This is the latest in a series of posts explaining the decisions we make that affect our users, as well as the results of those decisions (positive or negative).
We’re nearing the end of a transformative year for Dribbble, during which we reinvented ourselves as a revenue-sharing marketplace and delivered hundreds of thousands of leads – billions of dollars in opportunity – and millions of dollars in payouts to the service providers on our platform.
Along the way, we also remade our Pro subscription – introduced more than a decade ago – into a lever that service providers can rely on to increase their inbound lead flow on Dribbble. However, Pro continued to be a one-size-fits-all offering, whether the subscriber was a freelancer, a full-service digital agency, or anything in between.
Of course, depending on the type and size of the service provider, their capacity to work leads and take on clients can vary widely – sometimes by orders of magnitude. A full-service agency, for example, can typically absorb as much work as we can send its way, while a freelancer may only be able to manage two or three clients at a time – beyond which additional leads have diminishing returns (and may inadvertently overwhelm them, resulting in a lower response rate and slower response times, to the detriment of both the freelancer and their prospective clients).
To address their different needs, we now offer service providers three Pro plans – Pro Lite at $4/month, Pro Standard at $8/month, and Pro Plus at $99/month – depending on the level of control they want over their lead flow on Dribbble.
Among the key features of Pro Standard are a search ranking bonus, client analytics, inclusion in recommendations to clients, no Designer Platform Fee, and access to a feed of Project Briefs (effectively requests for proposals from high-intent clients) from which subscribers can select 30 opportunities to pursue each month.
FYI, all legacy Pro subscribers have been converted to Pro Standard, meaning they now have everything they had before – and more – at the same price.
Pro Plus subscribers get more of everything, including higher rankings in search and recommendations, additional seats, a higher daily upload limit, and 300 (!) Project Briefs each month. Additionally, there are no platform fees for Pro Plus subscribers or their clients, meaning that selecting a Pro Plus subscriber saves clients up to 5% compared to working with a non-subscriber.
More below on our thinking behind these new plans and their features.
Dribbble’s Long-Term Strategy
To put the recent work on Pro (and our roadmap, in general) into context:
Dribbble exists to help service providers generate and convert leads. The purpose of everything we do – every feature, policy, and campaign – is to increase the flow of high-intent, qualified leads to providers of design and development services.
The more providers that receive leads – and the more leads each provider receives – the better. Service providers will share their work, advertise their services, and transact through the platform only if they expect to generate viable leads as a result.
We monetize these leads through a revenue share with the providers that convert them, as well as when providers subscribe to Pro or advertise their services in order to gain an advantage over competitors. We must monetize every lead we deliver to service providers, and in a way that helps us generate more leads, otherwise we can’t sustain the business in the long run, which jeopardizes the income of all providers that rely on Dribbble.
As an aside, this is exactly why we prohibited disintermediation – if clients and designers meet on Dribbble but circumvent their respective Platform Fees, it becomes incrementally harder for us to generate each subsequent lead. It’s also why we unpaywalled Designer Search last year – requiring clients to pay for a subscription before contacting designers did, strictly speaking, monetize the leads that were delivered, but in a way that actually throttled lead flow, making it incompatible with our long-term strategy.
We’re proud of our progress, but this year has, admittedly, been a race to table stakes – we released the first iteration of the features required to be competitive with the incumbents (which include publicly traded companies, subsidiaries of mega-cap companies, and VC-backed companies).
Still, our platform is far more robust today than it was this time last year, and thanks to features like Service Search, Video Meetings, Write with AI, Recommendations, InstantMatch, and many others, transaction activity on the platform has increased in leaps and bounds. When we compare October and November of last year (the first two full months users could transact on Dribbble) with the same months this year, the year-over-year growth is eye-popping:
- +81% Project Requests
- +353% Project Proposals
- +715% Accepted Proposals
- +55% Average Accepted Proposal Value
- +1,163% Total Accepted Proposal Value
Lead generation is, of course, top of mind for us, but we’re also very purposeful about lead distribution. We steer clients toward the service providers on Dribbble that contribute most to our long-term growth, which enables us to commit more resources – including engineering, moderation, and customer support – toward increasing opportunity for everyone on the platform.
Of course, service providers who convert the leads we deliver receive additional leads. Conversely, providers who don’t convert leads – whether because they can’t reach an agreement with a client or because they transact off-platform in violation of our Terms of Service – receive fewer leads.
We also put our thumb on the scale for Designer Advertisers and Pro subscribers because they provide a predictable source of recurring revenue to support the platform. As a result of our efforts this year, both groups are thriving and the year-over-year growth in October and November has been, again, staggering:
- +248% Designer Advertisers
- +733% Project Requests received by Designer Advertisers
- +18% New Pro Subscribers (and 4% fewer Churned Subscribers)
- +96% Pro subscribers receiving Project Requests
- +128% Project Requests received by Pro subscribers
As Dribbble began its business model transformation last year, many of our legacy offerings (including design courses, workshops, events, and more) were discontinued – we considered any monetization activity that didn’t increase lead flow to service providers or help improve their conversion of those leads to be a distraction. Pro, on the other hand, was a part of our legacy business that we were confident could be repurposed to advance both those priorities.
Evolution of Pro
We began adapting Pro last year. Our first step was to waive the Designer Platform Fee for Pro subscribers, which meant subscribers could transact on the platform for free – protected against nonpayment and late payment, with secure payout options, and other benefits – whereas non-subscribers were required to share 3.5% of their revenue with Dribbble in exchange for those same guarantees.
