I just hit a pretty satisfying milestone:

I figured out how to connect a Supabase table directly to my Webflow front end — without using Webflow’s native CMS at all.

And honestly… it changes everything.

Because if you’ve ever tried to build anything even remotely data-heavy in Webflow (dashboards, directories, searchable lists, anything with user-specific content), you know the pain:

  • you start thinking “this will be easy”
  • you get 80% of the way there
  • then Webflow’s CMS limits and workflow start quietly boxing you in

So I decided to stop fighting it and treat Webflow like what it’s best at:

a ridiculously good visual front end.

Then I let Supabase do what it’s best at:

a real backend.

What this setup gives me immediately

Once I got it working, the benefits were immediate:

  • No more Webflow CMS collection caps
  • No more item limits
  • No more weird publishing delays
  • No more “CMS as database” compromises

Instead, I’m pulling data straight from Supabase using:

  • fetch requests
  • JavaScript rendering
  • and Supabase policies (RLS) to keep it secure

That means Webflow pages can display live data that updates instantly — without me touching the Webflow editor or creating CMS items manually.

Supabase is basically my headless CMS now

This is the simplest way I can describe it:

Supabase = my headless CMS
Webflow = my favorite visual front end

I still get everything I love about Webflow:

  • fast layout and styling
  • clean visual building
  • easy marketing page creation
  • client-friendly editing (when I want it)

But when it comes to data? Webflow is no longer the bottleneck.

The “annoying part” was worth it

To be clear: it didn’t magically work in 10 minutes.

The trial-and-error part was mostly:

  • figuring out the right way to expose data safely
  • dialing in Supabase RLS policies
  • making sure I wasn’t accidentally creating a “public database on the internet”
  • getting the JSON response shaped in a way that was easy to render in Webflow

But once those pieces clicked… it started feeling way more like building a real product instead of hacking around platform constraints.

And now it’s working beautifully.

If you’re building a dashboard in Webflow…

Good luck. Seriously. 😅

Not because it can’t be done — it can — but because at a certain point you’re using Webflow CMS for something it wasn’t really designed to be: a backend database.

If you’re building anything like:

  • a dashboard
  • a user portal
  • a directory with lots of items
  • a tool that needs filtering/searching
  • anything that should be personalized per user…

You should probably rethink the default “Webflow CMS-first” approach.

The better move: keep Webflow, swap the backend

If you love Webflow, you don’t have to abandon it.

Just stop forcing the CMS to do backend work.

Instead:

  • use Supabase for your data
  • use policies for access control
  • and render what you need directly in the front end

It makes Webflow feel 10× more powerful — because it is.

Here's a good article from Webflow on how to integrate Supabase into your project.