Designers are ditching Figma for this new tool!

This new interface design tool is currently used by 80,000 teams, including Microsoft, Mozilla, IBM, and Google. It has amassed over 400,000 users since it launched in 2022. On the day the Thanos of the design industry, Adobe, announced that they were going to acquire Figma— a small price to pay for salvation— this tool saw a spike of 5,600%. And its new user. The tool I'm talking about is Penpot, and it is an open source design tool that is in a subtle competition with Figma. In today's video, I'm going to be talking about why some designers are ditching Figma for Penpot, and I'm going to be doing a rapid-fire comparison between both tools using factors like features, ease of use, community, pricing, and the design to development flow. I'll also be rating each of these factors on a scale of 1 to 10. By the end of the video, I'll let you know what I think about Penpot replacing Figma as the ultimate design tool. The major factor that differentiates Penpot from other interface design tools out there is the fact that it's open source. And what does this mean? This means that the code of Penpot is publicly available for anyone to view, use, modify, and distribute as they please, as long as they know how to code. This also means that you can decide to self-host the tool on your own personal server so that you can make sure that your data is protected. If that's something that's important to you, that way you get to keep your data to yourself if you self-host it. And this is what makes this tool different from every other interface design tool out there. So let's talk about features. Like Figma, Penpot is also a web-based browser tool, and it has most of the essential features that you would need to create interactive prototypes. I'm talking about features like components, interaction, transitions, and real-time collaboration features like comments, sharing presentations, and also has a whiteboarding tool if you want to do any kind of whiteboarding as well. Figma still has a lot more features because of its maturity. I think one of the major gaps in features is the fact that Figma's design system feature is a lot more robust than Penpot, but Penpot is shipping very, very fast. So for features, I'm going to give Figma a 9 and I'll give Penpot a 5. Next, let's talk about ease of use. I found Penpot slightly overwhelming. The onboarding process for me was good, it was quick, but as soon as I got into like the interface itself, like the, the artboard where I actually get to put my designs together, I find the interface slightly overwhelming. It looks a lot like Webflow, and I find Webflow overwhelming as well. That's why I don't use Webflow till today. But this might also be because I've gotten used to like the mental model of designing in Figma. So I'm expecting every other tool to look like that, which is unfair to Penpot. I also think Penpot is designed to be a lot more developer-friendly than designer-friendly, and Figma is designed to be designer-friendly, and they are just now bringing in a lot more developer-friendliness into their products. But I think Penpot is designed to be a lot more developer-friendly, which could be a strength and a weakness. A strength because with developer friendliness, they've thought about the design to development workflow from the very, very beginning of the product. So it is baked into the product. So that way it's easy to hand off to developer. In fact, there's no need for a developer handoff on Penpot. It can be a weakness because if the designers are like your main target users, then it might contradict the mental model of designers in such a way that they might not be able to start getting into the tool and using it as quick as possible because they've already been used to like designing in Figma. But I'll be honest, Figma has also started getting a little bit complex recently with introductions of new features like variables. You can't just pick up these features and start using them. You literally have to go through a lot of tutorials. You have to go through a lot of learning to understand how to use these features. So for ease of use, I'll give Figma an 8 and Penpot a 5. Next, let's talk about community. Figma has a community tab where designers can find resources from other designers, designers can share resources, and designers can even get paid or monetize some of their own resources, which I think is a very, very fantastic feature. Figma also has the largest design event by a mile, which is Config. So the Figma community is really amazing. Penpot, on the other hand, also has a very, very active community. I find Penpot's community quite interesting because of how involved the community is in the product. And this is one of the advantages of having an open source tool because this way everybody is part of the development process. Even if you can't code, you can recommend features that you'd like to see and anybody can take part in the community. The community is so diverse. You have people that are from developed countries contributing to the code and you also have somebody from a third world country also contributing to the code as well. So this is something that I actually find interesting about Penpot, the fact that it is a tool that is built by the community for the community. Penpot also have their own design event which is growing rapidly, which is called the Penpot Fest. So for community, I would give Figma a slight edge. I'll give Figma an 8 and Penpot a 7. Next, let's talk about the elephant in the room, which is pricing. Pricing is the biggest reason why designers and companies might want to consider an alternative tool like Penpot. Let's jump into Figma to see what their pricing looks like. Here's the pricing page for Figma. Figma has separate pricing for Figma and for their whiteboarding tool, FigJam. On the pricing page, starter plan is still free. Starter plan has always been free on Figma. But the things that the starter plan can access have been limited from time to time. Now you have the Figma editor. You can create 3 collaborative design files, which means that you can only invite people to 3 files. You still have unlimited personal drafts. I think there's, there's something around drafts now that you have to like move drafts into actual projects. And then you can have like the basic file inspection without the dev mode. And then you have the professional, which is at £14 per seat per month. And you have all the features. Now you have organization, which is at £40, which is where things start to get like really expensive. Yeah, for each designer in the organization, you have to pay £40 for that person. And then for dev mode only, that means if you want to bring your developers into the tool to come and do their dev mode inspection and leave, you're going to pay £22, which is more than half of what you actually pay for a designer just for using maybe 20% of all the features that you have on Figma. I think that is quite expensive. I understand that Figma hasn't turned a profit since they launched in 2016, which is 8 years now. So as a company, they also need to make money. At the same time, it is getting really, really expensive for like a freelancer or like a very small design agency of like 2 to 5 designers. Penpot, on the other hand, have a pricing page as well. But on their pricing page, it is clear there that Penpot