Since 5 October 2026, the Webflow legacy Editor is fully deprecated and the ?edit shortcut no longer works, according to Webflow's own Legacy Editor deprecation FAQ. Editor branding, the white-label option that let agencies put their logo on the editing screen, went with it. Any handover document written before this year that tells a client to add ?edit to their URL now sends them to a dead end.
This page is the replacement: a handover kit an agency can copy, rebrand and send under its own name. Its core is four short Loom scripts, a CMS guide template and a checklist of 12 settings, sent with a welcome email, and every Webflow behaviour it relies on is taken from Webflow's help centre as read in October 2026.
What changed in 2026, and why old handover kits are wrong
Most agency handover kits were written for a world where the client got an Editor login, a branded editing screen and a two-page PDF. Three changes in 2026 broke that model.
| Topic | Old handover kit said | What is true in October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| How the client logs in | Add ?edit to the live URL | ?edit is disabled; clients sign in to a Webflow account with a seat, or use ?update |
| Branding on the editing screen | Agency logo via Editor branding | Editor branding is deprecated; the client sees Webflow's interface |
| What the client can change | Text, images and CMS items | Depends on the role: Content editor, Marketer or Reviewer |
| How many client logins | One per Editor user on the CMS plan | Client seats: 1 per site (Freelancer), 3 per site (Agency), no extra seats for sale |
| Who edits form settings | Anyone with access | Only owners, admins, site managers and designers; client roles can view and export submissions only |
Source: Webflow Help Center, Legacy Editor deprecation FAQ and Manage client seats, read 2026-10-20
Client seats arrived on 2 February 2026, Editor users were migrated to free seats from 4 May with the Content editor role, the Editor was switched off on 4 August, and ?edit was disabled on 5 October.
One detail matters for white-label agencies: Webflow excluded Editor users on white-labelled sites from its deprecation emails and left Workspace owners to tell them. Clients on a branded Editor may not know any of this happened.
What goes in the kit
The kit is four files. Our earlier guide, White Label Webflow Development: How Agencies Hand Off Builds Without Losing the Client, lists the seven artefacts a partner should hand over at the end of a build. This page is the client-facing subset of that list, written so the agency can send it as its own.
| Part | Format | Who reads it | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome email | Plain email from the agency | Client's marketing lead | 150 to 250 words |
| Loom walkthroughs | Four videos, recorded on the agency's Loom account | Everyone who will edit the site | Under 5 minutes each |
| CMS guide | Shared doc or PDF on the agency's template | The person who publishes content | 4 to 8 pages |
| Settings checklist | Internal checklist, signed off before handover | The agency or its partner, not the client | 12 items |
The welcome email says the site is live, names the agency contact, and links the videos and the guide in viewing order.
The Loom scripts: four videos, each under five minutes
Wistia's guide to video length, a vendor source based on more than 13 million videos for its 2026 State of Video report, recommends one to five minutes for educational content. Its 2024 report found engagement barely changes between one and five minutes and drops significantly after five. Loom's free Starter plan stops recording at five minutes anyway.
Record each one on the client's live site. Read the lines loosely; the order is what matters.
Video 1. Logging in and finding your site (about 2 minutes). "Accept the email invitation from Webflow and create a free account with the same address. The quickest way to edit a page is to open it on the live site and add ?update to the end of the address. Your role is Content editor, which means you can change words, images and CMS content, but not the layout."
Video 2. Editing a page (about 3 minutes). "Click any text to change it. Images are swapped from the asset panel, and every image has an alt text field: describe what is in the picture, in one sentence. Page titles and meta descriptions sit in Page settings. Nothing you change is visible to the public until you publish."
Video 3. Adding a CMS item (about 4 minutes). "Blog posts and case studies are CMS Collections. Open the Collection, click New item, fill in the fields and save as a draft. Our CMS guide explains every field. Publish when ready, then check the live site."
Video 4. Publishing safely, and when to call us (about 3 minutes). "Publishing pushes every pending change, not only yours, so check with your team first. If something looks wrong after you publish, do not fix the layout yourself. Send us the page address and a screenshot; we can roll back to an earlier backup."
That last line matters. On paid Site plans Webflow keeps unlimited backups, with a restore point on every 50th auto-save, but only Site managers can access them.
The CMS guide template
Write the guide for the new hire who has to publish a case study alone. We would use seven sections.
- Who to contact. One named person at the agency, an email address and the expected response time.
- How to log in. The seat invitation, the ?update shortcut, and what the client's role can and cannot do.
- Collections at a glance. One table per Collection, in the format below.
- Images. Recommended dimensions per Collection, maximum file size, and a one-line rule for alt text.
- Drafts, scheduling and publishing. What draft means, how scheduled items behave, and the rule that publishing pushes everyone's changes.
- What not to touch. Reference fields that drive filters, slugs on live items, and anything wired to a form or integration.
