Two years ago, saying you built a client's website in Framer would raise eyebrows. Today, it's becoming a selling point. The shift has been remarkably fast, and our tech stack data shows it clearly.
The Numbers
D1S1 tracks the technology behind every studio's website. Framer has shown consistent growth in our database, with studios either migrating existing sites or launching new ones on the platform. The studios using Framer tend to be younger, design-led, and focused on brand identity work.
What's notable isn't just adoption — it's the quality. Early Framer sites had a recognizable sameness. The current generation is harder to spot. Studios are pushing the platform's capabilities in ways that produce genuinely distinctive work.
Early Framer sites had a recognizable sameness. The current generation is harder to spot.
Why Studios Are Switching
The appeal is straightforward: designers can build and maintain sites without a developer. But the real driver is something more subtle — speed of iteration.
Traditional studio websites are static documents. You build them, launch them, and update them maybe once a year when you have enough new work. Framer sites are living things. Studios update them weekly, swap out case studies, test new layouts. The website becomes part of the design practice, not a chore.
Control matters too. Studios that care deeply about craft want to control every pixel. Framer gives them that without the overhead of a custom codebase. The tradeoff — less flexibility than code — is worth it for most branding studios whose sites are essentially curated portfolios.
The Design Language
Framer studios share certain aesthetic tendencies, though the platform itself doesn't force them:
- Motion-forward: Scroll animations, page transitions, and micro-interactions are easy in Framer, so studios use them liberally
- Grid-breaking layouts: The visual editor encourages experimentation with layout in ways that CSS grid doesn't naturally suggest
- Typography as hero: Without developer constraints on font loading and rendering, studios lean into type-heavy designs
This creates a recognizable vibe — polished, animated, typographically confident — that's becoming associated with a certain tier of design studio.
The Webflow Question
Framer's rise hasn't killed Webflow. The two platforms serve different needs. Webflow dominates in more complex sites — e-commerce, content-heavy platforms, sites with CMS requirements. Framer excels at portfolio and brand sites where visual polish matters more than functionality.
In our database, Webflow studios tend to be larger and more diverse in their services. Framer studios tend to be smaller and more focused on visual/brand design. The tool shapes the practice, or maybe the practice chooses the tool.
What to Watch
The interesting question is where Framer goes next. If it remains a portfolio/brand site tool, it'll plateau. If it expands into more complex use cases — blogs, e-commerce, web apps — it could challenge the broader web design ecosystem.
For now, Framer is doing something valuable: lowering the barrier between design intent and published website. The studios using it well are producing some of the most visually interesting work on the web. That alone makes it worth paying attention to.