" moment. Not the confidence you want from a content platform.
Then there are the technical walls. Only one designer can edit the canvas at a time. Reference fields have shallow depth. CMS reference limits force strange workarounds for anything resembling real relational content. And if you ever want to leave Webflow, the exported code drops CMS content, interactions, and animations, so your "no-code" site suddenly needs code everywhere.
Expensive pricing tiers
Webflow starts cheap, but the moment you need CMS items, traffic, or team features, the bill jumps fast. If you want just 10 pages, go ahead. But if you need an enterprise website, we suggest reconsidering.
Outdated CMS editor interface
For all the design polish, the CMS editor feels stuck in another decade. Tiny text fields, formatting quirks, and the occasional “why did that unpublish my live page?” moment doesn't help content teams move fast.
CMS reference limitations
Complex content models often require hacks, workarounds, or custom code anyway, which defeats the “no-code” dream. It doesn't have repeaters or shallow reference depth, and collection limits add friction to what should be simple tasks.
Single-designer collaboration limit
Only one designer can work in the Webflow canvas at a time. On larger projects, this turns teamwork into a queue.
Third-party integration dependency
If you need advanced features, prepare to stitch in custom code or third-party services. The plugin ecosystem is small, so extending Webflow usually means bolting on tools outside the platform.
Limited export functionality
You can export your site, but you lose CMS features, interactions, and animations the moment you do. It’s more like a one-way door than a portable build.
Benefits of Builder.io
Key advantages
Builder.io occupies a unique spot in the headless CMS landscape. It is not really a traditional headless CMS in the way that Sanity or Contentful are. It is more of a visual page builder with headless capabilities bolted on. That distinction matters because if your marketing team needs to ship landing pages fast without filing Jira tickets, Builder.io genuinely delivers on that promise. The drag-and-drop editor is solid, and the ability to register your own React components so that non-developers can compose pages from your actual design system is a legitimately powerful idea.
Where Builder.io really shines is in bridging the gap between developers and marketing teams. You build the components, register them with Builder, and then hand the keys over. Marketers can assemble pages, run A/B tests, and publish without touching code. For agencies like ours, this means fewer "can you just move this banner" tickets and more time spent on actual engineering work.
The framework support is also genuinely broad. Next.js, React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, Qwik, SolidJS, and React Native all have SDKs. If you are running a modern JavaScript stack, Builder.io probably has an integration for it. The AI features they have been shipping are interesting too, though still early days in terms of real production reliability.
Visual drag-and-drop editor
The visual editor lets non-technical users build and edit pages using your actual codebase components. It is one of the better implementations of visual editing in the headless space.
Custom component registration
Developers can register their own React, Vue, or Angular components so editors drag and drop real design system pieces rather than generic blocks.
A/B testing and personalisation built in
Native experimentation tools let marketing teams run split tests and personalise content without needing a separate optimisation platform.
Broad framework support
SDKs for Next.js, React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, Qwik, SolidJS, and React Native mean you are not locked into a single frontend framework.
Marketing team autonomy
Content and marketing teams can ship landing pages, campaign pages, and promotions independently, which frees up developer time for product work.
Structured and visual content modes
Builder.io supports both structured data models for developer-driven content and visual page building for marketing-driven content, giving teams flexibility in how they work.
Common questions
Webflow to Builder.io migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Webflow to Builder.io migration
How much does Webflow cost?
Webflow's pricing is layered and confusing. Site plans (billed yearly) start at $14/month for Basic, $23/month for CMS with 2,000 items, and $39/month for Business with up to 20,000 items. Those are per-site. Workspace plans are separate at $19/month (Core) or $49/month (Growth) for teams, plus $16-$35/month for Freelancer or Agency plans. Ecommerce runs $29, $74, or $212/month depending on the tier. Enterprise pricing starts around $60,000/year. The real cost surprise comes from CMS item caps and bandwidth overages, a single CMS site that grows past 2,000 items forces a jump to Business.
