WordPress to Webflow migration: how to do it

A WordPress to Webflow migration is a rebuild more than a transfer: your content is mapped into Webflow’s CMS, every URL gets a decision, and what your plugins did is rebuilt or retired. When we moved Altus from WordPress, its page-builder exports came out as little more than layout code, so the blog, case studies and integrations moved across by hand. Its addresses barely changed, so only a handful of pages needed redirects. The redesign and move took 18 weeks from kickoff to launch.

We plan most builds, migrations included, for two and a half to three months. When one runs longer, it’s usually waiting on copy or approvals, not on the import. Have every redirect in place before launch, and watch Search Console afterwards, because rankings can still move.

Most of the risk is in things nobody wrote down: the page that still gets traffic from a link in 2019, the form a plugin quietly ran, the category archive search engines indexed years ago. The plan below is how we find those before launch rather than after.

Altus is our WordPress move. The other examples come from migrations off other platforms: Fresh Clinics, from HubSpot’s CMS to Webflow, and Smokeball, where three regional Webflow sites were rebuilt and moved together. The audit, content map, redirects and checks work the same way whichever platform you’re leaving. If you’re still deciding whether to move, start with Webflow vs WordPress for B2B marketing teams.

The WordPress website migration plan at a glance

1. Take stock of every page and post.
2. Map the content into CMS collections.
3. Get the content out, by hand where exports fail.
4. Decide what happens to every URL.
5. Replace what your plugins did.
6. Check it all on staging.
7. Launch, then watch.

When WordPress is still the right call

WordPress is good at what it was built for, and big publications run well on it. It suits a growing marketing site less well: pages tend to follow the theme’s templates, and every plugin needs updating and adds code of its own. If your site is mostly a publication, staying may be the better call.

Nor does everything have to move. Fresh Clinics left HubSpot’s CMS but kept HubSpot as its CRM, so its forms and events still run from there.

1. Take stock of what you have

List every page and post on the current site, not just the ones in the navigation. The XML sitemap is a good start, and Search Console shows which pages actually get visits and links. Then decide, page by page, what to keep, merge or retire.

On Smokeball’s Australian and UK sites we audited every address in the old and new sitemaps: 425 and 257 existing pages, against 400 and 196 new ones. A migration is the cheapest moment you’ll ever have to drop pages that no longer earn their place. Retiring a page still means deciding where its address should point.

2. Map the content into collections

WordPress keeps most content as posts and pages. Webflow’s CMS works in collections, each with its own fields, so the content needs a map before it moves.

For Altus, blog posts, case studies, partners, testimonials and FAQs each became a collection. Authors became a collection of their own, and each post links to its author and category, so a bio is written once rather than on every post.

Fix the structure as you go. Smokeball’s US content arrived as 11 exports with 718 blog posts, 77 case studies and 65 legal resources. Three overlapping webinar collections became one, presenters became a reusable set of 59 speaker profiles, and 30 blog categories became 11.

Altus’s blog, moved from WordPress into Webflow’s CMS, with authors as their own collection.

3. Get the content out

WordPress exports content as XML. Webflow imports CSV, so the usual route is to convert the export and import it collection by collection, mapping columns to fields (Webflow).

Webflow’s import has limits worth knowing before you start (Webflow):

• Files of up to 4 MB, and only as many items as your site plan allows.
• Images imported by URL don’t get responsive versions, so use images that are already sized, or upload them in Webflow.
• File fields, such as PDFs, can’t be imported and are added by hand.
• Reference fields, such as a post’s author, match on the referenced item’s slug.

Plan for some of it to move by hand. Because Altus’s exports were mostly page-builder layout code, each post, case study and integration was moved across by hand and checked one by one. Tables and formatted content often need cleaning into plain rich text either way.

4. Decide what happens to every URL

Keep addresses the same wherever you can: a URL that doesn’t change needs no redirect. Altus’s old and new sitemaps came out almost identical, so only a handful of older and test pages needed redirects; across our builds, redirects have ranged from that handful to 645 (Webflow project benchmarks). Everything that does move gets a permanent (301) redirect to its closest new page, not to the home page.

A sample of the decisions, as they’d appear in a redirect map:

Old address	Decision	New address
/blog/our-2024-product-update	Keep	/blog/our-2024-product-update
/category/news/page/2	Retire and redirect	/blog
/services-old	Merge and redirect	/services
/wp-content/uploads/guide.pdf	Move the file and redirect	The PDF’s new address
/old-folder/(.*)	Redirect the whole folder	/new-folder/%1

A few rules save trouble later:

• One hop. Old addresses should point straight to the final page, with no redirect chains.
• Folders in one rule. Webflow can redirect a whole folder with a wildcard. Put specific rules before wildcard ones, because rules run in order (Webflow).
• Watch the count. Webflow sets no hard limit but recommends no more than 1,000 redirects. Fresh Clinics needed 324; Smokeball’s Australian and UK sites needed 399 and 246.
• Import carefully. Importing a CSV of redirects replaces all the existing ones, so export first (Webflow).

