At the end of 2024, Webflow announced some strategic changes which include the elimination of User Accounts ( WUA ) feature, and Logic which is the native automation platform.
User Accounts will continue to be available until Jan 2026, at which point it will be fully shut down. Logic will be shut down earlier, mid-2025.
User Accounts will continue to be available until Jan 2026, at which point it will be fully shut down. Logic will be shut down earlier, mid-2025.
This change certainly affect some users, and there's a bit of push-back in corners of the community asking for it to remain.
Webflow knows this impacts some customers, and that there will be backlash - yet they chose this path anyway. That decision would have made carefully, and with good reason. At the same time, it's difficult for Webflow to explain the business and engineering factors behind that decision.
So, why is WUA being removed?
Here's my perspective.
Currently, the use cases WUA can support are far too limited.
Basically you can gate static pages or entire collections by user group, and if you purchase an ECom plan, you can bill users for that access.
Outside of a "paid blog" kind of setup, it's too limited for 98% of the use cases Webflow customers were asking for.
I designed the SA5 User Info library which extends user accounts to support personalization and basic apps.
Here's what people are trying to do with User Accounts;
- Allow ECom customers to see their order history, and re-order
- Personalize their site with the user's name and photo
- Develop app-like behavior where certain features use user-specific information
- Build "likes and favorites" functionality.
- Build Auction sites, Classified listing sites, and User directory sites, where users "own" specific CMS items and have the exclusive ability to edit them.
- Build private-data sites, which allow a user to securely upload content, and securely share it with a specific invited group.
- Make features user-specific, e.g. pricing discounts, special calculators, etc where client-side JS can store and retrieve data
These things are possible in a platform like MemberStack, but they are not available in User Accounts.
This makes User Accounts "low value" to the community, and to the Webflow platform. Worse, it means new users come into Webflow with expectations of what User Account should be able to do - and it can't.
Frustration, backlash, angry forum posts, and support tickets ensue.
It's not healthy for anyone, and pushes Webflow to make a decision on UA. They can either expand it, leave it as is, or remove it.
The 3 Choices
What do those futures look like?
Expand it: Add those missing features
Most of those features can not be reasonably added without massive investment, infrastructure impacts, support, and ongoing dev teams which would require it to become a separately paid feature like Analyze and Optimize.
"Free" wouldn't be an option, and the feature still would struggle to compete with the capabilities of a well-seasoned platform like Memberstack.
Leave it as is: Change nothing
This seems like an obvious option, however keeping UA is not free.
The downside is the ongoing support costs, the huge frustration and panic that comes with users discovering how limited it is after they've already sold it to a client, and the fact that all other platform development becomes more complex and expensive with UA in the mix.
If you look at Webflow's dev trajectory - component slots, variants, localization, page builder... all of that passes through user accounts, which increases the cost of all development, documentation, support, and platform infrastructure.
Ultimately, that bill ends up passed to us.
Remove it
Deprecate UA. Reduce those infrastructure and support costs. Remove those systems engineering friction points.
Have clients use solid, far more capable 3rd party platforms instead.
Focus on integration of 3rd party solutions through apps and APIs so that they can become more directly integrated into the designer and the hosting platform.
This is the path Webflow chose, with a careful deprecation, partnership with Memberstack and Outseta, and a year to do the migration.
I totally agree with the assessment of "this sucks."
But let's be clear... it's not a choice between "keep it" or "remove it". It's a choice between "pay more for a limited system and get slower core platform updates." or "migrate to the 3rd party solution that best suits your requirements.
Between those choices, I really feel Webflow is making the right move.
