Framer Review 2023: Is It Worth Your Money?

Framer Free Trial — Exclusive Trial

If you’ve ever wished for more control over your website’s design, Framer might be your answer. Framer offers sophisticated customization options that will let you get the exact look and feel you want for your portfolio, personal website or e-commerce store—without coding.

Best For

Overall

Price

Free – $5/mo

Discount

3 Months Free

Features

Highly customizable, no-code site editor.

Like

  • Free forever plan and affordable plans starting at $5 per month
  • Highly customizable
  • No need for coding
  • No transaction fee on certain plans
  • Geared towards web designers

Dislike

  • Cannot connect a custom domain name with its free plan
  • Bit of a learning curve
  • Limited customer support
  • Does not offer a money-back guarantee for Monthly Plans

Most web builders preach about their customization options, but Framer really walks the talk. It’s known for being extremely customizable, making it an incredible option for creatives, perfectionists or those who are really detailed or design-oriented. Framer gives anyone the power to create a stunning website, complete with parallax scrolling and animations—without touching a single line of code.

In this Framer review, I will break down this website builder to identify its strengths and downsides, explore its features and evaluate whether it’s a worthwhile option.

Who should use Framer?

  • Designers, users with advanced technical skills, or those that like to roll up their sleeves and take the time to learn a slightly more complex system
  • Users who want more customization options than what’s available with a traditional website builder, but still need a bit of assistance
  • Teams that need to collaborate with others, or with clients. Framer lets you create Team areas in your account, so you can share your website project, and give permission to others to view/make suggestions or edit the content
Framer Free Trial — Exclusive Trial

Start building your site for free. Upgrade to unlock more features. What’s more, Framer is also offering 50% discounts on the yearly plans of — Mini, Basic, and Pro. You can choose the yearly plans once you get familiar with Framer.

What’s Inside This In-Depth Framer Review?

  • Framer Top Features
  • Pros and Cons of using Framer
  • Framer User Experience
  • How much does Framer cost (Pricing)
  • Should you buy it?

Framer Review – In A Nutshell

Here’s a quick overview of Framer to give essential insights into the website builder;

Tool TypeWebsite Builder
Best ForBeginners in web designing and small businesses.
Price$5 – $25 a month
Ease of UseUser-friendly drag-and-drop interface.
TemplatesA diverse range of customizable options.
E-commerce FeaturesPowerful e-commerce Templates for store creation.
App marketLimited app market

What Are The Main Features Of Framer?

  • Advanced Design
  • Drag and Drop Editor
  • Mobile App for designing on the go
  • Multiple Design Tools (photos & templates)
  • Dedicated app center for additional functionality
  • Email Marketing
  • Domain Hosting & Management
  • SEO Tools to Improve Search Ranking

Let’s explore all the bells and whistles that Framer adorn in more detail;

Advanced Design

Framer is known for its advanced design features: parallax scrolling, animations and micro-interactions. With Framer’s design builder, you can create more dynamic web browsing experiences with interactive elements, such as text or images that glide across the page.

Templates

Framer has Tons of templates to choose from if you don’t want to design completely from scratch. You can choose from e-commerce, personal or business templates and customize them to your exact specifications. Every single template is mobile-responsive, and Framer’s editor lets you edit your site’s mobile look as well as its desktop look.

Paid templates range from $5 to $80. Paying for a web template can help you achieve the look you want for your site more quickly and accurately.

CMS and Data Management

Framer offers a flexible CMS facility – although you do need to be on their subscription plan ($5/month) to access it.

Security

All Framer sites come with a free SSL certificate and DDoS protection. You’ll also get unlimited site backups, meaning your work will be backed up in case something goes wrong.

Drag And Drop Editor

Drag and Drop Editor is the main strength of Framer. It allows you to build websites without the need for technical expertise. In addition, you can easily place video backgrounds, custom headers, color backgrounds and more.

Convert your Figma design to Framer

You can convert your Landing Page design (in Figma or PSD formats) into a beautifully responsive Framer website.

