Active Member

Question

New Dev Mode seat pricing is unacceptable, what do we do now?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
January 24, 2024
22 replies
9498 views

This new pricing model for Dev Mode $35/seat/month just to inspect already finished designs is so out of touch with reality, I have no words.

We have an enterprise Figma license and we capped Editor seats to a minimum because it’s hard to sell to C-level. This limits UX maturity and spread of Figma usage in product development across the whole org.

We have about 4x as much full-stack developers as we have designers, who OCCASIONALLY need to inspect designs. How the bleep are we supposed to sell those seats to C-level executives?

This is completely unrealistic and limits not only spread of Figma usage, but design-led product development in our org even more.

If we are to keep Figma, all of our designers are left with one option, to extensively micro-document each design for devs to read as a book. Losing huge chunk of our UX time.

What a self-destructing pricing strategy from Figma. What do we do now?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Maxime_Ealet

My understanding is that you’ll keep the current “Inspect” mode without additional cost. They charge for the new functions within dev mode: vscode integration, external tools integration like jira or storybook and extra functions around dev. Is it worth the price ? I’m not sure but you are not loosing anything if you’ve been using the inspect tab for years.

If you want to move to a product with a lower price consider zeplin as an alternative.

Slava_BronevitskiyAuthor

Active Member

Take a look @Maxime_Ealet

impactby.design?ref=nI

Maxime_Ealet

Damn I thought there would be a bit more to the classic “inspect”… I’m need to see what we gonna do too.

Sasch

This right here is one of the main problems. Why do we get a such a downgraded inspect mode when not using dev mode? Makes no sense. These basic inspect features (and how they are presented within the UI) should be part of a good design tool without additional costs.

Designing systems that empower gripping experiences at scale.

MiloW

Active Member

35 bucks is quite a lot… they could’ve stopped at 20 or something.
On the other hand… isn’t Figma the tool that you wouldn’t be surprised if it was 50 bucks a month per user from the start?

M

Mykyta_Morozov

Did you guys find any valuable alternatives? I’m really curious what to do, as the cost is absolutely unacceptable for a very basic feature, as of me.

Bauke_Schildt

Active Member

Spacing and padding info can be accessed using modifier keys

I’m guessing they kind of hid it…?

It’s very odd.

uxhollvetica

New Member

Wow. this is not at all what I expected. My company (and i’m sure many others) will not be willing to manage 3rd party contracted developer seats at $35 each. We’ve just switched to Figma over the last year from Xd because the features were supposed to be better. Since the switch i’ve found it harder to push my designers to create new components and think through problems creatively because 1: Figma will do half the work anyway, and 2: componentization creates a barrier to them wanting to break out of the structure. Work is lazier and less effective - even if we do have a better library system. Knowing that this will negate the benefits of cross team collaboration without a big upcharge makes me wonder what the overall benefit of Figma is afterall.

Amy20

New Member

I’d like to say I’m surprised by this move but this has Adobe’s fingerprints all over it!

beasles

New Member

This is an interesting move, since the pricing seems like a big miss even compared to other similar and arguably better handoff platforms in the market.

See Zeplin at ~$12/seat, even if you have to onboard your design and development team, is cheaper in total and more functional.

Comparison: https://blog.zeplin.io/zeplin-vs-dev-mode