Webflow Accounts vs Hosting

When I first started working with Webflow
I made the big mistake of thinking

that once I've created my account and
I started to create some site I was able

to start utilizing it including hosting,
what is hosting? Hosting is just a place

or a server where your files, including
the HTML and the CSS and the images

all live in, where it get connected to a
domain so in this example, streamvr.play

or whatever the domain is and we can
actually have it live there, so I made the

mistake of thinking "Oh yeah I'm gonna
go ahead and pay for the whole year and

I'm gonna be able to access 10 different
projects, and boom, I'll be able to just

have that complete control and hosting
included.

But, because I am a little bit of a dyslexic
person myself I didn't read through all the

terms and conditions, and I didn't
understand how it would really worked.

So don't make the same mistake that
I made, I just paid for the account plan

which you can see is the Lite of
16 dollars a month, that includes

10 projects.
If you go for the free starter yeah, you

can start experimenting for free with
2 different projects and It give you kind

of like some basic features to have and
start playing with like this, 3D transforms

and all the features that you basically
get, uploading custom fonts, responsive

images, this is all kind of like, OK
I get it: Your tool itself as an editor

is what I am paying for, I am actually
paying to use your tool, it's like

a license I guess, but I made that
mistake and I thought "Well I already

paid for this whole year thing, why do I
have to pay hosting separately.

And that's what I wanna clarify with
you guys that yes, there is a difference

so, what I am paying here as an account
holder is just the ability to use the

features of Webflow and It gives me up
to 10 projects but, If I wanna actually

host those projects on their own domain
I have to actually pay a hosting plan.

So the hosting plan per project, it
goes like this: so you have a basic

$12 per month billed annually, an
SSL certificate so this is for security

it's just this little lock icon icon that
you get, so the site looks secure,

you get access to their CDN server
where we host all the images and etc.

So, you can compare it right away that
there is two main differences, one is

for a plan and the other one is for
hosting, and whenever you start creating

projects under Webflow, you need to
consider that, because it can get very

expensive in the long run, if you
are an agency and you have lots of

clients, you want to be able to utilize
one of the core features they have

which is client billing, so that hosting
expense you would add it to whatever

cost you are actually charging you clients
that way you don't have to pay for the

hosting yourself, you actually delegate
that over to your clients which I think is

pretty cool, but just be aware that when
you create an account, it doesn't mean

that once you pay tour account you have
access to free hosting, you have to pay

hosting separately and it can get pretty
pricy if you have multiple projects

of your own, if you are a freelancer.
I feel like the pricing model is a little

expensive. As you can see on this
chart right here, we see that Webflow

has a $16 anual billing with all this
extra features that none of the

competition has so I think in a
sense it does have some value to it,

but just consider it whenever you start
working with Webflow.

If you think that this pricing models
are a little bit to high, you can always

go for just the plan account and with
the plan account you'll be able to

export your code, so at the end I am
going to show you a little bit of how

we can export our code and utilize
it in a different hosting environment.

If you have a very limited budget and
you wanna kind of manage multiple

domains, and if you wanna have multiple
sites running on one same server I

recommend you check out some of the
shared web hosting, it's super cheap

it's like a $4 per month and you have
unlimited domains, and you can host

everything, but again, that will also
affect the speed in how your pages

load because this are older servers
that run on older, you know crappy

systems, so of course we have to see
the value in that Webflow servers, are

extremely fast, their CDN is super fast
and there is a lot more protection and

security around in having your own paid
hosting plan.

So let's go ahead and check out the
next lesson for just general configurations.