Have you ever tried a productized design-as-a-service business?
A complete done-for-you neatly packaged service as a product with a defined scope and price sounds handy. Design Pickle is one of the most well-known companies offering this kind of service.
But it isn’t the only one. If in case you aren’t impressed with Design Pickle, you can have a look at its competitors who offer the same or even better services.
In this post, I have compared the top Design Pickle alternatives that offer unlimited graphic design services at a fixed price.
I will be comparing them on the basis of:
- Price
- Free Trials
- On-Boarding Process
- Design Team
- Turn Around Time
- Money-Back Guarantee
- Limitations (if any)
Top Alternatives to Design Pickle
- Overview of Design Pickle
- Design Pickle vs Digifloat
- Design Pickle vs Penji
- Design Pickle vs Kapa99
- Design Pickle vs ManyPixels
- Design Pickle vs Pebbled
- Design Pickle vs Kimp
- Design Pickle vs Flocksy
1. Overview of Design Pickle
Design Pickle claims to be a simple, reliable, and scalable approach to graphic design. They have made themselves one of the most established brands when it comes to graphic design services.
One of the things that set Design Pickle apart is that they offer an impressive library of stock images and graphics from Unsplash. You can also get stock photo images from Getty but you’ll have to pay an additional $25 per month.
Price
They offer 2 price plans:
- Standard Plan for $499/Month
- Pro Plan for $995/Month
Custom illustrations are not included in any of these plans. You’ll have to pay an additional $499/ month to add a dedicated custom illustrator.
Free Trials
They don’t offer any free trials.
On-Boarding Process
You can request your designs in 2 ways, through emails or via the Design Pickle dashboard. They also have Zapier integrations allowing you to connect your account to other programs that you use like Google Sheets and Trello.
I found using their custom dashboard much easier than emails. Their dashboard is quite sleek and minimalistic.
To submit a design request, you’ll be first asked to name your request, add file size and dimensions, add some references in the inspiration box, give a small description of what you’re looking for, and what file type you need.
Then you’ll get the option to either upload your demo photos or select one from their collection of stock photos. In the last step, you’ll be asked to upload any additional assets you wish to include in your design.
Design Team
Design Pickle has claimed that all its designers go through a rigorous hiring process. They spend the dialing-in period during the first 2 weeks to familiarise themselves with your brand and design preferences.
You can stay in direct contact with your designer via their dashboard if you’re on Standard while on Pro you can also communicate and collaborate via your Slack channel.
However, I didn’t find any option where you can change your designer if you’re not happy with the one assigned to you.
Turn Around Time
The designer will submit the first draft within 24 hours. But of course, if you have a very complex design request or multiple requests it can take some time.
Money-Back Guarantee
They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. But there are conditions on the refund like you need to complete two design tasks and give them a chance to get this right for you – meaning you’ll have to submit revisions before you sign it off!
Limitations
Design Pickle doesn’t offer a lot of services including video graphics, complex illustrations, interactive PDF documents, Photoshop, 3D / CAD, HTML / CSS / UI / UX, mobile or app design and programming/coding/development.
Maybe you won’t even need a lot of these services like 3D/CAD. But there are services like video graphics that are very important.
When I started looking for Design Pickle alternatives I found so many other companies that include HTML, CSS, videos, and coding in their unlimited graphic design services.
Let’s start comparing these top Design Pickle alternatives.
2. Design Pickle vs Digifloat
Digifloat is a great alternative for businesses that are looking for affordable and scalable graphic design services. You can get ad creatives, custom illustrations, website and app UI/UX designs for a fixed monthly price. Apart from these graphics, we also make landing pages on WordPress and fully coded websites using HTML/CSS/JS.
Price
Digifloat offers 3 price plans:
- Standard – $399/Month
- Pro – $649/Month
- Agency – $999/Month
Each of these plans includes a dedicated designer and an account manager, unlimited designs and revisions, plus every basic graphic design from presentation to ad banners and blog images.
A few things that distinguish Digifloat from every other Design Pickle alternatives is that we design logos and branded graphics even in the standard plan. Also, we keep multiple active design tasks at any given time.
As you upgrade, you’ll get additional benefits such as web and app UI/UX design, HTML/CSS/JS, and WordPress in the pro plan and animated video creation and editing services in the agency plan. Again, no other Design Pickle alternatives offer these services.
