Framer

Founded by Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk in 2014 as a design-prototyping tool; pivoted to a full website builder, relaunched as Framer Sites in May 2022. This profile scopes to the current website-builder product, not the legacy React prototyping tool.

Company founded 2014 (prototyping tool); the Framer website-builder product launched publicly in 2022. No official launch-date page or Wikipedia article exists; ProductHunt launch record is the citable date source.

Freeform visual canvas + managed hosting; not a traditional CMS.

Proprietary, closed-source SaaS. ToS prohibits reverse engineering/decompiling. A legacy, unrelated open-source 'Framer Library for React' prototyping project exists but is not the website-builder product.

No Wikipedia page exists for Framer the company/product as of research date; sourced from official Terms of Service instead.

Per Framer's own plan-guidance docs; not well-suited to complex ecommerce or large-scale content operations without third-party plugins.

Basic plan, billed annually (monthly equivalent). Basic is the cheapest tier that includes a custom domain. Monthly (non-annual) billing is higher; official page does not surface the monthly-billed figure in static content, but is confirmed materially higher via multiple independent trackers (~$15/mo); see pricing.renewal_pricing_differs.

Pro plan, billed annually (monthly equivalent); Framer's own positioning ('for teams at agencies, startups, and scaleups') suggests this as the flagship paid tier.

Framer has no native ecommerce plan or tier. Selling requires a third-party plugin (e.g., Frameship, ShopiFrame, Framer Commerce) layered on top of a Basic/Pro subscription, each with its own separate pricing not controlled by Framer.

Framer branding/badge is present on the Free plan and removed starting at Basic.

Monthly billing costs more than the annual-equivalent rate shown by default on the pricing page (independently corroborated at roughly $15/mo vs $10/mo for Basic, and ~$45/mo vs $30/mo for Pro), consistent with Framer's stated ~20% annual discount; exact monthly-billed figures could not be scraped directly from the JS-rendered pricing toggle.

7 days worldwide; 14 days for customers in the EU and Turkey.

Figma-like freeform visual canvas with frames/stacks, not a rigid section template system.

On-page editing mode lets Content Editors click and edit copy/CMS content directly without opening the full canvas.

Ctrl/Cmd+Z undo plus a separate Version History panel with snapshots (every 5 min for 4 hours, hourly for 24 hours, then daily); restoring is done by copying elements from a prior snapshot into the current version, not a one-click full rollback.

Editor saves continuously; separate Staging & Versions system controls what goes live.

Mobile-friendly CMS editing (introduced ~March 2026) lets teammates edit CMS/on-page content from a phone browser; full canvas design editing is desktop-only. A separate Framer iOS app exists mainly for prototype preview, not full site editing.

No official claim of safe template-switching; Framer templates are typically 'remixed' as a starting duplicate rather than swapped underneath existing content, so switching templates generally means rebuilding.

Editorial judgment: easier than raw code, but the freeform canvas, stacks/constraints model, and CMS/variable binding require more design-tool fluency than a rigid section-based builder like Squarespace.

Framer's official marketplace lists templates from third-party creators alongside official ones without a clean official-only count; third-party aggregations cite 2,000+ across the marketplace, but that figure blends free/paid, official/community templates and could not be confirmed as an official Framer-published count.

Upload .woff2/.woff/.ttf/.otf, including variable fonts.

Manual breakpoint editing per device size plus fine-grained per-element responsive constraints on the canvas.

Custom Code component/embed supports CSS on any plan (paid plans needed for a custom domain to matter in practice).

Custom Code embeds support JavaScript; also supports AI-assisted code components for custom interactions.

Native no-code animation system: entrance/exit, hover/tap/drag gestures, scroll-linked transforms, layout animations, and 4 built-in page transitions (fade, slide, zoom, wipe), hardware-accelerated.

Reusable color/text styles and shared components function as design tokens across a project.

Editorial judgment: freeform canvas with pixel-level positioning, custom code, and full animation control puts Framer closer to a design tool than a template-bound builder.

No self-hosting of the actual built site; a 'reverse proxy' setup only lets you serve a Framer-hosted site under your own domain/CDN layer (Enterprise-oriented, or the paid Advanced Hosting add-on on Pro/Enterprise); the site itself still runs on Framer's infrastructure.

Global CDN with smart pre-rendering (popular pages cached globally, quieter pages rendered on demand) included by default; a premium/expanded CDN is part of Enterprise.

