Webflow vs. Storyblok: Choosing the Best CMS for Dynamic Websites

June 27, 2025

Selecting the right Content Management System (CMS) for dynamic websites can significantly impact your site's performance, scalability, and ease of maintenance. Two platforms often considered in this space are Webflow and Storyblok—a leading headless CMS. In this guide, we'll dive deeply into Webflow vs. Storyblok, exploring each CMS's strengths, limitations, and best use cases to help you decide which suits your project best.

What Makes Dynamic Content Important?

Dynamic content refers to site elements regularly updated and personalized based on user interactions or real-time data. Blogs, events, product listings, news updates, and portfolio items are typical examples. Dynamic content boosts SEO performance, engages visitors effectively, and provides scalable content management for growing businesses.

Understanding Webflow: Strengths and Weaknesses

Webflow stands out for its intuitive visual web design capabilities and built-in CMS functionalities.

Why Choose Webflow?

Visual Editing: Webflow provides real-time visual editing, making it easy to see exactly how changes affect your site's appearance.

Customizable Layouts: Ideal for in-house designers or marketing teams frequently needing to produce custom landing pages, event pages, and promotional designs.

Built-In SEO Features: SEO settings, structured data, and easy meta tag management provide a robust starting point for content visibility.

Limitations of Webflow

Despite its advantages, Webflow does come with limitations, especially noticeable as sites scale:

CMS Collection Limits: Webflow caps collection items at 10,000 entries, creating challenges for sites with extensive content.

Combo Class Complexity: Webflow’s visual design freedom leads to a complicated stylesheet structure due to combo classes, making style management cumbersome at scale.

Custom Code Necessity: For advanced features or integrations, developers frequently rely on custom code, reducing Webflow’s supposed ease-of-use advantage.

Steep Learning Curve: Webflow’s user interface, characterized by small fonts and dense panels, can make learning and daily content management tasks challenging for beginners.

Diving into Storyblok: Advantages and Use Cases

Storyblok is a robust headless CMS that separates content management (backend) from presentation (frontend), allowing developers full freedom in building front-end experiences.

Why Choose Storyblok?

Unlimited Scalability: Storyblok handles large volumes of content effortlessly, making it ideal for enterprises or rapidly growing websites with extensive, complex data.

Clean User Interface: Its intuitive, simplified backend enables non-technical users to manage content without confusion, promoting greater efficiency.

Structured Content Models: Storyblok uses a component-based structure, meaning content types and fields can be specifically tailored to a site’s needs, enhancing maintainability and adaptability.

Enhanced Developer Flexibility: Since Storyblok is API-driven, it integrates smoothly with modern frontend frameworks like Astro, Next.js, or Vue, providing developers unmatched flexibility.

Where Storyblok Excels

  • Any size website or team looking for a structured, stable website.
  • Large-scale or enterprise content projects.
  • Content-heavy sites with evolving structures or types.
  • Teams looking for streamlined content workflows and developer-friendly architecture.

Webflow vs. Storyblok: Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Feature/Capability Webflow Storyblok
Dynamic Content Scalability Limited to 10k items per collection Nearly unlimited scalability
Customization & Flexibility Visual customization but limited data structure flexibility Highly flexible data modeling via API
CMS UI & Learning Curve Steeper learning curve due to dense visual panels Clear, intuitive UI; easier for content managers
Style & Class Management Becomes complicated with combo classes Simple and clean due to frontend/backend separation
Custom Code Requirements Frequently necessary for advanced functionality Always required on frontend, cleanly managed

Avoiding the WordPress Trap

Many businesses initially attracted to WordPress faced long-term challenges: bloated code, cluttered backends, and high maintenance costs. Webflow, despite its appeal, can inadvertently lead teams into similar issues:

  • Unmanageable CSS: Overuse of combo classes can clutter and complicate the stylesheet.
  • Integration Complexity: Growing content needs often force teams into heavy custom coding, negating some ease-of-use claims.

Choosing Storyblok mitigates these issues by clearly separating content management from the frontend codebase, ensuring long-term maintainability and scalability.

When to Choose Webflow or Storyblok?

Making the correct decision depends heavily on your project requirements, team capabilities, and future scalability.

Choose Webflow If:

  • Your site demands frequent and quick visual customizations.
  • An in-house designer frequently needs to launch new pages.
  • Your CMS scalability needs are relatively modest and controlled.
  • Visual control integrated directly into the CMS workflow is critical.

Choose Storyblok If:

  • You have complex content modeling needs.
  • You require long-term scalability and simplified maintenance.
  • Content management tasks are handled by a non-technical team needing a clear, simple UI.
  • Your frontend developers utilize modern frameworks and require API-driven content delivery.

Webflow and Storyblok in Practice: Real-World Scenarios

Scenario A: Startup Event Company (Webflow Preferred)For a company frequently launching promotional landing pages for events, Webflow’s visual interface allows rapid, visually appealing customizations without complex development cycles.

