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Framer

Framer Sites

Portrait of Robert Klimant, co-founder of Roelu Studio
Robert KlimantCo-founder

What is Framer?

Framer is a visual website builder originally built as a prototyping tool and now positioned as a full publishing platform. Framer Sites lets designers build, animate, and ship marketing websites directly from a Figma-like canvas, without writing code. It is known for fluid animations, fast page loads, strong design controls, and tight integration with design workflows. The platform also includes a built-in CMS and hosting.

Why it matters

Framer hits a sweet spot for design-led teams shipping marketing sites with strong motion, sharp visuals, and minimal CMS complexity. It is faster to build in than Webflow for animation-heavy work and the output looks closer to what a custom build produces. Where it strains: deep content modeling, large content libraries, structured editorial workflows, and complex integrations. The CMS exists but is less mature than Webflow's, which is itself less mature than a dedicated headless CMS like Sanity. If the site is mostly marketing pages with rich design and a small blog, Framer is excellent. If content is the operating layer of the business, you will outgrow it.

How it works

Designers work in the Framer canvas — drag elements, set responsive breakpoints, build components, configure animations on a visual timeline. Pages publish to Framer's hosting with automatic optimization and SSL handled. For dynamic content, the Framer CMS lets you define collections and pull entries into pages. Forms, SEO settings, and analytics integrations are configured through the dashboard rather than custom code. Framer also supports custom code components for cases where the visual canvas hits its limits. The result is a site that looks designer-led out of the box — strong type, motion, and polish — without an engineering team behind it.

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