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A business leader redoing the company website often hears three names. The design studio suggests Framer, the marketing agency swears by Webflow, the developer talks about Astro. Each is right for the team they have in mind. All three produce fast, polished sites; what sets them apart is who edits the site day to day, how, and what you take with you the day you change provider. This article belongs with our guide to migrating to a static site with Astro.
In short
Framer and Webflow are hosted platforms: you design and publish in the same tool, and the site lives with the vendor.
Astro is open source, under the MIT licence: the site is a set of files in your repository, publishable with the host of your choice.
The right criterion is not technical, it is the team: designers, marketing, an in-house developer or an outside provider.
The hidden cost shows when you leave: Framer does not export the site, Webflow exports the code without the CMS content, Astro has nothing to export.
All three combine with an editing tool: the choice is about the weekly work, not the demo.
Three tools, three ways to make a website
Framer started as an interface design tool. You draw pages on a canvas, with animations, then publish in one step. Hosting is part of the service: its help centre states that Framer does not offer HTML export for self-hosting, because platform services optimise the site after it is published.
Webflow is a visual builder paired with a CMS: you assemble pages from blocks, and collections hold repeated content (articles, case studies, job posts). The marketing team publishes without a developer. The site is hosted by Webflow, and code export exists on some plans. Its help centre explains that exported code does not include CMS content: collection pages come out empty, and forms and site search stop working.
Astro is an open-source site generator, released under the MIT licence. The site is a set of files in a Git repository; at publication, Astro builds the pages as HTML, which a host serves as they are. In January 2026 Cloudflare announced the acquisition of the company behind Astro, stating that Astro would remain open source; an Astro site can still be served from any host.
A hosted platform (Framer, Webflow)
You design, write and publish in the same tool
Hosting, updates and security are included in the subscription
The site follows the platform’s capabilities and terms
A site made of files (Astro)
The site is code and content stored in your repository
Hosting is chosen and changed freely
A change goes through a developer, an editing tool or a coding assistant
The real question: who edits the site, and how often
The best tool is the one the person who edits the site every week can use without calling for help. Four team profiles come up often.
- A design studio, few pages, a quick launch. Framer is built for this work: the designer publishes what they draw, animations included, with no separate build step. The site stays in the tool of the person who designed it.
- A marketing team that publishes every week. Case studies, articles, event pages: Webflow’s collections and visual editor keep the team autonomous, within a frame the designer has set.
- A site that connects to the rest of the business. Several languages, hundreds of pages, data from the CRM or a database, checks before publication: a site made of files with Astro lets you connect and verify everything, with a developer or a provider in the loop.
- A large editorial team on a site made of files. Astro combines with a headless CMS: writers work in an interface, and the site stays static for visitors. That is the case described in our article on headless Astro and Sanity.
None of these profiles is better than another. A designer who publishes directly saves weeks; a developer who sets up checks prevents costly mistakes. The tool should serve the team you have, not the one you wish you had.
What shows the day you leave
A website lives longer than the relationship with the provider who built it. So the exit question arises at the moment of choice, and the three tools answer it differently.
- Framer.
No export to host the site elsewhere, according to its help centre: leaving means rebuilding, starting from the published site.
- Webflow.
Page code exports without the collection content: articles and case studies have to be moved separately, and forms reconnected.
- Astro.
There is nothing to export: the files are already in your repository. Changing host or provider means granting access to the repository.
This is not a flaw of the platforms: built-in hosting is precisely what makes them simple. It is a cost to know about, weighed against the subscription and the time saved.
From the field
What we do ourselves
This site is built with Astro, and its blog is written in Markdown in the same repository as the code: publishing an article means merging a reviewed change. In October 2026 the site moved from Netlify to Cloudflare: the pages did not change, only the redirect rules and the host configuration were rewritten. The property portal we run for Palmora Property, an agency in Phuket, is also built with Astro.
When Webflow or Framer is the right choice
We build sites with Astro, and we say so when a hosted platform fits better:
- the team that will run the site is made up of designers or marketers, with no developer or technical provider over time;
- the site has few pages, in a single language, and does not connect to other tools;
- launch speed matters more than the freedom to leave.
Conversely, a multilingual site, a site taking over hundreds of existing URLs, or a site whose content comes from other systems benefits from being made of files. The choice between writing in the repository or in a CMS comes next, and we cover it in Markdown in the repository or a CMS.
The rest of the project
The choice of tool sets part of the budget (how much a business website costs) and of the hosting (Cloudflare, Netlify or a VPS, hosting in Europe). Whatever the tool, a site must stay fast (Core Web Vitals), accessible (the 2025 EU obligation), readable by AI (what makes a website citable) and useful at every URL, including city and industry pages. Changing tool often means a redesign (keep, merge or delete) and redirects (the 301 redirect list), without forgetting what a site needs to generate enquiries (the five blocks), or forms and search on a static site (how to add them). A text drafted with AI raises the question of disclosing it. And if you are leaving WordPress, its weak points often weigh in the decision.
For a new site, our business website starts at €3,900; to leave an existing site without losing its URLs, the static site migration with Astro starts at €5,900.
Frequently asked questions
Are Webflow or Framer slower than Astro?
Not necessarily. Framer, according to its help centre, pre-renders pages, optimises images and fonts and serves them from a global delivery network. Speed depends mostly on what the page loads: animations, third-party scripts, heavy images. An Astro site starts with little JavaScript by default, but a badly built site stays slow whatever the tool. Measure each page against the thresholds Google publishes.
Can we move from Webflow or Framer to Astro?
Yes, it is a migration like any other. You list every existing URL, move the content (Webflow collections separately, since the code export does not include them), rebuild the templates in Astro and set up redirects before the switch. The design can be kept exactly as it is or reworked template by template, depending on what the redesign is meant to achieve.
Can a team without a developer edit an Astro site?
Yes, in two ways. A headless CMS gives writers an editing interface, and the site rebuilds on each publication. Without a CMS, a coding assistant can prepare a change from a written request, shown in a preview before approval. In both cases, the site’s structure and its checks remain set by whoever built it, so editors cannot break the layout by accident.
Which tool should we choose for a multilingual site?
All three can handle several languages, with different models. The criterion stays the same: one URL per language, reciprocal hreflang tags, and a team able to keep each version alive. A site made of files lets you control the translation of each page in the repository; a hosted platform manages it in its own settings, depending on the plan you choose.
Sources
- Framer help centre: exporting your site to HTML and self-hosting it (new tab)framer.com
- Webflow help centre: exporting your site code (new tab)help.webflow.com
- Astro repository licence (new tab)github.com
- Cloudflare press release, 16 January 2026 (new tab)cloudflare.com
Framer help centre: exporting your site to HTML and self-hosting it
Read on framer.com(new tab)Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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