I applied to 99designs for the second time since 2021 after gaining years of experience working on the platform through a job and designing for someone else's non-personal account (which was not owned by me). I worked for someone else's account to gain experience.

After working professionally and improving my skills, I decided to apply again—but my application was denied with the response:

"Unfortunately, after careful consideration of your application, we cannot accept you at this time."

📌 My Proven Experience on 99designs
🔹 2022 - 2024: I worked on a non-personal 99designs account (not owned by me) and helped win 29 contests and became a finalist in 49 contests.
🔹 Jan 2024 - June 2024: I worked at Mad Minds Creative, where I created daily design concepts for 99designs briefs. The company used their own 99designs accounts, and my work helped them win multiple contests and secure finalist positions.

Despite this proven success on 99designs, my own application was rejected without explanation. When I contacted support for a valid reason, they responded by banning my account permanently!

Why Did 99designs Ban My Account?
They claimed my account was linked to another 99designs account and that my name was similar to that account's name—just because of a "name similarity"!

Instead of properly verifying my identity and that account's personal identity ID card verification, they banned my account without proof—even though I told them multiple times that the account was not mine. I even asked them to verify my ID card and compare it with that account's identity, but they ignored my request and still banned my account just because of a similar name.

How is this fair? Are there not thousands of people with the same name? "Faraz Ali" is a common name in Pakistan, with thousands of people sharing it. So does that mean 99designs will reject and ban every person with this name?

They made a blind assumption and took unfair action without checking:
My identity documents (ID card)
My email history
My payment methods
My IP address

🤔 How Is This Fair?
How is it a violation if I previously worked on 99designs under someone else's account and Mad Minds Creative company account?
How does gaining experience disqualify me from creating my own independent account?
Is gaining experience and working on a platform before starting independently a crime?

99designs did not verify anything properly before banning me. They refused to review my case fairly, even when their parent company, VistaPrint, escalated it.

🚨 Unfair & Unethical Treatment of Designers
🔴 They rejected my application despite my experience.
🔴 They banned my account without proof or proper verification.
🔴 They ignored all my appeals and refused to review the decision.

I request 99designs to properly review my case and reinstate my account (FarazVisuals) Asap

Freelancers, BEWARE!
99designs treats designers as disposable assets. They can erase your career overnight with NO accountability. If they can do this to me, they can do it to anyone!

🚨 If my account is not reinstated Asap, I will escalate this matter to consumer protection agencies and take legal action.

Think twice before investing your time in 99designs. Their system is broken, and their treatment of designers is disgraceful!

99design is a company you go to outsource your design work. It is held to the highest standard. I believe you can get the BEST designers there. I have used it for YEARS and I know other professionals have used them as well with great results. There are drawbacks and things to be cautious of as there are anywhere you go. The

PROs. Their UI is upgraded and you can interact with your designers at the highest level. So you can either contact designers directly by looking at profiles or run a contest either blind or so all the designers can see the designs. Blind you will not get the designers copying each other. If you do not run it blind I suggest not rating the designs until you choose the finalists, because then you will get a bunch of similar designs. The UI is precise so you can leave a "brief"(your order) with examples, of art, colors, feelings, styles, (easily within their UI or upload your own) and descriptions you want to be portrayed in your art. It gives the designers a good idea of what you want. Also when a design is submitted you can interact with it by clicking on it and drawing on the design or commenting on specific elements and talking to the designer in private right there! Makes for a great collaboration! You can talk to all the designers, and integrate with slack if you choose to. Stock images used in the design are displayed when you select the design so you know what stock is used and where it is from.

CONs to be aware that if you choose a contest you can get designers who don't do original art. Some just put a stock image and text and will do 12 different designs. Nothing more than that so the art is not original. But you WILL get designers who spend 2-3 days making some amazing original art using a stock image and photos or freestock integrated all photoshopped together with text to make that AWARD WINNING DESIGN you came for. SO beware of the designers who are not original and just slap it up there in mass amounts. Otherwise, THIS IS where you will find the PREMIUM DESIGNERS. Be willing to talk and say yes I like this no I don't like that YOU ARE THE BOSS! Its a collaboration! :) Hope this helps you get the design of your dream. The image of the cover design for my Latest Book is attached done via a contest on 99designs.

This is a report about business fraud.

99designs is offering services for graphic and web design. Graphic design and web design are two separate fields of designs with similar foundations but a very different execution. Web design requires knowledge not only of basics of graphic design but also HTML, CSS an JS to understand the building blocks of website and apps, and if possible knowledge on the limitation of CMS(content management system). Graphic design requires knowledge of how printing machines work. 99designs does not have a filter or an option to separate graphic designers from web designers and because of that clients that enter a contest in most cases end up with designs that can't be developed or implemented into existing client's website structure, because designs have been provided by graphic designer that do not understand building blocks of website or app development - and when that happens client is not alerted by 99designs staff about the issues he might face.

There is also nothing about this in the 99designs legal text (terms of use or privacy issues), so clients who start the web design related contests on 99deisgns are not aware that they could end up paying a product that they can't develop. (mobile optimization as UI design is part of web design, it can't exist without it - 99designs decided to deal only with WordPress design problem that is just a small part of a bigger issue which they refuse to deal with.) - designing for web design projects means designing based on the code which you need to know to deliver a usable product that can be developed - it is not like graphic design that completely leans on free creativity. Web design has a lot of rules, knowing the code to make usable designs is one of them.

One of many real examples in the 99designs business:
The client started a contest for web design mobile optimization of their existing website. (This happens a lot on 99designs and there is no button or option to report the contest after the contest is finished and all designs are revealed.) At the end of a contest, the client ends up choosing the design that can't be used at all in the optimization of their actual website because the coding structure of client's website is completely different and does not support design he chose. Yet 99designs does not offer any client service in that manner to alert the client that the design he chose can't be implemented. 99designs staff says that clients are responsible for that part. Expecting clients to know graphic design, web design, coding, web development and how everything works are just unrealistic because that part of duty is on 99designs staff.

