I think the most maddening thing about this is: If adobe give you the suite of apps at any price, whether student or designer it was all the same once you got access.
What Figma does is they limit features based on your plan.
In order to get 40 modes you have to pay more money than everyone else, but if you try to change ownership of that file to a different organization because maybe your consulting, or a start up, etc…, well then they can not use those extra features like 40 modes because they do not have the enterprise license they only have the professional.
So - again I reiterate my point. At Config Figma stated they really want to focus on small teams, but this is cutting those teams out completely. Super frustrating
For me the most frustrating is not just the choice of limit. But the rationale behind it ánd the total silence on the forums. No matter what people ask on here, it is completely ignored. Is the company in chaos or something?
Why even bother with 4 values for variables, it does not work at all for ui kits. Up it to at least 10 for prof/org plans
I would settle for $1/mode per month. 🤝
Just dropping in with my regular rant about this unbelievably designer-hostile decision from Figma. My company has recently made changes to their loyalty program which means we now have more than 4 Status tiers. We’d previously been able to use Modes to easily and tidily build out variants of experiences for these different tiers but now we need to completely re-think our process.
It’s just so frustrating and disappointing because we all know it makes absolutely zero sense. Good process and library/prototype structure is team-size and organisational structure agnostic. Whether you’re a solo professional, part of a small team or a cog in a massive cashed-up organisation these needs are universal. Unfortunately that leaves us with no other option than to view this not as apathy from Figma, but as a shameful and opportunistic example of gatekeeping and price gouging.
I truly hope Figma come to their senses on this, and do the right thing to advance their publicly stated vision of a future where design is even more:
- collaborative,
- borderless,
- transparent, and
- community-driven
Because like Figma say: The best way to design is together. And the surest way to get there is to make design accessible to everyone.
We still reeeeeeealy need more modes. Paying 3x more for an Org plan and still only getting 4 modes makes no sense to me. Or can you just explain why, Figma folks?
Working on a team with enterprise account. We actually have run out of modes for a client and need mode than 40. I would say make it 40 for pro and unlimited for org/enterprise.
Wanted to create 6 modes (to reflect the breakpoints in Bootstrap) but then quickly discovered I’m limited to 4… Yes please for this 🙏
Main case: You can not hand off to small teams with this limitation, even IF a team has 40 modes in an enterprise plan and they are building to hand off to a small team on an org plan its absolutely useless as a small team on a professional or org plan could not consume those 40 modes.
UI kits are also useless with 40 modes as they can not be consumable for someone not on enterprise.
This is just infuriating.
40 modes for all!!!
Unlimited for enterprise!!
Unlimited for all!
Just consider, would any limitation make sense for Colors? Layers? Components? Pages? Interactions? etc? Because technically they could be.
No limitation on those would make sense and neither do they make sense for Modes.
Hey - is anything happening with variables?? Hoping for more modes!!! Please
Oh lord no please don’t say that. I remember way back when you have to buy Adobe Photoshop, I spent $1,200 on it, and now it’s basically useless.
PLEASE FIGMA, I BEG PLEASE DO NOT TURN INTO ADOBE OR EVEN TAKE A LOOK AT THEIR CORNER.
+1 on this one, I don’t understand the mode limitations, especially when you work on Figma plugins.
I use modes for responsive (5 breakpoints), not just light & dark.
Hello everybody, I posted here a few times already as a frustrated user, but also as someone who tried to create a solution for this longtime ignored issue. This lively discussion and also my own needs led me to a conclusion, that it’s worth it to create a decent workaround to this problem until Figma changes its ways.
It took much more time than I originally expected, but I believe I can call it a success, despite few limitations the plugin still has.
What kind of surprised me though, is that the response from the community isn’t exactly what I expected.
I shared the link and some info about the plugin here a few times, it had a few clicks, but almost no reactions, no feedback, no conversions (someone even flagged me as a spam once 😀). I’m really curious why is that.
So today, I’m kindly asking you for your constructive feedback. What is the reason you didn’t try the plugin, or didn’t convert to a paying user after the end of free trial?
Is it the price or the sole fact that it’s a paid plugin? (3$ a month currently)
Is it some specific limitation of the plugin?
Is it something not working as expected? A bug maybe?
Is it something else?
I know a plugin is still a workaround, but this one seems at least to me as a pretty decent one. It simulates the native experience very well and it offers even more modes than the expensive enterprise plan, for a fraction of the the price.
Let me know what you think about it, and if you haven’t tried it yet, give it a shot 😉
https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1404783727338541788/infinite-variable-modes
Thanks,
Michal
Yes, it was definitely a conjoin analysis study.
My my takeaway though is from the range of options presented. When I’d taken surveys like that before, I don’t remember them being as divorced from reality. The combos were reaching farther into and staying longer in the realm of what I’d consider absurd.
Honestly your plugin flew under the radar for me. When I saw it mentioned recently in this thread, I thought it was actually a different plugin that didn’t look like it would solve what I need to do with modes.
I see now that it’s not the same one, so I’m going to test yours now. Thanks for trying to make this and following up with your posts about it.
@dvaliao is anything happening with this? Can you give us an update if Figma is tracking this at all on internal project boards?
There is one line missing, right ?
The comment they’re ignoring
Hey Michal.
I appreciate you taking the time to make a plugin to try solve this but this is the problem… its a hacky solution that adds other costs in-terms of training etc. When a feature exists - but is being gatekept for enterprise deliberately stopping the target audiences work then thats a problem worth shouting about. I cant expect the companies i work with to step up to organisation rates, and i cant expect them to aintain plugins as part of their stack to make things work.
the issue is Figma hasnt cared about users since preadobe deal. it only cares about enterprise lock-in. So lets all move to penpot
Hi Jack, thank you for responding. I absolutely agree that this isn’t something that should be handled by a plugin. I also agree that such policy is absolute nonsense (greetings to Figma 👋 @dvaliao). But I also find this solution as a viable option for many designers until Figma comes to their senses.
Adding my voice. UNLOCK VARIABLES, or at least give org level more. Not really sure why the limitation. Storage is cheap. Feels like since the failed Adobe buyout the investors are trying to sqeez as much money as they can from Figma at the expense of the people using the tool.
Remember Figma, you can go the way of other tools if you become like Adobe.