If you are familiar with (and enjoy) Figma, then Framer will soon become your building tool of choice.

Having a website built and hosted within Framer means you are able to edit the text or add fresh content whenever you want, without needing to know how to code. So no time is lost quoting or communicating with a developer to apply changes.

Framer is also an affordable hosted solution to validate an idea with a One Page website. Framer pricing starts at $5/month per site but what’s great to know is it’s completely free to play around with and you only pay once you connect your custom domain.

Pros & Cons Of Framer

Pros

ProsDescription
Easy to learnAbundance of tutorial videos available
Seamless integration with FigmaAbility to copy and paste layers, frames, and autolayouts
Smooth design animationsSimilar to Figma’s smart animate
Supports CMS like WebflowAlthough not as robust
Custom domainAvailable for a fee
Free positioning designAllows for greater design freedom

Cons of using Framer tool:

ConsDescription
Limited CMS featureNot as robust as Webflow or Bubble
Not as seamless as other design toolsWorkaround: complete design on Figma and import into Framer
Limitations in copying and pasting from FigmaCertain design elements may not transfer over
Limited tutorial videosFewer resources available compared to more established tools

Framer Pricing

In this segment, we will explore the pricing of Framer ;

FreeMiniBasicPro
Cost per monthIf paying annuallyFree$5/month$15/month$25/month
Cost per monthIf paying monthlyFree$10/month$20/month$30/month
Site Limit3111
Remove AttributionThe badge in website footerx
Custom Domainx
CollaborationAdd $25 per extra editor
Custom Code EmbedCSS, Javascriptx
E-commerceStripe, Gumroad, Paypalx
CMS ItemsBlogs or Products100100100010000
TrafficMonthly visitor limit1,0001,00010,000100,000
BandwidthMedia downloaded limit1GB1GB10GB100GB
 Sign UpPay $10Pay $20Pay $30

Is Framer Right for You or Your Business?

Framer is an excellent fit for design lovers and those who want complete control over every pixel of their website. Framer will allow you to create a website exactly the way you want it—you won’t have to compromise on colors, fonts, buttons or placements.

Conclusion – Framer Review (2023)

Framer ticks all the boxes when it comes to simplicity and ease. Although a bit more restrictive than other platforms, its visual editor offers enhanced ease of use. On top of that, Framer provides a decent set of features to simplify the process, but it’s evident that Weebly is less aggressive in its growth than other similar platforms. Its designs are dated, its customization options are limited, and its support is sluggish.

Framer is not your average website builder. For one thing, it completely cuts out the need for designers to hand-off website designs to developers. It’s therefore ideal for designers and advanced users who want to create a site on their own, but require more design freedom than traditional site builders like Squarespace or Weebly can offer.

Is Framer free?

Framer offers a free plan for personal and portfolio websites. However, its free plan does not enable users to connect their own domain name. Instead, the free plan uses a Framer subdomain so it’s not suitable for professional websites.

Is Framer easy to use?

Framer is not the easiest to use. Framer gives you a guided onboarding tour when you first sign up and has a fairly robust help center where you can find more information. That being said, it’s not beginner-friendly and is more suited to those who have experience using other design tools. 

Does Framer have a refund policy?

No for monthly plan. For annual plans there is a 7 day grace period. Beyond the grace period you can still cancel your monthly subscription and access will be granted until the end of your billing cycle. Note that downgrading does not lock you out of your website.

Is Framer better than WordPress?

It’s more a case of which one suits you best, as opposed to one being better than the other. WordPress is an open-source platform where you can create pretty much anything, but you will need to know advanced coding.

Framer takes that need away, so it’s certainly the easier option.

Is Framer good value for money?

Yes. Framer is a good value for money. You can have it for $5/Month

Do you have to pay for hosting with Framer?

No. Framer , like every website builder, hosts your website for you. This means that the cost of things like web hosting and security are covered under your one monthly fee.

If you use a self-hosted platform like WordPress, you’ll need to pay for hosting separately. You can learn more about the best web hosts here.


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