They same happend to me… I was expecting a $15 monthly billing, and got $120 in the first month due this bizarre issue.
I’m really thinking in cancel my account cause the benefit I tought I would have (share with other editores), doesn’t exist…
Figma is really dropping the ball with their billing scheme. I guess using shady patterns leads to more revenue, regardless user satisfaction.
Reddit also has lots of discussions about this topic:
1 Like
Boys, cmon. These lads at Figma are full of bull****. They are paying for using Amazon AWS or Firebase as their servers and can’t change their pricing. They will never do something like Miro where you can invite guest editors. Switch to XD or Lunacy. And stop paying their strip club visits.
So happy these scum*** were acquired by Adobe.
1 Like
I am also majorly struggling with this in two different scenarios:
-
I am a freelance creative director for a company and I’m working to convince the client to move all projects to Figma under one team. Currently there are several freelance designers working on projects for the brand in their independent spaces (an email designer, a social designer, a marketing designer). So now to bring us together, the client does not understand why he has to pay for them to be editors while they are already paying for their own professional accounts to do the same work. This is the one hurdle to getting the client on board. Incredibly frustrating…
-
Separate from my own freelance practice, I am getting a small studio off the ground with two friends. We already individually pay for figma, so it seems so silly to have to pay again to set up a space for us to use for the studio.
Its ridiculous that for me to use Figma, i would need three separate editor licenses (my personal freelance practice, as a creative director within the company’s figma, and with my studio)
Please consider the actual people using your product!!!
2 Likes
I voiced this concern many times over the years, with many others, and yet it never changed. This is a dark pattern, one that should not exist.
Figma is a great product until you go into sharing rights.
So a free account can have 2 edit seats but a paid one cannot? Why paying customers need to pay again to access files from another org? it’s bonkers.
I too have been touched by the grace of the Secret Bill landing a month after i gave access people already paying for Figma, while i’m also a yearly paying custmer.
Bad bad bad practice.
3 Likes
Adding another voice to the mix - the dark pattern is to force each company with a Figma “team” to pay for every single user that can edit it’s files.
When you invite someone to a file as an “editor” or add the setting “Anyone with the link” can edit, you will pay for any user accessing your file - unless you make their permissions “can view” or “can view prototypes”. But that doesn’t stop them from joining another file as an editor, and therefore being a charged seat on your account.
The presumed behavior for “Anyone can edit the file” is that anyone with the software can edit the file, no extra charges. Large companies pay for the privilege of having seats for their designers, who might also pay for their own accounts. The benefit to the large company is they can de-provision users quickly and keep their files secure. Small companies cannot afford this privilege.
I can confirm there is no clear documentation around this - and when I wrote Figma frustrated that I kept being charged they refunded me for my complaints, but didn’t clearly explain the behavior, only that they couldn’t keep refunding.
It’s infuriating. We expect software to be “polite” or “courteous” - and when it’s not, our perception is deeply affected. In this case, the behavior is akin to a scam artist or con-man, and I will look for an opportunity to move back to Sketch, for this reason alone.
2 Likes
I’m a new-ish user to Figma, and a freelancer. (Used other prototyping tools for years). I was very suprised to learn that my clients are paying for an editor seat while collaborating with me… I can’t add anything new to the discussion, but I’m curious if anyone can answer: how long has this been Figma’s billing practice?
1 Like
I wish Figma introduce the same system as Slack Connect.
Paying teams can share their projects as editors would solve the problem.
1 Like
im confused, why give them editors rights if they’re a client? give them viewing rights, they can tell you the changes they need and you can make them and bill them. but yeah Figma is doing the dodgey on this one
They can be clients but also have designers in-house, which will most likely lead to collaborating on the same file
1 Like
This is definitely something, if resolved, that would make me migrate fully to Figma from Sketch
Josh, this model literally contradicts this whole collaborating between accounts that Figma promotes. Like many others in this thread, it is extremely frustrating when we’re trying to share files with PAID accounts from another organization and get billed for it. So now this user is costing their company 1 seat and costing us 1 seat. This is not good business practice. So we have been exporting files as .fig, send to the client so they can import. Just like you would expect, the moment we do that the client will not be able to access any of our synced library files and such, which puts us back into the early 2000s where you would email design files to clients and no collaboration happens what so ever. Few months into updating designs, we go back to the same old story, shit load of design files for the same file. Each person has a conflicting version.
We’re starting to reconsider using Figma with it’s current permissions.
11 Likes
Where’s Figma’s answer to this??? Isn’t this THEIR community forum?? Do they not employ forum moderators? Do they even care about their customers???
This ridiculous team billing model has been going on for waaaay too long.
3 Likes
Hey @christophertorres17 appreciate the feedback here. This is indeed our forum, and while we’re just a small community team, we recognize there’s a ton of room for improvement in making sure we’re engaging across both new and old threads. This is something we’re actively working on!
While we can’t always respond to every bit of feedback, I can assure you that our teams are constantly looking at it and we care deeply about our customers and the community.
As it relates to billing/account management we just released two updates this last week, one on making it more clear when editors get added to a team/file, and two, giving more control to admins across our Pro, Organization, and Enterprise plans.
1 Like
Josh, bless you for trying. But neither of these “updates” are fixing the primary complaint here… Figma is double dipping. If I am paying for a Figma account and my subcontractor is paying for a Figma account and we want to work on the same Figma file, one of us pays TWICE 
This is what we’re upset about, this is what needs solving. But because it makes Adove more money it’s not a problem they want to solve. This is like class action territory if someone would organize that let me know.
5 Likes
thats all well and good, but you are still double charging people when they are already paying editors rights? I cant believe thats in any way legal - so conceivably, if someone was an editor on one project and then invited to 20 other teams as editor, that one editor could accumulate 20 different editor bills in one month? even though that one person can only work on file at one time, given he / she is only one person? that doesnt sound right…
3 Likes
I agree. It’s really rubbish and sad.
The main issue is that the developer share is not fit for purpose that is why my developer friends want to have editor privileges. I’ve wasted tonnes of time with Figma billing support because I change access rights for my developer co-workers and then get billed unknowingly! Please stop this whole process. It makes you look so poor.
1 Like
@Figma, fucking deal with this shit! I work as a freelancer and it’s only normal that I share my files with clients. Now I have to be scared every time some client asks me if I can share the file with them because it means I’ll end up paying a fucking 15€ extra per month, for a file they just view once in a while.
4 Likes
This is such a bad response, you are litterally avoiding the problem here without admiting! It really makes Figma look bad because it looks like you are intentionnally keeping this “feature” just to make money.
2 Likes