The first thing to point out is Launch Lab’s experience.
We’re highly experienced Webflow developers in Sydney, but we’ve also been building websites with Astro for a long time. In fact, we were building static sites (using libraries like Jekyll and Gatsby) long before Webflow came along. That experience hopefully provides a trusted foundation for this article.
What is Astro?
Astro is a web framework that developers use to build websites.
I won’t explain exactly what it is, as you can read about it on their website, or ask your LLM to tell you.
The main points you should know are:
- It is not a CMS (Content Management System), but you can add one.
- It is owned by Cloudflare (a market cap above $125 billion at the time of writing), so it is in safe hands.
- The developer experience is excellent, and the resulting websites load quickly. Scoring 100, across all metrics, in Google Lighthouse is possible for almost any site built on it. That means strong Core Web Vitals, a better experience for visitors and better SEO.
What is Webflow?
Webflow is a visual platform for designing, editing and hosting a website, all in the one place.
The main things you should know are:
- It is a visual Designer, a CMS and hosting in one subscription.
- It is built for the person managing the content, who is usually not a developer.
- You pay Webflow on an ongoing basis: a site plan, and a seat for each person who edits.
Developer experience vs content manager experience
This is the crux of the decision. The website owner, or their marketing team, is usually the person who manages the content. Adding blog posts, editing team members, creating landing pages, and changing text and images are mostly done by the CMS user.
Having worked on many CMS projects over the years, we know the CMS experience matters. It’s a major selling point for our clients. Those clients are usually non-technical, and more visual by nature.
That’s why we landed on Webflow years ago. We could build a high-quality website quickly, the CMS was easy to use, and the learning curve wasn’t too steep for our clients. The majority of our clients love it.
Developer experience (DX, the software-engineering equivalent of User Experience - UX) may not matter to the website owner. What they should know is that a good developer experience often changes what the website costs to build.
For years we loved the visual nature of building sites in Webflow. Even though we could write the code ourselves, Webflow became our de facto platform for business websites.
Agentic coding has changed that. While Webflow has kept up with its recent MCP 2.0 release, working with an AI agent like Claude Code on an Astro site is still a far better developer experience than building with Claude Code hooked into the Webflow MCP server.
We can move much faster, and we have control over everything. For our clients, that means money saved on the initial build if they choose Astro over Webflow.
Astro or Webflow for your requirements
So far we’ve mostly compared the website build. The problem is that Webflow and Astro aren’t the same kind of thing.
On Webflow you get:
- The CMS, baked in on a Premium plan or higher. It does still need some setup from your developer.
- Hosting included.
- Staging and production environments included.
- A long feature list, though a lot of those features you may never need.
Astro isn’t a CMS. It’s a framework you build a website with. Hosting, a CMS and the other things Webflow includes are extras.
So if you need a CMS, we shouldn’t compare Astro with Webflow on its own. We should compare ‘Astro + Sanity vs Webflow’, or ‘Astro + BriskCMS vs Webflow’, or ‘Astro + EmDash vs Webflow’ etc.
I won’t compare CMSs in this post. Let’s focus on what matters to you, the website owner. If you own a website and you’re not a developer, ask yourself these questions.
Do I really need a CMS?
Clients often worry about being locked into a web developer’s service contract, so they opt for a CMS to stay in control. A lot of our clients then decide not to use it. They ask us to make their content changes. We’re always happy to do that, but think hard about this before the project starts.
If you won’t use the CMS, or you’ll use it rarely, go with an Astro build and forgo the CMS. You’ll save money, and the build will be faster. Changes made by the developer are quick, and most developers will prefer to make them directly in Astro with their AI coding agent.
I want a CMS, but only for simple edits. What should I choose?
If you’re adding blog posts, making the occasional text change, or swapping team member photos, almost any CMS will do. If you’re comfortable working in Claude or ChatGPT, you might even consider an MCP-only CMS. In that case, go with Astro.
I want a visual CMS for more complex work. What is best?
If you also want to build new pages visually, or reorder sections on the page yourself, Webflow is the place for you. Some headless CMSs let you do this visually too. If you’re already on Webflow, stay there. If you’re planning a new build, compare Webflow’s pricing with a headless CMS like Sanity.
I’m already on Webflow and I’m happy. Should I migrate?
Probably not. If you’re not hitting Webflow’s limits, and you’re already used to the CMS and the Designer, stay where you are.
The Astro vs Webflow buzz on socials
If you want to dig deeper, or hear a different perspective, this is worth a watch:
Or read this Reddit thread from agencies that moved from Webflow to Astro and Sanity.
On the surface those two resources seem negative about Webflow but they’re not. Watch or read both and you’ll see that for some people Webflow is a must-have but for others Astro is the clear winner.
Conclusion
Launch Lab has been building websites and software for over 11 years. We’ve seen the migrate-from-WordPress-to-Webflow trend, the Next.js trend, the Gatsby.js trend, and the other buzzy trends that come and go.
The platform or framework for your website depends on your requirements. Your web developer might prefer one based on the developer experience (DX), but they should find out what matters to you, and recommend the best fit for your website.
From our side, we’ll continue building websites on Webflow and Astro for the foreseeable future.
Oh, and finally, Webflow is blurring the lines with its upcoming release of Source. It promises an agentic experience for marketers with a visual layer too. And the critical thing with regard to this article … you can use Webflow’s Source product without building your website on Webflow. In fact, you can use it with an Astro website.
Maybe that’s the answer … Astro + Webflow Source!