Free trial
Digifloat doesn’t offer any free trial.
On-Boarding Process
You have 2 options to get started with submitting design work, email, or Trello.
It is always advisable to choose Trello. This way you can store all your design tasks in the Trello board. You can see the live status of your design task as it will be moved between “To Do” to the “Doing” and then to the “Done” list.
Design Team
Every designer in the team is hired after proper assessment, tests, and interviews. They are first hired on a probationary period during which their skills are put to test. Once they complete this period only then we assign them to your projects.
If in case, you are not happy with the designer or you think they don’t share the same creative mindset as you, you can always switch. Digifloat offers this unique feature where you can ask your dedicated account manager to change your designer free of cost.
Turn Around Time
Almost every brand claims a turnaround time of 24-48 hours. Most of the time they aren’t able to deliver in this time frame or they deliver a really crappy design just to meet the deadline.
With Digifloat, you will know exactly how much time every request is going to take as they have already mentioned different turnaround times for different projects on their website.
For example, you will get your social media or blog images in 1-2 days. Branding and logo design can take up to 3-7 days, web and mobile app UI & UX design will take around 4-10 days.
Money-Back Guarantee
Digifloat offers a no question asked, full 15-days money-back guarantee.
3. Design Pickle vs Penji
After Digifloat, Penji is another big competitor on our list of Design Pickle alternatives. They are known to have worked with brands like Aweber, the University of Pennsylvania, Lyft, Express, and Reebok.
Their unlimited graphic design service includes logos, infographics, websites, landing pages, apps, print material, illustrations, and so much more.
Price
They offer 3 price plans:
- Pro – $399/Month
- Team – $499/Month
- Agency – $899/Month
In all the plans, you’ll get unlimited design projects.
However, you won’t get website & app design and illustrations in the pro plan. You’ll have to upgrade to the team plan for this.
Penji also gives an option to bill yearly (if you like).
Free Trials
They don’t offer any free trials.
On-Boarding Process
Similar to Design Pickle, Penji too has developed its own online portal for submitting requests, viewing designs, communicating with your designer, and for managing all your projects.
You can simply create a design project, wait for your first draft, submit revisions, or approve the design within their interface.
Design Team
Penji claims to only work with the top 2% of the best designers. These designers are also made to take a rigorous design test before they are officially hired onto the Penji team.
Although you won’t be able to select them individually as they are automatically assigned to your projects, you can stay in contact with them directly through Penji’s interface.
Turn Around Time
Penji claims to deliver most of the projects within 24 – 48 hours.
Money-Back Guarantee
They offer a 15 day 100% money-back guarantee which is lesser compared to Design Pickle’s 30-days guarantee.
Limitations
Penji doesn’t give a dedicated account manager while many other Design Pickle alternatives do.
Also, they do not do animations, motion graphics, programming, and video editing.
4. Design Pickle vs Kapa99
Kapa99 is another one of the well-known Design Pickle alternatives. They claim to offer a world-class customer-centric unlimited graphic design services.
Their design services range from logo designs, book covers, packaging, brochures to podcast covers, and illustrations.
Price
Kapa99 offers 1 simple plan for $399/month. You get unlimited designs and revisions with all source files.
Free Trials
Unlike other Design Pickle alternatives, Kapa99 has a 15 days free trial.
On-Boarding Process
With Kapa99, you get two choices for submitting design work either by email or by using Trello.
If you select Trello all your design tasks will be stored in the Trello board. You will be able to see your design task move from “To Do” to the “Doing” and then to the “Done” list. If you want more edits you can further move the task to the “Revisions” list.
Turn Around Time
Kapa99 claims to deliver most tasks within 24-48 hours. If the project is bigger like a magazine layout, they will give you an estimate of how long it should take.
Also, one thing that’s super impressive is that they let you claim $15 for every delay that they encounter.
Money-Back Guarantee
If you aren’t satisfied with their work, you can avail of their no questions asked, 100% money-back within the first 30 days.
Limitations
Firstly, even Kapa99 doesn’t offer video graphics, HTML/CSS, or any programming, UI/UX, they don’t design websites or mobile apps.
Secondly, after reading so many reviews I felt the biggest problem was the consistency in the quality of their designs.