- When to call us. Layout changes, new page types, new Collections and anything involving forms.
| Field | Shows where | Required | Rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Card title and page H1 | Yes | Client name plus outcome, under 60 characters |
| Slug | The page URL | Yes | Set once; changing it on a live item breaks links |
| Summary | Card text and meta description | Yes | One sentence, under 155 characters |
| Hero image | Top of the page and the card | Yes | 1600 x 900 px, under 300 KB, alt text filled |
| Industry | Filter on the listing page | Yes | Pick from the list; do not create new options |
| Body | Main article | No | Use the heading styles, never bold text as a heading |
Source: illustrative template; adapt field names to the build
Section 2 is where most kits go stale. Webflow lets a Content editor create and publish CMS items, edit page SEO settings and view form submissions, and publish the site only if "Can publish" is on. It does not allow page building or form settings. Say so in plain words.
The 12 settings to check before handover
This list is for the agency or its build partner, not the client. Run it twice: once before the transfer or seat invitation, and once after, because a transfer resets several of these.
| # | Setting | Where in Webflow | How it breaks if skipped |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Client seat and role | Site settings > Site access > Clients | Wrong role, or "Can publish" left off when the client expects to publish |
| 2 | Site plan and billing owner | Site settings > Billing, or transfer | Agency card still paying a site the client owns |
| 3 | Made in Webflow and Creator Credits | Showcase profile | Transfer is blocked until both are removed |
| 4 | Form notification recipients | Each form's settings > Email Notifications | Reset on transfer; submissions arrive nowhere |
| 5 | reCAPTCHA keys and bot protection | Site settings > Apps & Integrations | Keys reset on transfer; restoring a backup turns bot protection off |
| 6 | Staging subdomain indexing | Site settings > SEO > Indexing | webflow.io copy competes with the live domain in search |
| 7 | Auto-generated sitemap | Site settings > SEO > Sitemap | No sitemap to submit in Search Console |
| 8 | Page-level noindex and robots.txt | Page settings > SEO, and Site settings > SEO | Thank-you and utility pages indexed, or AI and search bots blocked by mistake |
| 9 | 301 redirects from the old site | Site settings > Publishing > 301 redirects | Old URLs land on the 404 page |
| 10 | Favicon, webclip and homepage meta | Site settings > General > Icons, and Page settings | Blank tab icon and empty social previews |
| 11 | Custom domain and SSL | Site settings > Publishing, and the DNS provider | Certificate fails to renew if DNS stops pointing to Webflow or CAA records block its providers |
| 12 | Analytics and Search Console ownership | GA4 Access Management, Search Console Users and permissions | The agency still owns the client's data after it leaves |
Source: Webflow Help Center (site transfer, forms, indexing, sitemap, backups, health scan), Google Analytics and Search Console Help, read 2026-10-20
A few items need more than a line.
Items 1 and 2: seats and billing. Client seats are site-level and free, but fixed: one per site on a Freelancer Workspace, three per site on an Agency Workspace. Webflow will not let you fill a client seat with someone who shares the Workspace owner's business email domain. For a transfer, only Freelancer and Agency Workspaces can move a site with its paid plan and domains, and an Enterprise destination needs a downgrade first, which takes a published site offline. Sites using Localize must be duplicated and the duplicate transferred.
Item 4: forms. On the free Starter Site plan, notifications reach at most five recipients, all Workspace members. And anyone who clicks unsubscribe in a notification email disappears from the recipient field. Send a test submission from every form after handover.
Items 6 to 8: indexing. Turning off staging indexing needs a Site plan or a paid Workspace. The auto-generated sitemap updates on every publish. Search and AI crawlers are allowed by default; check nobody switched the Traffic control toggles off during staging.
Items 10 and 11: the health scan. Webflow's free site health scan checks custom domain status, SSL, minification, favicon and webclip, and homepage meta and Open Graph tags, and returns a score from 0 to 100. It reads meta tags on the homepage only, so it is a floor, not a full audit. File the score with the checklist. Webflow's SSL certificates renew automatically only while the domain's DNS points to Webflow.
Item 12: data ownership. In Google Analytics, only Administrators add and remove users, and the last Administrator cannot remove themselves, so make the client an Administrator before the agency steps back. In Search Console, a removed owner can re-verify if their token is still on the site, so delete the agency's verification tag or file as well as its user.
Before the handover call, save a named manual backup (Command + Shift + S on a Mac) as a clean restore point.
How to rebrand the kit so it is yours
With Editor branding gone, the client sees Webflow's interface the moment they log in. The agency's brand has to carry through everything around it.
Names. Replace every partner or freelancer name in the scripts, the guide and the file names. Uploaded assets move with the site on transfer, names included, so rename them before upload.
Accounts. Record the videos on the agency's Loom workspace, not the partner's. Send the seat invitation from the agency's Workspace.
Screens. Record on the client's own site, not a demo site, so every screenshot in the guide matches what they see.
Voice. Write the guide in the agency's tone, with its support hours and response times. A partner can draft it; the agency should send it.
We have been the white-label build partner to Web Tonic for more than 20 Webflow sites in twelve months, the largest with a CMS of over 1,200 items. On a white-label build we would draft all four parts under the agency's brand as part of the scope, and we would put the most effort into the CMS guide, because a CMS that size is where client questions concentrate.
What this means for your next Webflow handover
Treat 2026 as the year to rewrite the kit. If your template mentions ?edit, the Editor or a branded login screen, it is out of date. Start from the four parts above, record the videos on a real client site, run the 12 checks before and after the transfer, and book the handover call only after a test form submission reaches the client's inbox.
If you would rather a partner produced the kit with each build, our white-label service page explains how we scope it.
