Webflow has a built-in place for redirects, and for most sites it’s enough. You rename a page, move a blog to a new folder, add a rule, publish, done.
The trouble starts at the edges. An old domain that was never connected to the site. A campaign link that should only redirect for a month. A client who leaves Webflow and takes the redirects with them without realising it.
This guide covers what Webflow’s redirects do well, where they stop, and when it makes sense to handle redirects somewhere else.
Where Webflow redirects live
Webflow keeps redirects in Site settings > Publishing > 301 redirects. Each rule has an old path and a new path, and nothing changes until you publish the site. That last step is easy to forget: a saved rule on an unpublished site does nothing.
Rules are relative to the site’s root domain. In Webflow’s own words, they “won’t apply to localized slugs or subdirectories”, so /old-url and /es/old-url need two separate rules (Webflow help).
One more thing to check before adding a rule: the old URL must not still exist as a page. Webflow asks you to delete the page, set it to draft or change its slug first. For CMS items, archive, unpublish or change the slug.
What Webflow redirects do well
For moving pages around inside one Webflow site, the built-in tool covers the common cases:
Single page moves:
/about-usto/about, with a permanent 301 that passes visitors and search signals to the new URL.Whole folders: a capture group like
/blog/(.*)sent to/articles/%1keeps the rest of the path, so/blog/pricing-guidelands on/articles/pricing-guide.Several captures:
/blogs/(.*)/(.*)to/articles/%1/%2maps two path segments at once.Query strings: an old URL like
?category=foodcan be matched and sent to a clean path such as/blog/food.
If you’ve used wildcard redirects elsewhere, the idea is the same. Webflow just uses (.*) and %1 instead of *.
The escaping rules catch people out
Webflow treats some characters in the old path as special. To match them literally, you put a % in front: %, -, &, *, (, ), =, _, + and ?.
That means a folder with a hyphen, like /old-folder/(.*), has to be written as /old%-folder/(.*). Miss one % and the rule silently doesn’t match, so visitors get a 404 instead of a redirect.
The new path doesn’t need escaping. Only the old path does.
How many redirects can a Webflow site have?
Webflow says there’s no hard limit, but recommends staying at 1,000 redirects or fewer. Every rule is shipped with the site, so a very long list adds weight for the browser to download.
For most redesigns that’s plenty. For a large migration with thousands of old blog URLs, it pushes you towards capture groups, which is good practice anyway. If the old structure is too messy for patterns, that’s a sign the redirects may belong outside the site.
What Webflow redirects can’t do
These are the gaps that come up most often on real projects.
Domains that don’t reach Webflow: a rule only runs when the request arrives at your Webflow site. An old brand domain parked at the registrar, or a typo domain nobody connected, never gets that far. Webflow’s route for redirecting a whole domain is to connect both old and new domains to the site and set the new one as default.
Old domains with their own path structure: once
oldbrand.comis connected, its paths go through the same rule list as the main domain. Mapping an old site’s URLs to a new one works, but every rule lives in the same list and counts towards the same 1,000.Temporary redirects: the settings are built around 301s, and Webflow’s guide only covers permanent redirects. For a short campaign link that should point somewhere else next month, a 302 or 307 is the honest choice.
Life after Webflow: the redirects are part of the site. If the site moves to another platform or the plan lapses, the rules go with it. Years of old links depend on something that now no longer exists, which is the core argument in why redirects should live outside your website.
Testing a Webflow redirect
After publishing, test the old URL directly, not through a page that links to it. Check three things: the status code is 301, the final URL is the one you expected, and there’s only one hop.
The redirect tester shows every hop and status code in order. It’s the quickest way to spot a rule that doesn’t match because of a missing %, or a chain where an old rule points at a URL that now redirects again.
When to handle redirects outside Webflow
Keep redirects in Webflow when they’re about moving pages inside one Webflow site. Move them out when they’re about domains: old brands, merged companies, country domains, or anything that should keep working no matter what the website runs on.
With Redirect Supply, you connect a domain with a few DNS records from the DNS setup guide and create rules for it. Every rule can be a 301, 302, 307 or 308, HTTPS and www handling are automatic, and a wildcard rule like /blog/* to https://example.com/* carries the rest of the path across (how rules work). The Free plan covers one domain with a catch-all rule, and path rules, wildcards and CSV import start on Basic.
Your Webflow site then only handles its own pages, and the old domain keeps redirecting even if the site changes later. There’s a side-by-side in the Redirect Supply vs Webflow redirects comparison, and if you’re weighing site builders, Framer redirects explained covers the same ground for Framer.
If a redirect should outlive the website, don’t store it inside the website.
