A flat-month fee, a convenient way to streamline design requests – there are several reasons why businesses choose unlimited graphic design services. Are you exploring your options in this segment? Kapa99 is a well-known flat-fee graphic design service with convenient plans and competitive pricing. But how can your business benefit from this service? Find out from this Kapa99 review.
Founded by Ka Kei Ho in Hong Kong, Kapa99 is an unlimited graphic design service that caters to a wide range of marketing graphics.
The idea for the business dates back to 2014 when Ka Kei Ho was running a restaurant. He found it tough to create promotional graphics for his restaurant by himself while also managing the business. And he did not have the budget to hire an in-house designer. His own struggle to meet the graphic design needs of his business inspired him to create a model for providing unlimited designs for a flat monthly fee.
And today Kapa99 has served more than 4000 businesses around the world. Having spoken about the story of how it all began, let’s not get straight to our Kapa99 review.
$449/month
$649/month
Kapa99 has a creative team that can take care of core branding designs like logo design and graphics for marketing both on digital and print media. So, the subscription can help you take care of your designs for local promotions and online promotions.
In terms of graphic design, some of the design types that Kapa99 delivers are:
The one downside is that Kapa99 does not offer motion graphics design right now. So, video editing is also out of the picture. Which means that you have to choose another service to take care of your marketing videos and social media video content.
Leaving out motion graphics, the plans cover everything else including illustrations and presentations. The plans are the same in terms of what’s included. The difference lies in the fact that the Business Express plan nearly halves the turnaround time. And this means you get a bigger design output volume with this plan making it a suitable choice for moderate to large-sized businesses.
Now that you know what your monthly fees cover, let’s talk about how Kapa99 works.
There is a short video demonstration available on the Kapa99 website. And this is a brief introduction to what you can do with Kapa99 in general. There’s no in-depth walkthrough of the platform itself.
Several unlimited graphic design services offer the option for a live demo call where a team member gives you a walkthrough of the process. This is pretty useful in understanding the kind of input and even the effort you need to be putting in every time to place a design request. After all, a service that simplifies your job is what solves your problem. But Kapa99 does not currently have a live demo option. So, you do not get exposed to the platform before actually creating your account.
Kapa99 has a free trial option. And this means that you have a risk-free way to try the services and understand the workflow without making any payment upfront. Like most subscriptions with a free trial option, Kapa99 saves your card details in order to verify and create your account.
After the trial period, there is also a 30-day money-back guarantee meaning that you can request a refund if you are not happy with the service.
Creating the account itself is pretty easy and quick. Soon after your account is ready you can start placing your design requests.
The Kapa99 platform is pretty straightforward. So you do not have to spend too much time figuring out the features and functioning. One of the first things to do is to add your brands. This will be the step of saving your brand colors, fonts, and other brand assets to be used as references for all your projects.
You can add multiple brands or even go back and make updates to saved brands. Maintaining accurate details here makes it easy for designers to deliver on-brand designs.
The request creation interface on the Kapa99 platform is easy to use. In a few quick steps, you can document what you are looking for.
In the Kapa99 team, there are project managers who take care of the designer allocation process, designers who create your designs, and Art Directors who ensure that your design requirements are met. So, all the details you register while creating your design request are used by the team to ensure a smooth workflow.
Once your design is ready you can view them in your account. The Kapa99 platform also lets you point out particular aspects of the design where revisions are required. You get unlimited revisions and therefore you do not have to worry about requesting changes big and small.
Once you feel that the design meets your expectations you can download the design in various formats including the source files for future use.
Kapa99 has a free trial for those who wish to explore the service before making a long-term decision. After the trial period ends, your first month’s fee will be deducted from the saved card.
Even if the first month’s subscription fees are deducted, you have the option to try the services for a month and then back off if you are still not happy with the way things progress. Kapa99 has a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Yes, Kapa99 has both a free trial and a money-back period. Most unlimited design services only have one of these two options. So, with Kapa99 you get a longer period to try the services risk-free.
The turnaround time of 24-48 is pretty much similar to what most unlimited design services offer. And the Business Express plan has an even faster delivery option.
The website mentions that you can add unlimited active tasks but the real meaning here is that you can keep adding as many tasks as you like and change their priorities as required. The workflow is however in a queue-model where a designer is allocated to the first task in the queue and once the design is ready the next one automatically gets picked up. So, without the slightest delay, your tasks are completed one by one.
This combined with the quick turnaround ensures that you get a good amount of designs delivered every month. And that makes the Kapa99 plans a cost-effective option for businesses with a heavy design workload.
We’ve seen several unlimited design services charge extra for additional brands or even for adding more team members to the account. But with Kapa99, all these are included in your monthly subscription fee. So, it’s unlimited in every sense.
So, if you have to add people from your management and marketing teams or even directly allow your clients to track the design workflow, you can do so without paying extra. This comes in handy in the long run.
Video is a content format you cannot ignore these days. And you need it everywhere from your landing pages to social media. But Kapa99 does not cater to motion graphics design. This can be a turn-off for businesses making a switch to unlimited design subscriptions in place of traditional design agencies for a more comprehensive solution.
But yes, Kapa99’s graphic design plans do include basic GIFs. So if you are looking to create simple stickers for your email or social media you are sorted.
Having a designated designer feels like having an in-house designer who knows your brand well and creates visual consistency. But that’s missing with Kapa99. Some unlimited design services let you choose slightly more expensive plans to avail of this option but even that choice is not available when you work with Kapa99.
There’s one designer assigned based on the design request. But yes, the fact that they try to match designers to your preferences means that there is a good chance of getting to work with the same designer again.
A majority of the designers of Kapa99 work in EST hours. But they do have extended shift hours to allow a reasonable overlap with several time zones. That still does not solve the problem of delayed communication with designers.
The same issue exists with the customer support team as well. Though the website mentions 24×7 support the responses on live chat are sometimes delayed. So, if you have issues with your design and need to communicate with your designers or issues with your account and need to communicate with the customer support team, expect some delays.
There aren’t plenty of reviews online for Kapa99 at the moment but those who have reviewed the brand talk about the dependable design quality that the team is known to offer.
“I’ve worked with Kapa99’s design team for a couple years now and they provide some of the best graphic design work I’ve seen – and I’ve tried just about all of the subscription based design agencies out there.”
– Brian Rowland
Infographics
Business card
Podcast cover
Logo
If you want your designs quick, say when you are planning for a last-minute campaign, Kapa99 is a good choice. With the quick turnaround, you sometimes get more than one design delivered daily. The starting price of the subscriptions is also on par with most other well-known unlimited graphic design services. But at the price of the Business Express plan, some of the unlimited design services also offer motion graphics which is currently not offered by Kapa99. To sum it up, the plans are not very comprehensive but considering the quality of designs you get and the quick delivery of these designs, Kapa99 is worth a shot for small businesses.