How do I migrate from Webflow to a headless CMS?
We export your Webflow content through their API, restructure it for the target CMS (usually Sanity), and rebuild the frontend in Next.js. The content migration itself is straightforward. The tricky part is recreating Webflow's visual design in code, especially custom interactions and animations. Most migrations take 4-6 weeks. The payoff is a faster site, no per-page CMS limits, and a frontend your developers can actually version control.
What are the best Webflow alternatives?
For designers who want visual control, Framer is the closest alternative with better performance. For teams that need a proper CMS backend, Sanity paired with a custom Next.js frontend gives you far more flexibility. If you just need a simple marketing site and don't want to code, Framer or Squarespace will get you there cheaper than Webflow's higher tiers. The right choice depends on whether you're outgrowing Webflow's CMS limits or its pricing.
How do I understand Webflow pricing?
Think of it as two separate bills. First, your Site plan, which covers hosting, CMS items, bandwidth, and form submissions for each individual site. Second, your Workspace plan, which covers team seats, staging sites, and collaboration features. You pay both. A solo freelancer on one site might spend $23/month. A team of five managing three sites easily lands between $300 and $500/month. Always check CMS item limits before launching, because the cap for the CMS plan is 2,000 items and hitting it forces an immediate upgrade to Business.
Can I export my Webflow site and host it elsewhere?
Technically yes, but you lose almost everything that makes Webflow useful. Exported code strips out CMS content, interactions, animations, and form handling. You get static HTML and CSS. For most teams, exporting means rebuilding. That's why we recommend migrating to a headless CMS and custom frontend rather than trying to salvage exported Webflow code. It's cleaner, faster, and you end up with something maintainable.
Can you migrate from Builder.io without losing your page designs?
Yes, but it takes work. Builder.io's visual editor stores page compositions as JSON that references your registered components. Those component registrations are tightly coupled to Builder's SDK, so you can't just export and import elsewhere. What you can preserve is the design itself. We extract the page structures, map them to equivalent components in the new system, and rebuild the composition layer. The visual output stays the same. Typical timeline is 6-10 weeks depending on how many page types and custom components are involved. The biggest time sink is usually recreating A/B test variants and personalisation rules that lived inside Builder's platform.
What does Builder.io actually cost?
Builder.io's free tier gives you 1 user and basic features, which is enough to evaluate but not to run a real project. The Growth plan starts at $49/month and includes more seats and content types. Beyond that, pricing gets opaque. Teams needing roles, scheduling, and higher API limits are pushed toward custom Enterprise plans that typically start in the $500-$1,000/month range. We've heard from freelancers and small agencies who were caught off guard by charges after exceeding limits on the Growth plan. Builder.io also charges per "impression" on higher tiers, which means your costs scale with traffic in ways that aren't always predictable.
How does Builder.io compare to a traditional headless CMS?
Builder.io is a visual page builder first and a CMS second. That distinction matters. If your primary goal is letting marketing teams build landing pages without developer involvement, Builder.io does that well. If you need structured content modelling, editorial workflows, multi-language support, or content that powers more than just web pages, a traditional headless CMS is a better fit. Builder.io's SDK embeds deeply into your frontend code, which creates vendor lock-in that most headless CMS platforms avoid. We typically recommend Builder.io only when the use case is narrow: high-volume landing page creation for marketing teams. For everything else, a headless CMS with a proper content model gives you more flexibility long-term.
What's the main risk of building on Builder.io?
Vendor lock-in. Builder.io's SDKs are woven into your component rendering layer, which means migrating away requires rebuilding how your pages are composed and rendered. That's not a content migration, it's an architecture migration. With a typical headless CMS, your content is accessible through standard APIs and your frontend is independent. With Builder.io, the two are intertwined. We've worked with teams who spent months extracting themselves from Builder.io because every page template needed to be recreated outside the platform. If you're evaluating Builder.io, go in with eyes open about the exit cost.
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