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Compare · Updated November 5, 2026

Product design subscription or design studio?

A product design subscription for startups (DesignJoy, ManyPixels, Superside) or a design studio: what each costs, what each is built for, and which one fits your work.

The short answer

Yes, there are product design subscriptions for startups: DesignJoy ($4,995 a month), Awesomic (From $1,799) and design partner plans like Baobun Studio’s (from $15,000 a month). A subscription suits a steady flow of small requests, one at a time. A studio project suits work that has to fit together, like a product redesign or an MVP.

Our take: A subscription sells you time. A studio project sells you a result. Both are fine; just pick the one that matches what you actually need.

By Charles Postiaux, founder of Baobun Studio · November 5, 2026

The difference. 01

Design subscriptionStudio project
How you payA flat monthly fee, pause or cancelA fixed price for the project
How work movesRequests in a queue, often one at a timeA plan: audit, flows, system, prototype
Who designsWhoever picks up the requestThe same people from start to end
Best forMarketing design, small UI tasksRedesigns, MVPs, design systems
Research and testingRarely includedUsually part of the work

What they cost. 02

PriceWhat it is
ManyPixelsFrom $699Graphic design subscription
AwesomicFrom $1,799Matched freelancers and AI agents
DesignJoy$4,995One designer, one request at a time
SupersideFrom $15,000Enterprise creative, 12-month term
Baobun StudioFrom $15,000Design partner plan, or a fixed-price project

From each company’s own site, November 5, 2026. Every studio we compare is on the compare page.

When a subscription fits. 03

  • Your requests are small and separate: an ad, a post, a page.
  • Someone on your team decides what to design next.
  • You want a steady monthly cost you can pause.

When a studio fits. 04

Plenty of teams use both: a subscription for marketing design, and a studio for the product. We’ve designed for Booking.com, Serko, Slack and Mux, and the founder designs every project.

  • The work only makes sense as a whole: flows, screens, a system.
  • You need someone to find what to fix, not just make what you ask for.
  • You want it tested with users before your engineers build it.

Questions. The ones people ask next.

Email us
Can a design subscription redesign our product?

It can handle UI requests one at a time. A full redesign needs research, flows and a design system planned together, which is what studios are set up for.

Is a subscription cheaper than a studio?

Per month, often. For a redesign, one request at a time can take longer, so the total isn’t always lower.

Keep reading. Related pages.

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