The whole concept of these limitations make no sense to me.
Jumping in here, we’re in the same situation as Haleigh, as even with an Enterprise plan the limitation of 40 modes is too restrictive for our use cases, with multiple clients and themes/modes.
Really the “40” modes limit for variables should be for organization tier and variables should not be limited in any version since there is SO much out there you can’t even try if you don’t have at least one of the higher tier licenses.
Enterprise should be much larger and designed to flex to work with massive databases you’d expect massive enterprises to have needs for.
I don’t agree that any limitations would be fair.
That plugin looks interesting and useful a slightly different purpose but it doesn’t appear to be a great supplement for modes. It doesn’t dynamically cascade and I guess you’d have to put variable sets in a bunch of different files, however many you’d want to swap between.
+1 here guys, I’m really frustrated with this limitation and today I decided to find other users with the same issue. Please remove this bottleneck, it doesn’t make sense!
Hard disagree on limiting Professional to 5 - the following isn’t aimed at you, just in response to the limit.
Only allowing 5 Variables exclude any real value for consultants, freelancers or small agencies. Figma has essentially positioned Variables as a core feature, especially since introducing Typography variable support too. Putting a limit on Variables that low like trying to put a limit Styles - ridiculous and counter intuitive. They’ve already price gouged everyone with Dev Mode seats, trying to do the same with Variables seems like a pretty stupid hill for them to die on.
UNLOCK THE MODES. This is weird.
Having only 4 modes makes this feature unusable for any serious level of localization. I’d consider a team level add-on, but moving from 2 seats at $15/month to 2 seats at $75/month is a massive markup for an increased variable count.
I am begging for more modes. 4 is not nearly enough but 40 is way too much and not worth the extra $ to pay to get 40 and dev mode?? I don’t need dev mode I just need like max 10 modes that’s all.
Commenting here so that this thread doesn’t lose any traction. A shame that Figma have announced variables as a core feature but not made it usable for smaller design teams. 4 breakpoints is not possible for the majority of websites.
Completely agree here, 4 modes is not enough since you can now do typography, so for example I have a website with fonts in variables for desktop and mobile. Now I want to add 2 other subbrands to create a multisite, I can’t since I am limited to 4 modes. Our company is simply not big enough for Enterprise, and the price difference is huge. And since you don’t have any native option to move variables it just simply doesn’t cut it unfortunately.
Chucking my hat in the ring to support more than 4 modes on an Org plan. I strongly disagree that modes has anything to do with the size of the organisation and the plan they need. Let me make a responsive layout where we have 8 breakpoints already pleeeease! I’m holding off diving into variables with our team’s design system and this is one of the main reasons. This is not the carrot to get our Org to jump to Enterprise. We are not an enterprise. 🤨
Honestly, we have the same problem. Designing your system according to the latest Figma developments and then realizing that you’re limited to just 4 collones! I’m the only designer of my product and we don’t need the business plan. My solution: develop my own plugin.
The Org plan should allow more modes than the professional plan, if you are going to use these types of tiers as reasons to upgrade. It’s weird the ‘org’ plan has the same mode restrictions as the Pro plan.
But I don’t think this type of feature should be tied to the size of an org. Those feature differences should be account management, security/permissions, locking stuff down, multi-user management differences, and customisation. Not core features like variables.
Limiting modes in paid plans is senseless. Any news on this limitation? People have been waiting for a response for months.
Its been 1 year now and still no official response.
I have about 10 tickets for feaures im waiting on and its the same across all. Many years outstanding… Did everyone just go home after the adobe merger fall through? Need a hug Figma? Or should we just all move to Penpot?
Me again, BEGGING for more modes in organizational plans and all around - we are having to do SO MANY work arounds and creating a million collections just for the sake of not having more than 4 modes. PLEASE ADD MORE WE DO NOT NEED DEV MODE JUST MODES!!!
Still, there is no news, and no one talks about this. This is basically an alternative waiting to happen, with people jumping off the ship because of all the wrong pricing policies Figma introduced last year.
I remember the times when Sketch, Axure, Fireworks, InVision, even Photoshop were “irreplaceable” in UI work…
So I found a way to bypass it, it’s not pretty but here it goes (this example unlocks 16 modes, you can go 64, 256, 1024 to infinity if you can handle the madness):
- Create 4 collections (collection-0-1 collection 0-2, collection 0-3, collection 0-4), each having 4 modes. These should be identical in structure and each mode should represent a theme, so naming your modes by theme (eg. CocaCola, Sprite, Fanta etc) will come handy. You now have 16 modes to choose from.
- Create a collection (collection-0), same in structure as the first 4, create 4 modes for each mode and link the corresponding variables from each of the 4 collections (Mode 1 - collection-0-1, Mode 2 - collection-0-2 etc).
- Profit. You now can choose from 16 variable modes by combo choosing the appropriate one!
I hope it makes sense, but it works 🙂
Maybe someone can create a plugin to automate the whole process.
Yeah, that’s the same method I’ve described and been using. It works but it’s not the friendliest for the rest of a design team. I like you’re explanation and example.
It’s not the friendliest indeed, it just shows that the 4 modes limit or any limit at all is just insane!
Agree, 4 modes is not enough for a payed tier.
Would you mind screen-grabbing your setup please?