Scenario B: Content-Heavy Tech Blog (Storyblok Preferred)For a tech blog rapidly scaling in content volume and complexity, Storyblok’s structured, API-first approach ensures content is easily maintainable, efficient, and highly adaptable for the future.

SEO Benefits: Webflow vs. Storyblok

  • Webflow: Good basic SEO capabilities, built-in meta tagging, and structured data support.
  • Storyblok: Advanced SEO features via customized frontends (optimized for performance and Core Web Vitals) and structured data through API-driven content models.

Final Thoughts on Choosing Webflow or Storyblok for your website

Both Webflow and Storyblok provide robust platforms for dynamic websites but excel under different conditions. If you need visual customization and rapid iterations, Webflow is compelling. For scalability, long-term content management ease, and developer freedom, Storyblok emerges as the optimal choice.

Ultimately, selecting the right CMS hinges on clear, informed planning and an understanding of your project's specific needs and long-term goals.

Webflow vs. Storyblok FAQs

Does Webflow handle large websites well?

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Webflow can technically support large websites—but in practice, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage as the site grows. While the platform is excellent for visually building smaller to mid-size sites, larger-scale projects expose several key limitations in both content modeling and the editor interface.

One major issue is content organization and navigation within the Webflow Designer. As your page count increases, Webflow’s Pages panel becomes cumbersome to work with. Page titles are truncated, especially for CMS collection items and nested static pages, making it hard to distinguish between similarly named content. There’s no folder system or intelligent grouping for pages, which means users are often left scrolling through long, alphabetically sorted lists to find what they need. This quickly becomes frustrating in content-heavy builds.

On the CMS side, content modeling is limited. You’re restricted to a set number of CMS Collections (currently 60 on most plans), each with a cap of 10,000 items. While that may sound like a lot, it adds up fast if your site includes blogs, events, case studies, services, authors, testimonials, and other reusable content types. Each collection is also capped in terms of the number of reference fields and multi-reference fields, limiting how relational or modular your content architecture can be.

In addition, Webflow lacks true component-based content management. Unlike headless CMS platforms that support deeply structured and reusable content blocks, Webflow forces you to design around individual CMS templates and static pages. This makes it difficult to scale or repurpose content across the site, especially if you're building a multilingual or multi-regional website.

Finally, the UI itself becomes a bottleneck. The Designer’s interface, while powerful for visual editing, was not built for speed when managing hundreds of pages or large CMS databases. Font sizes are small, space is tight, and toggling between sections (Pages, CMS, Assets, etc.) can become inefficient in high-volume environments.

So while Webflow can support larger websites in theory, doing so comfortably and sustainably requires significant workarounds, discipline, and in some cases, concessions. If your site is expected to grow, or if you’re already managing a large content structure, a more scalable CMS—like Storyblok—may offer a better long-term solution.

What makes Storyblok better for content-heavy websites—or even for small sites?

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Storyblok stands out as a powerful content management solution not just for large, content-heavy websites, but also for small, fast-growing sites that need long-term flexibility. Its biggest strength lies in how it separates content from design, allowing teams to scale, restructure, and reuse content without being locked into rigid page layouts or visual editors.

For content-heavy websites, Storyblok’s benefits are clear:

  • Scalability: There are no practical limits on how much content you can create. Whether you’re managing thousands of blog posts, landing pages, products, or localized content versions, Storyblok handles it with ease.
  • Structured content modeling: You can define custom content types with fields tailored to your site’s specific needs, allowing editors to input consistent, SEO-friendly content at scale.
  • Component-based architecture: Storyblok lets you build reusable content blocks (like testimonials, CTAs, product cards), which can be managed centrally and updated across the site—something traditional CMSs or Webflow struggle with when content grows.

But Storyblok is also a strong choice for small websites, especially if they plan to scale or need more structure from the start:

  • Cleaner UI for editors: Compared to Webflow’s dense interface or WordPress’s plugin clutter, Storyblok provides a clear, distraction-free editing experience—even for non-technical users.
  • Future-proofing: Even a small site benefits from having a structured content foundation. If the site expands—new pages, new sections, localization—it’s already set up for scale.
  • Seamless developer integration: With an API-first approach, developers can build blazing-fast frontends (using frameworks like Astro, Next.js, or Nuxt) while keeping the content team independent from the codebase.

In short, Storyblok avoids the traps of monolithic platforms. It provides clarity, structure, and flexibility whether you’re managing 5 pages or 5,000. For teams that care about performance, ease of editing, and long-term maintainability, it’s a smart investment—at any size.

Can Webflow become just as clunky and complex as WordPress if the same mistakes are made?

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Yes—Webflow can absolutely become as unwieldy as WordPress if it’s not managed with discipline. While Webflow starts with a clean visual interface and modern features, the same pitfalls that plague WordPress projects—like poor design systems, lack of naming conventions, and unstructured workflows—can quickly create a bloated, difficult-to-maintain website.

