When you create a new project in Webflow, that site is automatically assigned the free Starter Plan.
The Starter Site Plan is designed to allow you to explore most or all of Webflow's capabilities - the designer, the CMS, Logic, User Accounts, ECommerce, Localization... before you commit to Webflow, or decide what features you want for your site.
However when you are ready the bring your site live on a hosted plan, the plans and pricing available to you will depend entirely on the features you've built your site on.
To a first-time designer in Webflow, this isn't immediately obvious.
For example, you can create CMS collections freely, but [ 25-Dec-2023 ] there is no indication that CMS collections will require the CMS plan, or even what plan you're currently on.
Enabling ECommerce or Localization are similarly non-descriptive in terms of how these choices will affect your hosting plan options and pricing.
Other features have allowances that are plan-based;
These are also often misleading or vague in helping a site designer make the right decisions and communicate the right information to their clients.
Here are some thoughts on how the Webflow team could improve this.
Under settings, you will see a note indicating that you're on the Starter plan, which is excellent, but it doesn't actually have a lot of contextual value there.
No matter what site plan you're on, for every feature that is governed by a site plan, it should be clearly stated-
For professional designers who are very familiar with Webflow, this added information is probably just "noise" that is not needed in the interface.
Ideally, anyone on a paid Workspace plan could disable those Site Plan Tips.
A slightly more advanced variation of this is to allow the designer to set the target Site Plan in advance, under designer settings.
With this target, the Webflow designer can clearly indicate which features are not available in that targeted plan, and provide a link to easily change that target setting if you want to.
