I’m at a mid-sized consulting company and we are findig the pricing and fees hard to control. What’s additionally problematic is that I needed to make all my dev and QA “Editors” so that they can see everything they need to. When they have “Viewer” access they could not see all of the design library component states and see details on nested frames. We’re paying astrominical prices.

On top of which, licensing is at the “Project” level, not a “Person” license with permissions to Projects, so its never quite clear who we are paying for access to what.

Wanted to chime in and keep this thread alive as Its clear as day that Figma/Adobe wishes to ignore this situation. They have so many great minds working there that the fact them thinking writing how billing works out in website is enough to make sense to users is disgrace. You can add a user to your file as an editor in one click without any notification is the same as allowing paying for things with your credit card without any authorization or PIN code check.

I find it amazing that this hasn’t been addressed and I guess this makes them enough money worth to ignore all the customers that would leave because of this issue.

I had a free account which I upgraded to Professional only because a client needed a file transfered.

Transfered ownership, forgot about it, and just got an email about my “6 monthly seats”.

Checked and the person I transfered the file to, added 4 other seats.

So I’m getting charged for mine, the new owner (?) AND the 4 new editors THEY added (???)

Garbage system. Glad I caught it just one month in.

Let’s say that. This is so unfair that Figma doesn’t even inform you about the payments. This is done on purpose and IMO these business practices are not okay.

Software subscriptions usually work like Adobe - you pay for your license, other users pay for theirs, and you can all use the software. Figma will charge you for a license for yourself - and will charge you additionally if you invite another Figma subscriber to one of your files. Even someone who has their own license. So if you are a team of freelancers, you end up paying a bunch of extra user fees in addition to your subscription fee.

Figma’s own support told me to come here and complain about it. Is anyone else experiencing this? I would imaging it’s not an issue if everyone works for the same company.

This is a huge stitch-up. Just checked my account and there’s 13 seats.

I thought you didn’t sell out to Adobe? Cause this is some Adobe level rubbish.

Where’s the UI to let me know sharing assets immediately creates paid users!!!

Almost close enough of a screw up to get my whole yeam off the product. 1/10 Figma. 1/10.

Yeah I have always found the subscription system unclear and misleading… Also the fact that your premium status goes to a specific team and not an entire account. And later on you can add some editors without getting any alert that it is a paid feature.

This is incredibly disappointing. While trying to learn Figma, I sent a file to a friend for help and was charged an extra 15 dollars because they were added as a design seat. I didn’t catch it in time before I got billed for it. Ridiculous and very very disappointing…

There should be a warning when sharing that I will be charged if I don’t configure the settings correctly.

I literally just spent half an hour trying to figure this out as well. I literally hate how they’ve designed this. For some reason, every single other company in the world can make this process so much easier by default… yet the industry leader in digital design can’t? The irony here is painful.

How to access billing etc is so insanely difficult. And if I try and upgrade it tells me I need a work email. WTH? I can’t even downgrade my plan.

The pricing on the sign up page is deceiving, somehow FigJam is included in my plan but I dont use nor want to pay for it by do by default… what Figma tells me is a $12USD payment PM ends up being $30AUD PM.

I literally just straight up cancelled it.

-10/10 from me. Really, really annoyed.

I totally agree!! I need to collaborate with another designer who has their own license, but am unable to!! Also when I added a dev to the file to view the file it added him as a “seat” without notifying me!! This is wild to me that I can’t collaborate with people that already have their own licenses.

I agree, it is completely fraudulous to ask another licence fee for already licenced professionals

This happens to me too. Its non-sense both people are paying for a subscription and they need to pay one more fee just because they’re collaborating on a different project. This structure doesn’t promote collaboration at all, this is supposed to be FIGMA core value.

Even worse, when I add someone to a project who already has a subscription, I get no notification that will cost a monthly subscription, and even if I cancel after 5 mins I’ll still get Billed for that month. Figma, this pattern needs to change, users need to be aware when they’re going to be charged more money at the end of the month.

So do I get this right?

Person A has signed up with Figma and pays for a full design license.

Person B has signed up with Figma and pays for a full design license as well.

Person A invites B to edit a file.