This year, we released a host of features – both subscriber-facing and client-facing – that radically improved Pro’s value proposition as a lead generation and conversion lever, including:
- Client Analytics – Pro subscribers can better understand – and optimize – the factors that determine their lead flow, including Response Time, Response Rate, Lead Conversion Rate, and Cancellation Rate, which reflect how effectively a subscriber converts leads they receive on Dribbble; Funded Projects, Completed Projects, and Earnings, which represent the total value of projects a subscriber has converted on Dribbble; Shot Views, Likes, and Saves, which indicate that a subscriber is sharing compelling work relevant to clients’ needs.
- Meeting Availability – Pro subscribers can set their real-time meeting availability and sync their Google Calendar so prospective clients can easily book meetings with them with minimal back-and-forth.
- Recommendations – after contacting one service provider, clients can forward their request to six Pro subscribers – highly rated, within budget, and available now – with a single click.
- InstantMatch – clients can skip search and tell us what they’re working on. Based on their needs, we generate a detailed brief and recommend the Pro subscribers most likely to deliver high-quality work and exceptional customer service.
The impact of Recommendations and InstantMatch on lead flow to Pro subscribers can’t be overstated – together, they increased the number of Project Requests sent to subscribers each week by 120% and the number of subscribers receiving a Project Request each week by more than 80% (based on pre/post weekly averages). Over the past six months, these two features have accounted for more than 50% of leads received by Pro subscribers, funneling millions of dollars in opportunity to them each week.
Just weeks ago, we introduced another game-changing feature for Pro subscribers – a feed of Project Briefs, which are requests for proposals from high-intent clients.
Subscribers can browse these briefs and identify the opportunities that match their skills and interests, giving them an outbound lead source and a competitive advantage over non-subscribers, who can only be contacted directly by a client. For the first time, subscribers are effectively guaranteed a minimum number of leads each month – a Pro Plus subscriber, for example, can select hundreds of opportunities that make sense for them.
This is important added functionality for clients as well – in just seconds, clients in need of design and development services can use InstantMatch to not only generate a robust brief and receive recommendations based on those requirements, but also publish their brief and receive inbound proposals from our most talented and accomplished providers.
Additionally, after generating their brief with InstantMatch, clients now have a dashboard to manage everything – they can edit their briefs, review and compare providers (those we recommended, those they found themselves, and those responding to the published brief), accept or decline proposals, and much more. This is especially important for clients hiring for multiple projects concurrently, who can now group threads with providers by project, rather than working entirely from their inbox.
Clients have already used InstantMatch to publish thousands of briefs worth millions of dollars, and Pro subscribers have seized the opportunity to land more clients:
- 84% of briefs have received a response.
- 5 responses per brief (on average).
- 61% of briefs received a proposal.
- 6% of briefs have been converted.
Looking Ahead to 2026
In the coming months, we’ll be adding even more benefits to our Pro plans. For example, work is already underway to give Pro Standard and Pro Plus subscribers an allotment of credits each month to use on Boosted Shot campaigns (a self-serve version of our display advertising product). We’re also giving Pro Plus subscribers an advantage when responding to clients by highlighting and pinning their responses ahead of their competitors.
We expect that full-service digital agencies, in particular, will find Pro Plus indispensable to their growth. The agencies that operate on Dribbble share key characteristics that set them apart from freelancers on the platform and help them maximize the ROI of Pro Plus:
- Limitless capacity – they can scale up their teams as lead flow increases, without diminishing their customer service or work quality.
- End-to-end solutions – they offer a wide range of services and can turn a client’s modest design request into a more substantial design-and-development engagement. While many individual designers on Dribbble offer additional services, including development (especially with no-code or low-code solutions now available), most tend to be more specialized.
- High lead conversion rate – they have a proven, repeatable sales motion. The agencies on Dribbble tend to reply to inquiries quickly and professionally, follow up diligently, manage objections effectively, and typically have relevant work and client testimonials to share with prospective clients.
However, while we waive Platform Fees with Pro Plus subscribers and their clients, only Designer Advertisers are permitted to:
- Display or share non-Dribbble contact details.
- Display a non-Dribbble scheduling link (such as Calendly).
- Reply to inbound leads from a non-Dribbble inbox or CRM.
- Meet clients on Dribbble but transact off-platform.
We require non-advertisers, including Pro Plus subscribers, to keep payments on Dribbble because we’re highly protective of the client experience – we can’t guarantee clients will get the work they paid for (or their money back) unless payments occur on Dribbble. The peace of mind we offer clients, a key part of our value proposition, depends on Dribbble facilitating their transactions. Designer Advertisers are reputable companies that have contracts in place with us and that we trust to provide a high level of service to their Dribbble clients, whether on or off the platform.
While we’re clearly giving our Pro subscribers and Designer Advertisers a great deal of attention, it’s important to reiterate to non-subscribers that Dribbble is (and will always be):
- Free to upload design work.
- Free to browse design work.
- Free for service providers to receive and respond to work inquiries.
- Free for clients to contact service providers with work inquiries, and request proposals.
Ultimately, our focus is increasing high-intent, qualified leads for providers of design and development services. Pro and Designer Advertising help us monetize those leads and spin the flywheel faster for everyone, and we’ll continue to add to both offerings next year.
