Framer vs Figma (Just got spicy)

Guess what I had for dinner this week? I definitely didn't have any beef. The only person who had beef this week for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was Framer and Figma. Now, this tweet by Vlad Morose perfectly summarizes the beef that happened this week, the drama in the tech world. Now, if you have no idea of what had happened between Figma and

Framer, let's dive in because in this video, we're going to cover three key things for you. We're talking about Figma's new prompt to edit AI feature. We're going to talk about Framer's design pages and why this was a jab, cross, hook from Framer at Figma, and why this actually matters. And then I'm going to give you a quick update on my SAS journey, me building my own apps with my dev team and documenting that

journey for you guys. So, if you're excited and you like this type of video, this type of content, make sure I just need this one thing and one thing only from you guys is to gently smash that like button if you do like these types of videos. It means the world for me. Nory, my puppy will he's not a puppy anymore. He's 4 years old, but he'll appreciate it. It's free. That's all I need from you guys. I don't even need you guys to subscribe. If you want to, you can subscribe, but I just need that one thing and one thing only, which is that like button. All right, so let's dive in, guys. Se uh September 16th, which was just 3 days ago, Figma came out and revealed something brand new that's coming to Figma. And here's the video. Let's take a quick look. Not bad. Not bad at all. It's perfect for me cuz I'm a lazy designer. Okay, now we're talking. everything I would be saying to Figma

it's in alpha. All right, so let's go ahead and talk about this new feature, Figma's prompt to edit. Now, first off, reasonable AI progress. So if we actually rewind back to config uh 2025, this was a few months ago. Uh Figma released some AI features and one of them was canned and sort of pulled back and that was when you could generate prompt to generate uh UI designs from scratch. Now, there was a lot of backlash because designers discovered that Figma had actually uh sourced and referenced lots of popular apps to use as a source to generate new designs. So, whatever people were generating were looking very similar to other apps. So, if you were generating a weather app, it was I think the Yahoo or the Apple weather app, it was coming, it was generating something that was very similar to these designs. So, Figma actually pulled that back and they hadn't released any new AI features until just the other day. They released um this new feature into alpha. And I think it's a step forward because if you have noticed, if you've used AI enough, you would notice that doing anything from scratch with AI is absolute rubbish and a waste of time. But if you have a piece of work, if you have an input, if you have written content or some designs or something to provide the AI, AI is absolute godsend because it can take what you've done and improve it. That's where at least I find the magic in AI, which is working with existing input. So I think this is a step forward. Utility is definitely there. It would save designers a lot of time with very with a lot of the uh boring monotonous type of work where you need to just change lots of colors. You need to make do manual updates to forms. You need to create 10 different uh form inputs to generate a new form. All this AI stuff is going to be super helpful. Now this does make me question how does

this work when you have an existing design system you have components you have all these constraints in your design uh system and process how does it work with that? So if you were to replace a design with you know in that example it had some text and it change it added an entire form into that uh section does it pull through all those components from your design system? That's something I'm uh thinking about which is does it maintain semantics in your design workflow. Now the third question that I am thinking about that's on my mind is the future is natural language the future of UI.

Now I've been thinking about this for quite a while. I think the future is a hybrid of voice, text and UI depending on the context, depending on the situation, depending on the goal of the user and depending on the level, the use case. So I think there are going to be situations where in some context the user wants full control over whatever they're doing and that's when you will need UI. There's going to be applications where someone might just want to ask a question. Someone might want to just make a very quick change. They might want to update some user details. Whatever it might be, they might want to go buy um, you know, a new pair of sneakers. Yeah, I can see a future where you will be able to grab your phone, you can use voice, or you can use text and say, "Hey, I want to grab the latest um you know, Nike sneakers in white in men's size 9. 5. " And there would be an agent that would go and purchase everything. However, what if something goes wrong? What if there is um there's some sort of error that happens? there will still need some level of UI where you will need to interact with the application in case something um goes wrong. It's just so chaotic and I just don't think it's the best experience if everything is in text. You're going to have to keep going back and forth chatting with this AI when you could have just clicked a button and fixed everything. So, I think there are different use cases and different situations that um that we need to think about. So that's my thought about the future of UI. Um now after this was

