Transition off Webflow Client billing for a better long term payments solution.
To provide customers with a better long term payments solution and free up our engineering resources for core product improvement, we’re discontinuing Client Billing by September 2022, and all customers using Client Billing will need to transition their clients to an external billing service for collecting recurring payments. As part of this process, Customer Support will also end support for Client Billing related issues in July 2022.
In this lesson, we’ll cover everything you need to know about transitioning your clients off Webflow’s Client Billing feature, including:
To ensure you don’t lose track of any important billing history records, we recommend that you download all invoices (or at least the most recent) for your sites with Client Billing and make note of 2 things:
To download the invoices for a site with Client billing enabled:
Note: Canceling Client Billing on a project also deletes all invoices for that project. Once deleted, these invoices cannot be recovered.
You can cancel Client Billing from your site's Billing tab by deleting the client. Once you delete the client, the website will remain published (no downtime) but the hosting subscription will transfer to the credit card on file for your account.
After you’ve canceled Client Billing on all your projects, you need to delete your Client Billing account. You can also delete the Client Billing account if you haven't added any clients yet.
Note: You must cancel Client Billing on each project that uses it, or you will not be able to fully delete your Client Billing account. Also, keep in mind that deleting your Client Billing account will remove access to Client Billing invoices, payouts, and profit details. If you have pending profit payouts, refunds, or other open issues in your Client Billing account, please wait until these are resolved to delete your account. Additionally, to ensure you don’t lose track of any important billing records, we recommend that you download all invoices for your sites with Client Billing and make note of the billing frequency for each site before canceling Client Billing on your projects.
To delete your Client Billing account:
Once you’ve deleted your Client Billing account, you cannot reactivate it at a later time.
To delete your team Client Billing account:
Once you’ve deleted your Client Billing account, you cannot reactivate it at a later time.
To make the transition off of Client Billing easier, we’ve partnered with our friends at Bonsai, who are offering Webflow’s customers the first 12 months of a subscription to Bonsai’s Workflow plan for free (normally $19 per month) — with 50% off a lifetime subscription afterwards. The Bonsai plan includes an entire suite of freelancing tools such as:
Bonsai’s support team will also be standing by to help onboard Webflow’s Client Billing users and answer any questions they might have during the transition. For details on how to redeem this offer and how to set up your clients with recurring billing in Bonsai, check out their article in Bonsai’s help center.
You can also read our dedicated lesson about migrating Client Billing to Bonsai.
If you’re not interested in using Bonsai for recurring payments, you can use a third party payment tool to charge clients for ongoing costs, while directly paying the subscription costs to Webflow yourself. (For instance, you could consider PayPal as a free alternative.)
If you’re not interested in using Bonsai or a third party tool for recurring payments, you can transfer your Client-billed sites out of your own account and into a new account for the client. The client can then pay for and manage hosting subscriptions on their own.
The client can use a free Starter Workspace and only pay for their Site plan, which means their ongoing hosting costs won’t cost any more than before.
Let’s walk through how you can:
Before you can transfer your client’s project to them, you need to first create an account for your client (or have them create an account on their own):
They will automatically be the owner of a free, Starter Workspace.
After your client’s Webflow account has been created, you can transfer the project to that account:
When you transfer a Webflow project, all the work in the Designer gets transferred to the new Dashboard, including styles, pages, content (including CMS content), and custom code.
When transferring the original project, the following content and settings also get transferred:
For security and privacy reasons, account- and client-specific configurations are reset to default and therefore not transferred with your project. These include:
Adobe fonts are only included when the Adobe Fonts API key is integrated into the project and not the account. Learn more about integrating Adobe Fonts into a project.
After you’ve transferred the project to your client’s account, you’ll need to set up hosting for their project:
Will my account’s credit card be charged when I delete my client?
No, not immediately. The site plan subscription will be moved to your account, and will keep its original billing cycle. Once the site plan’s billing cycle renews, your account will be charged.
Will the client be notified about a subscription deletion?
No, your client will not receive any notification from Webflow regarding Client Billing deletion. Depending on which option you choose to pursue after deleting your Client Billing account, we recommend that you communicate with your client about any changes they may experience.
If my client’s subscription uses a discount code, will that transfer over?
Promo codes will be transferred from the Client Billing subscription to the subscription under your Webflow account.
Is there a way to bulk delete clients to transition them off Client Billing? I have a large number of clients and it will take a lot of time to do it one by one.
At this time, there is not a way to bulk delete clients, and will need to be done one by one.
What if my client has failed payments? Will I be charged once Client Billing has been deleted?
Once you delete Client Billing, the transfer of the client’s bill to your account will be prevented if there is a failed outstanding payment. Therefore, any failed payments will need to be resolved before the subscription can be transferred. If the client cannot address the failed payment, you can first cancel the site plan for the project, then delete the client from the project. Remember: canceling the site plan unpublishes the site and takes it offline. You can then add a new site plan to the project under your own account or transfer the project to the client’s account.
Will I have access to invoices once the client has been deleted?
No. Past Client Billing invoices will not be available after the client has been deleted. Please download all past invoices before you delete your client.
How can I verify the client's card information has been removed from the site plan subscription and removed from Webflow’s records?
When switching off Client Billing, the client’s associated credit card will be automatically removed.
After Client Billing has been canceled on a project and the site plan subscription has been transferred, the fees and taxes I configured will no longer be charged, correct? For example, I would just pay $20 per month and not $35.50?
Yes, you will only pay the amount of the site plan subscription and any applicable taxes based on your billing address. Read more about sales tax on Webflow subscriptions.
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