Overview of Figma
Figma was originally designed as a web design tool — and quickly became the most popular one — allowing users to design and prototype web interfaces. But in recent years, the platform has evolved significantly. Today, Figma is an all-in-one solution built for collaboration, covering the entire design process from initial idea to launch.
You can brainstorm, design, prototype, present, collaborate with developers — and more recently, even build websites directly within Figma (thanks to Figma Sites). The tool has become a standard across companies, agencies, freelancers, and teams — used not just by designers, but also by developers, product managers, marketers, communication teams, and even sales.
In this guide, we’ve compiled everything you need to know about Figma: its features, pricing, best use cases, learning resources, and our expert agency opinion on the tool.
What’s New in 2025
Each year, Figma unveils its latest features and product updates during its annual Config event. And each year, we break down the announcements and share our expert insights.
Read the full article on Config 2025
Tools and Features
Let’s start by understanding who Figma is for and when to use it. Figma has evolved into a complete suite of tools (similar to Adobe’s model), offering several modules tailored to the different stages of a digital project. Here’s an overview of Figma’s most widely used features and tools.
(1) Brainstorming with FigJam

Teams involved: Marketing, Product, Design, Development
Figma offers a dedicated brainstorming tool: FigJam. Designed like a collaborative whiteboard, it helps structure ideas together, in real-time.
Use cases include:
- Ideation workshops (design sprints, product roadmaps, project kick-offs, etc.)
- Creating user flows, sitemaps, customer journeys, diagrams, etc.
- Interactive, visual meetings with real-time collaboration tools
FigJam includes simple yet powerful features: sticky notes, freehand drawing, stickers, timers, ready-to-use templates… An integrated AI also lets you generate predefined templates for workshops (roadmaps, mind maps, kick-offs, marketing strategies, etc.) using prompts.
A perfect tool to bring ideas to life before moving on to the next stages of a project.
(2) Webdesign with Figma Design File

Teams involved: Design, Product
At the core of Figma is its UI/UX design interface, whether you’re building a website or a digital product (SaaS). It allows you to design both web and mobile interfaces from A to Z:
- UX wireframes
- Responsive UI mockups
- Interactive prototypes
With a system of reusable components, global styles, variables, and auto layout, Figma gives you everything you need to build robust and scalable design systems.
And since Figma is a SaaS tool (cloud-based), multiple designers can work simultaneously on the same file.
Of course, collaboration doesn’t stop there — as you’ll see in the next features.
(3) Graphic designs with Draw

Teams involved: Design, Graphic Designers
Figma Draw is the new vector drawing tool launched in 2025. It’s designed for more creative profiles who want to draw illustrations, icons, or custom visuals directly within Figma.
The key benefit? It combines the precision of a vector tool (like Adobe Illustrator) with the fluidity of freehand sketching.
A few use cases:
- Vector illustrations and logo design
- Custom icons
- Visual assets integrated into your Figma mockups
(4) Presentations with Slides

Teams involved: Marketing, Sales
Slides is Figma’s alternative to Google Slides or PowerPoint. Fully integrated into the Figma interface, it allows you to create professional presentations using the same styles, components, and visuals from your design files.
Perfect for:
- Creating pitch decks aligned with your brand guidelines
- Presenting a project to your team
- Building sales or investor presentations
As with everything in Figma, collaboration is seamless. The output is clean and visually consistent, since it leverages all Figma assets. You can easily embed visuals, mockups, and prototypes directly into your slides — and export everything to PDF or PPTX.
(5) Integration with Dev Mode

Teams involved: Developers
Dev Mode isn’t a development tool per se — it’s a dedicated interface built specifically for developers.
This mode turns Figma’s UI into a streamlined read-only environment optimized for implementation. It includes:
- CSS properties of elements
- Spacing, typography, and color codes
- Code snippets (CSS, React, etc.)
- Asset export (SVG, PNG, etc.)
- Quick component inspection
All with a simplified interface and no risk of altering the design. The goal: to streamline collaboration between designers and developers — and speed up the implementation process.
(6) Website creation with Figma Sites (New)

Teams involved: Designers, Developers
Launched at Figma Config 2025, Figma Sites allows you to publish a website directly from Figma — without using any third-party tools.
Still in beta, this feature opens up new possibilities:
- One-click website creation from design files
- Built-in hosting
- Customization via a visual editor that retains Figma’s logic
- Lightweight CMS for managing dynamic content
- Fast publishing for landing pages or microsites
This long-awaited release has naturally created buzz across the web ecosystem. However, as of today, it’s still hard to say whether Figma Sites could truly replace CMS platforms like Webflow or advanced front-end frameworks. But it’s clearly a promising step forward for speeding up the early stages of going live.
(7) Extensions for more specific use cases
Teams involved: Depending on the use case (Marketing, Design, Product)
Figma isn’t just for interface design. The tool also offers newer or more “niche” modules, designed to address specific needs. Notable examples include:
Figma Make – an integrated generative AI tool [BETA] that lets you create UI components from a simple text prompt. It’s used to quickly generate layouts, animations, explore design ideas, or save time on repetitive development tasks.
Figma Buzz– a tool [BETA] designed for marketing and communication teams. It automatically creates visual variations (social media formats, multi-channel campaigns, etc.) from a Figma template. A huge time-saver when adapting one visual to multiple platforms or social networks.
These tools are still very new (often in BETA), but they reinforce the direction Figma is heading: broadening the design experience to all teams working around a product or project — not just designers.
Figma Pricing and Plans
One of Figma’s biggest strengths is its generous freemium model. The free version already allows teams to collaborate on up to 3 design files, with access to all core features (design files, prototypes, plugins, design system tools, components, variables, styles, etc.).
It’s a great way to get started with the tool — and in many cases, it’s more than enough to complete an entire web project from start to finish.