There were some great reviews but a lot of bad ones too. I found this very genuine review of Kapa99. The design samples they received were very poorly crafted. They also faced issues with Kapa99’s support team as they sent wrong files and the designers often misunderstood the requirements.
No matter how great of an offer you create, it always comes down to the quality of designs.
5. Design Pickle vs ManyPixels
ManyPixel works to become your go-to solution for ordering design services online. They have hired a team of 30+ Full-time designers so you won’t have to.
Price
They offer 3 simple plans:
- Essentials – $449/Month
- Advanced – $549/Month
- Business – $899/Month
In the essential plan, you get a professional designer to whom you can request display ads, posters, flyers, banners, illustrations, social media graphics, brochures, etc.
If you want some advanced design requests like landing page design, website design, logos, brand guides, presentation deck, or a 2-3 sec GIF, you’ll have to upgrade to the Advanced plan. And the most premium Business plan will give you everything in the Advanced plan plus an additional designer and prioritized support.
Free trial
They don’t offer any free trial.
On-Boarding Process
Once you sign up for ManyPixels you will be redirected to a dashboard. Here you can directly place your design request.
The details you will have to submit are very similar to other Design Pickle alternatives. You can start by selecting the type of design you’d like to create, then give a brief description to your designer including the size, references, and inspirations.
You can prioritize your request and chat with your designer directly from this dashboard.
One unique feature about ManyPixels is that they also give you an option to add more designers to your project if you have a lot of work. But of course, you will have to pay extra for these additional designers.
Turn Around Time
On average they can deliver the first draft or the next revision within 1-2 business days. More complex requests like websites, illustration sets, etc will take more time.
Money-Back Guarantee
ManyPixels comes with a no question asked, full 14 days money-back guarantee.
Limitations
First off, they don’t do videos. The only option you will get is a <5 sec animated gif in the Advanced plan. They also don’t do UX/UI design, HTML/CSS/JS, Squarespace, complex pdf documents, Photoshop, 3D/CAD.
Secondly, you won’t get any dedicated account manager. For a lot of people, this isn’t that important but if you compare, other Design Pickle alternatives offer a dedicated manager.
6. Design Pickle vs Pebbled
Pebbled is another Design Pickle alternatives that offer unlimited graphic design services at a fixed monthly price. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a digital agency, they claim to get all your design needs covered.
Price
They have 3 price plans:
- Core – $99/Month
- Plus – $299/Month
- Enterprise – $599/Month
You will get unlimited designs and revisions in each plan. The core plan, however, doesn’t include priority support and web design services. You’ll have to upgrade to the plus plan to get these.
The enterprise plan includes everything in the core and plus plan with web and app design and priority support.
Free trial
They don’t offer any free trial.
On-Boarding Process
Once you sign up for any plan you’ll receive an email with the links to get your Slack setup. From there on, the communication takes place on the slack channel.
You’ll also be asked to fill out a small questionnaire so that they can better understand your business. Your finished files will be shared with you via Dropbox.
Turn Around Time
If you sign up for core or plus plan your request turnaround time will be 2 to 3 business days. In the enterprise plan, you’ll get a turnaround time of 1 to 3 business days.
Money-Back Guarantee
Pebbled offer a no question asked full 15 days money-back guarantee.
Limitations
First off, Slack! You will have to go back and forth to check if you have received any messages. It can really slow down the whole communication process.
Secondly, they have a long list of stuff they don’t do like:
- Phone support
- Designs or modifications to word documents
- Trademarking
- Email application support
- Video Editing
- Illustrations
- Animations
They cannot even make a same-day turnaround for important projects.
Although their price is cheapest in comparison to other Design Pickle alternatives, they also don’t offer a lot of services that other companies do.
7. Design Pickle vs Kimp
Kimp offers a range of unlimited designs from logos, infographics to your campaign banners on social media and blog images. Their services are aimed at entrepreneurs, marketers, agencies, and small business owners. You can get their cost-effective solution without the need to recruit freelancers or hire designers.
Price
Kimp offers one simple plan for $389/month. In this, you’ll get unlimited designs, revisions, brands, free stock photos, dedicated design team, and an account manager.
Free trial
You will get a 7 days free trial with Kimp but you’ll have to provide your billing details at the time of registration. You will be billed only after the 7 days of a free trial.
