Framer (Design and prototyping)
Created by: Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk

Framer bifurcates pricing: per-site for publishing, per-seat for design. The two pricing axes match the two value-capture moments.

TL;DR: Framer's pricing structure separates the publishing value-capture moment (per-site) from the design-time value-capture moment (per-seat). The bifurcation matches the actual value moments: publishing is when the design becomes live; designing is the ongoing collaborative work. The lesson for indie founders: when your product has multiple distinct value-capture moments, bifurcated pricing axes capture each axis independently — single-axis pricing leaves money on the table at the secondary value moment.

What they sell: A design-and-publish platform that lets designers ship live marketing sites and landing pages without engineering handoff.
Who it's for: Designers building marketing sites and landing pages who want to publish their design work directly without coding or engineering involvement.
Pricing model: Bifurcated pricing: per-site for publishing + per-seat for design tier
Payment frequency: Monthly or annual with annual discount; per-site tiers for publishing + per-seat tiers for design
Free trial behavior: Free tier IS the trial; sites can publish on framer.website subdomain at no cost for evaluation.
Number of tiers: 6

Anchor pattern: Bifurcated pricing as anchor
Framer's anchor mechanic is structural rather than tier-based. The two pricing axes (per-site for publishing, per-seat for design) anchor against the alternative (build the site in Webflow with per-site pricing only, or design in Figma and pay engineering to publish). Buyers comparing Framer recognize the bifurcation as honest — you pay for what you use on each axis. The complexity is justified by the two-distinct-value-moment structure.

Upgrade trigger: Per-site visitor cap plus design-team-scale trigger
Two trigger types fire: per-site upgrades fire when sites hit the visitor cap on lower tiers (Mini at 1k/mo, Basic at 10k/mo, Pro at 200k/mo); per-seat design tier upgrades fire when design teams add collaborators. The triggers operate on independent axes — site traffic growth and design team growth are uncorrelated, so each axis monetizes separately.

What's working:
Bifurcated pricing axes match the two distinct value-capture moments (publishing vs designing).|Per-site visitor caps as upgrade triggers map to mechanical growth events that buyers understand intuitively.|Free tier with framer.website subdomain seeds visible-customer presence — designers see other Framer-built sites and recognize the aesthetic.|Branded subdomain (framer.website) removal at the Mini tier captures the publishing-moment willingness-to-pay spike.|Native CMS at higher tiers handles dynamic content needs without external CMS integration.|Per-seat design tier captures collaborative-design value separately from publishing value.

What to adapt:
When your product has multiple distinct value-capture moments, bifurcated pricing axes capture each axis independently.|Per-site (or per-unit) pricing matches publishing-style value; per-seat matches collaboration-style value. Mixing them maps to multi-axis value structures.|Visitor caps as per-site upgrade triggers match how sites actually grow — traffic is the value driver buyers recognize.

What to avoid:
Do not bifurcate pricing if your value-capture moments are not actually distinct. The complexity costs conversion when buyers cannot map the axes to their own workflow.|Do not gate the per-site publishing capability behind per-seat pricing. Framer works because designers can publish many sites without adding seats — bundling the axes would lose the indie-designer segment.

Brunson lens:
Stack: Bifurcated stack: per-site stack for publishing + per-seat stack for design.
Value ladder: Multi-axis Value Ladder with publishing tiers and design tiers as parallel ladders.
Decoy/anchor: Bifurcation-as-anchor; the structural distinctness of axes anchors against single-axis competitors.
Payment mechanics: Per-site monthly or annual for publishing + per-seat monthly or annual for design; visitor caps metered per site.

Pricing last verified: 2026-05-18