Staging vs the live site
The difference between your Webflow staging subdomain and your live production site, and how to use both safely.
Webflow gives you two places your site can be published: a staging subdomain and your live domain. Understanding the difference helps you test changes before they reach your real visitors.
Quick summary
Every Webflow project has a free staging subdomain (yoursite.webflow.io) for testing. Your live site is on your custom domain (yoursite.com). You can publish to staging first to check how things look, then publish to your live domain when you're confident. Visitors only see the live domain.
The staging subdomain
Every Webflow project automatically gets a free staging subdomain in the format yourprojectname.webflow.io. This is a real, publicly accessible URL — but your visitors don't know it exists. It's for your team and Chykalophia to use for testing and review.
Publishing to the staging subdomain is free and instant. Use it to:
- Preview big changes before they go live
- Share a link with a colleague for feedback
- Test new CMS content in context
- Check how the site looks on the staging URL before touching the live site
Staging is not private by default
The .webflow.io subdomain is a public URL. Anyone who knows the address can visit it. Don't publish sensitive or confidential content to staging if you're concerned about it being discovered before launch.
The live site
Your live site is on your custom domain (e.g., yourbusiness.com). This is what your customers, clients, and Google see.
Publishing to the live domain makes your changes available to everyone. It costs nothing extra — it's included in your Webflow hosting plan.
How to publish to staging vs live
When you click the Publish button in the Editor, a dropdown typically shows your publishing options:
- yoursite.webflow.io — the staging subdomain
- yoursite.com (and possibly www.yoursite.com) — the live custom domain
Click the checkbox next to the environment(s) you want to publish to, then click Publish.
You can publish to staging only, to live only, or to both at once.
A sensible publishing workflow
For routine content edits (fixing a typo, updating a price, publishing a blog post), publishing directly to live is fine.
For bigger changes (new sections, design updates, multiple page edits), use this workflow:
Make your changes in the Editor.
Publish to the staging subdomain only.
Visit yoursite.webflow.io and check the changes carefully. Browse on both desktop and mobile.
If everything looks good, publish to your live domain.
Visit your live site to confirm the changes appear correctly there too.
Staging in the Designer
When working in the Designer, Chykalophia typically publishes to the staging domain for review before pushing to live. During a project, the staging link is how you'll preview work-in-progress designs.
Common questions
Related guides
- How publishing works in Webflow
- Webflow hosting explained
- Backups & version history
- Connecting your domain to Webflow
Need a hand?