Design Pickle Review (2023): What To Know Before You Buy (2023)

Design Pickle is unquestionably one of the top unlimited graphic design services. But is it better than other popular choices, like Awesomic or Kimp? Most graphic design services are similar to each other, making them difficult to compare. But Design Pickle found an interesting niche where it outperformed all other picks—automation.

Thanks to the proprietary dashboard, Slack and Zapier integrations, as well as the helpful dev team, you can create any type of automation you need. But you don’t need to be tech-savvy to use it. Zapier is a beginner-friendly tool that lets you create cross-platform automations without coding knowledge. On top of that, Design Pickle has already created dozens of popular integrations for you.

How Much Does Design Pickle Cost?

You have at least three options when subscribing to Design Pickle. The Graphics plan runs $499 per month and includes graphic design and custom illustrations with a 1–2 day turnaround. The Graphic Pro plan costs $995 per month and gets you everything on the Graphics plan, plus presentation design, same-day turnaround, designated designers, Real-time Slack collaboration, an onboarding manager, and even Spanish-speaking designers if needed. The most expensive option is to get the Graphic Premium, which is $1,695 per month and gives you everything you get with the Graphic Pro, plus motion graphics, motion graphics revisions tool, and Canva file delivery.

With monthly fees ranging from $499 to $1,695, Design Pickle is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive unlimited graphic design service. It’s more expensive than ManyPixels ($439/mo), Penji ($374/mo), DotYeti ($399/mo), or Kapa99 ($358/mo). But keep in mind that they offer annual subscriptions, which reduce the price per month, while Design Pickle doesn’t promote them. However, we found that you can get quarterly plans for 5% off and yearly plans for 10% off, thus reducing the price to just $449 per month. In addition, there are also more expensive services, such as Vecteezy ($1,599/mo), Superside ($4,400/mo), and Awesomic ($699/mo).

Getting Started With Design Pickle

You can start with Design Pickle in two ways: through a video call that gives you a demo or without one. Design Pickle prefers to talk to every customer through a video call and give them a platform demo before signing up. This gives you, the customer, a better overview of what you’re getting while the Design Pickle team better understands your needs. That’s important because Design Pickle is a highly adaptable, unlimited graphic design service—nothing is set in stone. You can get custom pricing and any integration you’d like. While we haven’t tried everything, we got acquainted with Design Pickle’s automation through Zapier. Their development team is always ready to make custom integrations and automations for you.

Those who prefer not to talk through a video can avoid it by communicating only through emails and omitting the free demo during the sign-up.

How To Submit A Request

Design Pickle’s request form is user-friendly and is designed to help you communicate your design needs effectively. It’s broken down into three simple steps: Describe your design, add or request stock images, and add any assets, images, and text you need. When your request is ready, you can review it and send it to your designer.

Design Pickle also gives you tips on how to create an effective request. For example, it is recommended to make your request as precise as possible and to fill some fields with options automatically. It is also recommended to share links to online files you have and configure the privacy settings of the file or folder so that anyone who has the link can view and download the files.

If you want to send editable files, you can find instructions on how to do so on Design Pickle. They recommend sending the font along if the same font is used, making sure the text is editable, and sending the copy separately if needed. They also advise on how to send the text to the designer, such as including it in the instructions, attaching a plain text file to the request form, and proofreading the text.

Design Pickle also lets you choose the images you want to use in your design, or you can leave that up to your designer. You can search the available images by keywords, and the image results will be displayed from the available libraries. Design Pickle also helps you select the file types you need, such as Adobe Illustrator source file (AI), Adobe Photoshop source file (PSD), Adobe InDesign source file (INDD), JPG, PNG and GIF image files, PDF, EPS and SVG vector files, PPT, MOV & MP4, Word documents, 3D files and Figma.

Slack Real-Time Collaboration

Collaborating with your Designated Designer and other Production team members through Slack is a breeze. Slack is a real-time messaging app that allows you to communicate with your team in a private channel. This includes your Designated Designer, a Product Specialist, and other Production team members. This way, you can easily get quick feedback and revisions.

