Framer started as a Figma-style design tool and pivoted into a website publisher around 2023 — you design on an infinite canvas, drag in components, and Framer hosts the result on its own CDN for £4–£32 per site per month depending on the plan. It is the most design-forward of the visual builders, with genuine real-time animation and scroll-effect tooling that takes a developer hours to hand-code. It is also the most locked-in: there is no React component export, the CMS is shallow, and SEO controls are thinner than Webflow's. 1 Week Sites is a different shape entirely — from £1,000, paid once before work starts, for a bespoke site, custom-coded in Astro or Next.js, live in seven days, hosted on your own Vercel account from your own GitHub repo, or built in Webflow if you want to edit pages yourself. Over five years a £20-per-month Framer Pro plan costs £1,200 per site in hosting fees alone, with no underlying code to take with you if you leave. A standard 1 Week Sites custom build costs £1,000 plus roughly £60 a year for domain and email. Pick Framer when the design itself is the product — animation-heavy portfolios, agency landing pages, design-studio sites where the canvas is doing the talking. Pick 1 Week Sites when you want code in your name, real Lighthouse scores, and everything custom code can do.
Upfront vs five-year
Framer Pro at £20/site/month × 60 months = £1,200, hosting only. Framer designer's build fee excluded for parity. Framer charges per published site — five sites is five subscriptions.
When Framer is the right call
- The design itself is the product — animation-heavy portfolio, design-studio landing page, anywhere the canvas is doing the talking.
- You're a designer who codes occasionally, not a developer who designs occasionally. Framer's editor matches that handedness.
- Real-time scroll effects and micro-interactions matter enough to pay for the tooling that produces them visually.
- You'll only ever ship one or two sites — per-site pricing scales badly past a small portfolio.
When a 1 Week Sites build is the better buy
- You want the underlying code on your own GitHub, not a design file on Framer's servers.
- SEO matters enough that you need full control of metadata, schema, redirects, and server-side rendering — not Framer's curated subset.
- You'll add custom logic later (booking, gated content, integrations) that sits outside what Framer's components can do.
- You're tired of paying per published site every month for content that almost never changes.
Framer vs Webflow vs bespoke — three points on the same line
Framer, Webflow, and a custom-coded build sit on the same axis with different trade-offs. Framer prioritises design-time speed and animation polish; you trade away code ownership and SEO depth. Webflow sits in the middle: more SEO control, more CMS depth, less canvas-feel. Custom code is at the far end: full ownership, full SEO, full custom logic — and you need a developer (or me) to build and update it. The right answer depends on who edits the site in year two.
| Framer | 1 Week Sites | Winner | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting cost | £4–£32/site/mo on Framer | £0–£20/mo on your Vercel | Depends |
| Animation tooling | Best-in-class visual editor | Code (Framer Motion, CSS) | Framer |
| Code export | HTML/CSS only — no React | Full Astro or Next.js repo, yours | 1 Week Sites |
| SEO control | Curated, limited subset | Full — schema, redirects, headers | 1 Week Sites |
Side-by-side
| Framer | 1 Week Sites | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Free build, £4–£32/site/mo hosting | From £1,000, once |
| Ongoing cost | £48–£384 per year per site, forever | £60 per year (domain + email) |
| Pricing model | Per-site subscription — five sites is five fees | One-off per build, no per-site lock-in |
| Timeline to live | 2–6 weeks with a Framer designer | 7 days |
| Animation tooling | Best in class, visual scroll/interaction editor | Code (Framer Motion, CSS) — slower to build |
| Ownership | Site lives on Framer; export is HTML/CSS only | Custom build: code on your GitHub, hosting on your Vercel. Webflow build: in my workspace, plan billed to your card, transferred to you on request |
| Performance | Mobile Lighthouse typically 80–92 (improving) | Mobile Lighthouse 95+ target |
| SEO depth | Meta + sitemap + schema (limited) | Full — Article, Breadcrumb, FAQ, anything |
| CMS | Built-in collections, shallow but easy | Add-on (Sanity, Keystatic, Markdown) |
| Custom logic | Code components possible but constrained | Anything the framework supports |
| Editing after launch | Visual editor, designer-friendly | Markdown or CMS — bolted on per brief |
| Exit cost | Lose the design canvas; HTML export only | Everything is yours already |
Five-year total cost — one site
Framer's hosting is the per-site subscription that doesn't go away. The Pro plan at £20/site/month is £1,200 over five years for a single site — and that's hosting alone. Most Framer sites are also designed by a Framer expert charging £500 to £4,000 on top. A bespoke build here is from £1,000, paid once.
| Option | Five-year total | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Framer Pro (£20/site/mo × 60 months) | £1,200 | hosting only — plus £500–4,000 typical Framer designer fee |
| 1 Week Sites custom build + 5 years of hosting | ~£1,300 | £1,000 build + £60/yr domain & email |
Common questions
Can I move a Framer site to a custom build?
Yes. Framer's HTML/CSS export gives me a clean visual reference for the design. The interactions and animations need re-building in Framer Motion or CSS — usually a saving in long-term performance, but a real piece of work in the seven-day sprint. CMS collections don't export at all and need rebuilding as a typed data layer.
Is £1,000 really all-in?
£1,000 is all-in for a five-to-seven-page bespoke marketing site, custom-coded or built in Webflow: brief, design, build, one revision round, launch. No monthly fee, no retainer, no kill fee. You pay for your own domain (≈£12/year) and email hosting (≈£4/month on a provider of your choice), and on a Webflow build the Webflow site plan, from $15 a month billed yearly, USD plus tax. Nothing goes through me. Sites that need more pages take longer than a week and are scoped and priced on the discovery call.
Will I lose the animation polish if I move off Framer?
Some, honestly. Framer's visual scroll/interaction tooling is the best on the market — replicating every nuance in code costs hours that aren't free. I keep the animation that earns its keep (hero motion, scroll-reveal on key sections, micro-interactions on buttons) and drop the parts that were there because the editor made them easy. Most clients don't miss the rest.
Why is bespoke faster than Framer?
Framer ships its runtime, every component on the page, and the animation engine — even when only the hero needs it. A custom build ships only what each page actually uses. The Lighthouse difference is typically 5–15 mobile points, depending on how animation-heavy the Framer site is.
When is Framer the right answer instead?
Framer wins when the design itself is the product — animation-heavy portfolios, design-studio landing pages, indie SaaS pages where the canvas is doing the talking. If you've got one site, you'll never edit it after launch, and the design is the thing — Framer is genuinely good. Use it.
Do you do Framer work too?
No. I build custom sites in Astro or Next.js, and Webflow for clients who want to edit pages themselves. Framer is not one of my routes. If it is genuinely the right answer for the brief, I'll say so on the discovery call and point you to a Framer expert I trust. I'd rather lose the project than take on a build I'd execute worse than someone else.
Bespoke, live in seven days.
From £1,000, one sprint, paid before work starts. Full refund if I miss day seven. Code, hosting, and domain all in your name.
Free · no obligation · I’ll tell you straight if it isn’t a fit