Adding on to the bandwagon here. I was inspired by the awesome Ford demo from Config this year to really beef up our design system with variables, but very quickly learned that Modes are a huge, unnecessary bottle-neck.
My company currently has the Organization level plan and while I don’t think it’s completely impossible that we could switch to Enterprise, having to simply for more variable modes is pretty much a non-starter. We’re also fortunate(?) enough to qualify for an Enterprise level plan as we do have 6+ users, but as others have said, locking something like variable modes behind not only such a steep paywall but also an arbitrary chair limit is quite frankly absurd. Are we really meant to get by using only 4 modes at most for individual and even org plans?
I’m of the opinion that modes should be unlimited, but at the very least the arbitrary limit should be higher than it is for non-Enterprise level plans. Please at least consider upping it to a good 10+, because otherwise this has effectively kneecapped an incredibly useful feature that the community has been looking forward to for a long time now.
Adding to the fodder, though I think everyone else has more than provided sufficient explanations.
While it is typical for small teams to get priced out of “enterprise” features, the irony is small businesses and startups always need to do more with fewer resources yet many features that are aimed at increasing productivity are released only at enterprise-level plans. This is not just a Figma problem, but in the Figma world, has reared its ugly head in this unreasonable cap on variable modes.
In pondering the improbability of upgrading our entire team to enterprise, of which there are only 1-2 designers (daily users) and 4-5 developers (monthly users), I reviewed the enterprise features to see if there was any merit at all. Most of the enterprise features are very enterprise, i.e., network access restrictions, role setting via SCIM, dedicated workspaces, etc., as well they should be. Thus, it is odd limit to force encourage upgrades.
As the feature is still in beta, hopefully the powers will understand the negativity this restriction is creating amongst diehard yet not enterprise users who simply want to increase their productivity rather than find some inefficient way to work around the issue since upgrading to enterprise is not a possibility and would be quite irresponsible, even if financially able.
Absolutely agree with the majority here complaining about the max. 4 variable modes.
Also, I don’t understand why Dev Mode will not be available for professional plans.
This is crazy.
What! We also wanted to look into the possibility of switching, but we also don’t have enough licenses. This choice of Figma has a big impact on how I feel about Figma as a brand. I do feel misled. I have not seen this anywhere in the product presentations.
I think Dev Mode will still be available in the professional plan after the 2023 beta.
Their pricing page says this:
In 2024, Dev Mode will be included on Figma paid plans or can be purchased separately ($25 / $35 per seat on Organization / Enterprise).
They didn’t word it very clearly, but I interpret that as meaning it will no longer be available in the free plan, it will be included in the professional plan, and for organization/enterprise plans they will have the option of buying dev-only seats.
Well why should it be included in Professional but not in the two higher tier plans?
My interpretation is that Dev seats cannot be purchased with a Professional plan.
However, Dev Mode will be available for all Editor seats on paid plans.
We strictly want Dev seats on professional plan though because with Editor permissions there’s always a chance that folks make unwanted changes to the document.
Maybe Figma will update the Member panel for the Team and include “viewer-restricted” Editor permissions but Dev-mode enabled, so basically Dev seats.
Let’s just agree that it is quite confusing at best…
In other words, if you set someone as “can view” on a file, are they not able to access Dev Mode at all?
Since Dev Mode is currently available to everyone I have no chance of knowing it for sure until next year… I tested revoking Edit rights on a Member and setting design role to “viewer restricted” and the person was still able to access Dev Mode. But that’s just because of the open Beta. Guess I’ll find out next year then
Unfortunately, the Properties panel that was available as well seems to display way less information than the old Inspect panel.
If an investigation goes ahead, I for one will be following that closely as any public consultation may require us to submit this kind of price-gouging evidence to the regulators.
I wouldn’t think the free beta would matter, since you’re not talking about giving free users access to the file.
I think the only purpose of offering dev-only seats is because Organization/Enterprise customers don’t want to pay full price for users that will only be using Figma for read-only tasks.
I would bet that these dev seats are just accounts that are restricted to only viewing files. If so, it wouldn’t really make sense to have something like that for the professional plan, since they are independent accounts and not owned by an organization.
Seems like an intentional throttling of innovation for the sake of appeasing the new high table? and believe me, I get it, the world is a vampire. 4 mode limit seems like it makes sense until you realize how many other debilitating limitations that the org-level accounts have to survive through on a daily basis.
4 mode limit? Millions of dollars to upgrade?! No type/ stroke weight/variables switching /elevation support? Do you guys have friends in real companies that you run this by? Cuz that’s…an aggressively pointless limitation that renders this unusable in a professional setting. Still luv ya. But plz plz plz help . We are getting burnt out.
It seems to me that limiting the amount of variable modes is an absurd money grab, to push people into Enterprise without having a use for any of the other Enterprise features.
Absolutely. 4 variable modes for $12/mo/editor or 40 variable modes for $75/mo/editor. This is a greedy taste of honey monetization approach.
The scale here is entirely greedy and kneecaps our usage of variables. What’s next? A limit on the number of styles? Pages? Components?
I understand that a me too post like these are typically discouraged. But, there was no way to strongly voice dissatisfaction in a detailed way. So, thank you for reading and come on, capping variable modes along subscription plans is unnecessary.
Having recently delved into how these can be used for a design system, I can honestly report that modes have everything to do with design and nothing to do with employee structure.
The Enterprise tier seems to be all about employee structure EXCEPT for this modes feature.
This is an issue for us as well, if we would be able to upgrade to entreprise with only a few seats that would solve the issue, but there is a minimum of seats (that we don’t need) that you have to pay for to upgrade. Maybe 8-10 modes for Org plans make more sense? and this is still a great incentive for pro teams to upgrade to org.
. We are getting burnt out.