All plans should offer more than 4 variable modes

Just adding to the choir here -- and ​@figma_admin it’s a big choir at this point -- that limiting the modes to 4, especially for org seats -- is extremely limiting and takes what is an amazing feature and renders it almost instantly useless. We are a small team that doesn’t need the additional features of enterprise, but this one missing feature is holding us back from using figma efficiently. 

I'm supporting the cause. Absolutely crazy that organization and proffesional plans have the same amount of modes. I would expect organization mode to have atleast 8-12 modes instead of the 4 that you get with a proffesional plan. 

At my company we are at an organization plan and with 4 modes it's basically a useless feature. I'd nearly call this criminal lmao. 
 

The only reason I can think of for no action on this is because Figma are planning an overhaul of the current Modes feature, rewriting it to be better/less buggy. Maybe we just need to wait for this? It’s a pity, because this is a core feature.

This is nuts. I’ve just spent ages planning my approach for a site that has 5 colour themes (with light and dark for both) and now I’m stuck trying to find a workaround. 4 modes is completely useless. Cynical approach to pricing! 

I contacted Figma to ask about upgrading 2 design seats from professional to Enterprise.

In the reply, they pointed out that to be on Enterprise, there is a minimum £5,000 annual spend! 

We are a charity that has several websites and apps and we’re trying to rebuild our design system to use modes/variables to make our design workflow more efficient, sharing components across all products but using modes to manage themes.  

We would be satisfied having to pay more to unlock the 40 modes (although it seems counterintuitive to limit one of the core functions for smaller teams) but a jump to 5K is just not gonna happen!

Totally agree. 

For a basic website 5 modes at least covering typography changes across breakpoints. 
 

4 is such a random number, and if your recommending people hacks on how to get by then… just give the people more modes. 🤷‍♂️ 

I don’t understand why the Organization plan only has 4 variable modes, I saw a lot of comments on this and nothing has changed… Considering that the Entreprise plan has 40 modes, the Organization plan should have at least 12 or 20 no ?

This is such an arbitrary and artificial limitation that is purely done out of greed, making your otherwise good product unusable.

Whoever is doing pricing strategy at Figma, this is how you start the downfall of a company, by losing the trust of the community.

Well, it didn‘t! 😂

Why is there even a limitation at all on modes?

Is is completely random and artificial just in order to justify pricing tiers, this is dirty business practice 101.

Imagine if there was a limit on how many frames you can have on a page on a figma file, just as random.

Stop asking for more modes, ask for unlimited modes!

😡

This is really poor practice. Sort it out Figma. Very disappointed. 

​@figma_admin 
Just a reminder for Figma: Don’t underestimate the power of OpenSource.

PenPot is gaining traction. Look at Blender3D.

You are replaceable, and quickly too.

Friendly advice, don’t act shitty towards your community or else soon there will be none.

Where is Penpot at these days? Is there anything else coming up the pipeline? With the limit of modes and other issues with variables, I will probably need to look at some of the alternatives sooner rather than later. 

I’d check out their youtube, there you’ll surely find the latest news.

Adding myself here. We need to have more than 4 modes for 2 specific projects only but it doesn’t makes any sense for our team to go into an Organization plan as we won’t use any of the other features but just having more modes. It definitely doesn’t justify the extreme price increase on all seat types.

I wasn’t aware of such limitation until I tried to create a 5th mode on one of our shared design systems for a project, and it’s now being huge a blocker for us.

I don’t see a reason why such a feature would need to raise the price as much, given (and this is only my assumption) the impact is just storing a few more lines on a database per project, which is quite light (if not barely noticeable) in terms of costs for the product.

Comming soon, more modes to you? A simple website at least has 5 breakpoints, who on earth though 4 would be enough. this is a kick in the face. The next tier to unlock more modes in Enterprise. I’m a single Dev/Design. Locking those features in an enterprise level subscription is Adobe territory shenanigans.

Well it was never about storage in the first place. We have the ability to create unlimited design files, so it is not a storage issue. Plain and simple, it‘s artificial segmentation, greedy business practics.

Just ran into this arbitrary limitiation in the “Professional” tier and I am incredibly dissapointed.

Join the Choir! Incredible, isn‘t it?