I wanted to add another reply to mention that the Dylan, the CEO, specifically mentioned during his Config keynote that Figma needs to do a better job of meeting the needs of non-org and enterprise customers, and then a few minutes later they released Slides with an Org and Enterprise-paywalled feature for the core ability to publish templates, so Figma has a long way to go if they want to do more than sound good on stage regarding this particular promise. When he said that I thought “okay, prove it” and they didn’t really offer any specifics on how they will actually make things more equitable for users who aren’t on the Org or Enterprise tier.
I hope they reconsider this paywall, because as a single designer on a pro plan, it would actually be really useful for me to create a template that I can use for multiple slide decks, and obviously as an individual designer, upgrading to an Org plan is pretty much out of the question and way more than I need.
You could argue that publishing templates for internal use is a feature specifically tailored to offering larger teams an option to create more consistent decks, and that the use case just isn’t there for solo designers, but I don’t think that’s true, and really it’s such a simple feature on the surface that this seems hard to justify in any sense that doesn’t involve nickel-and-diming us.
Just as I thought Figma slides would finally put all the horrible presentation software to rest, this basic problem pops up. you could limit the amount of templates depending on the plan but having the ability to create them should be the absolute minimum.
This really slows down my process and makes me not want to use Figma Slides, despite its other great features. Now I have to spend a good amount of time recreating a branded proposal deck every time I need to make a deck, time that would be better spent getting the deck in the clients hand sooner.
Hi everyone! Kaitie here as an Advocate from Figma. Thank you all for your excitement for Slides and for this helpful feedback.
I wanted to jump into the thread to share that we intend to make custom templates in Slides available on Pro! We wanted to get this functionality in users’ hands ASAP and to do that we had to mirror how we built this for FigJam, where custom templates are on Organization and Enterprise plans. We don’t have a concrete timeline yet, so stay tuned for updates here, and please keep your feedback coming about Slides.
That is great to hear Kaitie and a great example of Figma listening to the community. We’re excited over here to finally have something to kick powerpoint out the door once and for all.
Agreed, it’s hard to justify spending time on this tool if I can’t create templates for my organisation. That was the entire point, and I expected this feature to be available even for testing in the Beta version – it’s essential when transitioning from templated files in other applications. We already have templated files within Figma that we use as slides, which is how we’ve created our presentations for clients and internal meetings. This feature needs to be enabled for me to justify the additional costs associated with adopting this software, and until then, I cannot afford to spend time in the tool in case it turns out to be a waste.
Hi Katie! Do you have an updated ETA for when custom slide templates will be available for Pro plans? This is currently blocking our team’s adoption of the product.
Apologies for the delay, @Michael_McCann. I didn’t want to spoil the surprise that today is the day Custom templates in Slides is available on Pro as of today!
Hope this removes the blocker for your team, and thanks for your patience!
