Design Subscriptions Are a Trap (For Both Parties)
Subscriptions work for many businesses. Design should not be one of them. It’s snake oil for designers and clients. Here's why (and what to consider instead)...
After 17+ years of running design businesses, I've tried all the pricing models (including subscriptions).
Design subscriptions are a hot topic after one designer came out and said he made a $million a year with them. He's now selling courses on how... guess he needed an escape.
I’ve spoken to many freelancers and small agencies that are considering the model or have already started making changes towards it.
And it’s easy to see why;
On the surface the subscription model sounds perfect; consistent price and convenience appeal to clients (pay a low monthly fee for ‘unlimited design requests’).
And the predictable income and easy selling appeal to designers.
The Reality
The typical process involves adding unlimited design requests to a Trello board whilst the designer works through them one at a time. It removes direct human contact, operating almost everything through Trello.
It becomes a conveyor belt for design, like McDonald's... with less flavour.
Beyond basic jobs like social media graphics or cookie-cutter marketing sites, it's impossible to create strategic, impactful design jumping between client tickets.
Context switching kills productivity. They've studied it. Moving from one client's deep problem to another creates terrible work flow for designers who value quality.
Subscription models don't allocate time based on what each design challenge needs. They allocate it based on how many other tickets are competing for attention that day.
The Hidden Costs for the Designer
Creating something new and impactful together is one of the most rewarding parts of being a designer.
Being reduced to a ticket factory frames the designer as a supplier, not a partner. This is made worse because most implementations of this model involve cutting out client contact as much as possible.
If you start a design business to achieve freedom, that freedom vanishes. Without staff, you're tied to the constant stream of subscription requests. The safety of that constant stream costs your independence.
Realising this during our trial of the model, we hired. Good designers cost $10k per month at a minimum. Each designer can probably work on 3 clients per month at a time to service them well. Herein lies the problem, you either overwork your designer and see quality suffer or charge a higher fee making the sale harder. And good luck finding a quality designer who will work like this.
Deception and Impact for the client
There's deception under the bonnet. It's not unlimited design - it's one task at a time, every other day or so. The speed at which is dictated by how many other tickets must be completed that day, NOT by the desired outcome.
A strategic onboarding flow gets the same time slice as a social media graphic, because the system optimises for ticket completion, not outcomes.
When faced with this problem, subscription advocates often say 'just break down big tasks into smaller tickets.' But strategic design doesn't work that way. You can't solve complex problems by disconnecting the pieces - you need to hold the full picture in mind to create meaningful connections. Breaking up strategic work into ticket-sized chunks destroys the very context that makes it valuable.
To try to work around this, we used asynchronous video to walkthrough designs paired with a framework for design requests that looked like this:
And whilst this helped frame design requests it still didn’t encourage co-creation, and looking back I think we were trying to put a bandaid on a bad model.
The model relies on clients paying during quiet months to keep their spot. They either waste money in slow periods or get rushed work in busy times.
This isn't sustainable for your design business. Your churn rises as competition grows and offers the same (or more) for less. Your unique selling point is convenience at a low price - something easily copied.
And your monthly price ceiling is capped, at some point clients aren’t going to pay more than hiring in-house. Or they will look at you like a temporary solution, not a long-term partner.
And as more designers enter the market using this model, the market price will drop. Forcing you to lower rates and increase customers to make up the difference. Lowering quality further. More fuel for the fire.
Subscriptions work when output stays consistent. Clear transaction, clear expectations.
But in design subscriptions, clients win by asking for more work while designers win by doing less work. This conflict guarantees someone always loses.
Better Alternatives
Let's skip hourly rates - enough has been written there.
The Modified Subscription
A more honest subscription might work for designers happy with three clients monthly. Tell clients they get one-third of your time. This gives space for quality work. It's not scalable without staff, but removes pressure to maximise output.
This builds ongoing relationships - you get to know businesses intimately. Work improves as you understand their nuances. It’s more of a fractional model, which is far more honest, but hard to scale.
The Value-Based Model
Dan Mall and Chris Do provide excellent resources here. This model frames designers as partners, and done right this model works well for both parties. The value in a project must be there for both parties, so the focus on value makes a lot of sense.
