Penji Review: How does it work?

So are you looking to join Penji designing membership service for better productivity? But do you have queries or looking for an unbiased review on Penji? Well, you came to the right place. This Penji review share our experience with the Penji with all our readers.

We will go in-depth and try to cover everything related to Penji which including Penji design quality, support system, working procedure, turnaround time, designers’ information, etc. And at last, we shared our opinion on whether or not you should go with Penji. So follow with us till the end of the article to learn everything about Penji.

What is Penji? A Simple Explanation

Penji is a membership-based Graphic design service that helps freelancers, marketing agencies, bloggers, individual marketers, or anyone who requires graphical content daily. The concept of the Penji design solution is unique from other graphic design service providers. Unlike others, Penji doesn’t charge as per the number of design projects. They have a membership-based plan where users can request unlimited design projects monthly or yearly regardless of how complex a project is.

How does Penji Designing System Works?

Penji workflow is very simplified and easy to follow. Let me walk you through the 4 steps procedure.

The first step will always start with the user request. When a user is ready with the design request, he/she is required to create a design project by filling a simple form to state his/her needs, requirements, problem, design ideas, design types, etc.

As soon as you create the design project, the second step will be initiated from Penji’s end. After reviewing the project, The Penji team will assign the best graphic designer and allow you to chat or communicate with him further.

The third step is for reviewing the draft and revisions. At this stage, you will receive the first draft of your design. When there is a problem with the design, Penji will give you the option to ask for unlimited revisions until you are fully satisfied.

In the fourth step, the only thing remaining is to download the source files.

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Penji Review: 

In this section, we will fully disclose or lay out the Penji designing system on a table, so that you can clearly understand whether you should go with the Penji design service or not. 

But first, I would like to share my graphic design experience with Penji.

My Honest Experience with Penji

I asked Penji designers to create a logo for my local client. After signing up, we have immediately allotted a designer which is good at communication. So we started by sharing every small detail we wanted in a design. Basically, our client company is related to Biofuel. So they send us a Shutterstock logo for reference and ask us to create a similar logo but in 3D vector format. 

We passed exact instructions to the Penji designer and gladly he understood on a first attempt. I and my client both were impressed by the design quality on the first attempt. However there is an issue with font size, but that problem will be resolved by the Penji designers in about 5 minutes.

You can clearly see the capabilities of Penji designers from the below image.

Summary of our first design experience with Penji:

• Number of designs asked for: 1
• Number of variations received: 3
• Turn around time: 31 hours, 20 minutes
• Revision time: 5 minutes
• Designer response rate: Perfect, they always get back to us within 1 to 3 minutes.
• File submission: Multiple formats (eps, .ai, png, jpg, pdf)
• Design quality: 5/5

The designers also told us that if the logo was not requested in 3D, the turnaround time was much shorter.

How Penji Bring Real-Life Value to User’s Graphic Design Needs: The Top 7 Plus Points

Let’s start by discussing the major real-life values you are getting by changing or handing over all your graphic designing requirements to Penji.

Unlimited Design Projects Make a Huge Impact Moneywise

As I stated earlier, Penji is a fixed price membership-based graphic design service, so here you have no restriction on the number of projects to be requested. If you have 10 projects or 100 project requirements monthly, the price will be the same. Plus you can save more money by paying the fixed charge on even complex designs where usually you have to pay almost 2x, 3x times extra money to individual designers.

But there is a point to notice here that Penji designers work only on 1 project at a time, so for the next design request, you have to wait until the completion of the current ongoing project.

No More Trouble of Sourcing Professional Graphic Designers

How would you usually source designers for your graphic designing needs? I guess you took help from freelance platforms like Fiverr, right? The main problem of designers available on such platforms is their skill set count. For example, if one designer you hired for Logo design service, then you must need someone else for infographics or maybe social media graphics service. This increases the sourcing time drastically which can be easily avoided in the Penji.

With the Penji graphic design approach, you don’t have to take care of sourcing and managing a graphic designer manually. Penji already has the best designers in their team with all the required design skillset. They followed a complete procedure which includes a design test to onboard the top 2% of designers in their team. So you just need to submit a project and relax. Penji will automatically take care of additional tasks of hiring, managing, and assigning a graphic designer.

Endless Free Revisions

The number of revisions is very crucial in graphic designing services. And nothing could be better than getting an unlimited revisions facility without extra charges. Yes, Penji made it crystal clear in their membership policies that users can ask for unlimited revisions or even change the designer (happens rarely) if the service is not up to the mark.

Compared to other graphic design freelance platforms where you hardly get 1-3 revisions and require to pay extra dollars for more revisions, Penji will never do this to you. No extra charge, no hidden costs are there in the case of Penji graphic design service.

