Graphically
Vs Penji
The ways that people order graphics and designs for their companies have changed a lot in the past decade or so. There are more designers out there looking to create for clients, tools are more accessible, and subscription graphic design services have been a huge game-changer.
Penji was founded the same year (2015) as Design Pickle, which is another subscription-based design service and probably the best-known brand in the space (See also: Graphically vs Design Pickle). Penji has a lot of things in common with many of the Penji alternatives out there, but they’re also lacking in some key areas.
Graphically hasn’t been around for as long as some of the other companies that offer subscriptions for design, and we see this as an advantage because we’ve been able to identify where our competitors fall short and improve in those areas.
If you’re curious how Graphically compares side-by-side with Penji, then this breakdown of Graphically vs Penji is exactly what you’re looking for.
Penji vs Graphically: The Quick Facts
| Graphically | Penji | |
|---|---|---|
|
$1 Trial Option |
Yes |
No |
|
Subscription |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Monthly Cost
|
$299 to $349 |
$499 to $999 |
|
Concurrent Tasks |
1-3 at once |
1 |
|
Revisions |
Unlimited |
Yes, but stalls your queue |
|
Overall Cost
|
Lowest |
High |
|
Turnaround Time |
24-36 hours
|
Up to 96 hours |
We’re proud to offer our $1 trial because it takes away the risk from you, the customer, and it puts it on us, the service provider. It makes it easy for you to give our service a try, and if we don’t win your business or you decide it’s not a great fit, that’s on us. Suffice to say, we’re confident that you’ll be among the many people who fall in love with our unlimited graphic design solution.
Our monthly membership is priced lower than Penji, and you’re able to have up to 3 tasks at a time with our premium membership (which is only $50 more than our standard plan, and still much more affordable than Penji’s entry-level subscription cost). You can’t spend less than $499 at Penji, and you can’t spend more than $349 with Graphically.
When you have 3 tasks going with us at a time, a revision isn’t going to slow down your whole project to a halt since you’ll have two other tasks that are still moving forward. With Penji, you’re allowed to queue up as many design requests as you want, but only one of them gets worked on at a time, so revisions are going to slow you down drastically.
With the basics out of the way, let’s dig in deeper to compare Graphically vs. Penji and the nuances that have put us ahead of the pack.
Graphically vs Penji: Key Differences
There are similarities between Graphically and Penji in the sense that they’re both subscription-based graphic design services and many of the broad benefits to this type of service are met by both.
However, that’s where the similarities end. At Graphically, we believe we’ve drastically improved upon the concept of paying a monthly fee for unlimited graphic design. Let’s compare Graphically vs. Penji in some of the most important areas. Some of these are objective, like the price, and some of them fall more into the subjective side of things. In any case, our goal is to help you make an informed decision.
Make sure you check out our $1 trial to get started so that you can take us for a spin with no commitments. We’re confident that once you give us a try, you’ll be eager to stick around.
With that said, here are the most important categories for an unlimited graphic design service, and how Penji stacks up against Graphically.
Team & Infrastructure
Graphically: Fully in-house team.
Penji: Fully remote workforce.
At Graphically, we’re incredibly proud of the team that we have brought together over the years. They work for us directly, in other words we’re not just connecting you with freelancers and seeing where things land.
We hire the best designers we can find, and then we train them meticulously in our processes and system, and then we unleash them to do their best work on all of your projects.
Many design subscription services have high turnover rates for their employees. It’s like a revolving door. They bring in a lot of designers, but a lot of them don’t work out, and the process keeps cycling along. What happens to all of the customers who received work from the sub-par designers during that time? It’s just tough luck for their projects, unfortunately.
We much prefer to have a more permanent staff rather than a revolving door like some of our competitors. We invest a lot of time and resources into our team and it’s worth it.
Beyond our incredible team, we’ve also put infrastructure in place to create a seamless ordering process. Our goal was to make it as simple and straightforward as possible for you to submit new graphic design tasks to our team, and for our team to receive and deliver the completed work.
We were able to improve upon what other design subscription companies were doing and we have created something unique.
Penji boasts about using A.I. to connect their customers with designers so that their customer doesn’t end up with “the wrong designer”.
In a response to a negative Penji review on TrustPilot, Penji said “There are times where we hit home runs and knock the design project out of the park. Then there are times where it’s just simply [a] mismatch of styles and poor pairing with the designer that worked on your project.”
We would rather do this manually to avoid those types of issues, instead of relying on some type of “artificial intelligence” to match our customers with our designers.
Penji puts their designers through a “design test” and then they’re ready to be matched up with customers. All of this feels a bit too robotic, especially for something like design.
When you’re using Graphically, the process is a lot more human and organic. We want that human touch to it, we want you to get to know the designers who are working on your project, we want you to communicate with them so that you can end up with fantastic results.
Could we toss all of that into an A.I. and save some time for ourselves? Yes, we probably could, but we’d rather do things the right way when you’re counting on us.
Quality of Work
Our team and our infrastructure both lead right into the overall quality of work that we’re able to deliver to our customers. There are horror stories of people paying upwards of a thousand dollars per month or more for design services, only to discover that the work they’re getting back looks like something you could get on Fiverr for a few dollars.
Here’s a review of Penji from TrustPilot: “I had 3 designers that I loved. For some reason, the company stopped pairing me with them. I begged for them to come back but they all got promoted. It sucks and it’s unfair to paying customers.”