During this trial, you can only make 3 design requests to test their services, workflow, and design quality. You won’t get source files and/or print-ready files for these designs during the trial. Only once you decide to subscribe to the service and make the payment you will receive the source files and/or print-ready for all your requests.
Also, you can request for resizing of banners, logos, mascots, characters, illustrations, landing page designs, presentations, and ebooks during the trial period.
On-Boarding Process
Just like most Design Pickle alternatives, Kimp also offers 2 options to submit design requests: Trello and email.
You can submit your design brief to a Trello board in the “Requests” card. Their team will check this card and move it to “In Progress” and once they are done, it will be moved to “In Review”.
You can then submit a revision if required or close the design request.
Design Team
Once you sign up for Kimp you will be assigned 1 account manager and 3 designers. These designers specialize in different areas and they can work to fulfill any request.
They also claim that they do not outsource work or work with freelancers, every designer in their team works in-house.
Turn Around Time
You’ll receive 2-3 designs to review, per business day. But if you have a more complex task like a presentation or brochure, they will provide an estimate on how long it’ll take.
Money-Back Guarantee
Kimp doesn’t offer money-back guarantee.
Limitations
Kimp does come with limits to what they can do. They do not make motion graphics, 3D rendering, UI/UX design, website or app design.
They also don’t offer a money-back guarantee like every other Design Pickle alternatives.
8. Design Pickle vs Flocksy
Flocksy is considered another big Design Pickle competitor. Their biggest USP is the variety of services they offer from custom template libraries to email templates, copywriting services, and website development. They do it all!
Price
They offer 2 plans:
- The Team Plan for $420/Month
- The All-Access Plan for $995/Month
Both these plans include unlimited projects, 24 hours turnaround and free stock photos.
Although in the Team plan you can add only 5 users, have 1 active project at a time, and 5 brand buckets (a place where you can upload your or client’s marketing assets). You will get a graphic design, video editing, and copywriting team in this plan.
Their all-access plan has everything! You can add 20 users, create 2 active projects, and unlimited brand buckets. In addition to all the teams in the team plan, you’ll also get a web development team, voiceover and audio team, animated Gifs, and custom illustrations.
Free Trials
They don’t offer any free trials.
On-Boarding Process
Similar to Design Pickle, Flocksy also features an intuitive Project Management board to create and manage your projects. They have unique briefs for each type of project that ensure you get the right information to their team.
Once you submit your design details, a timer on the dashboard will show the expected turnaround time.
Design Team
I couldn’t find any information about how they hire their designer. But once you create an account you can form a team of designers for yourself.
They will match some designers according to your requirements from which you can select who will be on your design team. In the future, you can always remove someone from your team who isn’t working as per your needs.
Also, you’ll be able to chat with your designer directly on the projects.
Turn Around Time
They claim to deliver most of the projects within 24 hours. Unless you have a very complicated design request.
Money-Back Guarantee
They offer a 14-day money-back guarantee which is lesser if you compare to Design Pickle’s 30-days guarantee.
Limitations
I am still not happy with the fact that in the base and team plan you can only have 1 active project at a time. Why am I getting an entire graphic design team if I cannot have 3 or 4 active projects? Suppose in my first design I only have a small typo that needs to be corrected. I will still have to wait 24 hours for the design request to be complete so I can submit a new one.
Design Pickle Alternatives: Conclusion Table
| Design Pickle | Flocksy | Penji | Kapa99 | ManyPixels | Pebbled | Kimp | Digifloat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price (Basic Plan) | $499/Mo | $420/Mo | $399/Mo | $399/Mo | $449/Mo | $99/Mo | $389/Mo | $399/Mo |
| Unlimited Designs | ||||||||
| Unlimited Revisions | ||||||||
| Logo Design | ||||||||
| Video | Separate Plan | |||||||
| Infographics | ||||||||
| Custom Illustrations | Separate Plan | |||||||
| Web UI/UX | ||||||||
| App UI/UX | ||||||||
| HTML/CSS/JS/JQUERY | ||||||||
| WordPress | ||||||||
| Dedicated Account Manager | ||||||||
| Free Trials | ||||||||
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 Days | 14 Days | 15 Days | No | 14 Days | 15 Days | No | 15 Days |