Faster Graphic Design Delivery

I don’t know about you, but literally, I am fed up with the slow or longer turnaround time of other designing platforms, for example, Fiverr. I dealt with many designers on Fiverr and found out that most of the designers demanded a longer time (more than 3-4 days) for a simple design project. However, I also noticed that the price will be almost double when you ask for fast delivery. 

But in the case of Penji, the average delivery time or turnaround time is 24-48 hours which is much faster than any freelance platform. The reason behind this is the selection process of graphic designers. Penji always made a selection of its designers based on how quickly a designer can complete the design task.

You and only You will Hold the Ownership of Files

 I would like to share my honest experience. A Few months back I hired a graphic designer on Fiverr for a logo designing task. After delivery, the freelancer told me that he will own all the copyright of the design as well as of the source file. This was shocking for me because I haven’t researched properly on Fiverr policies and later found that freelancers have the rights to keep the design under their copyright. I wasted my money but learned a lesson of not reading the copyright policy carefully.

But in the case of Penji, you are the only owner of all designs that you created with them. Even though to clarify further I checked their terms and services page where they made a clear point on the ownership, copyright, and trademark of all designs/files created by them for the users.

The Profitable Approach for Marketing Agencies and Individual Freelancers

Well, are you running a client-based business? Are you getting design requirements in bulk? Then outsourcing or handing over the graphic design requirement to a service like Penji will help you to make a larger cut as a profit. Since Penji is a fixed-price graphic design service, you can easily switch from high-cost freelancers and reduce the hiring cost. 

For bulk requirements, you can also upgrade to the Penji agency plan where you always have the support of 2 professional graphic designers. In the off-season or when you’re getting lesser requirements than you can save your money by downgrading your Penji plan in no time.

Not just a few, Penji will accept all kinds of Graphic Design Requirements

Bloggers, Marketers, Agencies, or those who are dealing in different graphic design formats (both digital and print) should only go for a graphic design company that is capable of handling all types of design requirements. A professional graphic design service should welcome any type of design requirement despite its format or complexity. 

Gladly, Penji is one of them. With Penji you can place design requirements for the range of design formats including:

• Digital Ads
• Banners: Social Media, Facebook, Website, PPC ads
• Book covers
• Advertisement: Digital, Magazines, Billboard, Newspaper, Print
• Album Covers
• Website design
• App User interface design
• Infographics
• Custom illustrations: Graphic novels, Album art, Book cover, T-shirts, etc
• Annual Reports
• Labels
• Blog Graphics
• Business cards
• Brochures
• eBooks covers
• Flyers
• Menu designs
• YouTube thumbnails
• Instagram graphic
• Much More…

Penji Features

• No restriction or limitation on the number of projects to be submitted for design work
• Unlimited revisions are available on all Penji plans. The user has the option to leave feedback or comment on any part of the design to clearly state your required changes with the designer
• No hourly charge, No hidden costs, No per project charges. Only fixed rates are there which are very affordable.
• Faster turnaround time (24-48 hours)
• All designs produced by the Penji team are completely owned by the user and should be used for commercial purposes without any issues.
• You can add n number of team members and clients under one Penji account to streamline the workflow.
• Almost accept every design format
• All source files can be downloaded immediately after project completion. Penji uses only popular or widely used industry software to design your projects including Adobe suite etc, so all the produced files will be easily accepted and used anywhere.
• Under the Penji dashboard, the user will get an option to create a separate brand folder that can be used to store or organize brand-specific information, assets in a single place. For example logo, fonts, color information, etc. This is a very essential feature when you have multiple clients to handle.
• The chat option is available to communicate with the assigned designer.
• All the external assets used by the Penji in designs are completely copyright free and eligible to use in a commercial space
• In the agency plan, 2 or more designers will be assigned to you for faster production
• The shareable links can be generated to get feedback on your designs from clients or friends
• Own royalty-free images to be used in the design can be specified during the project creation step.

The Design Quality

As I already shared my design experience with Penji in the above section of the article, but still we found something valuable. First of all, Penji produced designs are always top-notch. All the design output will be shared in multiple file formats. And If the user states their needs clearly, then there is a 100% chance the final output will not require any revision.

But In graphic designing, most of the time we require different variations in designs before finalizing the decision. So this question of varieties in design output was continuously bothering me. That’s why I decided to ask directly to the Penji support team and the response I received is as expected. The Penji team told me that their designers present multiple variations in a design output so that user can pick their favorite one and move forward with it.

Penji Support System

Doesn’t matter if it is Penji or another company, priority support is the root of any online-based service.

For customers or users who have any pre-sales queries regarding the Penji process or service: they can use the intercom chat pop-up live chat option. The intercom live chat button is situated at the bottom right corner accessible from any page of the website. 

