At a Glance
- WordPress still powers around 43% of all websites and more than 60% of known CMS installs — but its plugin-heavy model is showing its age for teams that need speed and governance.
- Webflow positions itself as a Website Experience Platform rather than “just a CMS,” combining a visual builder, composable CMS, SEO tools, and hosting so teams can build, manage, and optimize in one place.
- Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ study found Webflow delivered a 332% ROI, with 94% faster time-to-market and 80% more efficient content changes, reflecting why more businesses now choose Webflow as their next CMS instead of defaulting to WordPress.
The Real Shift: From “Free CMS” to Revenue Infrastructure
Behind the “WordPress vs Webflow” question is a bigger shift: your website stopped being a cost centre and became revenue infrastructure.
Webflow’s 2025 State of the Website report found 91% of marketing leaders say the website drives more revenue than any other channel, and 62% report more than half of company revenue comes from the site. At the same time, most organisations have expanded their web tech stack in the last 12 months, not simplified it.
On the supply side, WordPress is still huge: it powers roughly 43% of all websites and over 60% of known CMS-based sites. There are 70,000+ plugins and 30,000+ themes — which is both its strength and the root of a lot of security and maintenance pain.
Overlay that with Gartner-cited trends: around 70% of new applications will be built with low-code/no-code by 2025, up from less than 25% in 2020. New digital projects are expected to be visual, fast to change, and owned by business teams — not hard-coded by engineering.
In that context, the default question for a rebrand or rebuild has quietly changed from “Which WordPress setup?” to “Is Webflow a better operating model for our next 3–5 years?”
Why Webflow Is Becoming the New Default for Serious Teams
Webflow isn’t “winning” on hype. It’s winning where your website has to be fast, governed, and clearly tied to revenue.
1. The platform is built for modern marketing teams, not just bloggers.
Webflow now describes itself as “the website experience platform for high-performing brands,” combining a visual-first development environment, composable CMS, SEO tools, and enterprise-grade hosting. Practically, that means:
- Marketing and design can build and iterate visually
- Content teams use a CMS built for campaigns and thought leadership
- Engineering still has access to custom code, APIs, and governance
WordPress can do all of this with the right plugins and engineering, but Webflow ships it as a coherent, integrated platform.
2. Independent ROI data shows why teams are switching, not just experimenting.
Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ study on Webflow found a 332% ROI over three years, with 94% faster time-to-market and an 80% improvement in content-change efficiency for the composite organisation. That’s not “nice UX”; it’s hard business justification for moving away from stacks where every change depends on developers.
For time-poor marketing leaders under budget pressure, this is why Webflow is replacing WordPress as the default for new builds — the math works, not just the aesthetics.
3. Webflow is aligned with the low-code, AI, and WXP future — WordPress is retrofitting it.
Gartner-backed analysis shows 70% of new apps are expected to use low-code/no-code by 2025, signalling a structural move toward tools non-developers can operate. Webflow leans into this by positioning itself as the next generation of CMS — a Website Experience Platform that combines marketing agility with developer flexibility, instead of forcing a choice between the two.
WordPress, by contrast, is layering page builders, AI tools, and security plugins onto a core that was never designed around enterprise marketing teams as the primary operators.
How Underscore Helps You Decide If Webflow Should Be Your Default
Webflow doesn’t automatically replace WordPress for every use case. The question is whether it should be the default for your next strategic build.
Clarify what “default CMS” really means for your organisation.
We start by mapping where your web work originates: brand, demand gen, comms, regional teams, product marketing. Then we ask a simple question: “If you were starting from scratch today, which team should own 80% of changes?” For most B2B and professional service firms, the honest answer is marketing and comms — and that’s where a visual, Webflow-style platform lines up cleanly with your operating reality.
Compare total cost of ownership, not licence fees.
Yes, WordPress can look cheaper on paper. But when we factor in developer hours, agency fees, plugin licences, maintenance, and delays to campaigns, the Forrester-style ROI picture shows up quickly. We’ll help you build that comparison explicitly so you’re not arguing gut feel with your COO or CTO.
Decide what role you want engineering to play in the web — and design around that.
In a Webflow world, engineering focuses on architecture, integrations, performance, and guardrails. Marketing and design own the day-to-day surface. If that’s the division of labour you wish you had today, then Webflow isn’t just a tool change — it’s a way to formalise that operating model and make it sustainable.
Conclusion & Next Step
WordPress isn’t going away; it still runs a huge portion of the internet. But for growth-stage B2B companies and mid-market service firms planning their next website — under pressure to move faster, prove revenue impact, and cut reliance on dev queues — Webflow is increasingly the default choice.
It reflects where the world is going: low-code, AI-assisted, visually built web experiences that marketing can own, with engineering providing the backbone rather than every button change.
If you’re at that decision point, Underscore’s Blueprint Strategy Session is where we take this from theory to numbers: stack comparison, operating-model design, and a clear recommendation your leadership team can stand behind.
Sources
- Webflow – The 2025 State of the Website report
- W3Techs – Usage statistics and market share of WordPress
- W3Techs – Usage statistics and market share of content management systems
- WPZoom – WordPress statistics November 2025
- Webflow – Create a custom website | Visual website builder
- Webflow – Visual-first web development platform
- Webflow Blog – Webflow is the first Website Experience Platform (WXP)
- Webflow Blog – The next generation of CMS: A Website Experience Platform
- Webflow Blog – Forrester study: Webflow delivered a 332% ROI
- Forrester – The Total Economic Impact™ of Webflow
- AIMultiple – Low-code / no-code statistics 2025 (Gartner data)
- Adalo – Traditional coding vs no-code adoption statistics
- Integrate.io – No-code transformations usage trends
