Hello,
I would like to suggest the possibility of Sketch introducing a Free plan, similar to what Figma currently offers.
I understand that full access and advanced collaboration features should remain part of paid plans, but at the very least, allowing file sharing and basic real-time collaboration in the Free version would be extremely helpful.
This would support beginners and small teams, making it easier for them to collaborate and consider Sketch as their primary UI/UX design tool.
Hi @wigopaj591, we have no intentions of offering a free plan. I’ll share this from our pricing page FAQs which explains why:
We want to operate in a way that’s sustainable. Our business model is simple — we sell our product at a fair price — and we’ve been profitable since day one. We believe this commitment to long-term sustainability is a responsibility to our customers, who can trust that we’ll continue to be here and support their work, as we have for more than 10 years.
Offering a free tier inevitably leads to unpaid costs (free tiers still require storage, bandwidth, support and more). As a result, most products with a free tier will gradually remove features or apply limitations in an effort to force customers to move to a paid tier. That doesn’t feel right to us.
Our focus is on adding value to our product with consistent improvements and new features, not finding ways to remove it for customers who we’ve enticed with a free tier.
You mention Figma currently offers a free plan, but I think it’s worth pointing out we’re a vastly different business to Figma. Figma is now a public company, previously backed by extensive VC funding. We’re small and independent by choice. When you have very large pools of other people’s money to spend, offering your product for free is quite straightforward. Our goal is to remain sustainable and independent, and a free plan goes against that.
Additionally, a free plan for an app like Sketch, with a desktop editor that can work with local files, is hard to implement. At any moment in Sketch I can turn off my wifi and keep working with documents stored on my Mac. In order for us to limit how many files you were able to create on a free plan, we’d have to do some pretty privacy-invasive things to see what you’re storing, and that’s really not what we’re about.
Finally, I should mention that viewer seats are free (as are dev seats, which are the same thing to us) for viewing/commenting on/inspecting designs in the web app. Additionally, we do offer free subscriptions for students and educators.