But we wanted to know the response rate of that Live chat system, so we ping the Penji customer support employee and ask a few questions and found out that the customer support agent responded in less than a minute. 

The main thing to notice is that our company is based in India, but the Penji headquarters are situated in the USA, so it’s basically a 9-10 hours difference in both time zones. So at our first tryout, we texted Penji through their live chat system around 2:30 P.M IST which equals to 5:00 A.M in Philadelphia, USA (Penji headquarters). We had waited about 10 minutes but the Penji customer support agent didn’t respond, so we logged off.

However, we received a text from the Penji team at a normal working time in the USA that is 10:00 A.M EST. 

So, the result is that Penji didn’t offer live chat support for pre-sales questions globally. You can only expect a quicker response from Penji’s live chat intercom system when you reach them in their office time, or in a typical USA working time. This is a clear disadvantage for global customers.

When we talk about customer support after enrolling into a Penji membership: we found that the priority support option is only available in the Penji Agency plan which is a kind of disadvantage. All communication between the customer and Penji team regarding feedback, queries, etc is going to be conducted through the Penji online portal.

Although, communication with the designer is rapid fast. You and the designer will always have a live chat option for discussion. When you become the Penji membership holder, you can expect 24*7 communication from the designers. We had also clarified the designer’s availability time with the Penji support team and they told us that they had designers available from almost every part of the world so whatever the user location or timezone is there always be a designer available for customers and also one Penji team member or account manager will be there for any immediate needs.

However, there is no phone system for communication. To communicate or work with designers, you must know the English language. All the Penji Designers are located in English-speaking countries, so if English is not your primary language, you might face problems discussing your design requirements with the Penji designers.

We had put this question regarding the English language in front of the Penji support team and they told us that basic English is enough for communication.

Apart from the communication support, the Penji has a knowledge base in the form of intercom articles that can be accessed by both subscribed or non subscribed users. These articles have been created by the Penji team by keeping the customer’s frequently asked queries in mind.

Penji Portfolio, Past Clients and Other Customer’s Experience

Well, how do you usually hire freelance designers for your graphic requirement? Based on their skill set and their portfolio, right? So the same should be considered with Penji.

We found that Penji has numerous big clients in their portfolio bank which is proof of their reputation. Some of Penji’s former client’s names are Aweber, Reebok, Uber, DHL, Calvin Klien, Kohl’s, etc. 

Under Portfolio, Penji has a separate design show page where you can check the quality of their design’s in various types of design formats including Logos, App design, Web designs, Social media graphics, and whatnot.

While reviewing the company portfolio, it is a must to recheck or verify the designs are real or not. So we have manually looked at some of the logos (Burgitos) that Penji put up under their Portfolio page and we found that all designs are real and actually available on the respective company’s websites. 

Let’s see some of the best designs we really love in the Penji Portfolio:

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A portfolio is important to get the idea of design quality, but the customer’s experience is what we need to learn about the reality of the company.

We have found a few YouTube videos in which Penji former clients share their true working experience with Penji service. They shared how Penji helped them to satisfy the graphic needs effectively. To play any video just tap on it.

The Demo Video

We all need a demo first whether to test the service or to see what is going to happen when you subscribe to the service. Gladly, Penji has created an in-depth video of 10 minutes that guides you to the complete process from project creation to design final delivery. After watching the demo video, all your major queries related to Penji will be sorted.

To get access to the demo, tap on the watch demo button placed at the top menu of the Penji website, then fill up the simple form and you will be redirected to the Penji demo video.

Penji Pros

• 3 types of plans are available to suit every individual/business needs
• Flexible membership-based pricing plans to save huge bucks
• The interface of the Penji internal dashboard is quite simple and not have any complex tabs which require time to get used to with it
• The communication with designers is very smooth, you can contact them any time you want.
• Apart from the designer, one Penji team member will always be allotted under your account for any immediate needs.
• With the unlimited revisions, you can exactly get a design output that you planned in your mind.
• The Penji designers are reliable and well qualified so that you can always expect better results from them
• In case you aren’t able to cooperate with the designer or satisfy with the designer’s results, you can always switch or ask the Penji team for other designers. No extra charge is included in switching designers.
• Penji produced graphical content ownership would always be in a hand of a customer.
• For most of the design requirements, the turnaround time will not exceed 48 hours. Penji designers are again well trained and selected based on their speed efficiency.
• After enrolling in Penji membership, the user has full freedom to upgrade/downgrade the existing plan or even cancel the membership at any time. No fixed contracts are there.
• 15-days money-back guarantee
• The ability to onboard extra designers is available in the Agency plan
• The time required for sourcing or finding professional designers will vanish completely
• No user data will be kept by the Penji team as per their privacy policy rules
• Both digital and print design formats can be handled by the Penji designers. 
• The Penji team makes sure that the user will receive 2-3 design outputs created with a different approach. So that user has enough options to review and finalize the design.
• The Penji designers will work on your account 5 days a week which is enough. Since all the designers are full-time employees of Penji, You can expect them to work 8-9 hours each weekday. 
• Penji made organization simple by offering a tool to store assets in a brand-specific folder
• Commission on referrals policy is also there. If you like the Penji service, you can refer to your friends and get a commission percentage based on their membership plan.
• Penji designers double check and make sure that all the assets, resources, fonts, etc used on the designs are free from copyright infringement issues.
• Penji is totally compliant with GDPR data protection laws
• Penji designers are capable of designing the graphics needed in a different language than English. For example typography and fonts. The main thing is to remember as a user that all instructions should be in the English language.
• All produced designs will be stored and accessible from the Penji dashboard until the user deactivated or cancels its membership. So you have the option to extract any file from the previous or current ongoing projects.

