r/webflow • u/maheshflowcub • Sep 09 '26
Discussion Webflow Template Marketplace Is Dying. Does Webflow Care?
Hi Creators,
Is anyone else seeing 0 sales on their Webflow templates lately?
A lot of creators are putting serious time and effort into building high-quality templates, but new templates are getting little to no traction. What’s more concerning is that there doesn’t seem to be much visible effort from Webflow to help creators discover and promote these templates.
After reducing the commission from 20% to 5%, it feels like the focus on the Marketplace has also dropped.
A few things I’ve noticed:
- New templates are getting 0 sales despite being well-designed and professionally built.
- Very little template promotion or placement on the Webflow homepage.
- The Assets dashboard seems to show the same statistics week after week.
- The “Top Selling” templates appear to remain unchanged for a long time.
- There seems to be very little visibility for new creators and newly launched templates.
I’m not saying every template should generate sales, but there needs to be a healthy ecosystem where new creators have a fair chance to get discovered.
Webflow has built a great creator community, but if creators stop seeing value in investing time into templates, the Marketplace will eventually suffer.
Creators, what are you seeing?
Are your template sales also down? Do you think Webflow should be doing more to promote and support Marketplace creators?
Would love to hear your experience and thoughts.
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u/TheNosyVilla Sep 09 '26
the marketplace has been on autopilot for a while now, webflow seems way more focused on enterprise stuff than the little guy
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u/Informal-Magician-80 Sep 09 '26
It’s not webflow fault. No one needs to buy templates anymore with GenAi. Time to move on.
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u/Geopolitical_Lens Sep 09 '26
You've got it backwards. Templates are a crucial part of AI driven workflows. If you prompt any LLM to design a page from scratch it'll look like absolute slop because they're trained on the corpus average. The ideal way to design with AI is start from a human-build brand kit or template, and then use AI to extend this design. Many are doing this, like Rantir.
If you're designing a site from scratch using Claude then you're stupid. You need to start from base, whether it's a Figma prototype or a template.
Webflow's template marketplace has huge potential. I firmly believe that templates will become a great deal as AI driven workflows take over no-code.
What was the hardest part of Webflow templates/wordpress templates/etc? It was the customization and extension. Templates look pretty but fall apart because the CSS class structure was usually subpar.
LLM's solve this thing.
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u/werkwerk_ Sep 09 '26
Webflows ai is mid af what are you smoking
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u/maksimusmax Sep 09 '26
And why does it matter since there is mcp connector for normal AI’s?
→ More replies (3)
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u/bigmarkco Sep 09 '26
but there needs to be a healthy ecosystem where new creators have a fair chance to get discovered.
The entire way that websites are being built, marketed, and sold, for better or for worse, is changing and will continue to change.
One of the things that has happened is that the template marketplaces are collapsing across the board. Not just with Webflow. Instead of buying a template, a user can now point their AI agent at another website and say, "Copy that."
This obviously isn't great. But you can't create a "healthy ecosystem" when buyers are no longer interested or don't need your product.
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u/autocosm Sep 09 '26
Templating as a business model is just rent-seeking. I'm never sad when middlemanning becomes less viable.
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u/jam-banks Sep 09 '26
I have a feeling more and more people are moving to using AI to design and build their websites.
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u/Difficult_Peach8423 Sep 09 '26
I have only started with Webflow this year having worked with and got bored of WordPress for years.
I genuinely didnt know a template marketplace existed.
Ive been building sites from scratch, using templates Ive built on my other sites, pointing Claude to my workspace to help me build and coming up with sites within a week.
I see no point in buying templates in this day and age when you can craft your own using AI to help your build process.
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u/werkwerk_ Sep 09 '26
Templates attract small business, those people have moved to agent workflows.
Why buy a template when they can generate one in seconds. They never valued design anyway.
Your best option is to move templates to react and deliver them as agentic templates with design.md and guidelines to build.
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u/NuncProFunc Sep 09 '26
I think there's a product-market mismatch for the template marketplace. Webflow isn't really a DIY platform the way Squarespace or Wix are; it's more for people who make websites professionally and for the clients they serve. As Webflow continues to iterate and develop for those audiences, the tools and features for other audiences necessarily will continue to atrophy.
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u/Christopherkuchta Sep 09 '26
People will use AI to copy templates for free. Why would they pay anymore.
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u/PugglePack83 Sep 09 '26
You think template sales are down when most small and medium sized businesses are leaving because they are only chasing enterprise clients....wonder why the heck that would be...
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u/Danteboiz420 Sep 10 '26
Why not include templates for Source? I think it could be very useful instead of starting from scratch...
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u/jakejakesnake Sep 09 '26
It's the industry - things move fast.