Framer – an interactive design platform
#NoCode #Design #Series B
Quick Overview:
Founders: Koen Bok & Jorn van Dijk (both co-founded Sofa, Acq’d by Meta)
Latest Funding: $24m Series B (led by Atomico, with participation from Accel & AngelList in Nov 2018)
Website: https://www.framer.com/
Founded: 2013; Location: Amsterdam; # of employees: 99
Analysis:
About Framer:
Framer is a fully integrated no/low-code design, prototyping, and developer tool. The platform lets designers collaboratively design and publish webpages with integrated CMS’s and the produced webpages are powered by the React framework. Framer is designed to enable interactive designs/animations vs static pages and this results in the end-product being visually comparable to that of a fully developed app. Designers can also export front-end code to handoff to developers for further customization and import React-based production components such as live map functionality. While Framer initially feels like more of a prototyping tool, designers can also fully create, develop, and publish their own webpage using Framer.
Framer exists in a unique position within the suite of production tools used by both designers and engineers. It sits a layer above design tools like Figma but a layer below actual development. It’s main competitor is Webflow, which is the software that powers AirBnb, Stripe, and thousands of other websites. Yet, while Webflow requires a basic knowledge of HTML or CSS, Framer is basically Figma with a publish button at the end of the process. This makes Framer’s UI/UX much more user-friendly and attractive to designers who are used to Figma.
Investment Analysis / Why Framer?
Having tested out both Webflow and Framer, the learning curve of Webflow is much steeper, but the overall functionality is greater – Webflow’s capabilities are greater than Framer’s (which still feels like more of a prototyping tool). Yet, despite this, I’m particularly bullish on the future of Framer and the no-code industry as a whole. According to Gartner, the demand for app development services will grow at least 5x faster than developers capacity to produce them. Additionally, almost 60% of the custom apps are now built outside the IT department and 30% of those are built by employees with limited technical skills. No-code tools like Webflow & Framer fill this inefficiency.
In terms of development, Framer has made significant improvements in its functionality and UX over the last few months. While it’s functionality still lags behind Webflow, each component in Framer can be overridden with code and users can write code for each component directly inside the editor. Additionally, while Webflow uses classes, classes are not always the standard in web development; for example, in React, most of the time CSS is used with automatic class creation. Framer replicates this – CSS code reuse is done through components and component variants. Thus, while Webflow uses a classic HTML/CSS web development approach, Framer is designed for React development and therefore leans itself to a component-based approach. Yet, while Framer has improved its functionality recently through code overrides, it still has ways to go in terms of functional power.
Out of all the tools I’ve interacted with, Framer has been the most user-friendly (and design-friendly) and this places it well to onboard designers, freelancers, and individual users. While Webflow may be a better choice for building out extremely sophisticated, user-facing websites, the real growth in no-code tools lies with mass adoption by everyday users and freelancers, many of whom still rely on software like Wix & Squarespace. Additionally, the FramerX Store and Discord community have already placed Framer in a strong position for future growth via network effects.
If Framer can make the jump to a fully-fledged production-ready builder where users can design and develop sophisticated applications (with a similar level of customizability as coding), it has the potential to be the leading player in web development.
Some of my favorite websites built on Framer:
Good article, but i think is Arpal. not Apral.