Figma Review, Pricing & Features

What is Figma?

Figma is a design and prototyping software used by a wide range of businesses to collaborate on interactive prototypes and designs. Over four million users have used Figma for their design needs. Its standout points are its collaboration features and robust tool kit.

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Table of Contents

Figma Review Summary

Figma was founded in 2012 by Evan Wallace and Dylan Field. Since then, over 500 full time employees have served 50 thousand paying users from Figma’s San Francisco headquarters.

Figma’s features are tailored more for user experience designers and prototypers. This means that it does not include the user-friendly photo creation and editing features of Canva and Adobe Photoshop. Its strongest features are its tool kit and user interface.

Figma’s pricing starts at $12 per month per user. Its pricing is generally between its two closest competitors, Adobe XD and Sketch. Figma, however, offers an extensive free plan.

Overall, Figma is a powerful prototyping software built primarily for user experience designers and design teams in need of strong collaboration features. Figma’s free plan as well as its web browser support make it far more accessible than its direct counterparts, Sketch and Adobe XD. This accessibility also makes Figma a viable option for beginners in prototyping software.

  • If you are a marketer or a small business with far simpler design needs, consider Canva.
  • If you are in need of more affordable paid prototyping software, try Sketch.
  • If you are interested in more robust photo editing capabilities, try Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.

Figma Pricing & Cost

Figma pricing starts at $12 per user per month. Its starter plan comes with unlimited projects, as well as shareable team libraries.

Figma also provides a free plan with unlimited files and cloud storage.

Figma Features

Let’s discuss the major features that Figma offers and how they can help your design needs. Product screenshots are included to add context and demonstrate the user interface.

Designs

Figma is best for prototyping and wireframing. In this regard, it is very robust. However, we recommend alternatives like Canva or Visme if creating ready-made, well designed images and banners for your social media or small business is more important for you.

Design Types

Figma, like Sketch and Adobe XD, is built primarily for wireframing. This means that it’s best for creating mockups and interactive demos. Contrast this with Canva and Visme, which are best suited for social media posts, business cards, and presentations.

Figma Vector Graphic Icons

Figma works with vector graphics. These are scalable graphics you can create and export as SVG files. Because of this, it can be used to design logos similarly to Adobe Illustrator. However, note that Illustrator is a print-friendly software that offers more features centered around this model.

Templates

Figma comes with far more templates to choose from than Sketch. Figma supports the following templates:

  • Wireframe kits
  • Instagram templates
  • AWS diagrams
  • Google cloud diagrams
  • Azure diagrams
  • Customer journey map

Figma not only offers an ample amount of dedicated templates on its own, but also supports community made templates that can be added in the software itself. This means that if you are new to wireframing and prototyping software, Figma’s templates will be easier and more insightful to use.

Figma Templates

Tool Kit

Figma’s tool kit is built for prototypes and designers. You can customize your interface to include the exact tools and guides needed. In addition to its tools, Figma also allows you to create interactive demos of your prototypes. This means if you’re designing a website or mobile app, you can preview the user experience before moving forward.

User Interface

Figma’s user interface is sleek and customizable. An example of an uncustomized user interface is seen below.

Figma User Interface

Although Figma’s basic user interface is comprehensive, you can add a number of additional tweaks to modify your interface to your liking. These include:

  • Grid lines
  • Rulers
  • Outlines
  • Fonts
  • Toolbar
  • Resource use

Frames

Figma offers a large number of tool types to choose from. Each tool is designed to make prototyping simultaneously efficient and powerful.

The fundamental tool most users will start with is the Frame. Frames are similar to Sketch’s Artboards. They are canvases that house your prototypes and designs. Figma comes with a number of frame templates including:

Device CategoryDevice Types
Apple Devices
  • iPhone
  • iPad
  • Apple Watch
  • MacBook
Android Devices
  • Common mobile
  • Google Pixel
Social Media
  • Twitter post & header
  • Facebook post & cover
  • Instagram post & story
  • LinkedIn cover
Figma Frames

Once you’ve selected your Frame, you’re free to insert text and images. Figma does not come pre-installed with random generation features such as avatars, names, world cities, and images. These must be installed as free plug-ins from Figma’s community page.

