Why Unlimited Design Is The Best 99designs Alternative

The power of visuals in marketing needs no introduction. Businesses of all sizes need high-quality designs consistently, but hiring individual designers or managing a team can be expensive and time-consuming. Platforms like 99designs changed how companies access freelance talent, but they come with limitations. So, today we’re talking about a popular 99designs alternative – unlimited design services!

99designs and Other Graphic-designer-for-hire Platforms

The first option most people consider when they look for designers for their projects and business needs is the for-hire platforms. They allow you to connect with freelancers and small agencies as per your needs.

99designs is one of the top contenders in this category. Since 2008, the company has connected many clients with talented graphic designers (mostly freelancers) for their design requirements. The platform is active globally and helps you find talent from any corner of the world. 

The process is quite simple, too. You can either choose your designer by skillset or category-wise search, or hold a design contest. 

In the latter, based on the budget you choose and the plan you are on, you can invite designers to submit concepts for your brief. Out of these concepts, you can pick the one that works the best for you.

If you choose a category-wise search, you can request samples and price negotiation meetings before finalizing a designer. 

In both cases, you can have multiple revisions until you feel satisfied. There are multiple pricing plans for different volumes of work, support, and fasciitis you require. You can view the full pricing here. 

This way, you can explore before deciding what works best for your business interest.

While 99designs offers flexibility, there are drawbacks:

• Very transactional and leaves no room for developing a proper client-designer relationship so that you can extract the best out of a designer. 
• Different designers handling different projects means repeated explanations and brand guidelines, and inconsistency in branding.
• Since the projects usually carry a low price tag and faster TAT requirement for the designer to be profitable, quality and innovation often take a backseat. Also, during design contests, designers may churn out similar types of designs based on what you liked in the past. 
• Not all designers in the talent pool are experienced designers. Hence, there is no quality assurance in the collaboration. 
• 99designs and similar platforms involve a long hiring process that either involves sifting through multiple profiles or evaluating a ton of concepts you receive via design contests. If you have some urgent requirements, this could be an issue. 

So, what can you do? How can you have access to high-quality graphic design and still avoid the disadvantages that exist in 99designs? 

Well, there are some 99designs alternatives out there that may suit you better based on your unique situation. Let’s check them out.

99designs Alternatives for Graphic Design 

While there are many ways to hire a graphic designer to meet your business’s needs, we have picked out a few that are popular and successful for the majority.

Graphic design agencies 

If you are looking for a long-term, professional, and committed association, graphic design agencies feel like the best 99designs alternative, provided you have a large budget. Design agencies have designers from different backgrounds, experience working in various industries, and a very professional approach to the workflow.

However, there is usually a contract involved that limits the deliverables, revisions, and even the type of designs you seek from them. While it is truly a value-add working with a design agency, it is not always an ideal choice for small businesses or growing startups. You may need more flexible options where you have a stronger hold on the deliverables.  

In-house design team 

Building an in-house design team allows you to have complete control over the design process, TAT, and deliverables. You can monitor the development of your branding closely and ensure that the design team truly knows the brand’s values for better results. You also have the luxury of multiple iterations, innovative designs, and new formats whenever you want.

The downside is cost and management. Recruiting, salaries, benefits, and ongoing supervision make in-house teams expensive. For businesses without constant, large-scale design needs, this option can quickly become inefficient.

These options work in specific situations, but neither offers the flexibility, scalability, and cost control many growing businesses need. This is where unlimited graphic design services stand out as the most practical 99designs alternative.

Unlimited Design – Why is It the Best 99designs Alternative?

If you have looked up graphic design services for your business, you probably know what unlimited graphic design services are. For those not in the know, here is a quick overview. Unlimited graphic design services are a happy marriage between design agencies and in-house design teams, with a side of freelancer benefits. 

Businesses can tap into these services for graphic design and motion graphic requirements. Most of them offer unlimited requests, revisions, and users under a flat monthly fee-based subscription. 

When you are a growing business or budding startup, you have regular graphic design needs that all have to speak the same language. The volume is also quite high, and you have some diverse requirements.

A cost-effective and efficient solution to all of this is truly hiring an unlimited graphic design service. Intrigued about how exactly unlimited design can be the best alternative to 99designs?

Why wait, in that case?

Let’s jump into the advantages of choosing unlimited design as a 99designs alternative. 

1. Smoother hiring and onboarding

With services like 99designs, there is a limit to the number of designs you can avail of, and you have to hire the designers yourself, too. The designer you choose may not have the skills you need for every project, so the hiring process goes on for a while. 

However, unlimited design services remove this step entirely. Based on the plan you choose, the unlimited design company assigns a designer or design team to handle your designs.

This also saves you from any branding inconsistencies or having to explain the brand values, personality, and brand guidelines over and over again. 

2. Access to a diverse skill set 

One of the challenges with 99designs is that you hire designers based on a design contest or a specific design skill set. However, as a business or startup, more often than not, you are going to have diverse design requirements.

Businesses usually need logos, branding materials, marketing collaterals, package design, advertisements, billboards, videos, GIFs, infographics, illustrations, and a lot more. It can be hard to find a single designer who can do it all. 

