This pricing move and functionality removal is insane. Inspect was good. Dev mode is better, sure. But not at extra cost and greater risk. We work hard to get Figma approved in our orgs, to encourage devs to visit our designs in Figma and learn to use yet another tool. Now someone has to pay for the devs to access those designs? And, even worse, in the Professional plan we need them to have a design seat, heaping risk and complexity on top of financial cost. Just wow.
Part of the reason Figma was great was that small designers could afford to use it and it made hand-offs to their clients effective. Plus, they were learning an industry standard tool. Now, thatās a much more confused picture.
Itās madness, Figma. You have to fix this. You are bleeding credibility, you are losing business.
You know, Iād actually be ok with the price increase if the original inspect tab was unchanged, but now developers without the designer seat cannot even inspect all the properties of elements.
This is why everybody is up in arms. There was a basic free mode, it was called the Inspect Panel, which they removed when dev mode became a paid feature.
Please be careful what you wish for. I understand your intentions are honable being willing to pay for a seat.
But hereās whatās really happening. In order for a developer to gain access to dev mode on one of your files, they have to be within your organization. Meaning freelance developers that work with multiple design agencies, need to be a part of all of those organizations, in order to access dev mode.
So even if a Freelance Developer pays for their own Figma account, they will not be able to access Dev Mode from a file that comes from an agency.
Figma expects multiple agencies to pay for that same Freelance Developer to be in their organization. That means Figma is Double, Triple, Endless dipping on that same single developer. This is borderline criminal.
Again, I understand your intentions are pure. But even still, your method results in unjust business practices for Figma.
Dev Mode should work with freelancers, full stop, period. If I Own the file, and I have a paid account, dev mode should be available to any freelancer I share the file with. Iād be willing to pay Extra for My design account to enable dev mode to all developers I work with, but Having to pay for all freelancers to be a part of my organization, and then other companies have to pay again for those same freelancers. This is a total Scam.
A freelance Developer paying for their own professional account does not give them access to dev mode. The developer must be a part of the organization who owns the Figma file.
Meaning that same developer, must be paid for by each and every agency that works with him. This is called double dipping, and is absolutely a scam.
I canāt believe that profit always needs to be in the first place, no matter how stupid decisions are, if itās profitable thatās OK.
Donāt get me wrong, I donāt mind profit.
To explain why this is a ridiculous idea. We are company that use just our freelance developers network of 5-10 developers, in future that will be even more. Part of the industry goes in a direction where the cooperation of freelancers makes a team.
Why I need to pay for seats of all the developers that work with our designers instead that developers pay for their licence and be able to be invited in multiple teams.
This is stupid, except if money is the only motivator behind the idea.
And if it is, there will be a new company that will see an opportunity in a better model and give people what they want.
This thread is hilarious. The funniest comments are āAdobe is to blameā.
What did you expect? Figma stores god only knows how much data indefinitely, and every manipulation inside the app is server processing time. None of that is free. Someone so far had been paying that huge bill, in the hopes of Adobe coming in and paying billions.
Now that the deal is off, they no longer see the point in financing that little communist experiment, and they want their money back.
But Figma pricing is greater than almost every one of our other tools combined. So relatively speaking, something is far, far off. If hosting is really a concern, then they should provide a free or minimally priced, self-hosted version.
What I expected? I expected they to not waste time and money creating dev mode if it is so expensive and aggregates so little.
As tech chief I can say, we would spend (better to say invest) many times more, would it aggregate value for its price, but tools like copilot, miro, and etc do a much better job finding a good ratio, so, we move budget somewhere else.
You know what is curious? Figma probably is one of the most expensive per set services our company uses, but is in the list of smallest monthly cost we have.
We use Figma in a large company where one ux designer serves around 10 developer. As a developer seat costs half a design seat we would quintuple our costs. This is Ridiculous and even more a developer pays for a ide seat. We will take this into account in our design tool strategy
I have always been a Figma advocate. I love the tool, the marketing, everything. But I canāt understand this move that is so out of touch with the needs of the users.
I am on a pro plan. I need to give access to devs from an external agency to my designs. Their need is only to inspect, they donāt need to edit, in fact, they should not be able to edit.
We work with external agencies as well that are responsible for their designs, and a different agency for development. How can I ask the design company to pay for an editor seat, and give access to the design to a third company?
If devs were to pay, it should be up to their employer, and it should work similarly to slack connect. Similarly to slack, we should be able to give basic inspect functions to dev, without extra cost. If a dev wants to have more features, then it should be up to them subscribe to a specific plan (a dev plan, not a design planā¦).
Same as others, I am considering for first time in several years to move to another tool. This change is a sign of the companyās changing policy.
Looks like I am not the only one to consider changing.
In our organization, my team and I primarily use Figma for most of our design work. Figmaās licensing for designers is quite advantageous, as the tool is well-suited for a variety of tasks.
However, the licensing for developers seems excessive, almost as if itās forcing developers to buy a license. This situation is causing many designers to consider switching to other tools like Penpot and Adobe XD.
Dear Figma team, please consider this feedback. Developers often do not need edit access for design files, they spend most of their time developing our apps with the CSS code you provide. Plugins and other features are often not utilized by developers. If the licensing continues to be enforced in this manner, we might have to consider switching to other products.
Therefore, it would be greatly appreciated if you could reconsider the pricing of the licenses or provide some options for developer mode access. Thank you.
Figma has forgotten that this tool is built and promoted by the community especially designers. And now pricing is in a way that they are ripping off the same community promoted them. After 6+ years of working with Figma Iām ready to switch if there is a new player in the market and offers competitive pricing.
I also asked my frontend developer is she needs the dev mode - she said no and the same day we ran into problems because she could not copy the gradient css and some other minor inconvieniences. If dev seat was $5-10 I wouldnāt even think twice.
Iām really disappointed with Figmaās new pricing. It feels unfair to freelancers and small agencies like mine. Iāve recommended Figma for years, but now Iām looking into penpot and pixso. At first, Figma was great compared to Adobe, offering good performance and caring about its users. Sadly, the latest changes to your prices have been a big step backward, even worse than Adobe.
Engineers are not designers. They only need to āviewā the designs and code that was generated. That is like < 1% of the capability of Figma. We should NOT be paying the same subscription amount for engineers as we pay for a designer. Each designer supports about 15 engineers and to pay for 16 designer seats when in actuality, thereās only one designer is daylight robbery. Perhaps it is okay to pay $1 or $2 for adding an engineer for collaboration but itās NOT okay to charge the same amount as for a designer.
Figma is easily worse than Adobe, because even they wouldnāt dare to put such anti-consumer practices to use.
These arenāt decisions made by leaders who want their product to prosper, but people who want to make as much money as fast as possible, consequences be damned - so what if they eventually destroy the brand? They made money, thatās all that matters.
Just like before Figma, itās absolutely possible to change the status quo. There are plenty of competitors to it (Penpot and Pixso come to mind instantly), and just like Figma, one of the might eventually take over. Iāve only recently switched to Figma, and I have no problem jumping the ship again.
The tool is great, but itās not worth constantly worrying about paying extra in such shady way for somebody who works on a lot of smaller projects.
Just want to express my disappointment about blocking the inspect feature behind a paywall. This is completely ridiculous.
Iām no designer, Iām not working with Figma. I just want to inspect an element our designer made - who already pays for Figma - to get its font size, color code, padding, etc.
We are on the Org Plan and working constantly with external developers. The current business model for Dev mode is impractical, expensive and time consuming.
