Figma Complemented Adobe Displaced XD
Matthew Moore, Head of Design at Lime, on Figma vs. Adobe
This shows Figma was winning a new budget line, not just taking one from Adobe. Design teams still needed Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects for image, video, and brand work, but they chose Figma as the shared place for product design, prototyping, comments, and design systems. In practice, companies often paid for Creative Cloud and Figma together, while XD was the only Adobe product Figma clearly displaced.
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At Lime, designers had Creative Cloud access, including XD, but still standardized on Figma because the browser based, multiplayer workflow removed file sending and made one live file the source of truth for designers, PMs, engineers, and other teams.
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Another enterprise team reported 14 Adobe Creative Cloud seats and 10 Figma seats, but zero XD users. They kept Adobe for Illustrator and other creative work, while Figma became the home for brand libraries, prototypes, design system handoff, version history, and collaboration.
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The broader market pattern was that Adobe's bundle could distribute XD widely, but not make designers want it. Figma beat bundle economics by becoming the preferred workflow for UI work, while Adobe remained essential for adjacent creative jobs that Figma did not cover.
The next step is a bigger split of the creative stack, not a winner take all replacement. Figma can keep expanding from product design into whiteboarding and other collaborative workflows, while Adobe remains entrenched in image, video, and pro creative tools. That means enterprise design spend keeps expanding as teams buy the best tool for each job.