Final week, I noticed three headlines and one thing clicked.
Wix has lower about 20% of its workforce, or about 1,000 folks, citing AI competitors and foreign money stress. Webflow reorganized its workforce with out warning, and along with the brutality of workers discovering their laptops locked at 7 a.m., there was additionally a notice from the CEO relating to the transition to “Agent Net.” And Contentful, one of many headless CMS success tales of the previous decade, has signed a definitive settlement to be acquired by Salesforce.
I wish to be upfront: I work at Blutui, a platform constructed particularly for companies, so I’ve a hand in how this dialog goes. However I make this argument regardless as a result of what occurred final week is extra than simply trade noise. This was the clearest signal but that the CMS mannequin that the majority companies have secretly constructed their complete net enterprise round wasn’t actually constructed for them within the first place.
CMS was by no means yours
Earlier than becoming a member of Blutui, I labored inside an company. And one of many issues that constantly strikes me is how a lot company power goes into working with the instruments quite than utilizing them.
A CMS was designed to unravel a selected downside. This implies your advertising workforce can take management of your content material without having a developer for each replace. This is sensible for a single group that maintains its personal web site. Nevertheless, an company shouldn’t be a single group that manages a single web site. They run net practices concurrently throughout dozens and even a whole bunch of shoppers, every with totally different wants, totally different timelines, and totally different ability ranges.
Briefs have at all times been slender. Onboarding a brand new shopper or venture means ranging from scratch. Sustaining consistency throughout a shopper’s portfolio required handbook effort at each degree. Even when white label existed, it was an afterthought. And the platform’s priorities, roadmap, pricing, and future prospects had been by no means set with companies in thoughts, however with anybody with a working bank card in thoughts.
Companies adopted mainstream CMS instruments en masse. As a result of it was the best choice obtainable on the time. However “finest obtainable” and “match for function” aren’t the identical factor, and the hole has widened through the years.
The chaos was predictable
What occurred to Wix and Webflow should not come as a shock in case you’ve been following their trajectory. Each platforms constructed their companies on democratizing net creation, and each platforms labored brilliantly till AI-powered builders got here alongside to democratize net creation additional, sooner, and cheaper.
Wix inventory value fell greater than 50% in 2026. Webflow is repositioning itself as an enterprise advertising platform. This can be a well mannered method of claiming that we’re transferring away from the center market the place most companies really function. Their new buyer is within the firm’s advertising division. Companies which have advocated Webflow for his or her clients for the previous 5 years are an afterthought.
This can be a actual strategic challenge for companies which have constructed their manufacturing workflows round these instruments. The worth construction is altering. The roadmap is transferring in the direction of options that serve new goal clients for the platform. And with Contentful now underneath the purview of Salesforce, the chance of the identical drift is imminent for anybody with a headless CMS on the heart of a fancy shopper stack.
I’ve seen this sample play out earlier than. When specialised instruments are acquired or repositioned, the platform’s precedence shifts to the acquirer’s buyer base, and companies which have constructed their workflows across the platform are pressured to essentially renegotiate their practices. It often occurs on the worst doable time.
What Companies Actually Want
The companies I’ve noticed do not essentially use probably the most refined CMS. They’re those who stopped treating the CMS as the muse of their net operations and began constructing it round an ecosystem designed particularly for a way their company operates.
That distinction is vital. The company net ecosystem is constructed across the company, not the tip shopper. White labeling is native, not bolted on. Onboarding a brand new shopper doesn’t suggest reinventing the wheel. Design consistency throughout the portfolio is managed centrally. An company is a product of document in a relationship with a shopper, not simply an implementation layer on high of another person’s software program.
Industrial fashions may also change. Companies working inside the best net ecosystem not solely ship tasks, but additionally construct a recurring income base from managed websites. That is essentially totally different from a enterprise that depends on discovering the following construct. By compounding the worth of the portfolio you have already got, it turns into an actual asset, not a listing of accomplished duties.
None of this can be a new thought. However the urgency round this challenge is new. Final week made that urgency clear in a method that can not be ignored.
query I wish to ask now
If Webflow will get repositioned for the enterprise, if Contentful will get absorbed by a CRM big, if Wix cuts a fifth of its workforce underneath stress from AI, what in regards to the sturdiness of a platform that wasn’t designed with companies at its core?
The precise time to ask that query shouldn’t be when the platform sends out a pricing replace or publicizes that the platform has been acquired. There’s nonetheless room now to make intentional choices quite than after-the-fact choices.
The companies least more likely to expertise this disruption aren’t those that discover a higher CMS. They’re those who stopped counting on a platform that was by no means theirs to start with.
