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Config 2025

Figma Is More Than a Design Tool Now: 5 Key Features From Config 2025

Figma’s Config 2025 lineup expands beyond interface design into AI prototyping, responsive websites, CSS Grid layouts, vector illustration, and marketing production—but it does not eliminate specialist tools.

By ThatPainter Team 7 min read
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Yes—Figma expanded well beyond interface design at Config 2025. Its new lineup reaches AI-assisted app prototyping, website publishing, responsive layout, vector illustration, and marketing production. The important qualification is that Figma is not automatically replacing Webflow, Illustrator, Canva, or conventional software engineering. Instead, it is building a shared path from an idea to a prototype, website, illustration, or branded asset.

Figma’s five headline capabilities were Figma Make, Figma Sites, Grid, Figma Draw, and Figma Buzz. They are not equivalent products: Make, Sites, and Buzz are separate products, while Draw is a feature family in Figma Design and Grid is a layout mode.

What Figma announced at Config 2025

At Config 2025 on May 7, 2025, Figma presented one of its broadest product lineups, organized around moving from an initial idea to something that can be tested, published, illustrated, or distributed. The company’s official announcement also included additional AI enhancements and a London event on May 14.

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Capability Category Main job
Figma Make AI and product-building tool Turns prompts or existing designs into working prototypes or app-like experiences
Figma Sites Website builder and publishing tool Designs and publishes responsive websites
Grid Figma Design layout mode Creates structured layouts based on CSS Grid concepts
Figma Draw Illustration feature set Adds expressive vector drawing and editing tools
Figma Buzz Brand and marketing production tool Creates controlled, on-brand assets at scale

1. Figma Make: from design file to working prototype

Figma Make is an AI-powered prompt-to-code tool. A user can describe an experience in writing or start with an existing Figma design, then iterate through prompts, visual editing, and code. Figma also describes the ability to import an existing library so colors, typography, and styling guidance can carry into the generated work.

This makes Make especially useful when a team needs to explore an idea quickly. A designer can turn a product concept into something interactive for a usability test, while a founder or product manager can demonstrate an app-like flow without waiting for a complete engineering implementation.

Where Make fits

  • Early product exploration and concept validation
  • Internal demos and stakeholder reviews
  • Landing-page experiments
  • Usability-test prototypes
  • App-like experiences that need behavior rather than static screens

Make should not be treated as a universal one-click app generator. A generated experience may still need design cleanup, code changes, data and authentication integration, accessibility review, performance testing, security review, and a proper deployment architecture. It is strongest for prototype velocity, not as a blanket replacement for a production engineering team.

Figma announced Make’s general availability for all users on July 24, 2025, although publishing was still identified as beta in that announcement. Check the current Make announcement and plan details before relying on a specific capability.

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2. Figma Sites: design and publish responsive websites

Figma Sites brings responsive website building and publishing into the Figma workflow. It includes responsive layouts, breakpoints, interactive components, website-oriented interactions, and direct publishing. Figma also describes code layers for custom interactions and animations, while the Config recap presented integration with Make and a CMS as an upcoming capability.

The appeal is continuity: the person designing a landing page can also shape its responsive behavior and publish it without handing the work to a separate website-building environment.

Good use cases for Sites

  • Portfolios and personal sites
  • Product landing pages
  • Event websites
  • Marketing microsites
  • Early-stage startup websites
  • Design-led pages where visual control matters most

Publishing directly does not remove the technical responsibilities of a production website. Teams still need to consider content governance, analytics, forms, privacy and consent, accessibility, performance, domains, SEO, integrations, and long-term maintenance. A complex CMS, large editorial operation, commerce site, or heavily localized website may still be better served by a specialist platform.

Figma’s pricing page crawled in August 2026 listed Sites beta for Full seats. That is more precise than saying that Sites is simply available to every paid user.

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3. Grid: the quiet feature with major handoff implications

Grid is a new Auto Layout option designed around two-dimensional, CSS Grid-like layouts. It supports fixed track sizing, elements that span multiple cells, responsive behavior as frames resize, layering, and independent positioning. Figma says the structure translates more directly to CSS in Dev Mode.

That matters because a traditional design file can show what a page looks like without clearly communicating how its columns, rows, gaps, and spans should behave at different widths. A CSS-oriented layout model can make the intended implementation easier for developers to inspect and reproduce.

Grid versus Auto Layout

  • Auto Layout: Best for flow-based structures such as stacks, rows, buttons, lists, and content that grows or shrinks.
  • Grid: Better for two-dimensional layouts where elements occupy defined rows and columns or span multiple tracks.
  • Absolute positioning: Useful for deliberate overlays, but risky as the foundation of a responsive page.

Grid does not write a complete production front end or guarantee that its CSS will match a team’s framework, component architecture, or design-system conventions. It also does not eliminate the need to make breakpoint decisions. A well-structured layout is helpful; it is not a substitute for engineering judgment.

4. Figma Draw: more expressive vector work inside Figma

Figma Draw expands Figma Design into more expressive illustration and vector editing. Figma’s Config recap describes “unbounded expression and texture” in vector layers. Coverage of the feature set has highlighted tools including lasso selection, Shape Builder, multi-edit, text on a path, vector brushes, pattern repeats, texture and noise effects, and more expressive stroke controls.

