When Sygnal was first developing as an agency, Webflow's client billing feature was one of the big attractors of the platform. It simplified our processes, let us focus on project delivery, and minimized our ongoing work.
We build sites, and we really didn't want to be bothered with much else.
Sadly, a couple of years ago Webflow decided to remove the client billing capability, and a lot of pain was felt by the community.
It was an extremely painful transition, that involved clients paying a good deal more with the addition of billing platform & admin fees, and local sales taxes.
But you know what?
After the bumpy transition, and the hours invested learning and trying out billing systems, we're actually happier.
Most billing services offer a subscription capability with a monthly, quarterly, or annual billing option. These keep your billing automated, so that the only time you need to do anything is when a credit card expires.
In the past clients got one invoice from Webflow for hosting, and another invoice for us for design & development work. Now, both invoices can come from the same billing platform, and everything related to the client's website costs can more easily be managed and tracked by them.
They know everything with our agency name "Sygnal" on it is related to their website.
More complex Webflow builds involve more services and fees... Airtable, Xano, Wized, Jetboost, Vimeo, Basin, Make, Zapier... and in many cases you may be asked to handle other services for your client, such as email setup and domain names.
In some cases it makes sense to have the client billed directly for a service, but in others, you may be able to share that one service fractionally across multiple clients.
In a shared-services situation it makes sense to charge each client $5/mo additional, rather than one client $30/mo, and if you have 50 clients, you've just added significant value while also making more money.
Primary examples of this are automation platforms like Zapier and Make, and our favorite email-submission-handling solution, Basin.
We can't offer specific advice here, but there are hundreds of platforms out there.
Paying for a platform and investing your time in learning it only makes sense for agencies that are building and hosting multiple sites. If you're doing a one-off site, you're probably better off using a client-centric workspace setup.
More professional platforms include Xero and MYOB.
Subscription-specific solutions include platforms like Bonsai. This was Webflow's recommended solution when client-billing was shut down, but our team didn't like it. We found a lot of issues with international taxation, and the recurring subscriptions system itself, like it's inability to re-collect and invoice after a failed charge.
More technical, but powerful platforms include Stripe.
Just a few tips. We might expand on this later.
Make certain you test out the features first, and trial it with one or two clients before committing to a solution. Diving in blind and unaware will probably leave you in a very uncomfortable situation.
Priorities;
Ideally;
