[HN Gopher] Figma: Changes to free plan after April 21, 2021
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Figma: Changes to free plan after April 21, 2021
Author : seanwilson
Score : 116 points
Date : 2021-04-13 16:41 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (help.figma.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (help.figma.com)
| denysvitali wrote:
| Figma is cool, and I still can't believe that such a good product
| is free. Big kudos to them!
|
| This is something that I've done with Figma, mind that I'm not a
| graphic designer and this was my first use of Figma:
| https://github.com/denysvitali/dev-portal-designs
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| I couldn't even figure out how to draw a rectangle in Figma.
| Kudos to you!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| It is _far_ from free if you are doing serious work with it.
| denysvitali wrote:
| With a free account you can basically create a lot of content
| and export it in a vectorized format. Far better than the
| competition I would say.
|
| Illustrator isn't free either, but AFAIK it doesn't even have
| a free version that lets you do 1/4 of the features of Figma.
|
| Of course for the nice things you still have to pay, but I
| would argue that Figma already gives a lot of free features
| away
| xmly wrote:
| Still good one to use.
| bombcar wrote:
| As an aside lots of SaaS products seem to be going this way for
| monetization - free for "basic" use but pay for teams.
|
| Which is fair enough, but the jump often is insane - free gives
| you X, Y, Z and you can do basic collaboration, but go from 3 to
| 4 or otherwise pass some arbitrary limit and you go from
| $free/month to $300/mo (as now EVERYONE needs the $20/mo plan,
| etc). It's often too big a gap to cross.
|
| Better are the "pay for power users, the free plan can watch them
| do their thing" as that lets you slide in and slowly increase
| spend. (It's much easier to get corporate approval for $20/mo and
| then slowly increase that than to try to get approval for $300/mo
| out of the gate).
| bradstewart wrote:
| > (It's much easier to get corporate approval for $20/mo and
| then slowly increase that than to try to get approval for
| $300/mo out of the gate).
|
| Might be the case for you, but definitely not true everywhere.
| Both of those numbers are well under the threshold for "needs
| more approval" at lot of companies.
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| Airtable is like this and it's frankly insane.
|
| For various personal projects and nerd reasons, I would love to
| use the apps available for Airtable, but going from free to $20
| is bonkers.
|
| I don't need the 20GB or 50,000 records and a year of revision
| history. I only want the apps.
|
| Why not have a $5/mo a-la-carte upgrade for the free plan where
| I could purchase app functionality or more records or more
| storage, depending on my needs and then going to $20 when/if it
| makes sense?
| Someone wrote:
| I expect "20GB or 50,000 records and a year of revision
| history" costs them peanuts relative to development of their
| tools, and certainly way less than $15 per month (that easily
| gets you 2TB at cloud providers)
|
| If so, to come out even at $5 per user per month versus $20,
| I would guess they need more than four times the number of
| paid users (as more users means more support, and that costs
| money).
|
| = Dropping the price would be a big gamble. It may pay off,
| but if it doesn't, it's hard to increase prices again.
| granshaw wrote:
| Great for solo or two-person founders - just share a login and
| you can do most things
| edoceo wrote:
| > arbitrary limit
|
| I'm sure they do resource, cost analysis and basically chart
| out a few breakpoints
| throw14082020 wrote:
| I got very scared that free users can only create 3 frames in
| each file, and only 3 files. But this is only for collaboration.
| If you've been using Figma solo, you can have unlimited frames,
| this change doesn't affect you.
|
| > Drafts is becoming a personal space for work. In drafts, you'll
| still have unlimited files, pages, and viewers. However, if you
| want to co-edit with others, you have to move the file to a team
| space.
|
| > In the team space, we're removing the two-editor limit, which
| means you'll now be able to collaborate more freely with
| unlimited editors. In order to introduce unlimited editors for
| free, we'll be adding a new maximum of three files in the team
| space. Each file will have a cap of three pages.
|
| https://www.figma.com/blog/about-figmas-new-starter-plan/
|
| This is a nicer document than the original one
| apapli wrote:
| TLDR; We want to get free users to move to paid plans sooner, by
| (a) relaxing sharing limits, and (b) reducing the amount of pages
| you can create to 3 unless you upgrade.