Prototyping

Prototyping can be accomplished in Figma through its "Connections" tool. Connections in Figma are similar to Links and Hotspots in Sketch. They are essentially redirects that you can create from one Artboard to another. This allows you to simulate the actual experience of using the end product you’re prototyping.

Figma Prototyping

As you can see above, we’ve made connections with the scroll bar in each frame. You can also add additional animations to fine tune your prototype. We’ve added an "on drag" animation, which means the frames will transition upon a user dragging that specific element.

Having an array of animations and connection types available to you helps with immersion for your test user. It ensures your prototype can be as accurate as possible for both users and developers.

Components

Another important feature Figma offers is components. Components in Figma are the equivalent of Sketch’s Symbols. Components can help you substantially streamline your workflow by applying any changes you make across your entire file.

Figma Components

The main use case for this is if you are using the same element multiple times across your file, such as an arrow. You can mark any graphic, image, and text in Figma as a Component.

Now, anytime you make a change to that Component’s shape, size, or color, these changes will be made across your entire project. This means that you do not have to go through your entire project and individually make the same changes multiple times.

Photo Editing

Photo editing in Figma is limited when compared to Adobe Photoshop. This is because it is more so designed for wireframing rather than photo editing.

Figma Photo Editing

You can make very basic adjustments to your images. This includes:

  • Saturation
  • Brightness
  • Borders
  • Shadows
  • Blur

Although Figma’s photo editing is not as robust as alternatives, we feel it does well in accommodating designers looking to make quick edits without disturbing their workflow.

Collaboration

Collaboration is Figma’s standout feature. Figma features real time editing that can be leveraged by anyone with a web browser. Contrast this with Sketch, which only supports Mac computers. This accessibility means that collaboration in Figma is more flexible for your team than in Sketch and Adobe XD.

Projects can be edited by team members at any time. If multiple users are working at the same time, live cursors can be seen and even tracked in case they’re presenting changes.

Figma Commenting

Commenting in Figma is more flexible than Sketch. This is because you can pin exact areas of a project you want to comment on. This provides more context for both you and your team members.

Cloud Storage

Figma is fully cloud-based unlike Sketch. This means that you do not need to save your own projects on your device. We recommend Figma if you and your team will be handling a vast amount of projects and files.

Figma Version History

Version control is strong in Figma. You can access and restore versions up to 30 days with Figma’s free plan. There is no limit with paid plans. Figma’s advantage over Sketch in its version history is its capability of naming various versions and inputting specific changes. This makes restoring larger files easier in Figma.

Figma Integrations

Figma integrates primarily with prototyping, document management, and collaboration software. Here are some popular integrations Figma supports:

Figma Customer Service

Figma’s customer support team is quick to respond and attentive, but only available through email. Responses typically take one to two business days.

Figma’s secondary resources include a blog and best practice guide. These are effective ways to get updates on Figma as well as software guides for both new and experienced users.

Customer Support ChannelsEmail
Other Support ResourcesBlog, guides
Application Status PageYes

Figma Alternatives & Competitors

Figma has a number of competitors. Its most comparable alternatives are Adobe XD and Sketch.

Here’s a full list of Figma competitors:

Is Figma Right For You?

Overall, Figma is a powerful prototyping software built primarily for user experience designers and design teams in need of strong collaboration features. Figma’s free plan as well as its web browser support make it far more accessible than its direct counterparts, Sketch and Adobe XD. This accessibility also makes Figma a viable option for beginners in prototyping software.

  • If you are a marketer or a small business with far simpler design needs, consider Canva.
  • If you are in need of more affordable paid prototyping software, try Sketch.
  • If you are interested in more robust photo editing capabilities, try Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.

If you're interested, you can try Figma today.

Yousef Fatehpour

Yousef Fatehpour is a Junior Research Analyst at SoftwarePundit. He graduated from University of California, San Diego, where he studied Human Centered Design and Communications. His work at UCSD's Design Lab emphasized UX research and product management.

Yousef's primary areas of interest are software design, user journeys, and how user experience is handled across software markets. Yousef also has experience in product design and multimedia content production. You can connect with Yousef on LinkedIn.

Yousef is an expert in several software categories including:

  • SMS marketing software
  • Document management software
  • Human resource software
  • Applicant tracking software
  • Design software