Edit Access Issue with Figma Dev Mode for Professional Plan

@Karen_Beal I agree, the documentation (and the UX) are super confusing but from my experience above that does not seem to be correct.

Pricing for Figma's Free, Professional, and Organization plans. says

The docs say:

Dev Mode is included in a full Design seat on Professional, Organization, and Enterprise plans. It is also available as a standalone seat on:

• [Professional not mentioned here but basically seems to mean Dev Mode Standalone at the same price as a Full Design Seat, i.e. $12]
• Organization for $25/month [instead of $45 for a full design seat]
• Enterprise for $35/month [instead of $75 for a full design seat]
  Dev Mode is not available on the Starter plan.

[…]

Starter

• Since Dev Mode is not available on Starter, you’ll be prompted to upgrade to the Professional plan to access Dev Mode.

Professional

• Users with full Design seats (formerly called Editors) can continue using Dev Mode without interruption.
• People with a viewer-restricted seat can request an upgrade to a full Design seat from Dev Mode. [that is what I successfully did and am describing above but calling it “Dev Mode Standalone” but Figma seems to be calling “Full Design Seat” in this case as Professional is the only case where both has the same price. Mostprobably the root of the confusion. Especially since Full Design used to be called “editors”, which is exactly what we want to prevent here.] While they wait for admin approval, they can use Dev Mode for up to 14 days.

Organization and Enterprise

• Users with full Design seats can continue using Dev Mode without interruption.
• People with a viewer-restricted seat can request a Dev Mode seat. While they wait for admin approval, they can use Dev Mode for up to 14 days.

(emphasis mine and comments marked like [this])

Interestingly enough, without my users actually asking for edit rights actively, but only having done the Dev Mode upgrade request, I got a popup for “these users request edit rights” which I declined.

So now it seems that

1. They don’t have edit rights
2. They do have Dev mode
3. I.e. sounds like what Dev Mode Standalone should be
4. But since we’re on the Professional tier, they’re billed like a Full Design Seat (and therefore could gain edit rights without changing the bill, which is different to the higher tiers)

So seems like that’s what the thread start wanted to achieve, so now am tagging all other posters after Figma upgraded my forum status and I now can link multiple people…
@Derek_Jones @Jordan_White @Kelly_Battista @Agathe_Mametz @Ben

It’s astonishing though that the docs (and the member management + billing UX) aren’t adjusted for clarity.

Thanks Dennis! I tried it with my developer and he confirmed he still has Dev mode even though I made him view restricted. He has full access and I still have to pay for his design seat even though he has his own Professional account.

I couldn’t get the above “workarounds” to work, so my devs currently have full edit access to design files - which is completely absurd that this is required. Fix ASAP please or we’ll consider other options

Literally just add “Dev Mode” to this dropdown, or stop trying to combine two very different paradigms: LICENSING and PERMISSIONS

@Dennis_Sawin Yes! It does seem like team permissions allows for a view-only dev mode in a Professional paid seat plan.

Not fully resolved as I have realised that they have 14 days to use DEV mode while I ponder whether to grant access, so it is still a total confusion for me! After changing their status to View restricted the billing was reduced to 0. So am guessing they won’t have access after 14 days.

@Karen_Beal You have to ask them to initiate an Upgrade Request from their side. Then you can accept, and then billing seats are added while viewer-restricted is still there resulting in paid dev mode without edit rights.

Figma has produced a really regrettable UX writing !
Is it intentional to preserve the confusion ?
Does it increase the performance of their dark billing pattern ?
At this level, we can ask …
It’s stupid because I’ve denied all edit access… if the term was right like “…want to inspect”, “…want to develop” Figma’ll have sold more seats !

To my mind, it is so simple to modify that I don’t understand why the f@&! we’ve got this.

@Dennis_Sawin we’re tried this with a Pro plan and it doesn’t work. Accepting the request automatically upgrades the requestor to a full seat with edit access.

Hummm
Gaëtan I think you’re wrong, and that Dennis is right.
I’m on a Pro Plan.
If you look at my screenshot, the red frame shows the dev seat I’ve approved after a request.
They are listed as full design seat (that’s misleading)
But in fact, they can not edit the file because they don’t have the design panel.

To be sure of this, I requested with another account a dev access, and I wasn’t able to edit.

That said it’s still a pain to admin