Reviews
ManyPixels and Flocksy Square Off
The business landscape is constantly evolving and pushing forward through the 21st century. Corporate America is seeing a migration out of office space toward remote work. Small startups are capitalizing on social media campaigns to spread the word. And businesses of all sizes are learning about the beauties of outsourcing. Why waste manpower and overhead developing a customer service team? Outsource it. Why agonize over HR issues? Outsource it. And why bungle important presentations with shoddy graphic design when you could – you guessed it – outsource it.
Unlimited graphic design companies are out there to be at your beck and call whenever you need a touch of artistry. It seems that every day another graphic design company pops up offering an array of services. There is a handful that is really worth looking into. Penji, Design Pickle, Kimp – to name a few. Today, we look under the hood of two noteworthy unlimited graphic design companies: Flocksy and ManyPixels. Let’s see how they compare.
Services Offered
Flocksy and ManyPixels are both unlimited graphic design companies. Subscribers pay a monthly fee to have the services of a graphic design team.
ManyPixels
ManyPixels’ design team help with brand logos, infographics, presentations, ad campaigns, and web design. Any kind of graphic design you need, they can handle it. And not much else. They also have a free library of customizable icons and images on their website. You could pull one from their website right now without paying a dime. There aren’t watermarks or anything.
Flocksy
Flocksy also has you covered for all of your graphic design needs. Web design, animated GIFs. But it doesn’t stop at graphic design. They help with web development. They also handle copywriting if you need content for a website, and they design videos and offer voiceover work for those videos.
Winner
Flocksy is the dominate one in terms of services offered based solely on the variety and it’s not really close. It might not matter to you that your graphic design company does much more than just graphic design, but still – Flocksy is like a swiss army knife.
Pricing and Plans
Flocksy and ManyPixels can offer you the moon and that would be swell – but you still have to pay for it. Even if you run a large company with hundreds of employees, you still pay close attention to your budget, and you need something that makes fiscal sense in the end.
ManyPixels
ManyPixels has three subscription options. The most affordable is the ‘Essential’ plan. For $449/month, you can make unlimited requests and work with as many of your brands as you like with a promise of 1 project return per day. For $549/month, the ‘Advanced’ plan adds illustrations, web design, GIFs, and develop logos and branding. Their ‘Business’ plan comes in at $899/month and promises prioritized support and a second simultaneous output.
Flocksy
Plans work a little differently at Flocksy. They have the ‘Team’ plan and the ‘All Access’ plan. Both plans offer graphic design, video creation and editing, and their copywriting service. The ‘All Access’ plan also offers voiceover, custom illustrations, GIFs, and web development to go the extra mile. ‘All Access’ allows 20 of your people to work within the account while ‘Team’ only allows 5. Maybe you need more than 5. Maybe that’s excessive. ‘All Access’ also allows you to have unlimited brand buckets. (More on that later.) The ‘Team’ plan rings in at $420/month and the ‘All Access’ is $995/month.
Winner
Let’s say you’ll be using either service for the purposes of a graphic design team and that all the other bells and whistles are not important to you. In this case, ManyPixels is the winner – sort of. Sure, the Flocksy base plan is $29 cheaper than ManyPixels, but if you want GIFs, custom illustration, and web development – you have to dish out almost a grand. ManyPixels’ ‘Advanced’ plan takes the cake.
Submitting a Project
Even if you have millions to blow on graphic design (yeah right) no service is worth anything if it doesn’t work for you. What is the process like when you need to submit a request? Before we pick the two services apart, there are a few things that both have in common. For starters, they both have a user interface that works directly from their site. No using a third-party service like Trello or having to download an app, or submit projects via email. They also both offer brand profiles – or in the case of Flocksy – brand buckets.
A little on brands:
Say you have multiple brands that need some graphic design. Maybe you’re a children’s clothing store. Sometimes you need some graphic design work for the girl’s section, or the teen’s section, or the formal section. Each brand may require a different aesthetic. Sometimes you specifically want to work with different color profiles and fonts. Brand profiles or brand buckets allow you to save these aesthetics for the design team to reference when working with your brands. This is a great way for your brands to stay… on brand.
ManyPixels
ManyPixels is very straightforward. When you open up a new project task you are given the choice between different types of projects. Do you want to design an email graphic? An ad? Something for social media? Based on what type of project you choose, you will be assigned a graphic designer who specializes in that type of work. ManyPixels boasts about having a small team and therefore having more acute care than other graphic design companies that have a wide number of faceless artists.
For simple projects, the turnaround is roughly 24 hours. For more complicated custom work, tac on an extra day. If you have any questions or feedback to leave the team you can message your designer right from the site. Since their designers are all located in Europe and Asia, don’t expect a response right away. They will get back to you within a day during their business hours.
Flocksy
Flocksy’s service is fairly intuitive. While submitting design projects they offer prompts about your brand bucket, type of design you’re looking for, and give you space to upload any samples you would like the designers to draw from. For the graphic designs and copywriting, expect your project turnaround in a day. Web development takes a little longer. Many of Flocksy’s design team are in the States which is promising to those who need to have a back and forth with their designers.
Winner
It is close call. ManyPixels’ user interface is very pleasing and easy to use. There’s a reason you outsource your graphic design work. You don’t have the eye or the time for it. An idiot-proof user interface that is easy to navigate is key. But Flocksy wins here if only for the local talent. Being able to get a timely response can make a big difference if you have a deadline or if you need to make edits to a project.