|
| Existing work created prior to 21 April will be unaffected.
| rvz wrote:
| Catch all the users very early, grow quickly with VC capital,
| give the users whatever they want and then later force them to
| pay up by limiting access to the tools they love. - Silicon
| Valley VC Playbook.
| mguerville wrote:
| As an employee (not of Figma I mean of VC backed companies in
| general) it's also frustrating because you join based on some
| vision and then you often end up hating the feature
| throttling for philosophical (empathy with users) or
| practical reasons (makes it harder to sell or market if
| that's your job)
|
| Remember when products were getting better over time... now
| their value starts meh (MVP), becomes great (thanks to
| funding), and then reverts to meh (when finally focusing on
| unit economics)
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| *Unlimited draft files
|
| For solo people using Figma this shouldn't affect them too
| much, but naturally those are likely fewer than
| teams/collaborators.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I like Figma and it is a solid product. But one reason why my
| team will stay on Sketch is the unilateral ability of Figma's
| developers to change plans at will.
| lobstrosity420 wrote:
| That's the reason I try to stay away from SaaS in general. When
| I do, I try to have an "exit strategy" like keeping a markdown
| backup of all my Notion pages.
| O_H_E wrote:
| > When I do, I try to have an "exit strategy"
|
| Oh, yes. We need more people talking and doing that. A SAAS
| with no "readable" export option is a major no for me.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Why doesn't this issue apply to Sketch?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Sketch is a normal desktop app which works offline. Updates
| require a subscription, but you can keep using your last
| version forever.
|
| You open Figma at all without an internet connection--even if
| you've saved an offline copy of a project--so you're
| completely at their mercy for any work you create.
|
| I find it quite scary.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Sketch is a normal desktop app which works offline.
| Updates require a subscription, but you can keep using your
| last version forever.
|
| Until the next version changes the file format again, and
| it's incompatible with the version you're using.
|
| IIRC this happened in Sketch 2 -> Sketch 3.
| wdb wrote:
| Yeah, it's useless without internet. Guess the mandatory
| login is required to enforce these plans
| flixic wrote:
| You can keep using your last paid version forever.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I missed this when first reading their site. It seems that
| they're really pushing for the $9/month subscription - the
| old 12 months of updates pricing is in the small print
| below a huge box selling their subscription.
|
| Maybe they too are moving in that direction? I wouldn't
| blame them.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| That's why I prefer JetBrain's version. You pay for the
| product you get. That's it. Simple and done. You can
| benefit from updates for a year, and if you pay for
| another year, you get to keep those benefits. But at the
| end of the day, you get exactly what you pay for.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| That is actually the same model Sketch offers; they just
| promote the other (subscription-based) option.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Yeah, that's one of the things that, sadly, feels almost
| surreal these days. Their products are packed with
| features, they let you keep your old versions, there are
| discounts for students and loyal customers and open-
| source projects and even without any discount the prices
| are very reasonable for such an important part of my
| workflow.
|
| It's the only subscription where I'd happily attach a
| "Thank You" note to the money.
|
| I'm just curious -- I don't recall any high-profile dev
| getting screwed over by JetBrains, was there ever a case
| like that?
| [deleted]
| devmunchies wrote:
| sounds like UaaS (upgrade as a service). sounds nice. any
| cons?
|
| it seems to me like a company might try to withhold some
| features until the next release so you upgrade. Or is
| that expected out the gate and any _" updates for a
| year"_ are just for bugs?
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Jetbrains seems to take a broader view of life. They do
| lots of things that don't immediately benefit them. For
| example, their open source Rust plugin gets new features
| much more often than once a year, and I'm not even paying
| for it.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| With Sketch, the 'cons' are that if you withhold from
| upgrading, then after some time the app will get
| increasingly less useful: plugins are generally supported
| only for the latest version, and it is rare when you can
| get old versions of plugins. Design resources too always
| seem to be available for the latest versions only. So
| _if_ you work completely independently from external
| world, it migth not affect you much, but if you are not,
| it is cheaper to buy upgrades. Maybe not every 12 months,
| but every 18 months or so.
|
| But anyway Sketch is _that_ good that we pay it 's price
| gladly.
