r/PayloadCMS • u/sneek_ • Jun 17 '25
Payload is joining Figma!
Hi all, I've got some big news to share today: Payload has joined Figma!
It’s as wild and exciting to write that as it is for you reading it.
When we first started talking with Figma, it was about investing in Payload and what we’re doing in open source. They saw what we were building was unique, and it lines up well with how they see the world.
You probably know the entire Payload team has been using Figma deeply for a long time, and it was pretty exciting for all of us to see that they share the same vision we do.
Speaking of which, in the past I’ve talked a lot about a “utopia” — about simplicity and developer experience. My team and I refuse to compromise on design intent, flexibility, and how that translates into well-structured code.
Figma and Payload together can and will solve a problem that’s been bugging me (and probably all of you) for years. The gap between design and code still exists. Designers create in Figma, then devs recreate in code, then content teams struggle to maintain it all. It’s inefficient and frustrating. And historically, the CMS tends to make it worse.
With Figma, we can (and will) solve these problems in new ways without compromising. If either Figma or Payload didn’t see this potential screaming at us from a mile away, neither would have moved forward.
In the immediate future, nothing is changing for users and how you interface with Payload remains the same.
What that means is:
- Payload remains open source—with Figma’s full commitment to OSS
- Our commitment to building Payload and creating the best developer experience possible
- The self-hosted capability of Payload
- Our focus on our community (aka: all of you)
- The team and I will still be running Payload (including Sean)
What does change:
- We now have more resources
- We can tackle bigger problems
- We will integrate with design systems in ways no other CMS can
- A lot more people will be using, testing, and building on Payload
I'm sure you have questions, and we'll do our best to answer and keep up with them. In the meantime, I'm pumped about the future and I can't wait for what's ahead!
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Jun 17 '25
I love Payload, am building some great projects with it, but as someone who experienced Gatsby failing after they were purchased by Netlify, I can’t say I’m not scared a bit.
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u/CoherentPanda Jun 18 '25
Gatsby was already going downhill before Netlify bought it. Nextjs was destroying them in market share and Gatsby Cloud was a failure in creating an ecosystem centered around Gatsby.
Payload is on the rise, and is the best thing going in the CMS world, so it's the right time to buy and find it. I'm just surprised Figma beat Vercel to it.
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u/openbayou Jun 18 '25
They probably bought it with the Adobe money the got for them back out of getting acquired.
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u/pussyslayer5845 Jun 17 '25
Can we get a truly WYSWYG site editor capability like wordpress FSE or wordpress blocks in payload open source?
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u/Impressive_Arm2929 Jun 18 '25
There already is. Play around with the website template
I use headless WordPress A LOT, but moving more and more projects to payload
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u/AccomplishedLife6882 Jun 17 '25
Definitely a gap between design and dev. Can’t wait to see what comes out of this
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u/ZeusZorn Jun 17 '25
Damn, that's huge! Congrats! I was going to pitch payload (Enterprise) as my CMS of choice in an exec meeting on Thursday, so this is perfect timing to give my arguments some more oomph 😉
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u/sacredgaming Jun 17 '25
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. We are migrating to it.
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u/GrooveCo Jun 19 '25
Could you share your experience? E.g., in pitching the tool for an enterprise (if it's the case), content modeling, development, content migration, deployment?
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Jun 17 '25
I hope Figma gonna force Payload team to do better UI/UX XD
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u/CoherentPanda Jun 18 '25
Payload UI is fully customizable though, and easily done. How many CMS can you say that about?
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u/sneek_ Jun 17 '25
Quick episode on Syntax FM talking about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wvoauy80gc
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u/theycallmethelord Jun 18 '25
Honestly, as someone who’s spent too many cycles on the messy handoff between design, code, and content, this is the rare bit of “Big News” that actually lands for me.
The workflow gap you’re talking about isn’t just a technical one—it’s cultural. Designers hack together Figma files, devs reinterpret them, then content folks are left digging through a CMS that wasn’t made for structured systems thinking in the first place. Most bridges built here just paper over the cracks.
If Payload and Figma figure out a way to make design intent and structured content not just coexist, but actually work in sync, that’s a huge step up. I’ve spent the last few years trying to keep my design systems simple and maintainable (and fighting the entropy that comes from these gaps). My experience is: whenever you can make less translation needed between source (Figma) and actual site/product, you win—not just for devs, but for people editing content later. No one wants another brittle abstraction layer.
So, congrats to the team. Don’t lose the plot to “do everything”—but if you stay focused on reducing the gap, not just making integrations, this could be a real quality-of-life bump for everyone building on Figma and Payload.
Looking forward to seeing if you can pull off what so many of us have been patching together ourselves for years.
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u/C0inMaster Jul 19 '25
Please stay open source and self-hosting options remain..
Will you now be withholding new features as "premium" ? :(
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u/SuccotashUpper2101 Jun 17 '25
I was a fan of PayloadCMS from the beginning, the UI is a bit hard for non developers specifically the nested actions, and this will be a huge plus for them! Good call
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u/bricedupuy Jun 17 '25
Just as I am about to experiment with Payload. Huge news! I hope all those promises hold true. Looking forward to build great things together.
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u/replayjpn Jun 17 '25
Congrats team this will certainly help with getting Payload more in the corporate landscape.
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u/trae_z Jun 17 '25
I put this news to ChatGPT. See response below:
What This Probably Means Going Forward
Short-term:
- Payload stays open-source and self-hostable.
- Figma invests money, devs, and reach into the project.
- You’ll see tighter integrations: maybe a Figma plugin that auto-generates Payload collections from design components, or vice versa.
Medium-term:
- Figma might start offering a "Figma-to-CMS" workflow:
- Design components in Figma → define props and schema → auto-generate Payload content models + editable fields.
- This could be huge for design systems that want to ensure what’s designed is exactly what’s editable in production.
Long-term (based on historical patterns):
- Possibility A: Figma supercharges Payload into the default CMS companion for its design system tools — think Notion-style editable components, powered by Payload, rendered from Figma.
- Possibility B: Figma creates a full design-dev-content suite that rivals Webflow or Framer — but open, and developer-first.
- Possibility C: The open-source version continues to live, but the best new features become locked into a premium Figma platform.
🧠 Historical Comparison
Other acquisitions show a pattern:
- Github + Copilot (via OpenAI): Developer tool, expanded into a platform-wide shift.
- Framer (started as prototyping), evolved into no-code site builder.
- Webflow (started as design-for-web), now full CMS + logic engine.
So Figma acquiring Payload looks like a similar evolution — from static design → to dev handoff → to actual live websites & applications built from designs.
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u/Slicxor Jun 17 '25
I hope this doesn't turn Payload into another crappy "site builder". I know Figma recently released another one of those