Watching Timothy Ricks build an Astro site with Lumos, I kept wanting to back up ten seconds. Hang on. What did we just connect to what? And I build websites for a living.
My first thought was that I could see this working for a landing page. Build it, launch it, move on. But what happens when the client wants to add a blog, publish new services, or turn that landing page into a much bigger site?
I was too quick to put Astro in the landing-page box. You can build a substantial site with it, connect a CMS, and give the marketing team a perfectly good editor. Figuring out how the pieces fit together is my job. Still, that leaves me with a question. If my client can already publish a new service page in Webflow, and I’m offering to rebuild their site so they can publish a new service page in Astro, what am I asking them to pay for? How Astro works with a CMS
As a developer, I’d sooner compare Astro with Next.js. Once we’ve decided to build a site in code, there’s a good conversation to have about which framework fits. A client with a working Webflow site is making a different decision. They’ve already paid for a site, trained someone to use it, and figured out who to call when something breaks. All of that belongs in the comparison.
Who takes over when I leave?
Say my client opens a second location. Same service, different price. The editor I built has one price field, and by now I’m booked on another project.
With Webflow, the client knows where to look for help. Webflow’s own directory lists more than 1,200 certified partners. Now suppose they find a good Astro developer just as easily. That person opens the project and finds Lumos. Lumos has documentation. Whether my personal interpretation of Lumos has documentation is another question. How much of that first invoice goes toward adding the second price, and how much goes toward figuring out where I put the first one? Webflow’s partner directory · Lumos documentation
I’d ask the same thing about a Webflow site built with Client-First. Shared conventions give the next developer a head start. If I went off-script in six places and wrote none of it down, well, that ought to keep somebody busy. And the client gets the bill. How Finsweet describes Client-First
What growing a site looks like at Blue Sky
One client of mine had as many as twelve sites running at once. Most had a CMS. So when someone tells me a business will eventually outgrow Webflow, I want to know what kind of growth we’re talking about. If several sites need to share navigation, cards, and styles, Webflow already has shared libraries for that. Webflow’s shared design system tools
For a different client, Blue Sky Marketing Group, growth means their marketing manager can make the next page herself. We built their project pages out of reusable components so each case study could have the sections its story needed. I also set up instructions and skills in Webflow for Claude. Now she uses Claude to create new pages on the Webflow site. She doesn’t have to find a gap in my calendar every time Blue Sky has another project worth showing. Read the Blue Sky Marketing Group case study · Visit Blue Sky’s site
Behind the scenes, Webflow’s MCP connection lets Claude work on the site with the permissions it’s been given. The project instructions tell it how we use the components. I also have Webflow’s CLI if I want to work with the CMS from a command line. She gets to skip that part. If I pitched her a migration on the promise that she could finally build pages with AI, she might remind me who set that up for her in the first place. Webflow’s guide to MCP and project skills · Webflow CLI
I wanted to hear from someone who’d made the move
I talked this through with an AI. It started out making a case for Astro. A few objections from me, and the two of us were getting along a little too well defending Webflow. I finally asked, “If I’d started out defending Astro, would you have agreed with me just as easily?”
So I asked for a company that had moved from Webflow to Astro and explained, in its own words, what got better.
ZenML gave me an answer I could understand. Its site had a research database with 1,453 entries. Imagine trying to find something in there by picking from a dropdown of 107 tags, only to end up with zero results. After the move, visitors could search the full text and combine filters. The person who rebuilt the site also reported saving about $800 a year on Webflow fees. In his judgment, that alone wouldn’t have justified the work. ZenML had a specific problem worth solving and people on staff willing to maintain the result, right down to rolling the site back if a release went wrong. ZenML’s firsthand account
Then there’s Kwalitet, a Polish laundry and cleaning business. This was closer to the kind of client I had in mind. In a testimonial published by the agency, Paweł Pilch says they’d wanted to redo the site for a while and were impressed by how quickly the new one loaded. I’d be happy with that too. The agency also redesigned the site, reworked the contact form, and gave individual services their own pages. I wonder how the old Webflow site would have performed if the same team had given it that much attention. The case study gives us no way to tell. Kwalitet’s case study and client testimonial
I’m still looking for a small-business owner without developers on staff who can tell me what they paid to move, what they spend on support now, and whether the move paid for itself. That’s the account I’d most like to read.
Why Webflow put $150,000 into Astro
Webflow’s interest is easier to explain. In September 2025, the company donated $150,000 to Astro’s open-source project and chose Astro for its AI app-generation tool. Webflow Cloud already supported both Astro and Next.js. Say my client needs a pricing calculator. I can build it in Astro and run it alongside their existing Webflow site. Webflow gets a use for its platform, I get to learn something, and the client gets a calculator. At what point did we need to move the rest of the site? Astro’s announcement · How Webflow Cloud works
Then there’s Source by Webflow, in limited research preview as of November 2026. What caught my attention was the direction Webflow is going. A company already has a site built in code. Its developers are comfortable there. Its marketers would like to change a page themselves. Webflow can bring Source to that team and work with the codebase they already have. I can see why an agency would want to learn that. I’m less clear on how we got from there to a pitch for moving an existing Webflow client in the opposite direction. What Source offers agencies · Webflow’s FAQ for existing sites · The Source livestream, at 37:38
Here’s my theory, and I may be having a little fun with it. Webflow’s running a little special op to win developers over ))) Usually it’s your boss nudging you to learn something new. This time you’ve got a perfectly legitimate reason to say, “I build with Astro now.” And you do. You’ve still got your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You step outside the Webflow world, get your bearings, look around… and there’s Webflow again. First with Cloud, now with Source. Nicely played.
What I’d say to a client is pretty simple. Show me what your team keeps waiting on or paying too much to do. If moving to Astro solves it, and someone besides me can look after the site a year from now, I’ll happily make that case. If the best reason I can give you is that I’d enjoy building it that way, I’d leave your working site alone and learn Astro on my own time.
#Webflow #Astro #Nextjs #SourceByWebflow