Using Slack is super user-friendly and easy to navigate. It’s simple to invite up to three Design Pickle users to your private Slack channel so that you can work with multiple people simultaneously. And if you need to grab someone’s attention, you can tag them in your message. Plus, Slack is filled with fun features like emojis to make your messages more lively, and attaching files like images and videos is a breeze. Plus, message threads keep conversations organized and easy to follow.

Slack also integrates with a number of other apps, like Design Pickle, Zapier, Asana, Google Drive, Trello, and more, making it even easier to collaborate with your team and receive fast feedback.

Zapier Integration

Design Pickle’s Zapier integration is a great way to automate processes and streamline workflows. With Zapier, you can automate processes between Design Pickle and other apps you use daily, such as Google, Asana, Trello, and others.

Setting up a Zapier account is a straightforward process. Simply go to zapier.com and link your Zapier account to your Design Pickle account. Then you can start creating Zaps to automate processes between Design Pickle and other applications. For example, completed Design Pickle designs can be added as updated rows in a Google Sheet; Design Pickle requests can be submitted when tags are added to Asana tasks; newly completed Design Pickle designs can be posted to a Slack channel; Design Pickle requests can be submitted when new labels are added to Trello cards; newly completed Design Pickle designs can be added to the WordPress library; and completed Design Pickle design files can be uploaded to Google Drive.

Zapier has a wide range of triggers and actions. Examples of triggers include query completion, file delivery, and designer responses, while examples of actions include query creation, query search, and query update. This way, you can customize your Zaps to meet your specific needs.

What We Like About Design Pickle

Design quality and variety. Design Pickle can create graphic designs, custom illustrations, presentation designs, and motion graphics for you. This includes social media graphics, custom illustrations, infographics, landing pages, book graphics, brochures and flyers, packaging, and more. Large companies can also get campaign assets, which means you get one design in multiple formats and for many platforms, all forming a cohesive campaign. Most of the time, the designs are of the highest quality, and if you don’t like the result, you can always ask for a change or choose a different designer. Design Pickle’s work is all over social media and blogs.

Kind and friendly designers. On many platforms, you don’t get a feeling you’re working with real people—you submit a design, and the next day you have it waiting for you. But if you prefer a more personalized approach, Design Pickle is a good solution. You get to chat with your designer and ask for a different one, even based on a time zone and language. We’ve had a similar experience with Awesomic, where designers and customer support are very kind.

Assign specific designer to your task. The Design Pickle designer is assigned randomly. When submitting requests, you can also ask for a specific designer. This is a great way to maintain a consistent brand image across your design. We recommend doing this if you find a good designer.

No contract; cancel anytime. Design Pickle offers relatively affordable prices on a month-to-month basis, while other agencies offer significant discounts only with yearly commitments. Still, you can get 5% and 10% discounts by subscribing quarterly or yearly at Design Pickle, respectively. But these discounts aren’t as significant. As such, Design Pickle is the best option for on-demand projects (where you need designs for a month or two).

Fast turnaround times. At every unlimited graphic design agency, the turnaround time depends on the type of the project—UI/UX design can’t be done in a day—and the plan you choose. More expensive subscriptions generally come with shorter turnaround times, most of the time within a day. The only exception we found was Awesomic, which offers the same delivery even with the cheapest plan ($699/mo).

Numerous integrations. If you’re an automation fan like us, you will love Design Pickle. Thanks to the Slack and Zapier integrations, you can create any automation you like. Additionally, Design Pickle’s team can help you create more complex automations.

What We Didn’t Like About Design Pickle

Sometimes you can’t get a new designer. While we have praised Design Pickle’s ability to ask for a specific designer, this is not always possible. In some cases, Design Pickle assigns you a designer, and you can not get a new one even if you ask customer service. We do not know why this is, but there are other customers who have complained about it.

Too many revisions. Depending on the designer, you may not immediately be satisfied with the results. You can ask for unlimited revisions until the design is ready. However, since you pay monthly rather than per design, this costs you valuable subscription time. So if a designer needs twice as many revisions, you’ll only get half as many designs. We have had bad experiences with several Design Pickle designers who took way too long to deliver the results we wanted.

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