I contacted 99designs about this problem and all I got in reply was them trying to put the blame on me and when I tried to reply, they restricted me from further participation in the discourse which made it obvious they were simply trying to sweep everything under the rug.

This kind of manipulation and exploitation has to stop.

About web design industry:
If a web designer does not understand the code behind his design he will not be hired in this field because he will do more damage then good (every professional agency, institution or organization can confirm this).

And by 99designs staff reply, they publicly said that with them it is completely fine not to know your job because clients (contest holders) should know designers/developers job because as 99designs says, it is client's responsibility to know everything. Yet 99designs is the one that offers the service (not clients), that people (contest holders) use. This is fraud where the company (99designs) is trying to pin responsibility for their fraudulent service on others to keep the profit by delivering the unusable products without any notification in legal texts about the risks clients could face. They even went further by explaining in their F. A. Q. How that is OK and legal by delivering false and wrong information (evidence image) to justify their approach.

Amazing designers. Great support terms.

IM GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Hat highest respect for the ownerS of the site

There are some nasty reviews written by clients who had bad experience for a reason or another, but let me point some things out:

- You can't complain if you don't get good results for mediocre prizes ($300 ~ $500), top designers won't even bother looking at such contests.

- While, let's say $500 is deemed fair enough for some kind of design in case of a one to one project, but in a contest it should be 200% of the amount or more for the same design. Do you want many designers to compete and give it their best shot? Give them a reason!

- Some people said that the Money Back Guaranteed is a scam, morons!
Initially when a contest is created, they could get their money back at any moment during the qualifying round BUT NOT AFTER THE FINAL ROUND, did they seriously think that they will be dragging many designers to work on their contests for many many days then at end ask for a refund?! These are people working, not slaves who have nothing else better to do.
If you decide to make the contest guaranteed before the final round, you can't get your money back afterwards but chances that more designers will be entering the contest and working seriously on it will be significantly increased. The rules are clear and logical here.

- If you're going to create a contest, MAKE it "Blind", preferably not "Private" as designers tend to not be fond of Private contests because they cannot add submissions to their portfolio from such contests.

- These are contests, designers won't go all-out and give it everything they have (We're talking many hours of work) while they have no guarantee of winning. Probably they will submit an alpha version and work on improving it if the client is showing interest.

- Write a good and complete design brief, provide assets and resources.

- In many cases, contests don't attract designers because the brief is insufficient, vague, lacking specifics or just too demanding for the amount of its prize.

- Give feedbacks and communicate your ideas, designers cannot read your mind and know exactly at first glance how you want the design to be like.

- You may need to extend the deadline if not enough designers are entering your contest.

- Don't send those dumb generic contest invitations to designers, such as "Hello, I like your portfolio, please join my contest". Designers won't even reply or check the contest as this invitation message is clearly a copy pasted text and have sent repetitively to other designers God knows how many times before. At the very least address the designer by his/her first name when saying hello.
Attached is an example of such dumb copy pasted generic invitations I receive on regular basis. Don't make the same mistake if you're going to invite designers to join your contest.

- DON'T end a contest before its deadline, there might be designers who are still working on their submission and probably going to submit it minutes before the deadline.

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There are also some reviews from designers who claim to have years of experience and bla bla bla who were banned or suspended from 99Designs because their work was deemed mediocre, below average or not meeting the standards, well, most probably, it must have been so, with all due respect.

If you are good, you can make a decent living out of this platform, if you are not, you may be working everyday for years and not winning a dime.

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Of course not 100% of the members are professional designers (as any other marketplace), there are some amateurs and punks. Same goes for clients, there are professional and thoughtful clients as they are some morons who assume that all designers are mind-reader slaves and all of them should be interested in their contest asking for a logo, branding identity, packaging and website for their miserable $700.

"We can have 1,000 happy people not say a word online and 10 unhappy people making an awful lot of noise."

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There are some very talented designers out there, but they won't bother entering contests with mediocre prizes. Have an eye on their profile, portfolio and reviews, then invite them to 1-to-1 projects, results tend to be better when working directly with one designer.

I gave the extra star because--after following my explicit directions--one of the designers gave me a logomark that I liked. Frankly, though, I'm pretty sure it was luck that I liked it.

FOR $500 I GOT NO RESPONSE FROM THE DESIGNERS LISTED IN THE "DESIGNERS" PAGE. If you scroll through the designers, you see beautiful, elegant and sophisticated logo designs. You won't get anything like this for the $500 I paid. I invited maybe a couple dozen designers to participate in my contest, but only one of them replied to the invitation (and she declined).

F0R $500 YOU WON'T GET THE BEAUTIFUL LOGOS YOU SEE ON THE WEBSITE. You will get, literally, clipart and freeware fonts. Drawn up by teenagers. Seriously. All of my submissions were by people who had never won a contest. Who clearly had no experience or eye for design.

The designers were essentially unable to follow my directions. Primarily because they weren't going to spend time with me because their time isn't worth just a chance on $300. Also, English was a problem.

Eventually, I got a logomark and an open-source font that I liked. I approved the contest and paid the $500. But the final drawings weren't what I asked for, so I had to BUY ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR so that I could do the alignments and colors the way I'd requested (the colors were useless for printing). I'm no designer, but even I knew that the final drawings were useless.

The overall experience was terrible. The online chat personnel were responsive, but they aren't giving me designs. All of the designs were horrific with a couple of notable exceptions--and with those, I'm certain that I got lucky.

Worthless designs.