The Insane Costs of Finweet Components caused by Webflow

As many of you know, one of my biggest criticisms of Webflow’s product strategy is their reluctance to take full responsibility for their product. For the past 3-4 years, Webflow has been delivering half-baked features and leaving it to the community to fill the gaps.

A good marketplace strategy, like the one employed by Shopify and others, can benefit multiple parties. However, while Shopify has a solid core product and produces the most common add-ons in-house, Webflow relies on others to fix their product’s shortcomings. This isn’t a community-driven marketplace strategy—it’s an abdication of responsibility for their product.

Within the Webflow community, Finsweet stands out for addressing many of Webflow's shortcomings by providing solutions—mostly workarounds—often for free. That’s fantastic! And their creation of the Client-First standard is also impressive.

However, after introducing a $199/year subscription model and putting some solutions behind the paywall, Finsweet seems intent on cashing in big time by resolving Webflow’s issues. The reality is, most of the solutions and workarounds Finsweet provides shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. If Webflow took responsibility for its product, these problems wouldn’t exist. But more on that later.

Recently, Finsweet made a major announcement: Components. Components are Webflow Apps to add and configure additional features through a convenient user interface—no more copying and pasting attributes. As of now, Components includes two apps: Slider and Cookie Consent.

Components is a subscription service priced at $12 a month.

No joke. It’s $12 a month. Let this sink in.

You might wonder, how can a slider and cookie consent cost $12 a month when an entire Webflow website costs just $18 a month?

Sometimes, it’s unfair to compare prices solely based on customer value for money. If we do, Finsweet Components is 10x to 100x more expensive than Webflow. Consider watches, for example. A $29 watch provides the same basic function as a $29,000 watch—they both tell time. However, the more expensive watch is likely handmade, crafted from premium materials, with superior build quality and top customer support.

Does Finsweet Components justify their price in a similar way? Not at all.

Build Quality: I’ve been using Finsweet Components for a project since Wednesday, and it’s a disaster. There isn’t a single configuration of settings that doesn’t cause issues or unpredictable behavior. Some features or settings don’t work at all or are outright ignored.

Support: The support team is friendly, but there’s no actual resolution to the problems. Worse, there are some real head-scratcher moments. Here’s one example: “I see you’ve added a 16px margin to the slide; this might be causing the styling issues.” Well, that’s the default setting of the component.

I’ve spent hours tweaking settings, testing combinations, and documenting issues for support. Nothing works. It’s a mess. As a result, Finsweet has already cost me several hundred dollars just in time dealing with bugs—subscription not included.

But my biggest issue with Finsweet Components is the additional monthly fee for what should be basic Webflow capabilities.

Sliders: Webflow already has a slider component, but it still doesn’t support CMS content.

‍Cookie Consent: How is it possible that Webflow doesn’t provide a tool to ensure full legal and GDPR compliance? How are they even allowed to neglect this?

You might think these are edge cases that nobody cares about, or that Webflow isn’t aware their customers need these features.

Wrong. Webflow has been ignoring its customers for 7 years.

Here are the top 4 features Webflow customers are asking for:

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#2 on the list: The missing real-time sort/filter function for CMS items, requested since 2017. Providing a workaround with a kinda “fake” filter is one solution that Finsweet made known to a broader audience.

#3 on the list: CMS item support in sliders, requested for over 7 years.

#4 on the list: If you combined all the GDPR compliance-related requests, this would be the top concern.

To set the record straight:

Is it Finsweet’s fault that Webflow delivers half-baked features and ignores its customer base? No.
Is it wrong to profit from Webflow’s shortcomings? No.

Is the $12/month asking price for Finsweet Components fair? No.
Is the quality of Finsweet Components acceptable? No.

Will I buy the subscription? Probably, yes.
Does it further damage my perception of Webflow? Absolutely.