Fonts.com mockup fonts
I do like the way that fonts.com do web fonts. (I also like all of the web font services for different reasons and different projects.)
Mockup fonts
Fonts.com have this new system that really works. It involves an app called SkyFonts. This allows you to try out different fonts in your desktop mockups as rentals. Great for static mockups of web designs. You choose the fonts you want on the fonts.com website, and it syncs them to your desktop. I didn’t expect it to work as well as it does, but it just works. (I love using Typecast and working in the browser, but a lot of time I want to play with layout on a canvas.)
However, the plans don’t allow for much
The plans on fonts.com are frustrating. I have a Pro plan. It’s a very reasonable price for what I get, including a Typecast subscription and 1 million pageviews a month.
20 mockup fonts a month
This sounds like a very reasonable amount. Am I likely to use more than 20 different fonts over all my mockups in a month? Maybe only just… Say five family weights (bear in mind, I’m mocking up, not embedding these all on the web!) on four different projects. That’s doable. But if you hover over the details of the plan, you see this:
Mockup fonts are desktop versions of your Web fonts provided exclusively for creating website mockups. Delivered through SkyFonts, mockup fonts remain active for 1 day.
**Mockup fonts remain active for 1 day. **This means that if I want to use the same font two days running, I use two of my allowed fonts. This means working on a mockup for three days with four fonts, I’ve nearly burned through my allowance already.
The next plan up allows unlimited mockup fonts but costs nearly three times as much
As much as I’d like to upgrade just for the unlimited mockup fonts, I can’t justify that cost when I won’t use any of the other features.
Please fonts.com, may we have more mockup fonts?
For those of use who are small (me, just a one person!) web-based studios, it would be great to have more mockup fonts. We’re the people who try out your fonts, and then get our clients to subscribe and buy your fonts. We’re like an extension of your sales team!
I’ll happily pay slightly extra, just not three times the amount
I don’t doubt the value of the fonts, and I’m willing to spend money to get quality. Seeing as SkyFonts is doing a good job of allowing rentals, without any concern for piracy, couldn’t we have more fonts? (Maybe 150 × 24 hour uses a month?)
I know this is an odd blog post, and probably a niche request. I was going to tweet about it, but realised I just have too much to say in a short post. If anyone else has this problem, please leave a comment!
Thanks for taking the time to write such detailed feedback. We see Mockup and Desktop Fonts as one of the most important features of our Fonts.com subscriptions and we’re currently exploring ways to make it better. If you have more feedback, I’d love to hear it at twitter@fonts.com.
Thanks!
Matt
Fonts.com