launched, everyone was raving about it. Everyone was excited about it. The day after framer comes in, gets into position, jab, cross, hook, gives them a bit of a elbow, and this is what happened. Framer came in and said, "We're now turning Framer from a web builder into a true design tool with design pages. Explore freely without constraints. When you're ready, publish to the web in a single click. Unlimited projects, unlimited pages, and completely free. " This is just the day after. So, this is shots fired. So let's go ahead and take a look at the video of what frame had posted. Moving forward with design pages. Design pages are all about freedom of exploration, speed of execution, and keeping everything in one place. Think about what this unlocks. Agencies can finally show proof of work inside Framer with every iteration visible. Solo designers can start a project as casually as a mood board and then promote the winning direction to a web page in a single click. Teams can comment, mention, and co-edit explorations live. And when you don't know where to begin, wireframer inside design pages gives you multiple layouts instantly. But there's something we haven't told you yet. We've made design pages completely, totally, 100% free. Bang. Bang. That is absolute — Figma right behind. Bang. Gut punch. Liver punch. So, if that didn't make sense to you, let me give you a very quick sort of uh explanation of what had just happened. This was this is I think it's a big thing. It's not definitely not the end of the world for Figma and I think some people have hyped this up way too much, but it is definitely a step forward and very strategic from Framer's point of view. So this is why I think this was quite a move quite a move from framer. So previously if you know framer uh they were actually a prototyping tool then they made a massive pivot towards web building. So then they became this noode web building um application and they've picked up a lot of hype and a lot of usage and they they're growing significantly. And so when you use framer as you can see over here when you are actually in the application and you are designing because it's a noode website building tool it looks like Figma. So it looks like you have this infinite space or canvas to work in and you can like design freely and do whatever you want but it's not actually that. It's actually similar, but when you're designing the web pages, as you can see on the screen right now, you do have to follow a bit of a structure and a format because you have to remember you are actually building a website at the same time. So, whatever you design on the screen here, as you can see, if you hit publish, it actually becomes a website. So, you can imagine you can't just close your eyes and just throw things onto a page and then hit publish and it'll be a website magically. It doesn't work like that. You actually have to follow a bit of a structure. So with that in mind, what happened was people would be designing their websites in Figma and then they use a plug-in and they will import those designs into Framer and then they would publish it. So there was like a two-step process to achieving that. What happened was that now you can see on the left hand side there is a new design section where you can add new design pages. And here you can actually do everything you can do in Figma design freely. Don't have to really follow like a structure. You can treat this as like a mood board or a place for you to collect all your if you saw in the video collect all your brand assets, your graph assets. And you can also explore different options of designs creating them freely. So you don't have to follow some sort of crazy structure and get them web ready. you can just design them quickly, get some concepts and then once you are um happy with one of them, you can actually rightclick on the frame as you can see on the screen right now and click create web page and that would then throw you into the web builder um section of framer and then you hit publish. So you're probably thinking okay so like what what's the

key takeaway here? Well, the key takeaway means that with Framework design pages, you don't need to start in Figma anymore because you can actually start in Framer. You can actually do all your design, creative design in Framer. Framer is no longer just a website building tool. It's actually a design tool. You can do all your designs like you do in Figma and you can also build the website and hit publish. So that

begs to ask the question, is Framer killing Figma on the inside? I think there's probably a little bit of hype around this and I think people are overextending the hype to an extent. I think Framer has definitely strategically made this move because of a significant raise that they just recently made, but also they want to capture more of that design process. They've already got all the functionality and all the features and the canvas ready. So why not just add a new section to the application and allow people to design? And now people don't need to start in Figma. They can actually just start in Framer. Now, the reason why I don't think this is a Figma killer is because Figma is still very different to what Framer um currently achieves. Framer is definitely more of a website building tool while uh sorry, Framer is a website building tool. Figma is a product design tool. Very similar, but also very different. And it's in the nuance of the process that designers have to go through when you're designing a website. It's actually quite different to designing an application and especially because Figma and Framer currently are very focused on enterprise. When you think about the use case and the problems that enterprise teams go through when building and man managing a website and actually designing and building a product, there's a lot of different problems and they sort of start at the start together quite similar and then it just widens as you deepen and go deeper and deeper into enterprise um from individual use. So, I think this is definitely a market capture type of step for Framer. They're trying to really deepen their uh their market domination and penetration, but I don't think this kills Figma. I I just don't I think people will be happy to pay for Figma and Framer and use them side by side for their specific use case. At least for me, I'm happy to pay for a specific app even though it has overlapping features with others because one just does the other better. I'm not going to ditch Figma for Framer if I'm trying to build and design a product and I'm not going to ditch Framer if I'm trying to launch a website. It's just simple as that. So it's also very important for us to understand that uh recently just the other week I think like two weeks ago uh framer raised $100 million in series D funding and now the valuation is actually uh elevated to $2 billion in terms of their valuation. This is massive. This is pretty big. Series D is a much later stage in terms of uh fundraising for startups and generally at this point in time they're trying to just dominate the market and in the later stages in terms of funding they need to start preparing for like a major exit for their shareholders and investors. So either like go through an IPO or go or get acquired by someone like Nassive. So this is really important. Who knows, Adobe actually might end up they couldn't acquire Figma, so they'll acquire Framer. Um, they might be ramping up trying to make big moves in the market um in terms of Framer, trying to capture as many users and acquire many as many users as possible by owning more of the design process. So now you don't have to design Figma, you can just start designing in Framer and they're going to start capturing more and more users at that initial stage. Who knows where this takes us, but Framer is definitely ramping up. They're serious about uh their growth and once they're past series D, you know, sky's the limit. They might get acquired and uh who knows what that's going to uh do to the market. But I do think this is going to be super exciting. I love the beef. I love the drama. Um it's definitely going to encourage more innovation on both sides. I don't know. Let me know in the comments who you rooting for, Figma or Framer. There's uh there's definitely a cult for both sides on Twitter that I see on X. Anyways, let's move on. Um

