Primo vs Webflow.
Webflow builds beautiful sites without code — its design canvas is genuinely the best there is. But here’s the part that bites later: with Webflow you rent the result. You pay per site, per seat, forever, the site lives on their platform, and you can’t cleanly take the live, editable version anywhere else. Primo flips that. You own the site as files, self-host it for free, pay no per-site rent — and your client can still open the browser and edit it in place, exactly like they would in Webflow.
…you want to design a site from scratch, visually, with zero code. Webflow’s canvas for laying out responsive pages and animations is best-in-class, the hosting just works out of the box, and the ecosystem is mature. If pure no-code design is the job, nothing beats it.
…you want to own the site outright — no per-site rent, no platform lock-in, MIT-licensed files you can move anywhere — while still handing your client a browser editor. Build it with an AI agent, self-host free, and keep one source of truth you control.
Side by side
You own it — and your client still edits it.
The thing people miss until renewal day: with Webflow you never actually own your site. You pay to keep it online, the live editable version lives on Webflow's servers, and walking away means leaving most of it behind. Primo is the opposite — the whole site is plain files you own, self-hosted for free under an MIT license, with no per-site rent and no platform you're tethered to.
And you don't give up the part that made Webflow appealing. Your client still opens the browser and edits the site in place on the rendered page — click a heading and type, swap an image, reorder sections. Ownership and a friendly client editor stop being a trade-off.
The design canvas is best-in-class.
Let's be fair: Webflow's visual editor is excellent, and for some projects it's the right tool. You can lay out sophisticated responsive pages, build real animations and interactions, and ship a polished site without writing a line of code. For a designer who wants to compose a layout pixel by pixel from a blank canvas, nothing else comes close.
The hosting is solved out of the box, the ecosystem is mature, and the result looks great on day one. If zero-code visual design from scratch is the heart of the job, Webflow is a strong, honest choice.
Rent and lock-in compound over time.
The price isn't just the monthly bill, though that's real — Webflow charges per site and per seat, indefinitely. The deeper cost is lock-in. The live, editable site is bound to Webflow's platform. You can export static HTML and CSS, but the export loses the CMS and the interactions, so what you carry out isn't the site your client was editing — it's a frozen snapshot.
That means you can't move the editable site to your own infrastructure, version-control it cleanly, or hand it to an AI agent to refactor. The convenience you bought up front becomes a wall the day you want to leave.
One source of truth — files locally, a database on the server.
Here's the architecture under the ownership claim. The whole site — components, pages, content, config — is plain files in your repo. Locally it's just files an agent can change anything in; pushed to the server, content lives in a lightweight row store (SQLite via PocketBase) your client edits visually. primo pull and primo push move both code and content between the two.
The detail that makes it work: the block your developer (or agent) edits as code and the page your client edits in the browser are the same files. A block is a Svelte component plus a fields.yaml next to it, and the editor generates its UI from that field schema while the renderer reads the same files — no glue code, no platform in the middle. Because it's all files, you can point Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex at the repo and have it build the whole site, then hand the client the browser.
For from-scratch visual design, Webflow is stronger.
The trade is real and worth stating plainly. Webflow's pure-visual canvas for designing a site from a blank page is more powerful than anything Primo offers for that specific task. Primo's blocks are built in code (Svelte) — you, or an AI agent, build the blocks; your client edits the content inside them. If what you want is zero-code visual design from scratch, Webflow wins.
Primo is for people who build custom sites and hand them to clients to edit — freelancers, agencies, developers. And today the blocks are Svelte, not React; on the roadmap is primo integrate <framework> for layering Primo onto an existing SvelteKit app. If you need a blank-canvas no-code designer or React today, weigh that honestly.
Questions people ask
Can my client still edit the site themselves, like in Webflow?
Yes — that’s the whole point. Your client opens the browser and edits the site on the rendered page: click a heading and type, swap an image, reorder sections. It’s the same friendly editing experience Webflow’s Editor gives non-technical people, except the site underneath is files you own rather than something you rent.
Do I still pay per site, like with Webflow?
No. The core is open source and MIT-licensed — self-host as many sites as you want for free, forever, with no per-site or per-seat rent. Paid tiers (Maker $20 for 3 sites, Studio $50 for 10 with real-time collaboration and custom domains, Agency ~$190 for 100) add managed hosting if you’d rather not run infrastructure — but there’s no lock-in.
Can I move my site off the platform later?
With Primo there’s no platform to move off of — the whole site is already files you own in your repo, and primo pull exports both your code and content at any time. That’s the contrast with Webflow, whose static export drops the CMS and interactions, so you can’t carry out the live, editable site.
Do I need to code to use Primo?
To edit content, no — your client never touches code; they edit visually on the page. To build the blocks, yes: Primo blocks are Svelte components, built by you or an AI agent. That’s the honest difference from Webflow’s blank-canvas no-code designer. Primo is aimed at people who build custom sites and hand them off to clients to keep current.