My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech.

Hey and welcome to Creativerly 287 👋

After taking a bit of a break, I got back to working on my personal website over the course of the past couple of weeks. I shipped a new update introducing a new layout for the homepage, a new navigation, and overall I updated some of the colors and type styles. I have to admit that using Framer sometimes feels magical. After using the tool for over a year, I am now designing and building websites directly in Framer, rather than designing them first in Figma and then moving to Framer. It feels like a tool that has been billed for designers in mind. However, there are some limitations, especially when it comes to the CMS, and I am experiencing some quirks and run into some issues every now and then.

While doing some research on how to fix some of the issue I ran into, almost every time I stumble across some sort of post mentioned Webflow as an alternative. I used Webflow in the past, and compared to Framer, it does not feel as suited to my workflows as Framer does. Besides Webflow, I stumbled across another alternative that sounded super interesting to me, and led to this week's Creativerly post.

Without taking away too much now, there is a powerful, open-source Framer and Webflow alternative, that offers a lot flexibility and freedom.

Enjoy this week's newsletter.

The open-source Framer and Webflow alternative – with Webstudio

It is incredible to see how the field of website builders evolved over the last couple of years. Webflow and Framer became the leading tools to give almost everyone the possibility to design and build modern, dynamic, and fast websites without writing a single line of code. Visual development platforms like Framer and Webflow are continuing to grow in popularity. There are loads of freelancers and even agencies who exclusively build websites with those two platforms.

What matters most when choosing such a visual development platform is a free tier that allows you to explore the features and capabilities to decide whether it is a fit for you or not, flexibility, performance, sustainable pricing, depending on what you want to build you probably need a CMS, and a vibrant community to discuss, learn, and share. While Framer has been shipping one exciting feature after the other, Webflow, the company valued at over $4b, announced that it layed off 8% of its workforce. The announcement post from Webflow CEO Linda Tong could not have been more pathetic: the third paragraph starts with the sentence To be clear: our business is healthy and our financials are strong, so why did they decide then to lay off all those people rather than restructuring their focus with them. I totally believe them that their financials are strong since Webflow's pricing plans will put a serious hole into your pocket. The Basic Plan costs you $14 per month but does not give you any CMS collections or items, so if you want to create a basic blog you already need to jump onto the CMS plan costing you $23 per month.

Framer costs some serious money too, although the Basic Plan for $15 per month gives you access to one CMS collection, meaning creating a website with a blog is a bit cheaper with Framer compared to Webflow. The biggest drawbacks of Framer is that you are not able to export the CMS, the CMS itself is quite limited, and you are not getting the cleanest code in case you want to export your website. For Webflow, the biggest drawback might be indeed the costs.

While we have been talking about Framer and Webflow a lot until now, this post is about a new contender entering the area of visual development. The tool I am dedicating this deep dive to is privacy-focused, open-source, lets you connect your frontend to any backend, and avoid hosting lock-in. Let me introduce you to Webstudio*.

Read the whole post here:

The open-source Framer and Webflow alternative – with Webstudio
In case you are looking for an open-source Framer or Webflow alternative, Webstudio is the tool you need to check out. Powerful, feature-rich, and offering a lot of flexibility.
CreativerlyPhilipp Temmel
upload in progress, 0
The best new app for newsletter reading.

Meco is a distraction-free space for reading newsletters outside the inbox. The app is completely free and packed with features designed to supercharge your learnings from your favourite writers. Become a more productive reader and cut out the noise with Meco - try the app today!
Get started for free

This is an affiliate link to support Creativerly. If you are interested in putting your tool, product, or resource in front of over 2000 creative minds, consider advertising in Creativerly and book a sponsor or classified ad spot. Find all the important information at creativerly.com/advertise.

Fresh Updates & News

Humane's daily returns are outpacing sales →

Do you remember the $699 AI Pin by Humane? Yeah, the one that got shattered by reviews because it simply is a bad product, and then tried to sell the company for $1b because they realized they built such a bad product? They are struggling so hard, that their daily returns are now outpacing their sales. To be honest, this does not feel like a surprise, since they sold a device that simply did not work, for $699. The fact that they did that, is a clear indicator that they did not care about their buyers at all, they were only in for the money, trying to sell something to pay back their investors. It seems like the whole company is on the perfect route to disassemble into pieces.

People on Flipboard can now follow anyone in the Fediverse →

Flipboard, who has been a driving force for the fediverse, just announced, as it is opening up its platform more and more, that people can now follow anyone in the fedivers. This means, users are now able to interact with profiles from Threads, Mastodon, and other federated social services directly via Flipboard.

Mental Wealth

❯ Systems: The Purpose of a System is What It Does – “When trying to understand systems, one really eye-opening and fundamental insight is to realize that the machine is never broken. What I mean by this is, when observing the outcomes of a particular system or institution, it’s very useful to start from the assumption that the outputs or impacts of that system are precisely what it was designed to do — whether we find those results to be good, bad or mixed.”

❯ Between Process and Vision – “Throughout my career as a designer, I’ve experienced a recurring struggle with the concept of process. I used to look at process as something sacred: a holy calculus through which I could find the right answer to a problem every time. All I needed to do was remember the steps and apply them in just the right way. Wash, rinse, repeat.”

❯ The problem with growth: why everything is failing now – “When the Agile Manifesto was inked in 2001, it was supposed to spark a revolution, and it did: by 2023, 71% of US companies were using Agile. The simple list of commitments to collaboration and adaptiveness branched into frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban.”

❯ On the Many Paths Artists Take to Sustain Their Creative Practice – “How do we keep doing this—making art? My question can be read in two ways: What keeps us alive in our art; on what do we draw, year after year and project after project, to keep doing this? And, what happens to us as we keep doing this? In what manner do we keep doing this? This is the question that inspired my book The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry.”

Do not miss out on this ...

❉ Experience the ultimate vector editor for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Get started with Amadine*.

❉ Think tasks, not apps. Setapp* is you one-stop subscription to solving every task on Mac and iPhone.

❉ Fathom is cookie-free, GDPR compliant, privacy-first website analytics software. Get $10 off your first invoice and a 7-day free trial when you use this link*.

These are paid promotions or affiliate links to support Creativerly. If you are interested in putting your tool, product, or resource in front of over 2000 creative minds, consider advertising in Creativerly and book a sponsor or classified ad spot. Find all the important information at creativerly.com/advertise.

Appendix

❯ ICYMI

I just published a post about my reading setup on my personal website. In case you would like to get a glimpse into the tools and workflows I use to read, gather articles and blog posts, as well as process the highlights I get from those, make sure to head over to my personal website and give it a read.

❯ Quick Bits

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

Support: Do you have a friend who is looking for inspiration, news about design, and useful tools and apps? Forward this newsletter to a friend or simply share this issue and show some support. You can also show some love by simply clicking the button down below and keep this newsletter a sustainable side-project by buying me a coffee. ☕️ 🥰

Some of the links in my newsletter and my blog posts are affiliate links. Those links are marked by an asterisk. If you buy something through the link, the product will not cost you anything more, but I will receive a small commission which not only supports Creativerly and my work but also helps me to keep this publication a sustainable side-project.

Creativerly is proudly published with Ghost*.