Person A has to pay 2 design seats now? So 3 licenses total? And the only way you get informed about this is by the amount of your next invoice?

This is not how collaboration works and fraudulent behaviour in my opinion.

You should be ashamed, Figma

yeah we just noticed we paid 5 seats for a few months for users we just invited to collaborate once and additional costs this was nowhere communicated when adding them. So to me this feels straight up like a dark pattern. Also these costs make no sense since Figma wants to be all about collaborating and everyone is already paying their licenses. This feels really scammy…

This has been a known issue with Figma for a very long time, there is no way they aren’t aware of it, they just know that it will result in actively harming their revenue so its probably very far down their roadmap to actually improve upon. It’s grim but unless an alternative product that has a more ethical monetisation UX, they won’t change this.

Yes agreed 100000% percent. Everything else about their software is really really well thought out. I think their subscription model is an insidious extension of that. It’s honestly predatory and anti-collaboration. Figma’s still cheaper than Adobe XD, but it seems like their sneaky billing makes up for that “loss in revenue.” I work for a small agency and my boss was emailing with Figma for over a week to reorganize our licenses. Frustrating to say the least.

Was having this same issue - when trying to upgrade my own individual plan, the pricing page was trying to charge me for 2 seats, even letting me know that 1 seat was empty. Yet nowhere am I seeing a way to reduce to 1 seat.

I had to click the “+ Add seat” button to access a page that then let me manually decrease from 2 seats to 1.

This is very toxic design. The fact that I have to click a link that does the opposite of what my goal is makes zero sense. The fact that it was suggesting I even purchase 2 seats when I had only ever shared a file with a team member, again, makes zero sense.

Hard not to think Figma is just trying to get free unintentional income through this. Absolutely shameful design. The only reason I’m still staying with this product is because the software is just too good, and my team uses it. If this weren’t the case, I wouldn’t hesitate to stop supporting this company for ethical reasons. Huge bummer.

Figma, please get your act together.

I have also been charged for extra seats without realizing. It’s not the first time that this has happened and the last time that it did I made sure to make a mental note not to give design permissions to anyone else… somehow I have still managed to get charged! Ok, so I must have made a mistake, but it really does seem like Figma could inform me with a pop up when I’m about to get charged for an extra seat. Almost every service in the world informs their customers when they are about to incur an extra charge. When they don’t it is generally considered to be a shady business practice.

Figma is a really well designed tool - very user friendly. Therefore I find it hard to believe that their billing system could be so lacking in transparency without it being by design. Could the development team please fix this? I’m pretty sure it would take them an afternoon to sort out. It’s not a new feature or even a bug, just a small tweak that would have saved me from being unfairly charged at 3x the rate I should have.

this sounds like an unfair practice lawsuit waiting to happen. the same thing happened to me.

Hi all,

Also having the same issue, the setup of getting multiple users into a single team is not clear so I’m currently talking with support to get it fixed - really poor show, especially with how good Figma is to use.

Please Figma, fix this and create some transparency so users are clear when setting things up.

Thanks.

This is so annoying. If I do freelance work as a dev for 10 different companies using Figma they would each need to pay a monthly subscription?? It’s such a ripoff, as I can clearly only be workig on 1 project at a time. Surely when adding an existing member to a team you just adopt their license for the time they are on the team - just like Canva or most other collaborative system?

Totally agree - The seat rule is costing me a fortune to collaborate with clients - we all already subscribe to the licence - charging for seats in addition seems a little greedy. One or the other is completely understandable.

Also please make warning notifications if i’m accidentally adding news seats to my account, and make it easier to find and manage the seats if this is a chargeable feature. Thank you.

I cant simply find where these Figma jam bills are coming from or where to stop them. It is totally unclear you will be billed when you add some one to view/use. I have an annual fee and additional $25 a month I cant stop for months now please help. I have no clear options in the UI to stop this billing or clearly how to control it

It’s disheartening to see that so many individuals are experiencing this issue, yet Figma seems to be ignoring it. This certainly appears to be a deliberate tactic by Figma to exploit its users for financial gain. There should be accountability, and someone ought to take legal action against Figma