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).
In December, we announced new features that gave Pro subscribers more control than ever over their lead flow and earnings on Dribbble, including access to a feed of Project Briefs – requests for proposals from high-intent clients – from which they can select opportunities to pursue. This gives them an outbound lead source and another competitive advantage over non-subscribers, who can only be contacted directly by a client.
In January, we followed up on those releases with even more features to help Pro subscribers generate and convert leads on Dribbble, including:
- Boosted Shots Credits – Pro Standard and Pro Plus subscribers now receive up to $300 monthly credits they can use to purchase impressions in Dribbble search results and reach more clients.
- Featured Proposals – Pro Plus subscribers now have their responses to Project Briefs displayed to clients ahead of competing proposals. The higher a client’s budget, the more respondents their Project Brief will attract – and the more of a difference-maker this feature becomes.
- Read Receipts/Last Active Status – Pro Standard and Pro Plus subscribers now know that a client has viewed their message and when the client was last on the website.
Learn more about these releases and other recent progress below.
More for Pro Subscribers
Pro is a lever for service providers to increase inbound and outbound lead flow on Dribbble. The following features are inspired by feedback from service providers of all types and sizes and are included in subscribers’ plans at no additional cost:
- Project Briefs feed – Now, the Project Briefs feed is much more intuitive and robust, with advanced features to help Pro subscribers quickly find, save, and respond to opportunities that best match their skills and interests. The first version of the product, which we introduced in late November, was just a reverse-chronological feed of Project Briefs. We followed up with basic search functionality and other modest improvements, but we didn’t plan to do more anytime soon – the response to this feature has been so positive, though, that we made it a priority.
- Boosted Shots Credits – Now, Pro Standard and Pro Plus subscribers get monthly credits to spend on Boosted Shots, an existing feature that enables users to purchase impressions in Dribbble search results and feeds. A service provider selects a sample of their work (for example, a mobile app project) to boost and sets an impression budget. Unlike a ranking bonus, which acts as a multiplier, Boosted Shots guarantees a specific number of impressions for the selected work. Pro Standard annual subscribers get $30 each month to spend on Boosted Shots, while Pro Plus subscribers get $150 and $300 per month on the monthly and annual plans, respectively. Depending on their plan, subscribers can get more than three times the cost of their subscription in monthly credits.
- Read Receipts/Last Active Status – Now, Pro Standard and Pro Plus subscribers can see whether a client has read their message and when the client was last on Dribbble. This is helpful information for service providers managing communications with multiple prospective clients simultaneously – they can now focus on the highest-intent prospects, avoid unnecessary follow-ups, and minimize time spent on cold leads.
- Project Brief Notifications – Now, Pro Standard and Pro Plus subscribers can set their preferences to receive email alerts whenever Project Briefs that meet their requirements are published. Many subscribers continue to rely solely on inbound leads, despite having access to hundreds of Project Briefs published each week – with an average budget that’s 70% higher (!) than that of inbound requests over the same period. We expect this feature to increase the number of respondents per Project Brief. As that metric increases, the conversion rate for Project Briefs – already 4.2 percentage points higher than inbound requests – should rise even higher (typically, the more service providers a client reaches, the higher the response rate and the faster the response time, which are two leading indicators of conversion).
- Featured Proposals – Now, responses from Pro Plus subscribers to Project Briefs are displayed to clients ahead of competing proposals. On average, Project Briefs with budgets under $1K receive responses from four providers, Project Briefs between $1K and $5K receive responses from 14 providers, and Project Briefs with budgets above $5K receive responses from 20 providers – giving Pro Plus subscribers a meaningful advantage when competing for higher-value projects. Moreover, as the number of respondents increases thanks to the Project Brief notifications mentioned above, this feature will only become more impactful for Pro Plus subscribers.
Much of the input we received from Pro subscribers and non-subscribers alike is reflected in follow-up work completed in January, but there was one recurring feature request that we decided not to act on – enabling subscribers to purchase more Project Brief credits after they’ve used their monthly allotment. While we may offer add-on credits in the future, for now Pro Standard subscribers can upgrade to Pro Plus and receive 10 times the credits, and Pro Plus subscribers can become advertisers to receive any number of credits they need.
Platform Fee Increase for Service Providers
It’s free for any service provider on Dribbble – whether an individual freelancer, full-service digital agency, or anything in between – to:
- Create a public profile, share examples of their client work, and offer their services.
- Receive work inquiries from clients and communicate with them over text and video.
- Send proposals to clients, accept payments, and deliver work through the platform.
Service providers can tap into the billions of dollars of opportunity that clients – including some of the biggest companies in the world, such as Amazon, Meta, and Netflix – bring to Dribbble each year and transact risk-free at no upfront cost. When they generate revenue, we receive a share of that revenue by applying a Platform Fee to their payout – in other words, we don’t make money unless they do.
For the past 18 months, that Platform Fee was a flat 3.5% of the service provider’s payout. As of this morning, it’s a graduated fee – 10% on the first $500, 7% on the next $500, and 4% on any amount above that. For example, a $2,000 payout now incurs a Platform Fee of $125 ($50, $35, and $40 for each bracket, respectively). This is the same model we introduced last year for the client Platform Fee (flat fee of 7.5% became 5%–3.5%–2% graduated fee).
To be clear, the Platform Fee is calculated on a service provider’s total payout, not on each milestone individually. For example, the effective Platform Fee would be 8.5% on a $1,000 payout, 4.5% on a $10,000 payout, and 4.0% on a $100,000 payout, regardless of the number of milestones. In other words, as the service provider’s payout increases, the effective fee decreases.
As always, Pro Standard (annual) and Pro Plus (monthly or annual) subscribers are exempt from any fees on their payouts. Now, for the same-size transaction, a subscriber’s payout is up to 10% higher than a non-subscriber’s.
