I built a thing. As with most things starting 2022, I primarily build products I'm a consumer of myself. This project emerged from my need to manage a large volume of prints, including direct-to-consumer (DTC) non-fungible token (NFT) artwork prints for premium apparel, caps, packaging, clothing and shipping labels, and anything else that required automation for Outpaint.
First things first, figma plugins are essentially sandboxed mini applications. They have a main thread that can spin off an iframe for their visual widgets. While the fundamentals of the web are all you need to ship, I recommend picking the stack you're most comfortable with. In my case, I defaulted to react but there are tons of boilerplates and tooling built around this ecosystem.
Here's a list of tools I landed up using:
create-figma-plugin boilerplate to get your main.ts and ui.ts files already configured. It also comes with a really useful react components library so your plugins can feel native to the platform.
railway.app for all my database and servers. It's very affordable so I'm unclear on the benefits of a serverless setup. Not to mention, railway comes with templates for common templates so I repurposed the drizzle hono package for my usecase.
drizzle orm is hands down the best experience when it comes to managing dbs and migrations. you don't bend to its will, it bends to your typescript schemas. the copywriting is killer. what more do you want?
polar is the newcomer in town. Setting it up required the largest effort, as I needed to consider pricing plans, licensing keys, and how to capture the application state simply.
If you plan to write, tons of plugins I would also recommend stacking them as packages in your Turborepo so you can benefit from the the shared scripts, easy of handling library upgrades and not having to parse through 200 repos to make batch updates. In addition, I also landed up dropping the server repos as packages. This doubles as when you start AI driven driven development using editors such as cursor and zed that greatly favor monorepo so it can pull context across the entire folders.
Pricing* is always a sensitive topic. There is no fixed price. If customers frequently complain about the cost, it may indicate that the value isn't fully realized, they don't understand it, or they might not be the ideal customers. The product may address only a small portion of their pain points or be the only option available. Ultimately, the price reflects what users are willing to pay. I believe plugins should require a one-time payment, allowing users to choose whether to pay rather than facing recurring charges.
This upfront cost enables plugin developers to invest more time in adding features and attracting new users, rather than focusing solely on maximizing value extraction. Since plugins typically serve a specific purpose, they usually perform targeted tasks rather than generic ones, unlike platforms that can evolve their features.
The only caveat is when your plugin relies on an API with variable costs, where charging a small recurring fee for unlimited or high-threshold use. The basic plan still includes API usage but is capped to prevent abuse.The only caveat is when your plugin relies on an API with variable costs, while I charge a small fee for unlimited or high-threshold use. The basic plan still includes API usage but is capped to prevent unsustainable work.
Another important reminder is that plugins are mini applications. Like most software, they operate as a service-based business, which means there are recurring maintenance costs and support you will need to manage. For paid plugins, you will likely have to deal with taxes and refunds. Price your product based on what you can sustain, rather than undercutting other plugin authors and compromising quality. I have found FigStats to be an incredibly useful tool for tracking analytics and studying other authors.
As always if you have any issues, hop into discord or study the open source plugins on common use cases.
All things being equal pricing is largely a function of positioning and I highly recommend April Dunfords work here. Copy writing plays a huge role in not only what you sell but why you sell.