Automatic SSL provisioning/renewal (via Let's Encrypt) on all plans, including custom domains.

No official static HTML/CSS/JS export. Framer's help center explicitly states published sites depend on backend services (pre-rendering, image optimization, font subsetting, SSR, CDN delivery) that are tightly coupled to Framer's own infrastructure, so there is no self-hostable static bundle. Unofficial third-party scraper tools exist to reverse-engineer a live site into static files, but this is not a supported export feature.

May 2026 CrUX data via HTTP Archive CWV Technology Report API: 78.4% of 22,300 origins with good CWV (desktop 87.6%, mobile 69.0%). Report technology name: 'Framer Sites'.

Automatic image optimization/compression and responsive image delivery are part of the managed hosting pipeline.

Standard behavior for images on published Framer sites as part of the built-in performance pipeline.

Smart pre-rendering/caching is automatic and managed by Framer; site owners do not get direct cache-control configuration except indirectly through the paid Advanced Hosting reverse-proxy add-on (Pro/Enterprise), which allows fine-grained caching behavior at the proxy layer.

Site-wide defaults plus per-page overrides; CMS detail pages support dynamic per-item title/description.

Slugs auto-generate from page titles but are editable in page settings, including adding static path segments for CMS detail pages.

Native 301 redirect manager exists but is gated to Pro and above (not available on Free/Basic); Pro includes 100 redirects with paid overage tiers, Enterprise offers higher/unlimited limits, project cap around 2,500.

Every page gets an automatic self-referencing canonical tag by default (prevents www/non-www and trailing-slash duplicate-content issues); a manual override is available for edge cases like reverse-proxy setups where Framer can't auto-detect the domain.

Auto-generated robots.txt for every published site; can be fully replaced by uploading a custom file via Static Files.

Auto-generated at /sitemap.xml with no manual configuration required.

No automatic schema.org markup. Site owners must hand-add JSON-LD via the Custom Code embed, optionally referencing CMS fields with {{Field}} template syntax for per-item structured data on CMS detail pages.

hreflang and lang tags are generated and managed automatically in the backend once locales are set up; not manually editable in the UI.

Open Graph title/description/social image configurable per page and per CMS item.

Simple toggle in Page Settings > 'Search engines' that adds <meta name="robots" content="noindex">; available regardless of plan.

Alt text field available per image in the accessibility panel; an AI plugin (Alt Text Go) can auto-generate it, but native manual entry works out of the box.

Blogging is built via the native CMS (collections + templated detail pages), not a separate dedicated blog module.

CMS 'Collections' are fully custom content types with up to 30 configurable fields (text, rich text, image, date, reference, enum, arrays, etc.).

Achieved via CMS reference/multi-select fields linking one collection to another (e.g., a Categories collection linked to Articles), not a dedicated built-in taxonomy system.

No native 'publish at a future date/time' scheduling for CMS items as of research date; common workarounds are a manual Draft toggle field or third-party plugins (e.g., CMS Auto Publish, Framer CMS Scheduler) that add true scheduling.

Covered by the same project-wide Version History mechanism as design changes (snapshots on a decaying interval), not a per-CMS-item revision log.

Roles include Editor, Content Editor, and Viewer, with Content Editors scoped to CMS/on-page content edits without canvas/layout access.

No native RSS feed generation confirmed; multiple third-party plugins (Feedify RSS, Feed Control, RSS to CMS) exist specifically to fill this gap, which corroborates the absence of a native feed.

New 'Server API' (framer-api npm package, open beta since Feb 2026) allows any server to read and write CMS collections, publish changes, and update project settings via an API key; free during beta. Separate from this, the in-editor Plugin API also exists (read-only for user 'Unmanaged' collections, read-write for plugin-owned 'Managed' collections).

Framer has no built-in cart, checkout, product database, or payment processing of its own. All commerce is bolted on via third-party plugins/integrations (Stripe Payment Links for simple one-off sales; Shopify-bridging plugins like Frameship, ShopiFrame, or Framer Commerce for full storefronts).

No native product limits exist because there is no native product catalog; limits are entirely a function of whichever third-party plugin/Shopify plan is used.

No native digital product delivery; requires a third-party plugin or external service (e.g., Gumroad, LemonSqueezy) linked in.

Only via a connected processor/plugin (e.g., a Stripe recurring Payment Link); nothing native.

Only through a third-party commerce plugin (e.g., Framer Commerce advertises Shopify Markets/local pricing support); not a native Framer capability.

