Here’s how they do it!

Let me start with stating that at hype4.com we use Sketch as our primary design tool for all our professional projects. However, because one particular client insisted, we purchased a paid Figma plan — just for that one specific project.

We invited the three designers from hype4 that are going to work on this project and paid $45 ($15 each).

A little on the expensive side with $15 but ok, it’s not a lot, right?

Now here’s where it gets sneaky

There are two things within Figma that can make you pay a lot more than you anticipated. The first one is in the project permissions — if you have it at “anyone with the link can edit” it simply means that when your clients joins the project, they become an editor and now you’re paying for them too.

With this setting enabled anyone who JOINS the file will be a new paid member on your invoice.

There is absolutely NO information that you will cover the charge of every person that joins the file — even by clicking on it by mistake and quitting right away. Boom — they’re an editor now and here’s another $15 for you.

The other thing is that all editors can INVITE other editors without any moderation. So let’s say I decide that I want to pay for one client editor for the duration of the project. I invite them and yeah — we’re fine, I’ll add the $15 to their invoice.

And then they invite 25 people from their company thinking it’ll speed up the design process because “teams design together” right?

That’s extra $375 for the privilege.

Dark pattern

The billing section is designed in a way where you can’t even see directly for which emails you’re paying — we paid for three seats, it now says “four seats” and Figma’s stance is: You figure it out.

When you have multiple projects and files this can become a huge burden and Figma is definitely counting on that.

Maybe let’s just pay them extra and avoid the hassle, right?

I had some privacy concerns with Figma before but this is another reason I don’t trust that company. Just read their privacy policy carefully, it’s the worst, most invading one out of all the design tools — at least it was last year.

Sneaky dark patterns like that are designed to maximize revenue at the expense of the user. This is done on purpose, because after all it’s a design company. They know what they’re doing.