About Figma’s new Starter plan

The Starter plan updates rolled out on April 21, 2021. In addition to the below changes, we’re introducing FigJam to all plans! During the beta period, users can enjoy unlimited usage. Next year, we’ll introduce both free and paid plans for FigJam.

We all know that design is never a solo act—there are always reviewers, clients, or teammates of some kind. That’s why we built Figma in the browser, which is what makes it inherently more collaborative than other design technology. In fact, that’s what leads many teams to Figma. But knowing about the power of better collaboration and actually experiencing it are two different things.

Collaboration is more than just sharing assets. It’s working together in real-time. For many new users—skeptics and enthusiasts alike—the free Starter plan is their entry point to Figma and their first experience with multiplayer.

But since we launched the Starter plan as part of our closed beta in 2015, we realized that the plan, with its two-editor limit, didn’t let teams experience the full potential of multiplayer.

Before we share more insight into why we’re updating the plan, let’s recap what’s actually changing.

Changes to Figma’s free Starter plan

Drafts is becoming a personal space for work. In drafts, you’ll still have unlimited files, pages, and viewers. However, if you want to co-edit with others, you have to move the file to a team space.

In the team space, we’re removing the two-editor limit, which means you'll now be able to collaborate more freely with unlimited editors. In order to introduce unlimited editors for free, we'll be adding a new maximum of three files in the team space. Each file will have a cap of three pages.

The “why” behind these changes

To unlock the full potential of multiplayer, we needed to unlock the two-editor cap. We considered other options, like doubling the editor limit, but we realized that any limit would be arbitrary—especially as we continue to build more products for teams.

Every team and designer is different. Some want to work with one other collaborator, while others need to share with fifty teammates. Any team, regardless of size, should be able to try Figma’s Starter plan and experience multiplayer firsthand.

To make sure that this new proposed plan would work, we tested it with thousands of new and existing users around the world. Here is what we learned:

• 87% of users expressed excitement with the change to unlimited editors in the team space
• Teams saw a 29% increase in collaboration without the two-editor limit
• Users typically only actively collaborate on 2-3 files at a time, so the new file and pages limits in the team space felt reasonable, since unlimited files were still available in drafts

What you can expect

We are rolling out the new Starter plan on April 21, 2021. All existing files, pages, and projects created before then will not be moved, changed, or impacted. Over the coming weeks, we’ll continue giving our Starter users a heads-up both via email and in the Figma app.

As always, we build our product based on user feedback. And improving our free Starter plan is just as important as any feature we build—it’s central to making design accessible to all. If you have any questions or input regarding the new plan, please email us starter@figma.com, or check out this help center article for more details.

P.S. If you’re a student or educator, don’t forget to apply to our Figma for Education plan. It gets you everything on our Professional plan for free.