The three questions
What people who run a website really want to know comes down to three questions: what does it cost, do I have to understand it, and do I know where I stand? Most systems answer two. Webflow answers the third well and gives designers real power — and asks for the first two in return.
| Webflow | loam | |
|---|---|---|
| What does it cost? | A site plan, a workspace plan for the people who build it, and for working apart in branches the Enterprise plan. | On loam you pay for the design once, up front — made by hand, so not the cheapest start. After that: one licence per site for updates, and the subscription of your own agent. No theme or plugin licences, no bill because an update got stuck. |
| Do I have to understand it? | The Designer is a professional tool: powerful, and something to learn — for you, or for the designer you keep paying. | Nothing to understand: you say what you want, your agent knows how your site works, and you see the whole site as it would be before you say yes. |
| Do I know where I stand? | Hosting and security taken care of, predictable as long as you stay; leaving means a code export without the CMS. | You know where you stand: no plugin can hold an update back, the engine follows the PHP versions PHP itself supports, security fixes are free for five years per line — and without a licence your site simply keeps running. |
Built around the agent, not added to it
Webflow has a serious agent connection: an official MCP server that reaches the CMS and, with the Designer open beside it, the design itself — and each site can carry its own instructions for the agent. It is an agent added to a platform built around its Designer: much of it works only with that canvas open, and working apart in branches comes with the Enterprise plan.
loam was built the other way round. The agent is the front door, and there is no editor behind it. Everything your site is goes through that one door — the words, the design, the images and the guide that says how your site speaks — and every change is a draft first, checked against the whole site before it goes live.
Your own site, not a place on a platform
A Webflow site lives on Webflow. Its code can be exported on Workspace plans, but without the CMS: collections come out empty, and their content leaves separately. A loam site is its own: its own connection, with its own address and keys for your agent — no central service holding the accounts of many sites. It runs on any server that runs PHP, and leaving is copying a folder.
You are the maker
On Webflow, what the platform does not do comes from apps and outside scripts — each living as long as its maker keeps it up. A licence that runs out, a maker who stops, a price that goes up — and a part of your site that stops with it. On loam there is no store to depend on. What an app would do lives in your own design, made for your site, under your own control — nothing that stops when someone else stops.
Freedom in what you make
Webflow gives designers real freedom — inside its Designer, in its way of building. loam's freedom is a different kind: code that is yours. On loam the design is plain templates and a stylesheet, made by hand for your site alone — and your agent works within it, in your style.
What moves with you
- Your content. Pages, CMS items and images move over — your agent reads the live Webflow site and stages every page as a draft, so you see the whole new site before anything changes.
- Your addresses. Each old address is kept on its new page and forwards to it by itself — search engines follow, and so do your old links.
- Your words. Titles and descriptions come along, and are a good moment to read again.
What stays behind: the Designer, the apps — what they did lands in your design, or turns out not to be needed — and the Webflow build. The design is made again, by hand: part of the route, and the moment your site gets a form of its own.