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For product teams, the practical benefit is less tool switching. UI illustrations, product icons, decorative vectors, and brand explorations can live beside the interface they support, making it easier to keep visual work connected to the product and design system.

Where Draw is a strong fit

  • Interface illustrations and product icons
  • Decorative vectors embedded in product designs
  • Early brand exploration
  • Illustration elements that need to remain close to UI work

That does not establish Draw as a full Illustrator replacement. Specialists working on large illustration projects, advanced print production, color-managed workflows, prepress, or highly specialized brushes and effects may still prefer Adobe Illustrator or another dedicated application.

5. Figma Buzz: brand and marketing production at scale

Figma Buzz gives brand designers and marketers a shared space for producing on-brand assets. Its official feature description includes customizable templates, focused editing experiences, bulk creation, data connections, export options, and a Content seat.

The strategic difference is controlled flexibility. Designers can provide templates that marketers customize without exposing every protected brand decision. Data connections can also support variations such as names, prices, locations, product information, or regional campaign details.

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Good use cases for Buzz

  • Social media variations
  • Paid-ad creative
  • Event graphics and campaign banners
  • Regional or localized assets
  • Data-driven product cards
  • Merchandise and other repeatable branded materials

Buzz is particularly compelling for organizations already invested in Figma and its design systems. Canva may remain easier for casual users, broad template discovery, and organizations that want a general-purpose, non-designer-first content platform.

As of the August 2026 pricing page, Buzz beta was listed for all seat types, while Sites beta was listed for Full seats. Eligibility, AI credits, billing terms, and regional pricing can change, so verify them before purchase.

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Can Figma replace Webflow, Illustrator, Canva, or a developer?

Figma’s expansion is best understood as tool consolidation, not universal specialist replacement.

Need Figma capability Likely verdict
Prototype an app quickly Make Strong complement; not a universal engineering replacement
Publish a landing page Sites Potentially strong fit for contained, design-led sites
Run a complex CMS website Sites Verify content, localization, SEO, and workflow requirements
Build UI illustrations Draw Strong for product-connected illustration
Produce high-volume marketing assets Buzz Strong for Figma-native brand systems
Build production software Make plus engineering Still requires conventional development practices

For mature visual web development, compare Webflow or Framer. For broader publishing ecosystems, consider WordPress.com. For specialist illustration, Illustrator remains relevant. For accessible, broad marketing production, Canva remains a strong alternative. If deployable software is the priority rather than design-system continuity, developer-oriented AI tools such as Lovable or Replit may be a closer fit.

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Who benefits most?

  • Designers: Draw reduces tool switching, while Grid improves responsive layout structure.
  • Developers: Grid and Dev Mode can clarify layout intent; Make can accelerate exploratory prototypes.
  • Marketers: Buzz provides controlled templates and repeatable production.
  • Founders and product managers: Make and Sites can shorten the path from concept to demonstration.
  • Agencies and freelancers: Sites, Make, and shared client workflows can keep more project stages together.
  • Enterprise buyers: Seat types, permissions, governance, AI-credit limits, beta status, and portability deserve close review.

Availability, pricing, and lock-in

Figma’s pricing page, observed on August 18, 2026, listed a free Starter plan and Professional pricing signals of $16 per month for Full seats, $12 for Dev seats, and $3 for Collab seats. Organization and Enterprise plans were shown with annual billing and higher listed rates. These are time-sensitive USD signals, not a permanent price guarantee; taxes, regional currency, annual discounts, eligibility, and billing terms may differ.

The seat mix matters. A team should calculate how many people need Full editing access, development-oriented access, or collaboration access rather than comparing one headline subscription number. The pricing page also lists plan-specific AI-credit allocations, so AI access should not be described as uniformly unlimited. Figma’s plans and features documentation is the better place to verify current eligibility.

Consolidation has a trade-off: fewer handoffs and more shared context can mean greater dependence on one vendor’s pricing, export options, availability, permissions, and roadmap. Buyers should ask:

  1. Is the capability generally available or still beta?
  2. Which seat type is required?
  3. Are AI credits included, capped, or changeable?
  4. Can the output be exported or migrated cleanly?
  5. Can developers access and maintain generated code?
  6. Does the workflow support domains, analytics, SEO, forms, and integrations?
  7. Can marketers edit templates without changing protected brand elements?
  8. Will the setup work for clients, agencies, and external collaborators?
  9. What happens if the organization later leaves Figma?
  10. Do the permissions, governance, accessibility, and compliance controls meet the project’s requirements?

The practical verdict

Config 2025 made Figma more than a design tool in strategic scope. Make, Sites, Grid, Draw, and Buzz extend the platform into adjacent parts of product and marketing work, with the strongest advantage being continuity: shared design context from early concept through prototype, responsive layout, publishing, illustration, and branded content.

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That advantage is most valuable to teams already invested in Figma, especially when speed and collaboration matter more than having the deepest specialist features in every category. Keep dedicated tools when you need mature CMS operations, production-grade infrastructure, advanced print illustration, a broad casual-user template ecosystem, or deeply established engineering workflows.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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