Penji’s response included: “I’m sure we can match you with several qualified designers. I can’t guarantee that they’ll be “as good”, given the 3 you worked with were exceptional.“
Here’s another of the Penji reviews from a user on TrustPilot: “Miss after miss. Just couldn’t understand me in the first month. Was frustrating because I had such high hopes.”
Penji’s response started with: “Sometimes this happens. And it’s ok,” before continuing on to remind the user that when you get matched with a mediocre designer, you can switch to a new designer. A subscriber having to go a full month and still not getting a design they’re happy with, after paying $499-$999 for that month, is certainly not “ok”.
These types of reviews and comments seem to highlight that Penji is all about getting as many clients in the door as possible, churning out designs as fast as they can, and then worrying about things like quality after the fact.
That’s just the nature of their model. Scaling up in size quickly, rushing to find designers, using A.I. to match them with clients, and dealing with all of the disappointed customers after the fact instead of avoiding these issues in the first place.
At Graphically, we’ve grown very deliberately to only take on as many clients as we can support, ensuring that getting a great designer working on your project isn’t something you have to cross your fingers about and hope that you get lucky.
There are some incredible designers working with Penji and there are some lackluster designers, too. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky enough to be assigned to one of the good designers.
Or, you might not get lucky, and you’ll have to rely on their system to find a new designer to assign to your project, wait for your project again, hope it doesn’t need revisions, and then finally you’ll have the graphics you needed days ago.
That’s sure to eat into the amount of designs you’re able to receive each month. This is a limit on many services that isn’t discussed as often as it should be. “Unlimited” doesn’t mean much if it’s taking you 1-4 days for your initial design and then additional days for revisions.
Price Differences
Graphically: We’re the most affordable and best value.
Penji: Much more expensive for fewer tasks each month.
We believe that our work can stand toe-to-toe with any subscription-based design service, and most of the time we’ll also come out on top.
We’re also incredibly proud of the systems we’ve put in place, as outlined above, to make the ordering process smooth and simple with that important human-touch.
One of the most impressive things, if we do say so ourselves, is how we’ve managed to do all of that while also maintaining considerably lower prices than Penji, and any other Penji alternatives out there.
You can’t subscribe to Penji for less than $449 per month (for their most basic plan), whereas our most advanced plan is only $349 per month.
Unless you want to spend $699 at Penji, you won’t be able to request presentations, animated graphics, web, or app designs. It’s going to cost you $999 at Penji for designers who are awake at the same time as you (if you’re USA-based). You’ll also have access to a “dedicated art director” for that additional $300 per month.
At Penji, an extra $300 gets you one dedicated person to oversee your project. At Graphically, that $299 is the entire cost of our standard package.
The difference in price is astonishing, especially since:
- We’re able to complete more tasks each month,
- We’re able to offer consistent quality,
- We have an incredibly user-friendly, custom process for ordering,
- And we even have a $1 trial so you can get a feel for us before you commit to paying for the first month.
Turn Around Time
Graphically’s turnaround time is 24-36 hours, but it’s not uncommon to have a project delivered within the first day.
Penji’s turnaround time is 24-96 hours, but if you buy their $999 plan, they offer same-day delivery for simple projects and tasks. For more complex projects, they state that it can take up to 4 days to receive your order.
That’s a massive difference in cost for what amounts to essentially the same minimum wait times, and our timeframe is actually 12 hours shorter than theirs if you use their $499 or $699 plans.
With our $349 plan, the real magic is the fact that you can have three projects going at the same time. This means you can order 3 projects on day 1, get them delivered on day 2, order 3 more that same day, get them delivered the next day, and so on. You can get very close to 100 different designs for your business each month, depending on the complexity of the designs.
Reaching that milestone is going to be hard to do with our competitors, especially the ones who only allow you to have one project being worked on at a time. If you factor in the 1-2 day turnaround, you might be lucky to get 15 designs back by the end of each month.
More Advantages of Using Graphically over Penji
A Consistent Design Language
Graphically: Our designers are dedicated to your projects, creating a cohesion and flow from graphic to graphic.
Penji: They use some type of algorithm that attempts to pair you with a designer, which means you could end up with different people all over the world working on one task to the next.
Our staff work together in a physical location. They are interested in one another’s work, they pay attention and they work together, so even if one person had to take over your project from another, they’re already ahead of the game.
Everyone Needs Graphic Design
Graphically and Penji both fill the needs of anyone that requires graphic design on an on-going basis. We’re similar in that sense.
Where things start to differ a lot more is when we get into price, process, quality, and everything else that we’ve outlined in this article.
With both options, you’ll purchase a subscription and you’ll be able to submit your tasks. You’ll receive the completed work in a reasonable amount of time. You’ll be able to request revisions as needed.
With Graphically, you’ll be able to get a lot more work done each month at a much lower price. We also have more of a hands-on, human touch without A.I. deciding who works on your project.
Graphically vs. Penji: Which is Right for You?
We’re biased, but with all of the objective facts about each of these options outlined above, it’s pretty clear that Graphically comes out on top. Even if you ignore the subjective things or the matters of opinion, Graphically gives you a lot more at a much better rate.
We’ve built ourselves around providing professional designs for organizations of all sizes. We’ve created a process that works smoothly and saves you time (and saves our designers time, too, so they can focus more on your projects and less on administrative tasks).
If you’re still on the fence, we’re happy to offer you a $1 trial that will give you a chance to experience what we’re all about.