🎓 Are you a student or teacher? Figma offers free “Professional” licenses. Just follow this link.
Figma comparison
(1) Figma vs Adobe XD, Sketch & Penpot
| Criteria | Figma | Adobe XD | Sketch | Penpot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tool type | Web-based + App | Desktop (macOS/Windows) | Desktop (macOS only) + Cloud via Workspace | 100% Web-based (open source) |
| Collaboration | Real-time multi-user, comments, visible cursors | Limited collaboration (asynchronous cloud) | Shared via Sketch Cloud but no native real-time | Real-time, similar to Figma |
| Prototyping | Built-in with interactions and transitions | Integrated, smooth | Basic, limited to simple links | Integrated, basic but evolving |
| Components & Design System | Complete: components, variants, styles, variables | Component support but less advanced | Complete but less automated | WIP |
| Dev handoff | Dev Mode, inspection, snippets, export, CSS/React | Less seamless, manual export | Requires third-party plugins (Zeplin, Avocode) | WIP, very limited |
| Plugins & ecosystem | Very rich, thousands of plugins, templates, etc. | Limited and closed ecosystem | Good plugin catalog | Very limited, but growing fast via GitHub |
| Accessibility | Browser, Mac, Windows, Linux, Mobile (preview) | Mac/Windows only | macOS only (Cloud required for sharing) | Any browser |
| Intuitive interface | Very user-friendly | Quite simple | Simple but old-school design | Minimalist, less polished than Figma |
| Pricing (pro plan) | From €16/month (Full) | Adobe subscription (~€78/month via Creative Cloud) | From ~€10/month (annual license) | Free (open source) |
| Adoption / Community | Very active community | Gradually declining | Strong historical community but losing momentum | Rapid growth, closely followed by devs |
Overall, Figma remains the most complete, collaborative, and scalable web design tool on the market today — with the highest adoption rate.
(2) Figma vs Webflow & Framer
| Criteria | Figma | Webflow | Framer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tool type | Design + Hosting [beta] | All-in-one WXP platform: visual builder, CMS, hosting, multilingual, analytics, A/B testing, etc. | Visual builder + limited CMS + hosting |
| Main goal | Design, prototype, and publish micro-sites | Create limitless websites: high-performing, scalable, custom-built | Quickly create small animated and aesthetic sites |
| Complexity level | Very low (design logic similar to creating mockups in Figma) | Medium to high (more technical, more precise) | Low to medium (intuitive, simpler than Webflow) |
| CMS capabilities | Very limited | Powerful, customizable and scalable CMS | Simple CMS, efficient for small-scale needs |
| Code customization | Very limited (only via embed code) | Full code access (HTML, CSS, JS), export, custom scripts | Limited to global scripts |
| Animations & interactions | Simple transitions and very limited animations | Fully customizable: advanced IX2, fine interactions, scroll, hovers, GSAP | Built-in smooth animations (scroll, transitions, micro-interactions) |
| Responsive design | Basic automatic adaptation | Full control via precise and cascading breakpoints | Good responsiveness, based on flex but less granular control |
| SEO & performance | No advanced options | High performance, native SEO optimization, sitemap, tags, speed | Optimized for Google, tag management |
| Collaboration & workflow | Live collaboration within Figma | Asynchronous collaboration, live mode coming soon | Simple collaboration, instant preview |
| Visual control level | Full control over static design | Pixel-perfect with CSS logic | High visual quality, but more limited technically than Webflow |
| Learning curve | Very accessible | More complex at first | Very quick to learn (logic similar to Figma) |
| Pricing | From $16/month (annual plan) | From $14/month (annual plan) | From $5/month (annual plan) |
As you can tell from the comparison table, Figma is still quite limited when it comes to building full websites. While the tool now allows you to publish simple pages, it doesn’t (yet) compete with the power and flexibility of platforms like Webflow—or even Framer. We’ll be keeping a close eye on how Figma Sites evolves, but for any serious web project, Webflow remains the go-to solution today.
Got a project coming up? Let’s talk with our team
Real-world use cases for Figma
(1) For UI/UX designers

