DesignFiles and MyDoma Studio are platforms that allow interior designers to create design packages they can embed in their website to sell their services, as well as process payment for those services. Both platforms integrate with Quickbooks (although, for DesignFiles, it depends on which subscription you purchase). Both platforms also provide designers with the ability to create design boards, manage their projects, and communicate with their team and their clients regarding each project. But there are significant differences in how each platform allows designers to do each of these tasks, and the quality of each feature for each platform also varies. Which one will be best for you is going to depend on your own business model and how you will be utilizing the platform most often.
As I wrote this comparative review for DesignFiles vs MyDoma Studio, I was subscribed to and actively using both applications. I know other designers in the industry that swore by one or the other and also those that warned against one or the other, so there didn't seem to be any consensus among my own peer group. I resorted to reading online reviews and comparisons, but was disappointed by the lack of a thorough dive into the features of each. It seemed all the other reviews were written by people who never used either system and were simply using the basic information they could find on each platform's marketing page. Hence my motivation to write my own comparison. I hope interior designers or edesigners considering either of these programs find this comparative analysis helpful.
DesignFiles vs MyDoma Pricing
Enter your text here... | MyDoma Studio | |
|---|---|---|
Monthly Subscription Fees | $55 per month for eDesigners for first user, $25 each additional user $75 per month for Full Service Designers for first user, $30 for each additional user They also have an Enterprise Plan for larger teams. Call them for pricing. | $64 per month per user. $58 per month if you pay for a full year in one payment. |
Set Up Fee | NO | YES, $149 on top of your first month, and - in my opinion - a rip-off. You set up your own account, and the four Zoom calls to help you walk through set-up are not personal. They are webinars with multiple participants and don't provide any additional information that their pre-recorded instructional videos don't already provide. This fee does include one personal support session, so save up all your questions for that. |
Discount for Paying Annually | NO | 10% |
Free Trial Period | NO, but a 90-day money-back guarantee | NO |
Cancellation Policy | 30-Day Notice | 30-Day Notice |
DesignFiles vs MyDoma Design Boards
Perhaps you call them mood boards, or concept boards... everyone calls these boards something different these days. I call them design boards, and they look like this:
This board of the olive green and terra cotta design above was made using DesignFiles. Notice I was able to distort the shape of the rug to make it look like it's laying on the floor under the furniture. DesignFiles has a lot of great tools that make creating boards fast and easy. DesignFiles definitely beats MyDoma in this category.
This design board with the gray sectional was made using MyDoma Studio. The dots on each product are called "hot spots" and they link to the online webpage where the product can be purchased. However, the hot spots are very glitchy. I had clients complain that they couldn't get the links to open using the hot spots on their smart phones.
Design Board Feature | DesignFiles | MyDoma Studio |
|---|---|---|
Distort Image Tool | YES, which is what I used in the image on the above left to make it look like the rug is lying on the floor under the furniture | NO |
Linkable Hot Spots | NO | YES, and it would be the only advantage they have over DesignFiles' boards, however my clients are complaining that the hot spots don't work on smartphones. They only seem to work when clicking on them using a mouse and a desktop computer. |
Layering Elements | YES | YES, but difficult to navigate. You still have to spend a lot of extra time moving other elements out of the way. |
Text Boxes | YES, and there are many formatting options | YES, but very limited formatting options |
Background Remover Tool | YES, both auto and manual. Their "magic background remover" is fantastic and I'd argue just as good as Canva's background remover tool. DF's manual remover can be used to trace the object you want to keep and remove everything else. | YES, but horrible performance. It basically only removes white space. I usually have to use another photo editing app to remove the background of an image first, then upload it to MyDoma, adding a lot of time it takes me to create design boards |
Select & Lock Elements in a Group | YES | NO, you can select multiple elements but not lock them and keep them in a group |
Drag & Select Multiple Elements | YES, they just added this feature as I was creating this post | YES |
Duplicate Elements | YES | YES |
Undo Button | YES | NO, and it's so aggravating. It adds a significant amount of creation time. |
Perspective Guides | YES, they offer one under their "visual elements" menu. | NO |
Pop-Up Guides to Help You Align Elements | YES, this sometimes automatically appear as your moving elements around the board. | NO, but there's an option to turn on very faint grid lines |
Ability to Flip Images Horizontally or Vertically | YES | NO, only rotate, so you can't create mirror images of duplicate items, such as two chairs facing each other. |
Can use arrow keys on keyboard to move elements | YES | NO |
Boards Auto Save | NO | YES, but very glitchy. Layers don't always save in the right order. |
Can Duplicate or Copy Boards | YES, as well as create a template from a board. | NO, but you can create a template from a board. |
Separate Shopping Lists Per Board | YES, all products on a board are shown in a shopping list under the board, with the cost of the whole board (room) shown | NO, products selected are shown in one shopping list per project, not grouped by board (room/area) |
