Dribbble

Dribbble is a freelancer marketplace and community for design professionals with skills in animation, illustration, and product design.The company has bootstrapped since launch and claims to be profitable working with over 40,000 global brands including Apple, Google, Facebook, and AirBnB. The website is also a platform for designers to showcase their work, with over 12 million active users in 120+ countries as of April 2020.

In October 2024, Dribbble introduced new features to help designers generate leads, with UX/UI improvements in Designer Search for easier client engagement. This included Promoted Listings for advertisers to rank higher, with future plans including further improvements to the search algorithm and new discovery tools.

In April 2020, Dribble acquired Creative Market, a ready-to-use design asset marketplace which includes fonts, themes, and graphics. With the acquisition, Dribbble opened up its marketplace to all users while it has historically been an invite-only membership marketplace. In line with this, Dribbble acquired Fontspring, a marketplace for fonts, for an undisclosed amount in February 2022. The two companies will continue to operate separately following the acquisition and will collaborate to support designers and creators. 

Fontsprings’ font marketplace features over 69,000 fonts from more than 700 leading type foundries, including Exljbris, Mark Simonson Studio, and Canada Type. As of February 2022, Fonts remain one of the highest grossing and growing categories within Dribbble’s marketplace, which was developed using acquired Creative Market assets. The company claims the acquisition adds further expertise to its leadership team in the design and type space while solidifying its position as the second-largest distributor of fonts online.

The company generates revenue through monthly client subscriptions, ranging from USD 150 to USD 300 for hiring freelancers. For companies without a subscription, Dribbble charges a 7.5% platform fee. Freelancers can also subscribe for USD 8 per month.

Key customers and partnerships

Notable brands which used the platform included Chewy and Sticker Mule.