Know Your Limits, and Design with them in Mind

Know your limits.

In Webflow's CMS, your limits include;

• 20 total collections ( CMS plan ), or 40 ( Business plan )
• 2,000 total item ( CMS plan ), or 10,000 ( Business plan )
• 5 Reference fields per collection, including single and multi-refs combined ( 10 for higher plans )
• Multi-ref fields are fixed in ordering
• Refs and multi-refs are one-way. You cannot query them from the other end of the reference.

In the Webflow designer your limits include;

• 20 Collection Lists per page
• 100 items per list, before pagination is needed

Nested Collection lists are supported, however they;

• Are limited to 5 items
• Cannot be filtered or sorted ( verify this )

Design for those limits.

If you don't design for these limits, you'll almost certainly hit them, hard.

Like a kid running full speed into a wall, you'll suddenly be laying there dazed, wondering what happened, why the world is upside-down, and why you're wearing your ice cream.

For me, it was coffee.

Most people encounter these limits completely unprepared.

The truth is, those limits really aren't a problem in good site design at all. You just have to be aware of them, and how to design with them in mind- the same way an architect needs a basic grasp of gravity and local weather, in order to build a decent home.

If you have hit these limits and it's frustrating your design, you probably want to rethink your design.

‍

‍

‍