Client Can Give Feedback Directly Related to Each Board | YES, there are ways both the design and the client can discuss the board in general with each other, as well as each specific item in the shopping list (and an image of the item will appear next to the comment, which is very helpful) | NO, which can make it confusing. There's just one message center in the app for all communication between client and design related to the entire project, so both parties have to be very specific when referring to issues related to the boards and items selected. |
Decline Buttons Next to Each Product Selected Under Each Board | YES | NO, no decline buttons or boxes at all. Again, it would have to be specified in the message center, which is basically just internal email. |
Ability to Create Multiple Board Sizes | NO, and only landscape orientation | YES, 7 different sizes, as well as portrait or landscape orientation |
Can Change Background Color of the Board | YES, by selecting a specific paint sample as an element and stretching it across the board. But the sample is square, so you'll need to duplicate and crop the second sample to fill the entire board. | YES, by simply changing the background color with one of the options provided or a custom color by entering the HEX code |
Add Lines, Arrows and Other Visual Elements to Boards | YES. The lines and arrows come in very handy, and this is the menu where you'll find the perspective grid, but the other elements in this library are pretty useless in my opinion. They look like something you'd use to create a scrapbook page, not a design board. I can think of far more useful elements they could add. | NO, and lines and arrows would be helpful. |
Provides Images of Empty Rooms to Use as Backgrounds | YES, DesignFiles has a limited library of empty rooms to choose from. You may have been misled by their demo videos where they appear to be creating boards with floors, cabinets, windows, fireplaces, etc, but they aren't creating design boards in those demos. They're creating one of their "3D renderings", meaning they're selecting from architectural elements in the library they have available for renderings, then using the 3D furniture and decor models in the very limited library they have for those. I don't see a lot of designers being able to make good use of this to show their clients what the actual products they're selecting for them are going to look like in their homes. I explain more about the limitations of their renderings below. | NO, but you could upload an image of one and place it on the board. But please don't think this means you could use their design board tool to create a virtually staged room. Not even close. Nor could you do that with DesignFiles' design boards. |
Can Upload and Add Images to Board That Won't Be in Shopping List | YES, which is helpful if you want to incorporate an item the client already owns onto the board so they can see what it will look like with the items you've selected for them | YES, for the same reason |
Can Edit Images on the Board | YES, you can edit color, transparency, brightness, contrast, saturation, blur, horizontal offset, vertical offset, and opacity. You can also add a drop shadow. Although not all of these options will be available for all images. | NO, if you want to edit images, you'll need to use a separate app then upload the edited image to MyDoma. |
Other Visual Representations: DesignFiles vs MyDoma
Feature | DesignFiles | MyDoma Studio |
|---|---|---|
Floor Plans | YES, you can create floor plans within the platform, although these are not going to be "specs" and should not be used to replace CAD drawings for construction purposes. Unfortunately, you cannot upload floor plans or CAD drawings. | YES, you can create floor plans using their Visualizer tool. Again, though, these are not "specs" and should not be used to create CAD drawings. However, you can upload floor plans and CAD drawings to MyDoma and use them in their Visualizer tool rather than creating the floor plan from scratch, if you have drawing available to you. |
3D Renderings | DesignFiles' allows you to create 3D floor plans of rooms that you and your clients can view from every angle. However, DF's renders for these rooms are inferior. They are not photo-realistic by any stretch of the imagination. They look like illustrations, not photos (see below). Furthermore, when creating a 3D view in DesignFiles, you're restricted to an extremely limited library of 3D models for furniture and other objects, This makes it difficult to show clients what their space will look like with the actual items you've selected for them. | The 3D photo-views that are available at MyDoma without any additional rendering subscriptions are comparable to the illustration-looking 3D renderings you'll get using DesignFiles. If you want to create photo-realistic renderings using MyDoma's "Visualizer" tool, you have to an additional $58 a month, and that's if you pay for the whole year in one payment. I could not find what they charge if you want to pay for Visualizer month-to-month. During my Zoom call when I signed up with MyDoma, the sales rep said they were no longer offering 3D photo-realistic renderings with Visualizer, which is odd since the option to sign up for it is showing in my account. He said that the renderings are and always have been generated using a third-party platform, Coohom), and that I would have to purchase a subscription directly with Coohom As of this writing, Coohom was offering "free", $29/month, $58/month, and Enterprise subscriptions. As I said earlier, you are still able to create both 2D and 3D floor plans and create the same basic non-photo-realistic renderings you can get from DesignFiles, but-unlike DesignFiles, you are able to upload your own 3D models and textures. I have not yet used Coohom, but their website says you can upload you own 3D models in their platform, as well. |
Above is an image of the results you'll get for a "rendering" using DesignFiles floor plan tool. As you can see, it doesn't look realistic at all. Furthermore, I couldn't use the actual products I had selected for my client to create this. I was was restricted to the very limited library of 3D models DesignFiles provides. This creates significant issues. For example, the upholstered dining chairs I selected for my client are white, but I was stuck using the closest thing available in DesignFiles 3D library, which are these seen in the illustration.
