Only owners/admins to grant editor status + new editor seat(s) warning

Normally I don’t pay much attention to our Figma invoices because the number of editors on our account hasn’t changed in a long time. However, I happened to look at our invoice this month and noticed that we were suddenly being billed for 12 Figjam editor seats, up from 5 the previous month!

I checked our account and sure enough, multiple users who were previously set to view-only in FigJam had suddenly been upgraded to editors. Considering that we barely use FigJam I have no idea how this happened, but the fact that it can happen without explicit action from or notice to me, the admin, is upsetting.

I’m not the first person to have this complaint. Figma has always been loosey-goosey with roles and permissions to their benefit, and the fact that they’ve ignored feedback about this for so long tells me that that’s exactly what they want. All the same, I’ll add my voice to the pile saying that it’s an unscrupulous business practice and really sours my attitude towards the software.

Perhaps the one good thing to come out the Adobe acquisition will be giving admins some much-needed transparency and control over how seats are created and roles are assigned.

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Hi @RizePoint_Product - we understand your frustration. This usually happens because there are added seats outside the original annual agreement. If you haven’t already, please get in touch with our support team for help correcting seat numbers & charge here: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

(The forums are primarily run by the community and, because of privacy and security reasons, please do not share any personal info in response to this in the Forum.)

Thank you for your understanding!

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Hi Celine,

Thanks for reaching out. I was able to fix the issue of the new editors on my own. My true issue is the larger problems of:

  1. There is no friction to adding new paid seats to a Figma/FigJam plan, meaning it’s easy to do so accidentally
  2. There is no notification that new paid seats have been added to a plan besides the sudden arrival of, or increase in, the next monthly invoice. But any change that involves greater expense to the customer should have ample warning before they’re billed for it.
  3. Users besides admins are able to add new editor seats, which should not be the case.
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It’s crazy that someone who is just an editor can invite as many people as they want as editors, immediately adding paid seats – no warning: nothing. This should be an owner/admin role only, or at least there should be an option that makes it so.

I shouldn’t have to resort to insisting on refunds from Figma support. It feels really shady and lowers my esteem for the company whose product I love.

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I agree. We had this situation a couple of days ago where my unknowing colleague gave a person editor rights without any warning and knowlege about costs.

It definitly shouldn’t be like this.

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This exact thing happened to our team. Just don’t understand how it’s okay to charge without any prior indication. Is this the dark UX side of Figma? :unamused: :angry:

Same issue here. It makes zero sense to have a permission structure to manage roles and then it’s easily circumvented, either maliciously or by mistake.

It should never be allowed by default for non-admin roles to make any changes that will generate additional billing, these should always default to admin approval.

It could still operate as it does, but with express admin configuration and a clear understanding of these options.

I’ve already had multiple instances of backlash from Finance over extra charges for my team and had to ask for invoice cancellation a few times as well.

If there’s no improvement on this front I may seriously need to consider closing off our Figma team to outsiders, or even looking at other alternatives, even at cost of losing functionality.

I’ve had the same problem. I work as a freelancer and I share my projects for the outsiders to view only. Then suddenly I get a massive bill out of nowhere saying there are number of editors on my Figma account. I really don’t understand how this works! I’m the only Admin and I’m neither notified or have full control of how my paid plan is…? If this is due to lack of awareness then I would like to know how to prevent this in the future, if not then it’s kinda shady and I would have to reconsider using paid plan.

Hi Celine,

We (Curve Analytics) have just experienced this exact issue as described - Editor users ballooning because Figma lacks a robust upgrade approval process out of the box. It has cost us $15k - an over $10k increase vs. our usual billing.

Our Product Support response is completely unsatisfactory - telling us the bill is good and that we have to make do with the inflated user licenses for a year. The invoice - issued on Sunday - was the first we knew about it. We corrected user numbers on the Monday.

Please can you support in escalating this issue internally - we would like a refund. Per your Community note above, I see this is possible, but based on the Support email they are dragging their feet. We will 100% not be using Figma going forwards and be sharing our experience with clients and the design community if we cannot resolve this satisfactorily. Alternatively, Figma can make its approval processes more robust, issue us a new bill for the right number of users, and we can continue using and growing over time with Figma :slight_smile:

Thanks,
James

Hey @Alicia_Dean ,
Sorry to hear you are still having issues with your billing. Unfortunately, we’re not equipped to handle billing issues here on the Forum (for both security and privacy reasons), but the support team can assist you. I saw in our backend that the support team replied to you. Please check your inbox, for your reference, your ticket number is: #919491. I have also escalated internally your feedback to the team. Thank you!