Fabric vs Frontify

Last updated October 2026

Fabric and Frontify solve different problems. Frontify is a brand management platform that combines digital asset management with brand guidelines, templates, and creative workflows for large organisations. Fabric is a personal cloud and context layer that handles every file type alongside notes, documents, AI search, tasks, annotations, and publishing. This page covers what each one does and where the trade-offs sit.

Comparison table

What is Frontify

Frontify is a brand management platform used by mid-to-large organisations to centralise their brand identity, assets, and creative workflows. The platform combines a digital asset library with interactive brand guidelines, design templates, and approval workflows. The idea is that everyone in an organisation, from designers to sales reps to partners, can find, use, and create on-brand content without bottlenecking the brand team.

Brand guidelines in Frontify are interactive, web-based documents that cover logos, colours, typography, tone of voice, and imagery. Templates let non-designers create assets (social posts, presentations, emails) that stay within brand constraints. The DAM stores and distributes approved assets with metadata, tagging, and permission controls. Creative workflows manage the review and approval process.

Frontify does not publish fixed pricing. Contracts are typically based on monthly active users and start around $8K-15K per year for small teams. The median contract is around $32K per year, scaling up for larger organisations.

What is Fabric

Fabric is a personal cloud and context layer that brings files, notes, documents, bookmarks, links, web clips, emails, and media into one searchable workspace. Where Frontify is built for brand governance and asset distribution, Fabric handles everything a person or team works with and makes it searchable, annotatable, and actionable.

Fabric's AI search finds content by meaning across every file type: the exact page in a PDF, the right slide in a deck, a moment in a video through automatic transcription, or an image by colour. The cloud drive streams files with zero disk space from any device. Notes and documents include real-time collaborative editing. Annotations pin feedback to exact spots on images, documents, slides, and video frames. The AI assistant uses four model families and can act across 30+ connected apps with user approval.

Pricing starts at $8/mo billed yearly, with a free tier that includes limited storage and AI.

Brand management vs personal cloud

The core distinction is scope and purpose. Frontify governs how an organisation's brand is represented. It ensures consistency across teams, regions, partners, and campaigns. The guidelines, templates, and approval workflows are designed to scale brand governance without requiring the brand team to review every piece of content.

Fabric is a workspace for everything. It does not have a dedicated brand guidelines builder or a template system for non-designers. What it does have is AI search that finds anything by meaning, annotations on any content type, notes and documents, tasks, and an AI assistant that understands your entire library. For the people who create the brand assets (designers, content creators, marketers), Fabric is where the work happens. For distributing those assets at scale across a large organisation, Frontify has the governance tooling.

Search

Frontify uses metadata and tag-based search within its asset library. Assets are found by the keywords, categories, and tags assigned to them. The system relies on consistent metadata discipline and manual or AI-assisted tagging.

Fabric's AI search goes inside every file type by meaning. You describe what you are looking for and the AI finds it, whether it is in a PDF, a slide deck, a video, or an image. Colour search finds assets by palette. Visual search takes a reference image and finds similar content. No manual tagging is required. Cross-platform search also pulls in results from Google Drive, Figma, Notion, and other connected services.

Templates and brand constraints

Frontify's template system lets non-designers create on-brand content. Templates define which elements can be changed (text, images) and which are locked (logos, colours, layouts). This is useful for distributed teams creating social posts, presentations, or sales collateral without design support.

Fabric does not have a dedicated template builder with locked brand constraints. Its strength is in the creative work itself: brainstorming on the spatial canvas, writing in notes and documents, reviewing with annotations, and finding reference material through AI search.

Collaboration and review

Frontify has approval workflows for creative projects. Assets move through stages (draft, review, approved) with assigned reviewers and due dates. Comments with markup let stakeholders provide feedback on visual assets.

Fabric's annotations pin feedback to exact spots on any content type. Threaded comments work on any file. Real-time chat lives inside documents and workspaces. The spatial canvas supports visual brainstorming with multiplayer. Publishing turns anything into a shareable link with analytics showing who viewed it and for how long.

Frontify's review is structured around brand approval. Fabric's review is broader, covering every kind of content a team works with.

Pricing

Frontify's pricing is custom and based on monthly active users. Smaller deployments start around $8K-15K per year. The median contract is around $32K per year. Enterprise deployments scale higher. There is no free tier and no self-serve sign-up.

Fabric starts at $8/mo billed yearly or $10/mo monthly, with a free tier. A team of 10 costs roughly $80/mo billed yearly. Fabric is substantially cheaper for small-to-mid teams and does not require a sales conversation to get started.

How to choose

Frontify is the right choice for organisations that need brand governance at scale: interactive guidelines, templates with constraints, asset distribution to large distributed teams, and approval workflows for creative output. If your challenge is ensuring brand consistency across hundreds of people, Frontify provides the governance layer.

Fabric is the right choice for the creative team itself. If you need a workspace where all your files, notes, research, and feedback live together, searchable by AI and annotatable on any content type, Fabric provides that. For smaller teams or teams that do not need enterprise-grade brand governance, Fabric's workspace covers collaboration, search, and review at a fraction of the cost.

Frequently asked questions

Does Frontify have AI search?

Frontify uses metadata and tag-based search, with some AI-assisted tagging. It does not offer semantic search that goes inside documents or video by meaning. Fabric's AI search finds content by meaning across all file types without manual tagging.

Can Fabric create brand guidelines?

Fabric does not have a dedicated brand guidelines builder. You can create guidelines as a note or document in Fabric, but the interactive, template-driven guidelines system is Frontify's speciality.

How much does Frontify cost?

Frontify does not publish fixed pricing. Contracts typically start around $8K-15K per year for smaller teams, with a median of roughly $32K per year. Enterprise pricing scales higher.

Does Fabric have template constraints for non-designers?

Fabric does not have a template system with locked brand elements. Its focus is on the creative workflow: search, notes, annotations, and AI across your content library.

Can I annotate video in Frontify?

Frontify's commenting works on visual assets including images and videos. Fabric's annotations cover all content types: images, PDFs, slides, video frames, documents, and any rich media.

Does Fabric connect to design tools?

Yes. Fabric connects to 30+ apps including Figma, alongside Gmail, Slack, Google Drive, Notion, Dropbox, and more.

Is Frontify suitable for small teams?

Frontify targets mid-to-large organisations. The pricing and feature set are designed for teams that need brand governance at scale. For smaller teams, the cost and complexity may be more than needed.

Does Fabric have approval workflows?

Fabric does not have a structured approval pipeline with stages and sign-offs. Collaboration happens through annotations, comments, and real-time chat. For formal brand approval processes, Frontify provides that.

Can I use both together?

Yes. Some organisations use Frontify for brand governance and asset distribution across the company, and Fabric as the creative team's workspace for the day-to-day work of producing content, collaborating on ideas, and managing projects.

Is Fabric free?

Fabric does have a free tier with limited storage and AI. Paid plans start at $8/mo billed yearly.

See also

• Best digital asset management tool

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• Best creative collaboration tool

• Best design review tool

• Best file sharing tools for creatives