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).
Last week, we introduced Outbound Proposals, enabling service providers to transact securely on Dribbble with clients they already know outside the platform – without Platform Fees for either side.
With Outbound Proposals, service providers can now use Dribbble’s contracts, payments, and other workflow features to manage those clients alongside the ones they land on Dribbble, and receive hands-on support from our team when needed.
Dribbble does not apply Platform Fees to the client’s payment or the provider’s payout – for their initial transaction or any subsequent transactions between them – as long as the client does not already have a Dribbble account.
Every Outbound Proposal that converts also counts toward the service provider’s reputation on Dribbble. The more a provider converts, the higher they’ll rank in search results, and the more inbound leads they’ll generate.
More on Outbound Proposals and other recent releases below.
Dribbble’s Long-Term Strategy
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.
However, until we pivoted from social network to marketplace, we didn’t share in the billions of dollars of opportunity flowing through Dribbble to service providers. This misalignment of incentives inevitably diverted our resources away from increasing lead flow and toward monetization activities that, in some cases, inadvertently throttled lead flow.
The marketplace model, on the other hand, plays to our strengths, is fair to all stakeholders, and positions us for long-term, sustainable growth. The more leads that service providers receive from Dribbble, the more revenue they generate, and the more resources we have to generate high-intent website traffic, optimize the conversion funnel, mediate disputes, and prevent spam, fraud, and abuse – further increasing their revenue and ours.
Of course, the flywheel only turns if the leads that originate on Dribbble are converted on Dribbble. If lead recipients circumvent or attempt to circumvent our Platform Fees, they jeopardize both the future of the platform and, in turn, the income of hundreds of thousands of service providers who rely on Dribbble.
Disintermediation is a constant headwind for any marketplace, not just ours. For that reason, every marketplace – whether a competitor like Upwork or Toptal, or one in an unrelated vertical like Etsy or Airbnb – strictly prohibits it. Last March, to protect the integrity of our marketplace, we implemented our own non-circumvention policy that ensures we share in the revenue generated by any lead that originates on Dribbble.
While it has never been our intention to monetize leads that originate outside Dribbble, until now there was no way for service providers to accept payments on Dribbble from clients they met elsewhere without incurring Platform Fees.
Outbound Proposals enable them to do exactly that.
Outbound Proposals
Most freelancers – and virtually all agencies – rely on multiple lead sources. They meet clients through referrals, social media, paid marketing, online marketplaces, and other channels, each with its own workflow.
Now, Outbound Proposals enable service providers to accept payments on Dribbble from any client, regardless of where they met. In just moments, they can generate a thorough, well-structured proposal with payment link to send to their clients, whether on or off Dribbble.
Beyond the peace of mind that Dribbble offers service providers – fraud protection, secure payout methods, customer support and dispute resolution, and timely payment upon completion of work – there are no Platform Fees applied to them or their clients on that initial transaction or any subsequent transactions between them.
As always, the more leads a service provider converts on Dribbble, the higher they’ll rank in search results and recommendations, and the more reviews and ratings they’ll have to establish credibility with prospective clients.
Dribbble also offers peace of mind to the client – fraud protection, secure payment methods, a money-back guarantee if work isn’t completed, full copyright ownership of the finished work, and customer support and dispute resolution.
Of course, if a client and service provider have worked together many times before, there’s already trust between them. However, if this is one of their first transactions – or a higher-stakes one – Dribbble’s safeguards enable both parties to proceed with confidence.
The fine print:
- While a Pro subscription is not required, this feature is only available to freelancers and agencies who have been approved to share their work and offer services on Dribbble.
- Platform Fees are waived for any client who does not already have a Dribbble account when they receive the Outbound Proposal. If the client does an account, standard fees apply.
- The payment processing fee applied by our partner Stripe is not waived – clients will be assessed a 2.9% + $0.30 processing fee for credit card payments,1.5% for crypto, and 0.8% (capped at $6.50) for ACH.
For more information on Outbound Proposals, please visit the Help Center.
