A higher designer has been prohibited from dribbble. Now he builds his own competitor.

Dribble Definitely prohibited dozens of designers of its platform following a new effort to rotate on a market and continue monetization. This includes one of the best known designers on the platform, Gleb Kuznetsov,, Founder of the studio design, based in San Francisco, Milk.

Dribbble deleted his account with his Over 210 million The followers because he shared his contact details with potential customers via the platform in violation of his new rules.

Pointed out Kuznetsov In a post on x“I have brought more than 100,000 monthly users. 15 years of work. 12,000+ gunshots. All of all deleted, because a customer asked for my email. A warning. No call.”

Fed up with the company’s changes, which helps products, UX, web and other digital designers present their portfolios and find new customers, Kuznetsov says that he spoke to investors to launch a competitor.

Totally agree with @jondschubert . I loved @Dribbble. I brought more than 100,000 monthly users. 15 years of work. 12,000+ blows.

All instantly deleted, because a customer asked for my email. A warning. No calls.

They did not care about the community. Just their 3%reduction.
Dribbble is … pic.twitter.com/ujzvhkloxo

– Gleb Kuznetsov (@Glebich) July 29, 2025

Shortly after its publication on social networks, users of Dribbble expressed their shock and anger with regard to the decision, creating Kuznetsov as one of their greatest inspirations and moving that the platform would make such an erroneous decision.

Dribbble, on the other hand, says that Kuznetsov was in fact warned several times that he violated the new rules and that the e-mail was the last opinion.

Dribbble’s pivot on a market

The question has to do with a more recent change in policy announced for the first time on March 17, 2025.

In an email shared in March with some 750,000 approved designers from Dribbble-which means those authorized to communicate with others on the platform-the company said that it no longer authorized designers to share their contact details with potential customers until their customer has sent payment via their platform.

The company has positioned this change as of protecting designers from non-payments, as well as that which allows Dribbble to continue to maintain its business.

The announcement was also published on social networks and corporate blog.

However, Kuznetsov says that non-payment is not a very common problem, and really, this update concerns Dribbble which tries to take a greater cup of the business of designers.

Dribbble does not dispute this.

Before the policy change, Dribbble has made money in two ways. From September 2024, Dribbble began to rotate on a market that connected designers and customers. The designers could communicate freely on the platform, then share a reduction in income of 3.5% on the customers they converted, or they could pay A pro subscription To skip the share of the Reverend. In March, the company tightened the rules more, saying that anyone finding customers on Dribbble should offer the platform a reduction in its income.

“It came out in optional to use our transactional features, it was necessary that non-versisters use our transactional features, if they were on a dribbble, to find customers,” Dribbble CEO Constantin AnastasakisIn an interview with Techcrunch. “If a user is on a dribbble to find inspiration or to get comments on his work, or to speak with his peers, none of this affects them,” he added.

The executive, who joined the company after working with the direct lender to the consumer, below, the Pond5 video market (which was released in Shutterstock) and the Freelancer Marketplace Fiverr, was hired last April to pivot Dribbble in a market. While the company is profitable under the parent company TinyIt is always a small team of 20 people and does not depend on the support for the company to serve its unique visitors from 7.5 to 10 million people.

“Dribbble was something that really accelerated our company spectacular at the time,” Kuznetsov told Techcrunch. Before Dribbble, there was no platform where designers could share their work with others, he said. He helped designers receive comments that come specifically from their peers and allowed new designers to learn from those from the Industry Summit.

Kuznetsov is now part of this last group.

At Milkinside, Kuznetsov worked with companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Scandinavian Airlines, United Airlines, Honda, Mitsubishi, Mercedes-Benz and other large companies in the Bay region.

Consequently, he probably did not think that Dribbble could prohibit it so as not to respect the new terms.

Anastasakis essentially confirmed that this was true.

He told Techcrunch that Kuznetsov had received 83 work requests since the new terms were deployed in March and responded to 61. In each message, the site shows a warning that reminds users that contact details should not be shared before the project payment. However, Kuznetsov shared his contact details in six messages, which would have displayed a stronger warning at the time.

The company then followed a warning email on July 22 on its repeated violations of the terms of service, which informed it that it risked a permanent suspension.

Kuznetsov told us that he had not seen this email at the start, but Dribbble says that he followed that the email had been opened three times before his suspension.

“I believe that Dribbble – It was their goal to injure myself so that I could disseminate this (new) so that they can give a hard lesson to all those who are trying (to break the rules)”, explains Kuznetsov.

The CEO of Dribbble, Anastasakis, confirmed as much at Techcrunch.

“There is really not in a imaginable way which he did not realize that what he was risky to suspend permanent suspension of his accounts,” said Anastasakis.

“I think that in the end, it is because he believed that we did not take action against a designer of his caliber,” he continued. “As a secondary note, I actually think that he made us a great favor with regard to the word on how we take the terms seriously.”

For Kuznetsov, or any designer that has been prohibited for similar reasons, the only option to return to Dribbble is to join as a announcer, which requires a minimum campaign budget of $ 1,500 per month for at least three months.

A new dribbble competitor emerges?

Kuznetsov decided to forge his own path, saying that he was injured by the change of dribbble.

“It will not be a copier of Dribbble,” he said about his pending startup. Instead, it will be a resource for designers who will also exploit AI.

Although there have been a lot of backlash on the training of AI models on the work of creatives without compensation, Kuznetsov thinks that there is a case of use for technology in terms of inspiration, creation and design.

“It’s a big hole at the moment on the market … Everyone is making AI startups, but nobody really makes AI startups for designers,” notes Kuznetsov. “AI is something that can really raise our ability to create and do it at a much higher level of quality. It will help us not only to earn more money and to grow, but also to create something that we never even thought that we were possible to create without a set of specific skills. ”

Kuznetsov says he expects to have a MVP (minimum viable product) Loan in three or four months.

However, he notes that the objective is not to “kill” Dribbble, even if the investors offered him money to do so.

“It’s not like that. I try to do something good for the community because I am a designer. So I know how painful it is to be a designer in this world, ”explains Kuznetsov.

“We must be really intelligent on how we invest our time – how we give our best and give our lives to other platforms. The diversification of this investment should be something that everyone should think of, “he adds.