Figma is designed for collaboration, so the share link shows comments, version history, and the frames you parked. Channel options for a client-facing preview, and where private-link hosting fits.
Five channels agencies use for client previews — and what each accidentally reveals about the work in progress. Where private-link delivery sits, and when it's worth the swap.
A pricing proposal is read more like a website than a document. Channel options for sending one, and where private-link HTML sits between a PDF attachment and an esignature tool.
miinideck turns a single HTML file into an unguessable link with optional password and expiry. Default-private, never indexed.
The format you pick for an internal review is a category-signaling choice. When the team starts shipping HTML links instead of .pptx attachments, the room reads it before the content opens.
The homepage is good. The client call is tomorrow. The Figma file has six weeks of iteration in it — comments from the strategist, version history showing the four directions you tried, a parked stack of "rejected v2" frames next to the live one, the brief annotated in red and green.
You could share the file. The client would see all of it. The work is fine; the file is a back-room.
The channel decides which one the client sees first.
Figma view-only link. Designed for collaboration. The whole shape of the share is "anyone with this link can comment, follow the version history, walk through the file." That's exactly right when you're sharing with the strategist mid-week. For the client opening it cold tomorrow, the same property means they see the comment threads on the rejected direction, the parked frames in the sidebar, the file's working title from week one. The fix is to duplicate the file, strip the back-room, share that file. Possible. Adds twenty minutes per round.
Figma Prototype mode. Designed for clickable flow demos. The Figma logo sits top-left, the prototype controls sit bottom-center, the URL says figma.com/proto/.... The framing is here is a design preview, not here is a shipped page. Right shape for an early prototype review where the client is part of the design process; different framing when the deliverable is meant to read as production work.
PNG / JPG exports. Designed for static reference. The hover states are gone, the responsive breakpoints are gone, the micro-interactions on the CTA are gone. Right shape for moodboards, hero shots, anything meant to live in a deck or a doc. The interactivity wasn't the point; the still image was.
Combined PDF. Designed for archive. Pages stacked sequentially, scaled to fit, no interactivity, no responsive view. Right shape for a printed leave-behind after sign-off, or a portable summary the client can flick through on a flight. Less right as the client's first introduction to a website that exists, in their browser, as a thing they can touch.
Live deployed site (Vercel, Netlify, custom hosting). Designed for production. Public URL, deployment pipeline, sometimes a staging password, all the infrastructure that supports a launched page. Right shape when the work is ready to go public — the link is the launch. Overkill when the only audience is one client reviewing for a meeting.
Self-contained HTML at a private link. Designed for handing off a finished interactive surface. Plugins like Anima, Bravo Studio, or Figma's own Dev Mode export turn a frame into a single HTML file with the CSS, the animations, and the responsive behavior bundled in. Host the file at a private link, send the URL, the client opens directly to the work — no Figma chrome, no comment sidebar, no version-history dropdown.
The first thing the client sees on the preview sets the conversation for the next forty minutes. If they land on the work, the conversation is about the work. If they land on the design tool's interface, the conversation has a frame around it before the work loads.
Studios that have been doing this a while solve the framing by curating a separate surface per client — a clean Figma file with just the final frames, a Notion page with just the agreed deliverables, a one-off Loom that walks through the homepage. Real work, scaling with the number of clients.
A private link compresses that work into one step. Export the frame to HTML, drop the file, send the link. The client opens to the page and the page only.
Drop one HTML export from Figma, get a private link in under 60 seconds. No account needed — the file self-destructs after 7 days. Useful for testing the flow with one teammate before sending the real link to a client.
Not every preview should hide the iteration. Some clients are paying for the thinking — they want to see the version history, the parked directions, the comment threads on what you rejected and why. For design-partnership engagements where the client is part of the process, the Figma link is the right shape; the back-room is the feature.
The rough split:
The channel decides which one happens.
The URL is a small surface and a real one. A link at previews.studio.com/<random> reads differently from someservice.io/<random>. Same work, framed by a domain that says: this is what the studio ships.
Studio-tier plans on private-link tools support custom domains — point a DNS record, the link lives at your domain. The unguessable slug stays the same; the front of the URL is yours.
For solo designers and small studios, the upgrade is mostly about how the client reads the link in their inbox. Same export, same client, different first impression.
Studio plan ($14.99/mo) hosts the private link at your own domain and removes the footer. And password protection — useful when the preview is under NDA or the client forwards links by habit — costs nothing on any plan.
For multi-frame previews (homepage + product page + pricing), the same flow repeats per file — or bundle them into one HTML page with anchor navigation if the client review covers them together.
The agency variant walks through the same channel choice for stakeholder previews rather than solo handoffs.
A private link doesn't replace Figma. The iteration loop still happens in the file — comments, version history, frame parking, the whole working environment. What changes is the link the client opens.
The split is roughly: build in the tools designed for building, hand off in the tool designed for handing off. For designers already doing both — exporting to a deploy after sign-off — the swap is small. For designers using the Figma share link as the hand-off, the upgrade is mostly framing, and the framing is what the client reads first.