The rendering above is an example of the results you'll get for an AI "plus" rendering (20 credits) of a DesignFiles design board. Below, is the design board before rendering. You can see that AI added an extra set of curtain panels and left out the art I had selected, so not perfect. I can get these same results using ChatGPT, which I subscribe to for $20 a month, so I'm not sure how much of a value-add this new rendering feature for DesignFiles' boards is for me. I'd rather they offer the option to upload 3D models to their floor plan tool and then affix a rendering tool to that.
Below is the rendering of the design board above that I got from using my ChatGPT subscription.
DesignFiles vs MyDoma Client Onboarding
Feature | DesignFiles | MyDoma Studio |
|---|---|---|
Client Questionnaires | DesignFiles comes with customizable templates as well as the option to create your own templates. You won't need to use an outside platform to see your clients' responses. No integration with a 3rd party platform is needed | |
Packages | The ability to create packages in DesignFiles is far more limited than what MyDoma offers. There are a very limited number of characters you can use for the description, and the "details" section uses bullet points, which aren't always needed or makes sense if you're trying to use that section to offer a longer description. DesignFiles' Packages feature is also not the ideal place to sign up clients for discovery calls or consultations, since it requires the client indicate the number of rooms they want designed. Prior to the discovery call or consultation, they may not have made this decision yet. Also, | You can create, sell, collect payments all from MyDoma's Packages feature. Create custom packages for nearly any type of service. Use this feature to book discovery calls and consultations by integrating with Acuity, Calendly, or Google Calendar. What I love in particular about MyDoma's Packages feature is that you can write detailed descriptions using a text editor that provides you with ample editing capabilities. You can create email templates and automate them so the clients automatically receive an email through each step of the process. You |
DesignFiles vs MyDoma Project Management & Misc Features
Feature | DesignFiles | MyDoma Studio |
|---|---|---|
Client Portal | YES | YES |
Contracts | YES | YES |
Proposals | YES, but only in their full service plan | YES |
Invoicing | YES, but only in their full service plan | YES |
Purchase Orders | YES, but only in their full service plan | YES |
Order Tracking | YES, but only in their full service plan | YES |
Tasks | YES, in a Trello-like format. There's a column for "to do", another for "in progress", and a column for "completed". You also have the option of adding additional columns. You can also create task templates. You can assign team members to each task, set due dates, set low, medium, or high priority, add sub-tasks, add attachments, add notes, and leave comments. | YES, you can but instead of moving tasks into columns, there's a drop-down menu for "to do", "in progress", and "done". You can set the priority to "low", "medium" or "high", enter start and end dates, pair the task to a specific project, designate "assignees" and "watchers", add tags, checklists, and notes. You can also create task templates. |
Spec Sheets | YES, but only in their full service plan | ? Can't find an option to create spec sheets in MyDoma |
Time Tracker | YES, but only in their full service plan | YES |
Finish Schedules | NO | NO |
Calendar | YES, but it doesn't connect to your Google Calendar, nor does DesignFiles currently integrate with any scheduling apps. | YES, and clients can schedule appointments with you through MyDoma, which integrates with Google Workspace appointments (which is a paid subscription). It doesn't work with any other scheduling apps. Also, I'm unclear if only the appointments clients book with you through Google Workspace appear in the in-app calendar, or if you can see other events from your Google calendar, as well. |
Financial Reports | YES | YES |
Design Presentation Templates | YES, there are 5 presentation templates in DesignFiles | NO |
Project Proposal Templates | YES, there are 5 proposal templates in DesignFiles | NO |
MyDoma vs DesignFiles: My Choice
So after subscribing to and comparing MyDoma Studio vs DesignFiles for several months, I decided that for my needs, I'll stick with DesignFiles and cancel my MyDoma subscription. One thing I love about DesignFiles is that they frequently add new features. They also provide a forum for users to add their requests for new features. Many of the features they've integrated came from that wish list, so I will continue posting my feature requests in that forum and hope for the best.