No point-of-sale capability, native or otherwise documented; out of scope for a site builder.

No cart concept exists natively; would depend entirely on whichever external commerce platform.(e.g., Shopify) is bridged in, not on Framer.

CMS content can be exported/synced out via the Server API or plugin API (e.g., to Notion/Airtable) since content is structured data, but there is no one-click 'export all my content' file download documented; design/layout is not portable at all.

Framer's own help center states plainly it does not offer HTML export for self-hosting, because published sites depend on backend services (pre-rendering, image optimization, SSR, CDN) coupled to Framer's infrastructure. Unofficial third-party scrapers (e.g., NoCodeExport, FramerExporter) can scrape a live published site's rendered output into static files, but this is not a supported/sanctioned export path and can break dynamic/CMS functionality.

Standard custom domain via DNS (A/CNAME records); domain remains owned by the customer at their registrar and can be pointed elsewhere at any time.

The built site cannot run anywhere except Framer's own infrastructure; the 'reverse proxy' option only re-routes a custom domain/CDN layer in front of Framer, it does not move hosting off-platform.

The Server API can read all Collections (Managed and Unmanaged) in a project as structured data via an API key.

Editorial judgment: no code/HTML export path exists (officially confirmed), and the site cannot be self-hosted or run off-platform under any plan; content is somewhat portable via the Server API, but the design/build itself is fully locked to Framer's hosting.

Server API (framer-api, open beta since Feb 2026) provides genuine external programmatic access via API key; there is also an in-editor Plugin API/SDK.

Native webhook support confirmed for form submissions (JSON POST to a configured endpoint), which is the documented bridge to Zapier/Make.

Custom Code (HTML/CSS/JS) embeds are available; not documented as plan-gated, though the surrounding page/site limits (pages, CMS items) that affect where you'd use it are plan-gated.

framer-api npm package and Plugin SDK provide developer tooling for scripting against a Framer project (CMS sync, publishing, canvas updates).

Supported indirectly via native webhooks (form submissions trigger a webhook that Zapier/Make can consume), not a first-party Zapier app listing found.

Framer AI agents can generate editable pages, sections, copy, and visuals from a text prompt, refined conversationally on the canvas.

AI agent can write and iterate on on-page copy as part of page/section generation.

AI agent generates layouts and visuals directly on canvas as part of design generation; dedicated standalone AI image-generation tooling beyond that was not independently confirmed.

AI agent can audit a site and surface 'contrast, typos, missing alt text, SEO gaps, inconsistent styles' on request.

Editor / Content Editor / Viewer roles, with edit rights further scoped to Content, Canvas, and Publishing permissions individually; Viewers are free/unlimited.

Real-time multiplayer editing with visible collaborator cursors/avatars.

Branching workflow: isolated branch copies get a shareable preview URL for stakeholder review, then a 'Review Changes' diff view before merging ('Apply') into the main published version.

Staging & Versions lets you pin a specific version to the live custom domain while continuing to edit/preview on the base domain; separate from per-branch preview URLs.

Could not independently confirm a native in-canvas commenting feature (distinct from branch review/diffing) from official sources within research scope.

No official documentation of a dedicated activity/audit log surfaced during research; Enterprise security materials reference monitoring/compliance controls generally but not a customer-facing audit log feature specifically.

No always-on support confirmed. Documented response-time targets are up to 72 hours (general product support) and up to 24 hours (in-app support); Enterprise cites a median first-response under 10 minutes but as an SLA/quality metric, not a 24/7 guarantee.

Editorial judgment: extensive, well-organized official Help Center plus a separate structured 'Framer Academy' course library covering CMS, localization, animation, and version control in depth; above average for the category.

SOC 2 Type 2 attestation available to Enterprise customers via Framer's Trust Center; SOC 2 Type 1 completed prior to Type 2. No ISO 27001 certification found during research.

Continuous off-site backups with restoration processes tested every 30 days, per Framer's security documentation; combined with project Version History for content/design rollback.

Native Locales system: add a locale, all text strings (titles, descriptions, alt text) populate into a per-page localization table for translation.

Manual translation entry or AI Translation (partial or full automatic translation) directly in the Localization view.

hreflang and lang tags generated and managed automatically once locales are configured; also supports 'Automatic Locale' redirection based on visitor browser language.

Could not independently confirm native RTL layout mirroring support (vs. just RTL text rendering) from official Framer sources within research scope; flagging for manual verification rather than guessing.