You’ve got it—Figma is now the go-to tool for UX/UI web design. It allows teams to manage the entire design cycle, from wireframe to final mockup. All with the structure and assets needed for smooth integration later on.
Designers typically use it to:
- Create wireframes and UI mockups (desktop, mobile, and more)
- Organize files clearly, by page, feature, or design element
- Build and maintain an evolving design system (styles, components, variables…)
- Prototype full user flows, with interactions and animations
- Collaborate in real time with other designers or developers
Concrete examples:
- Designing a marketing or e-commerce website
- Building a SaaS product or mobile app
- Designing a conversion funnel
(2) For developers

Dev Mode has established Figma as a true bridge between design and development.
Developers now use it to:
- Inspect mockups with precision and retrieve properties (HTML, CSS, etc.)
- Export assets (images, icons, SVGs…) in the correct formats
- Follow variables (colors, typography, spacing…) defined in the design system
- Access code snippets (CSS, React…) automatically generated
- Collaborate with designers without altering the original files
Concrete examples:
- Pixel-perfect front-end integration from a Figma mockup
- Streamlined designer/developer collaboration
- Implementing a design system based on Figma specs
(3) For Product Managers / Product Owners

Figma enables PMs/POs to monitor, manage, and contribute to design projects—without having to get involved in the creative work.
The tool facilitates quick decision-making, centralized feedback, and clear visibility into interface progress.
PMs commonly use it to:
- View mockups in real time during the design process
- Leave comments directly in the Figma file
- Prepare product specs based on wireframes and prototypes
- Coordinate exchanges between design, dev, and stakeholders
- Participate in co-creation workshops via FigJam
Concrete examples:
- Managing the design of a new product feature
- Centralizing client or internal feedback on a prototype
- Preparing a design/dev sprint around an onboarding flow
(4) For marketing/sales teams

Even without being designers, marketing and sales teams can use Figma to gain autonomy over visual assets and ensure consistency with the product or brand.
Marketing & sales teams typically use it to:
- Create or adapt campaign visuals (banners, social media assets, etc.)
- Design sales presentations using Figma Slides
- Quickly build landing pages or mockups to validate with the design team
- Collaborate with designers on web content (images, copy, CTAs…)
- Create visual variations in multiple formats
Concrete examples:
- Creating a pitch deck for a sales team
- Quickly adapting a product visual for a LinkedIn campaign
- Preparing a landing page for a specific marketing offer
(5) For Clients and Stakeholders
Figma simplifies collaboration with clients and stakeholders on a project, even if they don’t have specific expertise with the tool. A simple link is enough to view mockups in real time, leave comments, or approve a version.
Clients typically use it to:
- Review the progress of design at every stage of the project
- Leave feedback directly on the project
- Validate an interface or a user journey
- Follow iterations in real time
- Streamline communication with design and product teams
Concrete examples:
- Validating mockups for a site redesign
- Giving direct feedback on a prototype before development
- Monitoring project progress in real time
Learn how to use Figma
Whether you’re new to Figma or looking to sharpen your skills, the platform offers a complete learning ecosystem. From beginners to experienced designers, there are hundreds of free (and high-quality!) resources available to help you master Figma.
(1) Official Figma resources

Figma provides (for free) a wide range of official learning resources:
- Best practices → A set of tips to get started with Figma the right way
- Resource Library → Deeper learning on the tool and web design in general
- YouTube channel → Demos, tutorials, webinars, and more
- Figma Community → Thousands of templates, files, components, and plugins you can duplicate and learn from by doing
(2) The Figma community

Beyond the Figma Community, an entire ecosystem of designers is active online. On social media, YouTube, Twitch, and more, many creators share tutorials, resources, and best practices around Figma.
Some of the most well-known include:
- Digidop Académie
- Basti Ui
- Flux Academy
Read our article to learn more
Hiring a Freelance Designer or an Agency for Your Figma Project
Even though Figma is an accessible tool, it doesn’t do the design work for you. Designing a high-performing interface that reflects your brand image, addresses SXO/CRO goals, and is cleanly structured for development requires experience, a solid methodology… and experts.
If you’re about to start a project (or already have one in progress), you’re probably asking yourself:
Should I hire a freelancer or a design agency? Here are a few elements to help you decide:
Freelance
Hiring a freelance designer is often a good fit if:
- You have a targeted or one-off project (e.g. landing page design, improving a user flow, etc.)
- You’re looking for a flexible and autonomous profile
- You already have an in-house product/dev team
A good Figma freelancer can handle the full UI/UX design phase, deliver clean, usable files, and help build the foundations of a design system.
Agency

We’d be happy to talk about your project: Contact our team
An agency is a better fit if:
- You have a more comprehensive web project, like a full website redesign or the launch of a new product
- You need structured support, from strategy to design and development
- You’re looking for multidisciplinary expertise (UX, UI, SEO, Webflow, etc.)
A good agency works with a proven methodology, brings together various expert profiles, and ensures smooth continuity between Figma design and the website launch.