The redirect map is a decision document as much as a technical one, so your team should approve it. For the search side of any move, including a change of domain, see website migration SEO.

5. Replace what your plugins did

Plugins don’t migrate. List every active plugin and decide what takes its place:

• Forms. Embed forms from your CRM and map their fields. Altus’s HubSpot forms needed field mapping before they embedded cleanly, and Fresh Clinics has HubSpot forms on every page.
• SEO fields. Titles, descriptions and social images from an SEO plugin need carrying over to Webflow’s page and collection settings.
• Analytics and consent. Set up again, and tested, before launch.
• Everything else. It becomes a Webflow feature, a Webflow app, a small piece of custom code, or nothing at all. Many plugins solved problems Webflow doesn’t have, such as caching and security.

Some features are better rebuilt than replaced. Fresh Clinics runs hundreds of events a year from HubSpot, so instead of typing them in twice, a sync brings them into the site’s event calendar twice a day.

6. Check it all on staging

Before anything goes live, check the new site against the old one on staging. Links, layouts and page titles are the obvious checks. These are the ones that get missed:

• headings inside rich text, compared against the source
• every form, submitted through to the CRM, with notification emails going to the right people
• CMS collections without their own pages kept out of search
• unused pages left as drafts, and a 404 page in place
• analytics and cookie consent
• a sample of redirects, tested against the old addresses

Then have the right people on your team sign it off. At Altus, the marketing team checked every page’s copy against the content document, its links and its metadata, while we handled social images, structured data and redirects. Every sign-off was in a week before launch.

For Smokeball’s US content we checked the move in four passes, from confirming every record arrived to comparing 1,319 field values against the originals. Fresh Clinics spent a month testing on staging before launch.

7. Launch, then watch

Add the redirects before the domain moves, not after (Webflow). Redirects are a site setting, so they only go live with a full publish.

On launch day the domain is connected, the sitemap switched on, form emails pointed at your team, and the staging copy taken offline so it can’t compete with the real site in search. Altus’s own IT team made the domain change, and the new sitemap went into Search Console the same day.

After launch, watch Search Console closely. We monitor every site for its first week, fix anything that comes up, and then train the team.

“Website seems to be running well and all very positive feedback after the launch (and no SEO rankings dropping off a cliff which is always a relief!)”

Nick Rivett, Marketing Manager, Altus, a week after launch

That’s the realistic goal: rankings can still move after any migration, and Search Console shows you early which pages need attention.

Who does what

A migration goes smoothly when the decisions sit with the right people:

• Your team decides what to keep, merge or retire, approves the redirect map, supplies new copy and images, and signs off the content on staging. Content is usually what holds a migration up, so start on it early.
• We map the content, run the import and the manual moves, build the redirects and replacements, test everything, and handle the launch.

Questions we get asked

How long does a WordPress to Webflow migration take?

We plan most builds, migrations included, for two and a half to three months. When one runs longer, it’s usually waiting on copy or approvals. Altus’s redesign and move from WordPress took 18 weeks from kickoff to launch. Fresh Clinics’ move from HubSpot’s CMS ran from November to its February launch, including a month of testing on staging.

Will we lose our Google rankings when we move to Webflow?

No one can promise they won’t move, but redirects in place before launch keep the risk low. Carry over titles and descriptions, submit the new sitemap, and watch Search Console in the weeks after.

Can Webflow import WordPress content automatically?

Partly. WordPress exports XML, which you convert to CSV for Webflow’s CMS import. Simple posts usually come across well. Page-builder layouts, files and plugin features don’t, and images imported by URL don’t get Webflow’s responsive versions, so plan for some manual work.

What happens to our WordPress plugins?

They don’t move. Webflow handles hosting, security and SEO fields itself, and forms embed from your CRM. Anything else becomes a Webflow app, a little custom code, or nothing.

If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your plan, or someone to run it, see our website migration services, or tell us about your site. The Altus, Fresh Clinics and Smokeball case studies have the full stories.

This guide is part of Webflow for marketing teams, which brings together everything we’ve written on choosing, building and running a Webflow site.

Sources

• Webflow, Migrate your site from WordPress to Webflow
• Webflow, How do I import content into the Webflow CMS?
• Webflow, How do I set up redirects in Webflow?
• Webflow, Import/export 301 redirects