| rgifford wrote:
| I'm an engineer, so presumably not the intended audience wrt
| Figma. I hate it. Hopefully changes to the free tier curtail
| adoption. Three big reasons:
|
| - It's built around an un-cropped 2d view. Cute-sie and unique, I
| know. But sending teammates links in an un-cropped 2d expanse is
| hit or miss. All us working in it don't know where/what one
| another are referring to. We've taken to slacking screenshots and
| pretending it doesn't exist.
|
| - It feels super heavy weight. Load the page and look at the
| network requests. It's seconds just to get a menu of projects.
| Jumping into a project takes just as long. I assume this has to
| do with them trying to do a bunch of collaboration stuff that's
| already done by better, more established products. Why is ms
| paint so complicated?
|
| - It's super clumsy to search. For comparison look at storybooks
| -- searchable, cropped, focused on compose-able components. Very,
| very simple UI. I spend minutes hunting around Figma for a random
| design I need to attach to a PR description when I know the name
| of the component I'm looking for!
| 16bytes wrote:
| It's great to see that I'm not the only one with this opinion.
| As an engineer who consumed design work from figma, I hate it.
|
| * Slow is an understatement. And huge. Like 100Mb to start
| working on a medium size design (~20 frames?)
|
| * It's impossible to figure out what part of the design to code
| to. Like you said, the best way we figured out how to work is
| to take screenshots and export them.
|
| * It's impossible to follow comments. We just take
| conversations to slack.
|
| * There's no easy way to track design revisions. What's
| changed? Who knows?
|
| I miss working with designers who use sketch. Even better,
| those who just send me a full versioned spec that I can review
| offline. Design changed? Just send me an updated spec? Figma
| design changed? I have no idea where to even start looking.
| rronalddas wrote:
| Was considering Figma for a new project. But now that it
| doesn't have any version history, don't think will try it
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Slow is an understatement. And huge. Like 100Mb to start
| working on a medium size design (~20 frames?)
|
| Because they need to load the entire editor into the page.
| Compare that to Sketch, or Photoshop, or any other tool.
| arenaninja wrote:
| I wish my company would go back to Figma. Revisions are a
| nightmare; our project is young and designers change designs
| without ever notifying software engineers
|
| Designers love it for some reason but as an engineer it's a
| pain in the ass
| fassssst wrote:
| Yea it's a useful tool but the UI gets super slow for larger
| projects. And I dread opening Figma files now with my Comcast
| data cap.
| hrpnk wrote:
| One project I had read access to was ca. 100MB as PDF export.
| Neither Figma nor evince could render this project well
| without eating up GBs of RAM.
| granzymes wrote:
| * Files can now have an unlimited number of editors, up from 2
|
| * The number of those files is now capped at 3 with 3 pages each,
| down from unlimited
|
| * Draft files (of which you can have an unlimited number) can no
| longer have any editors besides you
| jasonlotito wrote:
| https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360061769534#Compar...
| wayneftw wrote:
| I guess people who want to avoid paying will start packing more
| frames into a file now? I wonder if there's a limit to how many
| things you can put into one file...
|
| (EDIT: Someone mentioned it below - you're limited to 3 "pages"
| per file now. I guess that means 3 frames.)
|
| Also, I am using the starter and created a Team to work on
| stuff with my friend. Will the limitations affect our team
| project which already has more than 3 files?
|
| Oh, I see it in the article now:
|
| > These changes don't apply to files created before April 21,
| 2021, only files you create after this date.
|
| Looks like we're going to have to start paying :)
| throw14082020 wrote:
| Frames != pages. You can navigate pages on the left side
| menu. 3 frames cap would be insane, making Figma's free
| version completely unusable.
| martin-adams wrote:
| Can you create lots of files now as placeholders and use them
| after the changeover date?
| fencepost wrote:
| _[can we work around these new charges]_
|
| This starts shifting from a "free vs paid tools" question
| to a "how I do business" question. If the pricing for
| something critical is so high it's not practical, it's time
| to do some hard evaluations.
|
| Edit: from practical experience, I've worked regularly with
| someone who will spend a lot of energy to avoid paying for
| things. That can result in hoop jumping just to accomplish
| things that should be quick and simple.
|
| Edit2: also be wary of trying to get paid by people who
| aggressively work to not pay for things.
| happymellon wrote:
| It's also the volume of tools that keep moving to
| subscription models. There are only so many tools I can
| rent. Especially for apps that I download, Jetbrains have
| the best model for this as I keep the version that I paid
| for, but they keep releasing updates that are actually
| worthwhile to upgrade.
|
| Then I have other things like GitKraken which should be a
| one time purchase for $15. I know it's not sexy pricing,
| but the subscription price is just too damn high when I
| have ever other tool trying to bill me every year with
| fundamentally no change.
