Design & prototyping
Design handoff keeps breaking
What ships does not match what was designed, and the gap is discovered in QA rather than in review.
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Recognise this?
What it looks like from the inside
If three of these are true, the tool has stopped fitting the team. If one is, it is probably worth waiting.
- 01
Engineers build from screenshots or outdated files
- 02
No single source of truth for components and tokens
- 03
Non-designers need a paid seat just to leave a comment
- 04
Feedback is scattered across chat, email and slide decks
What separates the options
The questions that actually decide a design tool
Everyone asks about price and seat count. These are the ones specific to this category — and the ones our questionnaire asks you.
- 01
What are you mostly designing?
Product and app interfaces · Marketing sites and landing pages · Brand, social and collateral
- 02
How many non-designers open the files?
Almost nobody · Engineers, for specs · Half the company comments on things
- 03
What do people work on?
Everyone is on macOS · Mixed macOS, Windows and Linux
5 options
What you could move to
Every credible design tool we have done the work on. The questionnaire ranks them against your answers.
Canva
Template-driven design that non-designers can use without training.
$10/seat
Figma
The browser-based standard for interface design, systems and handoff.
$15/seat
Framer
Design tool and production website publisher in one product.
$20/seat
Penpot
Open-source, self-hostable design and prototyping built on web standards.
no seat cost
Sketch
The native macOS design app, now with a collaborative web layer.
$12/seat
Prices are unverified estimates — useful for comparing orders of magnitude, not for budgeting. Confirm the current figure with the vendor before you commit to anything.
Questions
Before you move
Is switching design tool actually the fix?
Sometimes, and sometimes not. If the symptoms are about a capability the tool does not have — retention controls it cannot enforce, a price that scales the wrong way, an integration that does not exist — then switching solves it. If they are about how your team uses the tool, a new one will reproduce the same mess in a fresh interface within six months. The questionnaire asks what is driving the change precisely to separate those two cases.
Which design tool should we move to?
The credible options are Canva, Figma, Framer, Penpot, Sketch. Which is right depends on your team size, budget and non-negotiables — a 12-person team with no compliance requirement and a 400-person team that needs EU data residency should not end up with the same answer. The questionnaire ranks all 5 against your specific situation.
What does it cost to fix?
Two numbers matter: the licence difference and the cost of the move itself. Median list price in this category is about $15 per seat per month, so the licence difference at 50 seats is usually a few thousand dollars a year either way. The migration is the bigger number, and it scales with history, integrations and headcount rather than with the tool you pick. The questionnaire estimates both.
How long does a switch like this take?
For a team under 50 with a handful of integrations, a few weeks of elapsed time and one to two weeks of actual work. Above 200 people, or with compliance in scope, plan a quarter. The single biggest variable is not the tool — it is how much history has to come with you, and how many other systems are wired into the one you are leaving.
Get the 5 options ranked for your team
About a dozen questions — team size, budget, timeline, what is non-negotiable — and you get a shortlist with the reasoning shown, plus what the move would cost.
Get my shortlist