With unlimited design services, you usually have a team of 2 or three designers who can deliver all you need. It saves you the time of looking for a new designer and ensures that the output matches the rest of the creatives.

You can just keep adding design requests to the bucket without having to worry about who is going to take care of it. In comparison, this facility in a design agency will easily cost 5-10x more than what an unlimited design will bill you for. 

3. Flexible commitment 

We discussed how graphic design agencies come with a lot of rigid conditions on deliverables, timelines, and billing through firm contracts. That is not an ideal situation for a growing business. You need the flexibility of additional workload, newer design categories, and prioritized deliverables. 

The solution? Unlimited graphic design services that operate without contracts. You can sign up for monthly subscriptions that you can pause anytime you want. Most of these services offer unlimited design requests, users, branding profiles, and revisions under a flat fee model.

You can hire an entire team of designers for as long as you need and load as many requests in different design categories, such as graphic design, animation, video editing, and motion graphics as you want without any additional charges. 

There is also the possibility of increasing the design output and the active requests at any given time by adding more subscriptions and canceling them as you please. 

4. Predictable costs

Why do we say that unlimited design is the best 99designs alternative in terms of cost? It all boils down to how much you pay in the long run.

Yes, initially, hiring freelancers through services like 99designs feels like the most affordable entry point. After all, you get logo design projects for as low as $299. However, if you wish to add more designs to the mix, that’s when things start getting a little expensive. 

For instance, a “logo and website” bundle starts from $1399 with 99designs. On the other hand, KIMP’s graphic design plan and video design plan both cost nearly the same. But they cover a whole range of designs for that price – so much more than logo and website. This includes almost all kinds of branding designs and marketing designs. 

Not to forget the unlimited revisions this monthly fee covers, the dedicated design team assigned to your brand and the convenient and streamlined collaboration. That’s the visible financial advantage unlimited design services bring to the table. 

5. Professional project management

When you are running a business, and your marketing plan relies on good quality and timely graphic designs, you need a team with professionalism. Graphic design agencies promise professionalism in deliverables and management; however, they are quite expensive for a new business. Freelancers are comparatively inexpensive but not so good at professionalism and management. 

A better way to have a cost-effective professional service is via an unlimited design service. They are reliable, often with dependable, easy-to-reach customer support, and usually consist of a project manager to help you with communication, project management, deadlines, and revisions. 

Unlimited graphic design services also provide high-quality design deliverables as part of their package, along with the original source files for your designs. This means you own all the original work that is done, and you can reuse it later wherever and however you want, without any reliance on the designer. 

In terms of management, you can easily track the progress of your request via a dashboard in real time and prioritize any project you want. 

Services like KIMP are also available in time zones that work best for you and have an extremely transparent approach to the whole process. 

6. Customized design approach 

Unlimited design services allow you to add multiple branding profiles to your account and create graphic designs unique to each brand. With this service, you can create custom design briefs for each design and have the team work with the overall brand design guidelines. Since a particular team handles your requests, this is easy to manage without any hiccups. 

Most services like KIMP also allow you to replicate a design across web and print mediums with minor tweaks without compromising on the brand values. Since you don’t have “per design” prices or contest concepts like in 99designs, this does not affect your design budget at all. 

You can also tailor your videos and other social media content to different channel requirements without spending additional time on editing and repurposing. This is great for an upcoming brand with a full content marketing calendar. 

When is an Unlimited Graphic Design Service Good for You?

An unlimited graphic design service is a strong fit for businesses that rely on consistent, high-quality visuals to grow. If design plays an ongoing role in your marketing, branding, or product communication, this model offers long-term efficiency.

Summing up, unlimited design is especially useful if you:

• Have recurring design needs across marketing, social media, or sales
• Want consistent branding without managing multiple designers
• Need flexibility as workloads increase or decrease
• Are actively looking for a scalable 99designs alternative

Instead of treating design as a one-off expense, unlimited design services allow you to build a reusable design library over time. This gives your brand room to experiment, refine its visual identity, and stay consistent without budget pressure.

99designs vs Unlimited Design: A Quick Comparison

When comparing 99designs with unlimited graphic design services, the difference boils down to scalability and consistency.

99designs works well for one-off projects or businesses that need occasional design work. In this case, each project requires a new brief, designer selection, and budget, which can slow teams down as needs grow.

Unlimited design, on the other hand, is built for ongoing creative demand. A dedicated team or designer handles all requests under a flat monthly fee, making it easier to scale design output while maintaining brand consistency.

Considering these differences, for businesses with regular design needs, unlimited design is the more efficient and predictable 99designs alternative.

Want to Explore the Benefits of Unlimited Design? Get KIMP!

KIMP is a team of designers who work diligently to give you the best possible graphic design solutions for your brand. We work with you not just to supplement your marketing with designs but to develop designs that make your business shine. KIMP Graphics and KIMP Video can help your business soar with unlimited design requests, revisions, and branding designs at a flat monthly fee. No strings attached. Just a pure design partnership.

Sign up for a 7-day free trial today and explore the designs of KIMP.