To be clear, even when Platform Fees do not apply to an Outbound Proposal, the increased transaction activity benefits our marketplace in the long run – more clients, more reviews and ratings, and better terms with our payments and fraud prevention vendors.
Video Meetings
In addition to Outbound Proposals, we released the latest version of Video Meetings.
Video Meetings make it easy for clients and service providers to clarify requirements, set expectations, and share feedback before or after a project has been funded (particularly important for more complex, higher-value projects).
All service providers – Pro and non-Pro – can start or schedule Video Meetings (though only Pro subscribers can set their working hours and real-time meeting availability).
With the latest version of Video Meetings:
- The feature is more integrated within our user experience.
- Calls are more stable and consistent across environments – especially important for high-stakes, client-facing meetings.
- Meeting transcripts are available to both parties upon request, and may be used by our team to help mediate disputes.
While Video Meetings is a free feature available before a project has been funded, both clients and service providers are expected to abide by our Terms of Service – meaning they cannot exchange contact information to circumvent Dribbble’s Platform Fees (and doing so may result in permanent account suspension).
Framer Experts
Thousands of freelancers and agencies on Dribbble offer Framer-related services – now, clients can easily find the ones who are certified Framer Experts.
To be certified as a Framer Expert, a service provider must have completed client work using Framer that is fully functional and responsive, original (not simple template edits), and demonstrates their knowledge of advanced features.
Clients can find Framer Experts on Dribbble by browsing profiles or services for service providers with the Framer Expert badge, or by visiting our Framer Experts page.
To be recognized by Dribbble as a Framer Expert, service providers apply on Framer and link their Dribbble account (or add their Dribbble account to their Framer dashboard if they’re already a Framer Expert).
For more information on becoming a Framer Expert, visit the Help Center.
State of the Business
A business model transformation like ours doesn’t happen overnight – especially if the company intends to remain profitable during the transition. In our case, we couldn’t just turn the lights off on Dribbble’s legacy offerings and move on – we still needed that revenue to fund our plans for the company.
Instead, we had to simultaneously develop the transactional features needed to compete against marketplaces with decades-long head starts, adapt the parts of the existing business that were compatible with our strategy (such as Pro), and sunset the rest incrementally, as the revenue could be replaced.
Now, we’re at the point where most of Dribbble’s revenue – and all its growth – comes from products introduced over the past 18 months, and the pace of change is accelerating.
March was our best month ever for most of our key metrics, including GMV, Orders, Clients, Fee Revenue, and more, with triple-digit Y/Y growth for each. February had been the previous high-water mark for each of these metrics.
For the quarter, clients purchased millions of dollars of design and development services on Dribbble, up 289% Y/Y and 17% Q/Q.
We’re especially encouraged by our GMV growth because:
- It’s happening without paid marketing – the clients who transact on Dribbble are coming through search engines, LLMs, referrals, and other non-paid channels.
- More agencies than ever are advertising their services on Dribbble – while that advertising revenue is a net positive for our business, these agencies are exempt from our non-circumvention policy, and any transactions they complete off-platform are not counted towards GMV.
- It’s balanced – a combination of more clients, more orders, and higher-value orders.
In Q1, agencies spent a record amount advertising on Dribbble, up 94% Y/Y and 4% Q/Q.
It was also our best quarter in years for Pro which received a lot of attention from us in Q4 last year. We acquired thousands of new Pro subscribers, up 74% Y/Y and 37% Q/Q.
Of course, transaction activity, agency advertising, and Pro signups are all lagging indicators of lead flow – if Dribbble is not generating enough lead flow for service providers, none of our monetization levers will work.
In Q1, we set a new record for Leads – the total number of Project Requests, Service Requests, and Project Briefs that were approved by moderation – which increased by 179% Y/Y and 40% Q/Q, and again, we did it without paid marketing.
We couldn’t be more confident about the rest of the year – besides the features announced today, there’s impactful work underway up and down the conversion funnel. We’ll share more soon – including early results from Outbound Proposals.
