Webflow automatically enables gzip compression for all hosted sites, so you don’t need to manually configure it. However, there are important clarifications and additional steps you can take to fully optimize your site’s performance.
1. Gzip Compression Is Enabled by Default
- All assets hosted on Webflow (HTML, CSS, JS, etc.) are served via AWS Cloudfront, which automatically applies gzip or Brotli compression based on the visitor’s browser.
- You can confirm this by testing your site using an HTTP header checker tool—look for the
Content-Encoding: gzip
or br
header in the server response.
- Use tools like GTmetrix, WebPageTest, or Google PageSpeed Insights.
- If the tool still flags compression as missing, verify:
- You’re testing your live Webflow domain (e.g. www.yoursite.com) and not a staging or export environment.
- The test isn’t falsely flagging third-party scripts or assets not hosted on Webflow.
3. Consider Exported Sites
- If you’ve exported your Webflow site and host elsewhere, gzip compression must be enabled on your external server yourself.
- For Apache, configure in
.htaccess
. - For NGINX, update
nginx.conf
. - Compression is no longer managed by Webflow in this case.
Even with gzip enabled, other performance issues may impact load speed:
- Compress images using WebP or tools like TinyPNG before uploading to Webflow.
- Use lazy loading for images and iframes (
loading="lazy"
is applied automatically for Webflow images). - Minimize the use of third-party scripts, which may not be compressed or optimized.
- Structure your layout to reduce DOM complexity and JavaScript execution time.
Summary
Gzip compression is already enabled automatically on all published Webflow-hosted sites via Cloudfront CDN. If performance tools still flag compression, double-check external assets or confirm the test is evaluating your live domain correctly.