Which Figma paid plan do you need for your organization? An in-depth comparison

Once you’ve extended the life of your Figma Starter (aka Free) plan and can see your enterprise scaling beyond one team project (and needing a more robust collaboration for more than three team files), you may be starting to think about upgrading to a more powerful plan. This is a comprehensive breakdown of the reasons why you might want one or the other.

On the Figma website, we can see that there are some nice-to-haves on both plans.

Image credit to the Figma.com website.

So, which one do you need? And what’s the major difference for the additional $12 vs $45 per month per user?

90% of small teams who need just a slightly more robust sharing system and version control are probably going to be perfectly fine with the Professional plan. However, I thought it might be most helpful to actually break this down by talking about the main reasons why you might actually need an organization plan in the first place.

Figma is awesome for major collaboration systems! GIF credit to Figma.com

What is an Organization-wide design team/system?

If you need an unlimited number of teams users can create or join, Organization-wide design team systems can simplify your process for when members across teams need to share prototypes or double-check design systems. This will significantly improve streamlining your process since teams can share Component and Style libraries, so everyone can use the same collection of assets.

For example, if you have several design systems you’re trying to juggle, this is a necessity to keep everything under one centralized umbrella! But if you only have one or two, this may not be as important.

Why would I want a centralized team?

From a corporate leadership level, this centralized area can help manage users, teams, billing, and shared resources across your organization from the main Admin dashboard. This would be especially helpful if you have 50+ designers/developers on one product.

Figma’s more extensive permissions and editor settings for fine-tuning who has access to what.

GIF credit to Figma.com

But what about Advanced Security? How much do I really need?

Advanced Security features are particularly important if you have confidential, sensitive, or private work that is under heavily regulated industries (HIPAA, pharmaceuticals, transport/manufacturing).

The Figma Organization Plan has Link Access Controls, which limit the ability to share files through links outside your enterprise. They make sure that no one can view your files unless explicitly invited.

Additionally, full content ownership means that every file, including your user drafts, is owned by your organization and can be recovered when someone leaves the company.

Activity logs (the equivalent of Git Blame!) are a great way to see who has edited what in each file, in case there is a need to track a missing asset or to see if someone has updated a file to the most recent changes.

SSO, also known as Single Sign-On, is a singular central way to log in that can simplify user access. Essentially, users log in using their main work email and password so that they don’t have to juggle many different passwords or log in credentials.

This is particularly useful for simplifying regulatory compliance and decreasing chances for authentication/security issues.

Not all organizations really need this, but if you work in a HIPAA field, it could be required. So be sure to check with your client or industry in the case that you may actually be required to have these functionalities.

Don’t be afraid to try one plan out and see how it works for your team!

Again, many of these advanced security features are used for highly regulated industries or if your organization needs much more granular levels of permissions for users across teams. So, it may be a good idea to try the professional plan and see if you need more functionalities before diving head-first into the organization plan!

Good luck with your decision-making and let me know which plan you choose!

Still in the process of figuring out if you want to use Sketch or Figma or Adobe XD? Check out my other article here with a comparison of their features!