very quick update on my very own journey. Um as I promised, I wanted to talk about my and document my journey. Right now, we're still in those very early stages of this transition. And there's a reason why I don't want to p publicize too much about what I'm doing just yet because um mainly because my head of engineering is away. We're slowed down in terms of development right now. There's a few things I want to really uh fix up prepare before I announce it on YouTube. But for now, there's two things I want to talk about in terms of my journey. Acquisition just completed. I mentioned in the previous video I had just acquired a new application um that's successfully completed now all done and dusted. So acquire. com which is the marketplace to that connects um buyers and sellers. So someone who wants to buy business, sell a business. Um they sent me a t-shirt. I wore it proudly yesterday. Um so super happy about that. Um but two things I want to talk about with this application. I've actually gone ahead and updated the website and I've done some optim optimizations in terms of the website. I'm going to share with you guys what I did and why I did it in an upcoming video. But for now, I'm going to just uh hold it back because I don't want to reveal publicly reveal what the app actually is because there's a few bugs and stuff that I personally want to fix before um I announce this. But there is already thousands of users who use it. um paying users as well. It's a fully operational operating app and business. So, it's going to be super exciting to share the journey with you guys about how we turn it around. Um and then so updated the website. The second thing I did was and this is something that all designers, founders, marketers, whatever, whatever you are when you start a new project, you should never jump straight into the tool. You have to understand what is the landscape that you're working with. what are the users thinking? How are they using the app? And you want to understand those behaviors before you make any r um irrational decisions. So, I sent out a survey um as you can see in the bottom right. I asked a series of questions and I was analyzing some of the responses that these paying users um were experiencing. So, I sent a survey out to only the paid users because those are the people who was we are serving. And as you can see in the last column in the screenshot, there were people who loved the app and absolutely hated the app. There were more results, but there was like ones and twos and threes, but then there were also like tens, nines, sevens and eights. So this is important for me to understand and I wanted dive deeper into why people um feel this way. So I've asked more questions. I have a better understanding of where the gaps are now in terms of the application and this will help us move forward and prioritize work and try turn this ship around and make this a profitable a super profitable super popular app um for

anyone who wants to create content. Now the second thing that I want to talk about is the actual app that I'm building as well. So the one that I acquired sort of plugs into what I've been currently building. A very quick update on that. We've pivoted. I initially wanted to build an app around YouTubers because I'm a YouTuber, but I've actually pivoted and decided to focus more on content um in general because I don't want to niche down too much just yet. I want to be able to cast a wider net and then learn how people are utilizing the app and then start to drill down once I have a better understanding of um of how people are using it and what people want. Now, the core feature for us to get to beta and start actually onboarding real beta users is around 60% complete. Um, I'm pretty happy with it, but there's obviously when you're building tech and you're building an app, there's always going to be some technical challenges where powering through that. But once again, my hoe, which is my head of engineering, is um is on holiday and he's going to be back end of this month. So, right now we're a bit sort of low in terms of velocity. Uh, but we're hoping to ramp up in October and really go hard on this. Now, since he's away, I've also got my hands dirty in terms of DevOps, which is um the operations of development. I was in AWS and I was um our staging server went down and me and our front-end dev had to work together to try solve this. We finally got our server um back up and as you can see in the screenshots um we sort of celebrated teamwork makes dream work. So Alex is our front end. Um yeah, we worked together to get this back up and um we're now up and sailing again. So hopefully this gave you guys a better understanding of what has happened this week in the Figma and Framer world and a little bit more about my journey. I can't wait to start sharing more and document more about the apps that I'm building and the portfolio of sort of apps that I'm looking to start and grow. There's a lot that you guys will be able to learn from my journey because I'm going to be teaching you guys real world firsthand experiences. But uh yeah, really appreciate you guys being here and let me know in the comments what else you guys would want to see more of. And I'll see you guys in another video very soon.