Figma Comments vs a Feedback Tool: When Each One Fits

If the work is still a Figma file, Figma's own comments are often the right call; adding another tool on top is friction nobody needs. The question is when that stops being true, and for most agency work, it stops being true sooner than people expect.

Why this comes up more as projects mature

Early in a project, almost everyone reviewing a Figma file is a designer, a PM, or someone comfortable navigating software built for designers. By the time a project reaches client sign-off, the audience has usually shifted entirely to people with no reason to know what a frame or a component is, and the tool stops matching the people using it exactly when accuracy matters most.

What Figma comments are genuinely good at

Figma's pin comments live directly on the frame, support threaded replies and @mentions, and can be marked resolved, which is a clean workflow for an in-progress design file reviewed by other designers or close collaborators who already live in Figma daily. For critique inside the design process itself, before anything is built, it's hard to beat working in the same tool the file lives in.

It's not a Figma problem, it's a fit problem

None of this is a knock on Figma, which does exactly what it was built to do extremely well. The mismatch shows up specifically at the point where a tool built for people who make things meets an audience of people who are only ever asked to react to things. That's a different job, and it's worth a different, simpler tool rather than asking Figma to stretch into a use case it wasn't designed for.

Where it gets harder with clients

• An account is required. Commenting in Figma means signing in, even on a file shared by public link, which is one extra step a lot of non-designer clients stall on or skip entirely.
• It's built for a design file, not a built site. Once the project moves from a static mockup to an actual coded page, Figma comments reference the mockup, not what's actually live, and the two can drift apart fast.
• There's no sign-off or QA structure. Resolved comments aren't the same as a dated approval, and there's no built-in way to track which version of a page a client actually signed off on.
• Figma-fluent clients are rare. Designers forget how unfamiliar a layers-and-frames interface is to someone who has never opened the tool before.

Designers feel this trade-off differently than clients do

It's worth naming the asymmetry directly: moving review out of Figma can feel like a loss to the designer, who's used to seeing comments in context of layers and components, while it reads as a pure improvement to the client, who just wanted to click on a thing and say what's wrong with it. When those two preferences conflict, default to whichever makes the actual reviewer's job easier, since they're the one whose participation you need.

When each one fits

Keep it simple: Figma comments while the work lives in Figma and the people commenting already know their way around it. Switch to a dedicated review tool the moment the site goes live, the moment a non-technical client becomes the primary reviewer, or the moment you need something Figma doesn't track, a dated approval, a bug report with a location on a real page, or a client with no Figma account at all.

A workflow that uses both

Plenty of agencies run both without conflict: early concept and layout critique happens in Figma among the design team, and once a build goes to staging, client review moves to a tool built for people outside the design process. Roundmark picks up exactly at that handoff, live sites, images, and PDFs, with reviewers clicking a link and commenting straight away, no account required. The free plan covers three projects if you want to try that second half of the workflow without committing to it first.

The real signal to watch for

If you notice a client asking you to screenshot the Figma file and email it to them "so I can just reply with my thoughts," that's the tell. They're already telling you the tool doesn't fit how they want to work, usually before they've put it into words themselves. That's the moment to move the review somewhere they can click directly on the thing itself.