is free, and they're basically just talking about how they plan to make the product successful and sustainable without charging anything. One of the things that they mentioned here is that they are going to make sure that all the features remain free for every user, and then there will be other Simply Pay tiers which might include storage-based threshold for their SaaS or enterprise-ready certified builds for self-host. So when you want to get into where you want to host this in your enterprise, for example, a military agency might want to use Penpot and host it as their enterprise because they want to keep all their data to themselves, or a security agency like the CIA, for example, might want to keep everything private to themselves. They don't want to use any kind of tool that they would send their data to. Then those kind of agencies would have to pay for it, which makes sense. It means that this is free For the average person, either you're making money through your business, either it's a commercial project you're working on, or it is just a simple passion project that you're working on. Penpot is free for everyone forever. Figma has become really expensive for an average freelancer or a small team of 2 to 5 to use. So on pricing, I'm going to give Figma a 6 and I'll give Penpot a 9. I mean, it doesn't get any better than being able to get a tool that you can use for absolutely free. Even if you are using it commercially. Lastly, let's talk about the design to development flow. Figma launched the dev mode feature at their Config conference last year. I think it has become obvious that for an interface tool to be successful, you have to think about simplifying the design to development handoff process. And this is the gap that Figma is trying to bridge. Figma saw that 30% of their users were actually developers. So what did they do? They developed the dev mode feature and monetized it by charging companies to pay for every developer seat that gets to use the dev mode feature, which I think is, you know, yeah, it's a bit harsh, but then capitalism, you know, they have to make money. In typical Figma fashion, the dev mode feature is a well-designed but expensive afterthought. Now, Penpot, on the other hand, has designed the development feature as part of its products from day one. I said it before that Penpot seems to be a lot more developer-friendly, so they, they really consider the needs of developers as part of the products, and that really shows in the newly launched flex and grid CSS layout, which actually mirrors how things are developed in the web. I think that was the reason why it felt a bit overwhelming when I looked at the interface the very first time, but this means that it'll be completely erases the need for handoff. You don't need a separate tool or a separate feature to be able to hand off to your developers. Developers can easily just build what they want to build based on how it has been designed in the tool itself. And again, it's free forever. So for this reason, I'll be giving Figma a 6 and Penpot an 8. Overall, Figma scores 37 and Penpot scores 34. Obviously, Figma is still the superior tool here. I'm sure no one was surprised by that, even though these were just like my own ratings for each of these features. But I'm actually surprised by how close Penpot is for a product that only got launched about 2 years ago. They are shipping really fast. They are putting a lot of features. The community is very, very active, and I'm actually really rooting for this product. I believe there are 3 reasons why designers are switching to an alternative tool like Penpot. The first reason is the obvious reason, the fact that it is absolutely free and Figma is just getting more expensive. Second reason is because most designers do not want to feel like they are using another tool that is owned by Adobe. This was the reason why there was so much surge in users that migrated to Penpot. And I've even seen a lot of questions on Twitter, on Reddit about people asking for alternative tools. Because of all of these new features that Figma is bringing in and the fact that they are more focused on teams and companies. Thankfully, the deal with Adobe fell through. That threat of actually being part of Adobe does not exist anymore. But this was one of the major reasons why a lot of designers bothered to check out this tool in the first place, just because of the fact that this company Adobe has introduced a lot of dark patterns into their products. And it feels like if they do acquire Figma, they are going to bring in a lot of their DNA into Figma. So yeah, a lot of people opted to even check out this tool called Penpot just because of that announcement from Figma. And if that acquisition had actually gone through, I think a lot more designers would have migrated. The third reason is the fact that some people are inclined to support open source projects because they believe they're ethical projects, because these projects don't make any kind of revenue or any kind of money. And it just feels like it's good for society. People can contribute, people support by using the products, and there's been a couple of successful open source projects as well. WordPress is an open source project. I think one of the browsers is an open source project as well. I can't remember what the name of the browser is, but I would put in the name as I'm talking through this so you can see. Now, do I think Penpot can actually replace Figma as the ultimate design tool in the next 5 years? I don't think so. That's the short answer. Penpot is going to get a lot of market share. Because of the fact that it is very, very freelancer and small team size friendly. But a lot of teams are still going to rely on Figma to be able to get their job done. A lot of designers will still rely on Figma to be able to get their job done, mostly because Figma is a lot more advanced when it comes to the features. One of the disadvantages of open source projects is just like that care to like the smallest detail of things might not really be there with open source projects. But a closed source project like Figma that has a team that is actively behind it would make sure that the put proper care into every little detail of every kind of product or feature that they release. And we've seen this with Figma already. Figma actually does care about how they design their products. Although when it comes to monetizing it, I wouldn't really say they care about that. But you can tell that Figma actually cares about how they actually design their products. And this is one of the disadvantages that I see from Penpot being an open source project, because it is a project that is developed by the community. that final piece of just caring for like the smallest simple detail might not be there. However, I'm really, really rooting for Penpot in all of this. I am a big fan of the underdog in this story and I want to see how they actually get to progress. I'm actually going to be using Penpot for some of my own personal projects as well. Would you be using Penpot for any of your personal projects? Let me know in the comment section. And if you'd like me to make a tutorial on how to create a landing page using Penpot, Just type in pen pot tutorial in the comment section. That'll be all for this video. Don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this. I'll see you in the next one.