But as Dan notes in 'Pricing Design':
"Since I've started using value pricing, my loss rate on proposals has gone way up—my agency lands significantly fewer projects than when we had a standard hourly rate. (But we make way more money now.)"
In my experience this needs:
Strong market presence or high profile
High number of incoming customers
Sales skill and practice
Strong proposal writing ability
A reliable talent network to manage
Any project needs to have discussion around value regardless of how you frame your offer to the market.
What I've Settled On
Here at Caboodle I tried productising our services several times and failed. I didn't know how to structure them.
After hundreds of projects, patterns emerged in client needs and high value areas. We wanted to capture them, so we mapped out the entire customer journey:
Identifying these areas of value then breaking them up into mini products lets you improve each part over time. This creates leverage without hiring. The value compounds. You can charge more in low-competition markets or deliver more value for less in high-competition ones.
I worried about getting bored or cookie-cutter results but found the opposite. We use:
Workshops for ideation, strategy and co-creation
Templates for expected outputs (Figma structures, billing, design atoms, booking systems)
Re-usable videos deployed at specific points (like guides and instructions)
Automations to link everything together with AI where relevant
Tools and calculators
Banks of design insights that grow with each project
This removes busywork, reduces timelines and frees up creativity. To maintain independence and work / life balance we limit the number of workshops and projects we take on per month.
The sales cycle is short. The projects are 2 weeks long.
We offer fixed prices for transparent transactions and easier cash flow. No lengthy proposals needed. No song and dance about price. No managing different skillsets and wrangling different personalities and timelines. We're motivated to do our best work, because it’s only the stuff we love doing.
Clients see exactly what they get through our low-ticket entry point that maps everything in real-time. They know exactly what to expect should they want to upgrade to the next higher ticket service with zero risk because we offer a money-back promise.
We rely on increasing CLTV by breaking out optional ‘power-ups’ and offering them at specific points in the journey so clients can SEE the value of each one before committing.
For example: not every client needs prototypes, they just need screens to get buy-in. So we offer prototypes after they’ve seen the designed screens and explain how it can tie everything together into a stronger narrative.
Making It Scalable
Our business scales in a few ways (without extra labour):
Strategic equity partnerships with select clients. We need few successes here to transform the business.
On-going process optimisation using ‘build once, use twice’ type assets
A thousand mini robots automating away the busywork
Before viewing projects as products, each needed countless moving parts:
You can't excel at everything for every client. So you need to focus on specific strengths or hire for skill gaps.
The more you offer. The more complexity you add —the more risk there is of unstable outcomes.
To sell your business someday, you need consistent systems (SOPs and IP) for delivering consistent results. Without this, you don't have a business - you have a job charging hourly rates which hinges on you.
At the end you leave with nothing because the business is too reliant on you.
Shaping Your Business Around Values
There's no single right way to do this. Shape your model around what you love, and phase out what you don't.
For me, this meant letting go of some pride in working on six-figure projects.
I've realised I prefer:
Less bureaucracy
Smaller teams
Faster, simpler sales cycles
Quicker decision-making
Projects that don't stretch over many months
I love being part of a small product team that helps people visualise better ways of working. I enjoy co-creation and that early excitement of fast-paced innovation. So I removed or automated 80% of the busywork and complexity I disliked.
This left 20% pure value - the work my team and I excel at.
Of course, profitability matters. Big projects with impressive numbers feel good, but there's safety in diversification. It spreads the risk. Running the numbers, I believe this approach will prove safer, more profitable and satisfying long-term.
Advice for Different Stages
Starting Out
If you're building your own design or product business, take on varied projects with different companies. This helps you discover what you enjoy and excel at. These usually align!
Stuck in a Rut
If you're tired of doing many things you dislike:
Reframe your service as a product in your mind
Note which project areas provide little value or satisfaction
Remove or automate these parts
Focus on what you love and what provides value
Consider how to improve and standardise these elements
This approach takes time and experimentation to understand which parts offer value. But the results are worth it, I promise.