One of the most common issues is combo class overload. Without a consistent naming system or style guide, designers often create dozens of similar-but-slightly-different classes for buttons, spacing, or headings. Over time, this leads to a tangled CSS system that’s hard to update, debug, or scale—similar to the “spaghetti stylesheets” seen in poorly built WordPress themes.

Webflow also lacks true component reuse across pages unless you're using Symbols or CMS-driven layouts properly. If those features aren’t implemented with care, updates require manual edits across dozens of pages—just like in WordPress sites that over-rely on page builders.

Another overlooked issue is workflow management. Without version control, proper staging environments, or team handoff standards, multiple users working in Webflow can step on each other’s changes, introduce inconsistencies, or break live pages—again, much like WordPress when developer and marketing workflows aren’t clearly separated.

Webflow’s strengths—its visual freedom and no-code appeal—can become its weaknesses if structure and process are ignored. Just like with WordPress, long-term success with Webflow depends on having a clear strategy for design systems, CMS architecture, content governance, and developer involvement. Without that, you're just swapping one set of problems for another.

How easy is it to migrate from HubSpot to Storyblok?

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Migrating from HubSpot to Storyblok is very achievable—but the ease depends on how your HubSpot content is structured and how much custom functionality you're using. HubSpot's CMS combines marketing tools, page templates, and blog features in a tightly integrated system, which means content isn’t always stored in a straightforward or easily exportable format.

To migrate to Storyblok, you’ll typically begin by exporting blog posts, landing pages, and other assets (often as CSV, JSON, or HTML). From there, you’ll map this content into Storyblok’s more structured component-based system. This gives you much greater flexibility and future-proofing, but it does require upfront planning:

  • You’ll need to define content types (e.g., Blog Post, Author, Category) using Storyblok’s schema editor.
  • Assets like images and PDFs must be re-uploaded and linked within the new CMS.
  • HubSpot-specific modules or marketing automation elements won’t carry over directly, so you’ll either rebuild them in your frontend or integrate third-party tools more suited to your stack.

While there's no one-click migration, the payoff is significant. You gain a faster, developer-friendly system that’s not locked into HubSpot’s marketing platform. If you're moving to a Jamstack frontend (like Astro or Next.js), this migration sets you up with a clean content API and modern publishing workflow. For larger sites, using a migration partner or automation scripts via HubSpot’s API and Storyblok’s Management API can reduce manual workload and ensure consistency.

How easy is it to migrate from HubSpot to Webflow?

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Migrating from HubSpot to Webflow can be straightforward for simple sites, but more complex HubSpot setups often require a custom migration process. HubSpot's CMS includes built-in tools for content, landing pages, blog posts, forms, and marketing automation—many of which don’t translate directly into Webflow’s more design-centric, visual builder and limited CMS.

If you're only migrating blog posts, HubSpot allows export of blog content via CSV, which you can then import into Webflow using its CMS Import tool. However, Webflow has strict collection structures and field limits, so you’ll need to map the data carefully to match your CMS fields. Any embedded HubSpot modules or CTAs will need to be recreated in Webflow, and images must be re-uploaded and re-linked.

More advanced migrations—such as landing pages with custom modules or gated content—often require manual recreation due to differences in how HubSpot and Webflow handle layout logic and dynamic data. Webflow does not support dynamic templating or component reuse at the same level as HubSpot, so layouts may need to be rebuilt from scratch.

Additionally, HubSpot forms and CRM integrations won’t migrate natively. You’ll need to replace them with Webflow-native forms or third-party services like Formspree, Make, or Zapier.

Overall, the migration is manageable for small-to-medium content libraries but demands planning, manual effort, and SEO attention (like implementing 301 redirects, matching meta fields, and preserving structured data). It's a worthwhile move for teams that want greater design control and faster site performance—especially if they're decoupling from HubSpot’s bundled marketing tools.

Which CMS is better for SEO, Webflow or Storyblok?

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Both platforms support good SEO practices, but Storyblok provides greater flexibility and performance optimization due to its API-driven structure, beneficial for Core Web Vitals and advanced structured data.

How difficult is migrating content from WordPress or HubSpot to Webflow?

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Migrating content from platforms like WordPress or HubSpot to Webflow typically involves exporting your existing content as CSV or XML files and then manually or programmatically importing it into Webflow's CMS. However, Webflow's rigid content structure and limited import functionality may require additional manual adjustments to ensure compatibility, such as fixing content formatting, reassigning fields, or re-uploading images and media assets. Planning and executing a migration carefully, possibly with a migration expert, can streamline the process and prevent data loss or formatting issues.

Can I migrate from Craft CMS to Webflow without losing SEO rankings?

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Migrating from Craft CMS to Webflow is possible, but maintaining SEO rankings requires careful management. You'll need to implement proper 301 redirects for all URLs, recreate SEO metadata accurately in Webflow, and ensure the site's structure closely matches your previous setup. Due to Webflow's more restrictive CMS compared to Craft CMS, extra care must be taken to replicate content types, fields, and structured data precisely. Conducting a comprehensive SEO audit before and after migration is strongly recommended to preserve your site's organic search visibility.

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