Penji Cons

• Prices are very high and not suitable for companies/individuals whose monthly requirement is less.
• Communication on the phone with designers is not possible.
• A mobile app is not available
• Priority support is only available in the Agency plan
• Advanced design services like website design, app design, illustrations, infographics are absent in the Penji Pro plan
• Non-English speakers might face difficulties in communication with designers. A basic English verbal skill is a must to work effectively with Penji.
• Slack integration should be there for better communication with your existing slack team. However, you can onboard unlimited team members, clients, etc on Penji for seamless communication
• A free plan is not there. However, Penji is a service-based organization; a free plan is usually not required. But 15 days money-back guarantee is there so there will be no issue in canceling the contract.
• Penji designers mostly work with Adobe software, so if you want your design to be made or exported through other design Softwares like Sketch then you may face a problem. I suggest first clearing this with the Penji support team before getting into their membership.

Penji Plans, Pricing, & Discount Coupon

Penji has divided its pricing structure into 3 plans. Let’s discuss them one by one to find out which plan suits who.

Penji Pro Plan – Starts from $399/monthly

The Pro plan is the starter plan of the Penji and especially useful for those whose requirements are basic because you won’t find advanced design formats such as Infographics, app design, and web design in this plan. And you have allocated 1 professional designer which can be changed any time if you aren’t satisfied with the design results. And you can add as many project request’s in a queue, but remember, the designer will work only on one design until completion.

In a nutshell, the Penji Pro plan has:

• Unlimited design projects
• 1 designer
• Unlimited users/team members
• Unlimited brands folders

Penji Pro plan pricing divided further into 3 timely based plans:

• The Penji Pro monthly plan would cost you $399. And,
• The Quarterly plan would cost you $1017.45 which needs to be paid per quarter. Compared to the monthly plan, here you will save $179.55
• The yearly plan is the most cost-effective and would cost you $3,591 annually. As a result, you save $1,197 here compared to the monthly plan.

Penji Team Plan – Starts from $499/monthly

The only extra thing you will get under a Team plan is the support for advanced design formats. Only applied for the Penji team plan when your design requirements include website design, app design, infographics, or illustrations.

The Penji Team plan is divided into 3 price slabs:

• Monthly: Starts from $499 per month
• Quarterly: $1,272.45 per quarter (15% savings)
• Yearly: $4,491 per year (25% savings)

Penji Agency Plan – Starts from $899/monthly

Well, the Agency plan is the most powerful plan of the Penji membership. The main benefit you will get here is the Priority support and 2 designers allotment. Go for this plan when you have graphic design requirements in bulk. With the 2 designers, you can really speed up the work. The most important thing is: you can always downgrade your plan as per your requirement. All features of the Pro plan and Team plan are included in the Agency plan. 

The Penji Agency Plan pricing is:

• $899/month – Monthly plans
• $2,292.45/quarter – Quarterly plans (15% savings)
• $8,091/year – Yearly plans (25% savings)

Offer: Our readers get a special 15% discount on all Penji Membership plans for the first month using the coupon code: VWANT15.

Final Words on Penji Review

So what do you think about Penji? From my perspective and experience, I just want to say that if you are an agency or the person who is dealing with the bulk of graphical content monthly then subscription-based services like Penji would definitely save you plenty of money. For those who recently started their business and have a fewer graphic content requirements, then Penji is not the right option. Apart from that, there is no serious issue we found in the Penji. 

Before subscribing to the Penji membership, we suggest you check on the Penji support team to clarify about the design software. Because Adobe software is the first choice of Penji designers for design production. So if you prefer a different software, it is always better to consult with them before making any payment. 

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