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

Josh, this model literally contradicts this whole collaborating between accounts that Figma promotes. Like many others in this thread, it is extremely frustrating when we’re trying to share files with PAID accounts from another organization and get billed for it. So now this user is costing their company 1 seat and costing us 1 seat. This is not good business practice. So we have been exporting files as .fig, send to the client so they can import. Just like you would expect, the moment we do that the client will not be able to access any of our synced library files and such, which puts us back into the early 2000s where you would email design files to clients and no collaboration happens what so ever. Few months into updating designs, we go back to the same old story, shit load of design files for the same file. Each person has a conflicting version.

We’re starting to reconsider using Figma with it’s current permissions.

Where’s Figma’s answer to this??? Isn’t this THEIR community forum?? Do they not employ forum moderators? Do they even care about their customers???

This ridiculous team billing model has been going on for waaaay too long.

Hey @christophertorres17 appreciate the feedback here. This is indeed our forum, and while we’re just a small community team, we recognize there’s a ton of room for improvement in making sure we’re engaging across both new and old threads. This is something we’re actively working on!

While we can’t always respond to every bit of feedback, I can assure you that our teams are constantly looking at it and we care deeply about our customers and the community.

As it relates to billing/account management we just released two updates this last week, one on making it more clear when editors get added to a team/file, and two, giving more control to admins across our Pro, Organization, and Enterprise plans.

Josh, bless you for trying. But neither of these “updates” are fixing the primary complaint here… Figma is double dipping. If I am paying for a Figma account and my subcontractor is paying for a Figma account and we want to work on the same Figma file, one of us pays TWICE 🙂 This is what we’re upset about, this is what needs solving. But because it makes Adove more money it’s not a problem they want to solve. This is like class action territory if someone would organize that let me know.

thats all well and good, but you are still double charging people when they are already paying editors rights? I cant believe thats in any way legal - so conceivably, if someone was an editor on one project and then invited to 20 other teams as editor, that one editor could accumulate 20 different editor bills in one month? even though that one person can only work on file at one time, given he / she is only one person? that doesnt sound right…

I agree. It’s really rubbish and sad.

The main issue is that the developer share is not fit for purpose that is why my developer friends want to have editor privileges. I’ve wasted tonnes of time with Figma billing support because I change access rights for my developer co-workers and then get billed unknowingly! Please stop this whole process. It makes you look so poor.

@Figma, fucking deal with this shit! I work as a freelancer and it’s only normal that I share my files with clients. Now I have to be scared every time some client asks me if I can share the file with them because it means I’ll end up paying a fucking 15€ extra per month, for a file they just view once in a while.

This is such a bad response, you are litterally avoiding the problem here without admiting! It really makes Figma look bad because it looks like you are intentionnally keeping this “feature” just to make money.

Clarity would be nice - I feel the same. @figma. What’s the word? Ignore and sit on the yacht?

Slack has an approach that can work for Figma assuming that comments in this thread makes it somehow in front of decision makers at Figma, most likely not…

Anyhow, Slack uses Organization channels, used be called Slack Bridge Channels or so. The whole point of it, is that two paying orgs e.g: client paid accounts and vendor paying accounts to collaborate, share files, comment, etc while each is paying for their own users.

It’s a shame that all these cool collab features in Figma end up not being so useful with Figma’s current setup. Hopefully this messages lands itself somewhere. Again, I doubt it especially when you put profits ahead of what your community of users actually asking for.

Well said. I echo this sentiment.

Figma is great and all… but not that great.

The market will ultimately decide–Figma isn’t the only option out there.

here to voice my support for this! as a consultant, we are often working with designers from our internal team as well as their designers. free account with 2 editors won’t work in that case. our client already has a paid full seat in their organization, so i don’t understand why we have to pay again within our organization.

This is indeed a super dark pattern. We have a single designer using Figma and an external agency with multiple designers, also using Figma (paid accounts). Every few months a new designer from the agency would hop on, old one hop off, which meant that the amount of seats on our end grew, even though only one external designer was working on it. So with only two people working, our bill got to be >150 USD per month.

The bare minimum that needs to be fixed is that a clear warning is shown that your bill will increase when giving edit access -and- that only the billing contact can increase seats.

This is incredibly annoying. We are a development agency and we work with several designers. Although we own (=pay) professional accounts for all our team members, every client is charged for each of our team members once again.

THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED ASAP. An absolute rort. Should we all just leave Figma and move back to sketch?

Same problem here. Paying for 2 seats on my end but some of our clients also have their own paid seats. One side always has to pay double to grant the other access.

Yeah, I think a paid Figma user (professional) should be able to add at least one temporary editor per file. That would increase harmony across small scale single dev/design partnerships and relationships across the Figma globe and not make the revenue model totally redundant for Figma in larger team situations.

This is madness. My company has an enterprise account (75€/m and seat) and a external agency also has one. To work on the same file, we will have to pay another 75€/m seat for each agency member, even though they are already paying. This is madness and prevents us from working together. Bad business practice and at the end less collaboration and with that less need for Figma.

This won’t end until people start “voting” with their wallets. By now, most of my colleagues are addicted to Figma, including me… Maybe it’s time to look for…?

Penpot is gaining traction. Maybe it will be a good alternative in the future.

This is a major issue that needs addressing. As people before have suggested, implement a mechanism something like Slack Connect, otherwise you’ll lose the users that heled your company grow.

Hi guys, let me get this straight: I work for a software company and we have 5 full licenses for Figma.
I am not the account administrator, so I don’t have access to the billing information (or other super admin info), but I do have full designer-dev-FigJam access.
When i share a file with another account, for example a collegue that doesen’t have a paid account, and i need some edit permission this account became autoimatically a paid account? Without any kind of approval from admin account?

Yeap for sure!

This issue seems unlikely to change, but it is forcing us to search for an alternative product.

Figma is useful primarily because it promises collaborative workspaces. Unfortunately, collaboration is only built for collaborating within a single team. Clearly, Figma is betting the farm on the enterprise (intra-organizational collaboration). But Figma is killing the ability for companies to work with agencies (the ability to collaborate across organizations).

Why does Figma punish the agency/client model? For agencies and companies hiring agencies, this pricing model is a disincentive to work together in Figma – why would an agency have to pay for a license for each new collaborator at each new client they bring on? Why would a company have to pay for a license for each new creative at each agency they work with?

A Figma license should act like a license – meaning “I can use this tool to share and collaborate with other people who use this tool.”