Can a file be edited by an account from another team without charging the owner team?

i can’t believe this hasn’t been addressed yet! i’m a freelancer who needs to grant my (freelancing) developer access; they have a paid figma account but i’ll now need to pay double for them to work with my file. how does that make sense??? @Figma_Support are there going to be any answers? i can’t believe this pricing isn’t driving people away from using this program

Run into this problem so often, we have to go through and cull clients’ access until they realize they cant edit and ask for it back.

As a company, we would love to move to the organization plan for the extra features but with the extra costs the clients generate this isn’t sustainable for us.

Just been stung by this as well and only realised after a few months. No notification/alert to warn of any additional charges when adding an editor from outside of the company.

This needs to be resolved asap.

so,… is there somebody from FIGMA that can tackle that and give the community response! Many feel screwed here, including me!!!

Same issue here - got stung with this when we started using Figma by not understanding the billing method. Now it causes issues, like everyone above, when a client wants to edit items or we need to collaborate with another firm.

Would love a response by Figma on this.

This a bonkers system.

If we were doing this work using Adobe Creative Cloud (god-forbid!) and sharing files with a client also paying for Creative Cloud, that would be it – no further charges for either side.

Having to take out an additional Creative Cloud subscription to edit a shared file would not be okay, and that’s what’s happening here.

Imagine if Adobe started doing that - people would lose their S*** over it.

I don’t understand the rationale for this model other than to increase Figma revenues.

It feels counter to frictionless collaboration between client / agency / freelancer.

And the worst part is the lack of warning that you’ll be billed extra until it’s too late.

At the very least we need a “You will be billed $ per month for inviting this user” warning.

But really two paying users shouldn’t have to pay again to collaborate.

We’re not the only ones…

And another, see “Collaborating with other teams should cost nothing”

This is absurd, we are running into this problem too. I am out of seats on our account, but working with an external client that already has their own figma license. So we are both paying for figma, but can’t collaborate without paying for more than one license per user… That’s a scam. So, if we each want to collaborate on each others teams we’d be paying for four user licenses between the two of us.

Not saying anything different than others have… but I noticed this today because figma showed an upcoming bill despite me having recently paid for an annual account. I realized it’s because I added two editors to a project, but they are folks at another agency who have their own accounts. I don’t throw around the word scam much, but I must agree with others that it feels like a serious scam. It would make sense if you were inviting people who didn’t have their own accounts, and the cost implications were clear, but the fact that it just happens no matter their account status is bananas.

This is absolutely ridiculous, just got charged on my account for someone I added and came here and read this, it’s terrible.

Whoaaa 😮 I can’t imagine the bills. No response from Figma after months, is this Adobe spirit?

I’m an indy consultant needing to work with one other person for some client work coming up so I’m doing the workaround by creating a new free team separate from my pro account team . Once we’ve done our work I’m going to copy/paste the relevant bits to my pro team/file to share with the client.

Don’t need any of the pro features for this body of work so in my case the workaround does the job needed.

Doesn’t solve the core problem here and doesn’t work in many other use cases, but for those like me I thought I’d reiterate the workaround.

Ya’ll in this thread are badaces. Keep changing the game and making it happen.

🤘

Here we are quite chocked to realise this billing structure as well…

And even more chocked that there was no warnig that this would happen, solely by sharing a document with a client.

This makes absolutely no sense, and needs a fix ASAP.

They same happend to me… I was expecting a $15 monthly billing, and got $120 in the first month due this bizarre issue.

I’m really thinking in cancel my account cause the benefit I tought I would have (share with other editores), doesn’t exist…

Figma is really dropping the ball with their billing scheme. I guess using shady patterns leads to more revenue, regardless user satisfaction.

Reddit also has lots of discussions about this topic:

Boys, cmon. These lads at Figma are full of bull****. They are paying for using Amazon AWS or Firebase as their servers and can’t change their pricing. They will never do something like Miro where you can invite guest editors. Switch to XD or Lunacy. And stop paying their strip club visits.

So happy these scum*** were acquired by Adobe.

I am also majorly struggling with this in two different scenarios:

1. I am a freelance creative director for a company and I’m working to convince the client to move all projects to Figma under one team. Currently there are several freelance designers working on projects for the brand in their independent spaces (an email designer, a social designer, a marketing designer). So now to bring us together, the client does not understand why he has to pay for them to be editors while they are already paying for their own professional accounts to do the same work. This is the one hurdle to getting the client on board. Incredibly frustrating…

2. Separate from my own freelance practice, I am getting a small studio off the ground with two friends. We already individually pay for figma, so it seems so silly to have to pay again to set up a space for us to use for the studio.

Its ridiculous that for me to use Figma, i would need three separate editor licenses (my personal freelance practice, as a creative director within the company’s figma, and with my studio)

Please consider the actual people using your product!!!

I voiced this concern many times over the years, with many others, and yet it never changed. This is a dark pattern, one that should not exist.
Figma is a great product until you go into sharing rights.
So a free account can have 2 edit seats but a paid one cannot? Why paying customers need to pay again to access files from another org? it’s bonkers.
I too have been touched by the grace of the Secret Bill landing a month after i gave access people already paying for Figma, while i’m also a yearly paying custmer.
Bad bad bad practice.

Adding another voice to the mix - the dark pattern is to force each company with a Figma “team” to pay for every single user that can edit it’s files.

When you invite someone to a file as an “editor” or add the setting “Anyone with the link” can edit, you will pay for any user accessing your file - unless you make their permissions “can view” or “can view prototypes”. But that doesn’t stop them from joining another file as an editor, and therefore being a charged seat on your account.

The presumed behavior for “Anyone can edit the file” is that anyone with the software can edit the file, no extra charges. Large companies pay for the privilege of having seats for their designers, who might also pay for their own accounts. The benefit to the large company is they can de-provision users quickly and keep their files secure. Small companies cannot afford this privilege.

I can confirm there is no clear documentation around this - and when I wrote Figma frustrated that I kept being charged they refunded me for my complaints, but didn’t clearly explain the behavior, only that they couldn’t keep refunding.

It’s infuriating. We expect software to be “polite” or “courteous” - and when it’s not, our perception is deeply affected. In this case, the behavior is akin to a scam artist or con-man, and I will look for an opportunity to move back to Sketch, for this reason alone.

I’m a new-ish user to Figma, and a freelancer. (Used other prototyping tools for years). I was very suprised to learn that my clients are paying for an editor seat while collaborating with me… I can’t add anything new to the discussion, but I’m curious if anyone can answer: how long has this been Figma’s billing practice?

I wish Figma introduce the same system as Slack Connect.
Paying teams can share their projects as editors would solve the problem.

im confused, why give them editors rights if they’re a client? give them viewing rights, they can tell you the changes they need and you can make them and bill them. but yeah Figma is doing the dodgey on this one

They can be clients but also have designers in-house, which will most likely lead to collaborating on the same file

This is definitely something, if resolved, that would make me migrate fully to Figma from Sketch