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| 3 frames would be a pretty stark limitation. When Figma says
| "pages" I assume they are referring to their "page" object,
| which allows you to have multiple separate workspaces per
| document. Limiting documents without limiting pages would be
| too easy to work around, so it's clear why they had to do it.
|
| I believe you can still have unlimited frames.
| shivenigma wrote:
| Existing files will stay unaffected as far as I understood.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| The hero we need! Slayer of marketing speak, writer of patch
| notes. Thank you.
| dmitriid wrote:
| The linked page literally contains two tables concisely
| describing all the changes
| granzymes wrote:
| I personally found the tables less helpful than the text
| since almost every row is the same in both columns.
| kickscondor wrote:
| So I use Figma exclusive as... a chat client! I don't think I can
| go back to normal chat.
|
| https://twitter.com/kickscondor/status/1373639637814575104
|
| These changes mean no more free chats. But it's probably time for
| me to pony up anyway.
| user3939382 wrote:
| A little off topic, but given its popularity I gave Figma an
| honest try for my last UI design. I tried to like it, I wanted to
| like it.
|
| But after 15+ years of using Illustrator, I felt so constrained.
| It felt like 15% of the feature set of Illustrator.
|
| I wonder who the target is? People who work on teams probably get
| more out of it. Or if you design front ends by dragging and
| dropping predesigned elements from libraries like Material?
| flixic wrote:
| I've been designing UIs for 15 years, from Photoshop 6.0 to
| Sketch to Figma. I LOVE Figma. It makes it easy to do things
| that will be easier to develop, and makes it much harder to do
| things that "break" layout rules. End result is more consistent
| UIs, clearer component structure in code, and much happier
| developers.
| tootie wrote:
| Illustrator is an illustration tool. Even Adobe is pushing XD.
| Figma has thoroughly taken over the web design space. Every
| company and agency I've worked with in the past 5 years are on
| the bandwagon. And before that it was Sketch and before that it
| was mostly Photoshop which was also a very mismatched tool.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| It is substantially easier for me as a developer to get
| information out of the document and into a template.
| darkcha0s wrote:
| I used with a design agency on my current project. Have to say,
| I was very satisfied by the feature set, considering the output
| is generally the same as what can be made easily using a common
| toolset (ie. html/css, it even gives you the CSS when you
| highlight a component)
|
| It's not a photoshop/illustrator replacement, but I think the
| agency imported some of the more 'complicated' SVGs and such
| from another editor.
| paxys wrote:
| Lots of marketing lingo in that post which obscures the real
| change - you can now only have 1 project, 3 files and 3 pages per
| file on a free account, down from unlimited.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360061769534#Compar...
|
| Seems fairly clear and concise.
| flixic wrote:
| On a Starter team. Drafts are still unlimited.
| paxys wrote:
| Starter = free, so yes. And drafts were always unlimited, now
| they can't have collaborators.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| What's the difference between drafts and other files?
|
| I use Figma casually as a non-designer and I have a bunch
| of drafts and a bunch of other files. No clue what the
| difference is.
| flixic wrote:
| The main feature that pushes my projects from Starter to
| Professional is Sharing Libraries, aka Component Publishing. It
| was never possible in drafts or Starter teams, so these changes
| don't really do much.
|
| Due to the way their prototyping works (not allowing links
| between pages), I almost always work from one file and one page.
| Extra limits don't change much.
|
| So, whatever. More editors, good.
| lobstrosity420 wrote:
| Not allowing liks between pages is really annoying, and makes
| pages near useless to me. I wonder if they have any plans to
| implement that.
| the100rabh wrote:
| Just wondering if anyone uses something other than figma these
| days. Is there any viable competitor to them?
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