Why SyncSketch is counting any user role with project access towards paid seats
When SyncSketch first launched, we made the 'Reviewer' and 'Viewer' roles free of charge. They were intended for the occasional external guest or client. To this day, this is still the case for our legacy paid plans such as Starter, Pro, Professional and Education.
The Viewer and Reviewer roles are very powerful: apart from creating reviews and uploading content, users with these roles could do pretty much anything a full member could do; launch reviews, access project content, getting notifications on changes, etc.
Many studios noticed the power of these free users, and started using these roles for regular team members. As a result, studios with hundreds of users paid for one member, while adding swaths of unpaid Reviewers and Viewers. Not only did this fold our business plan onto itself but it also created a lopsided pricing structure where a freelancer with a single seat would pay the same as a large studio using SyncSketch disproportionally more. Beyond being outside of our initial intention for these roles, the effect was that individuals were indirectly footing the infrastructure costs of larger studios.
For this reason, on our new plans, all users regardless of their roles are counted towards the seat limit. Finally, our UI has also caught up with this calculation.
We want each seat price to remain an outstanding value, with each user only having to pay their fair share. On our end, this will allow us to continue providing a review platform with unparalleled feature design/development and support that is second to none.