Week 3-4 update: 3 platforms, 500+ icons, 74 Figma users — and still 0 paying subscribers
Keeping the honest streak going. Here's where Glyfiq stands.
Numbers:
— Figma: 74 users
— Framer: 9 users (plugin was in review for about a week, so growth stalled)
— Adobe Illustrator: 5 real installs (6 if you count me 😅)
— Product Hunt: 69 points
— Paying subscribers: 0
What happened this period:
The library crossed 500+ icons with 50 free for personal use. The Illustrator plugin officially passed Adobe's review and is now available both through Creative Cloud directly and manually via GitHub. Three platforms total — Figma, Framer, and now Illustrator.
Something I noticed:
After each LinkedIn post about the plugin, I see 2-4 new Figma users appear. Could be coincidence, could be causation. Hard to tell without proper attribution. But it's the closest thing to a pattern I've found so far.
The honest truth:
Still 0 paying subscribers. I'm not going to pretend that doesn't sting a little. But I'm also not ready to call it a wrong assumption yet. The product is on three platforms, the library is growing, and I'm still finding my distribution channel.
I keep coming back to something I know from 10 years in this space: large healthcare agencies and pharma companies actually prefer to pay. Free tools create procurement headaches for them. The audience exists — I just haven't reached them directly yet.
Still building. Still pushing. Not done.
Any suggestions on reaching healthcare marketing teams or agencies directly? That's my next target.
honest mismatch first: healthcare marketing teams don't browse Figma plugins, their designers do. so targeting them directly is probably the wrong funnel. the person who converts is the designer already on your free tier at an agency, once they have a reason to expense a team seat.
before more outreach i'd dm ten of your 74 free users and ask flat out what would make them pay. i'd bet it's not "more icons," it's commercial licensing, coverage of the niche medical stuff stock sets miss, or a request-an-icon promise. if 50 free icons already cover a normal medical UI, your free tier is closing the sale for the paid one, and the paywall needs to move onto something a real project actually hits.
This is genuinely useful, thank you. One clarification on the free tier though — it's not designed to cover a real project. The 50 free icons are specifically for evaluation: checking the style, testing the quality, seeing how the icons fit a particular UI. They don't include commercial licensing and deliberately exclude the most niche and in-demand categories. The paywall isn't accidental — it's where the actual medical specificity lives.
But your core point stands. I'm probably targeting the wrong layer. The designer on the free tier at an agency is a much warmer lead than a marketing director who's never opened Figma.
I'll try reaching out to some of the free users directly and just ask flat out what's stopping them. No pitch, just curiosity. That conversation is probably more valuable than anything I could post right now.
One more thing worth adding — in my experience working in this space, individual designers rarely make purchasing decisions at agencies. That call usually goes to a project manager, art director, or head of design. The designer might discover the tool and love it, but the conversion happens when they can justify it upward.
So the funnel is probably: designer finds it → uses free tier → brings it to a senior decision maker → that person approves the expense. Which means my job is twofold — make the free tier compelling enough for the designer to advocate for it, and make the Pro value clear enough for the person holding the budget to say yes.