To state the obvious, the lower end of the graduated fee on service providers’ payouts is now higher than the flat fee it replaced, while the upper end of the graduated fee on clients’ payments is lower than the flat fee it replaced. The intent behind raising fees for service providers isn’t to increase Dribbble’s take rate, but to offset the lower fees we now offer clients. After we factor in fee-exempt Pro subscribers, this change is effectively revenue-neutral for Dribbble today – but as we reduce friction for clients and transaction activity increases, we can commit more resources to accelerating growth and generating more revenue over the long run for service providers and, in turn, for Dribbble.
In 2024, when we decided to reinvent Dribbble as a revenue-sharing marketplace, nearly a million freelancers and agencies already relied on Dribbble for leads. We were determined to minimize the disruption our business model transformation might cause for them. We made early product and policy decisions through this lens – sometimes, admittedly, at the expense of the client experience.
For example, we didn’t require service providers and clients who met on Dribbble to keep payments on the platform. When they did stay on Dribbble, we spelled out every fee to providers before they sent a proposal – both the fees applied to their payout and the fees applied to the client’s payment – and made clients responsible for most of those fees. The more leads a provider converted on Dribbble, the higher their content and profile would rank in search – but a low or 0% conversion rate wouldn’t adversely impact their rankings.
These choices, among others, were unconventional for a marketplace business – and, as it turned out, for good reason. It became obvious that service providers weren’t going to upend their workflow – monitor another inbox, learn to accept payments and deliver work through Dribbble, gather reviews and ratings, and abide by unfamiliar policies – when they could simply continue generating leads on Dribbble while converting them off-platform, as before.
In retrospect, we should have focused on maximizing qualified lead flow on Dribbble. Every part of our business depends on this – service providers will share their work, subscribe to Pro, advertise, and transact through the platform only if they can expect to generate viable leads as a result. Providers will adapt to any change as long as we consistently deliver high-intent clients.
Now, we obsess over every facet of the client experience. Fees aren’t a client’s only consideration when deciding whether to use Dribbble, but the lower, the better – and over the past year, client fees have come down significantly from where they started:
- We replaced a flat 7.5% Client Platform Fee with a graduated fee of 2% to 5%.
- In addition to credit cards (which incur a 2.9% + $0.30 payment processing fee for clients), we now offer crypto (a 1.5% processing fee) and ACH payments (a 0.8% processing fee capped at $6.50).
- Platform Fees are waived completely for clients working with Pro Plus subscribers or Designer Advertisers (who receive a disproportionately high share of leads).
- We offer clients up to $100 off their first payment on Dribbble (which effectively cancels out any fees on payments under $1.5K). To be clear, this amount isn’t deducted from the service provider’s payout – it’s funded entirely by Dribbble (sometimes at a loss).
As an aside, the wider the gap grows between Pro subscribers and non-subscribers in terms of Platform Fees, the more service providers will subscribe to Pro – and the lower Dribbble’s take rate becomes. While Pro subscriber growth does cannibalize transaction fee revenue, it’s a tradeoff we’re willing to make:
- Pro subscriptions enable us to monetize lead flow on Dribbble even if those leads don’t convert (though we miss out on the upside of a revenue share when they do).
- Pro subscribers are more invested – they consistently deliver better results than non-subscribers, as measured by response rates and response times, lead conversion rate, reviews and ratings, and other customer experience metrics.
- Pro revenue is more predictable than transaction fee revenue, helping us make long-term investments with more confidence.
More for Clients
As the client experience improves on Dribbble, lead flow increases and disintermediation decreases. In recent weeks, we’ve made it easier for clients to make contact with the service providers that contribute most to our long-term growth:
- InstantMatch (latest) – Now, clients seeking design and development services can use InstantMatch to generate a robust Project Brief in seconds and, with a single click, publish it to receive inbound proposals and send it directly to the service providers we recommend. Previously, clients had to review and contact each provider one by one. The impact of this modest change has been eye-popping – requests sent through InstantMatch have increased by nearly 600% since its release, and InstantMatch accounted for 40% of all requests received by service providers in January.
• Submissions Filters — To help clients sort through the proposals they receive from Pro subscribers in response to their Project Briefs (which, depending on the budget, can number in the dozens), we now enable them to filter by cost, location, and provider star rating, and to sort by recency, cost, and more – helping them hone in faster on the providers most likely to meet their needs.
- Read Receipts/Last Active Status – Same functionality enabled for Pro subscribers. While service providers want to know where to focus their efforts, clients (especially those on a deadline) want to know there’s someone paying attention to them on the other end.
- Ranking Algorithms (latest) – We introduced new algorithms for Recommendations and Designer Search that upweight service providers’ Lead Conversion Rate, rewarding freelancers and agencies that convert the inbound leads they receive on Dribbble and penalizing those who don’t. We consider many ranking factors, of course – including response rate, response time, and client ratings – but Lead Conversion Rate helps us divert prospective clients away from those service providers who are either unlikely to convert them, or are circumventing our Platform Fees.
Looking Ahead
2026 is off to a record-setting start. January was our best month ever for most leading indicators of transaction activity on Dribbble, including:
- Leads (+165% Y/Y)
- Lead Senders (+35% Y/Y)
- Proposals (+723% Y/Y)
- Proposal Recipients (+326% Y/Y)
- Accepted Proposals (+333% Y/Y)
This year, our top priority will be helping clients fulfill their design and development needs on Dribbble. The projects that clients bring to Dribbble will always start with design – but they can’t end with design. By serving clients with more complex projects – and the corresponding budgets – we increase the revenue potential of the leads that providers receive on Dribbble which, in turn, supports all our monetization efforts.
More to come soon!
