Creative Fabrica is a scam

Signing up for the free trial

From the order pop-up, I opened the Terms and Conditions in a new tab. Immediately after the page loaded, the free trial order pop-up popped up on the page.

I hit the X on the Terms page and read through them. It didn’t say anything about your card being charged before you utilize the “free trial”.

After signing up for the free trial

After signing up, a pop-up with a blue button to “get started” and a green button prompting you to “lock-in” your downloads comes up.

First round, I clicked the green button thinking I’d be taken to a page about whatever this meant. Wrong.

My phone received notifications that my bank declined a purchase due to insufficient funds.

Support cancelled my subscription after I contacted them.

I tried the free trial on a new account

Next round, on a different account, I decided to try again because I could not re-download any of the downloads I’d gotten during my free trial. One of them had not downloaded after all, and I needed that one.

I created another account for this thinking I could buy a license for it myself, but this was in vain because guess what? I was looped into another free trial.

So I was like, sure, fine. Let’s go.

I closed the order page with the damn pop-up. Again.

On the new page, a pop-up to “upgrade” my free trial appeared. I clicked the X. The green button on that pop-up switched from “upgrade” to a greyed out “Upgrading…” button.

Excuse me, what?

Another declined transaction for insufficient funds.

At this point, I’m extremely confused.

Clearly, the company’s set on billing anyone who signs up, regardless of their free trial.

And you can’t cancel until after 24 hours because your subscription is “activating”…which is complete bullshirt and violates the FTC’s now-vacated Click-to-Cancel rule, the UK’s consumer law, and EU consumer rights.

This is a literal subscription trap.

Every time I downloaded anything, it tried to charge my card.

And the invoice list shows them trying to charge me the same day I signed up for a free trial (and I only had 3 downloads):

Untouched, my free trial should end April 2, 2026.

However, even on my original account, my 10th download = definite start of paid plan.

So, really, you get 9 “free” downloads contingent on whether you pay. Your “free trial” is contingent on whether you pay for the “All Access” plan.

Jumping ship, because WTF

So I did what felt most logic to me: downloaded all the downloads I could from my original account and contacted support for the new one.

In case, you know, they delete both my accounts because they assumed I was skirting their policies, exploiting their loopholes despite being the ones exploiting cancellation dysregulation in the USA..

I did not receive an answer why they charged people for utilizing their free trial (or not, even). Only an I’m-sorry-this-happened kind of non-apology like what they’re apologizing for is the fact that you realized their scam.

While my accounts both remain in existence, my initial subscription keeps trying to charge my old debit card even though it was removed.

Neither account has my new debit card in it anymore, but somehow I continue to be charged despite both accounts showing “Cancelled”.

Even loading my account, I’m faced with a pop-up that makes it seem like I need to pay the $47 annual fee just to continue browsing.

Creative Fabrica could be a genuinely great resource

The only people who love Creative Fabrica are creators selling on the platform and making pennies (I used to be one of them!) and people who subscribed to their yearly plan to access loads of resources for cheap.

Those who recommend Creative Fabrica and don’t fall into the above categories don’t use it; they’re promoting it passively, without thought.

The problem is not the download options, even though Creative Fabrica is being overridden by AI slop.

The problem is in the structure.

It sounds too good to be true because it is.

You’ve got these font creators who make really cute fonts…but the platform they exclusively sell their fonts on only cares about making as much money as possible.

Alternative to selling via Creative Fabrica

They source people from Dafont (where they found me) to sell exclusive commercial licenses on, so you have no choice but to use Creative Fabrica.

I’d rather pay those creators individually via Gumroad or Ko-Fi than a company that doesn’t actually care about its creators or their customers.

Ultimately, you’re losing more and not even building up a brand beyond someone loving your font and that being the end.

Creative Fabrica would be nothing without its sellers. Fonts and SVG files are the most popular products sold there…people could make more via Etsy and Gumroad.

Gone are the days when PayPal was the only choice for people sending money. Add a

• Buy Me a Coffee
• Gumroad
• Kit or
• Ko-Fi

to your free Dafont download description asking/telling people to send you money to use your font for commercial reasons.

Creative Fabrica is not the place.

If a subscription was $47-60/yr, with a true free trial, I would not mind supporting Creative Fabrica.

However, it’s not even a good marketplace for shop owners.

I have been a subscriber before. I decided not to renew my subscription after my first year because I didn’t need more digital files collecting dust.

Purchasing individual commercial font licenses should not be considered a bad thing, since it tends to directly support creators. There should be an option to buy one or five fonts individually instead of paying $47-60/yr for a subscription.

I’ve paid $6-24 per font to use commercially. Let’s bring this back.

Why bloggers and creators promote Creative Fabrica anyways

Affiliate marketing is a wonderful way to make money blogging because you need only share information.

It is not inherently bad.

The bad, unethical aspect of affiliate marketing comes from promoting scams. If you didn’t know until now and continue to promote it knowing it’s a scam, that’s a disservice to your audience.

Not all bloggers care.

Those are decent commission percentages. Good commissions for what you’re promoting!

But the catch for Creative Fabrica is that most purchases will be subscriptions, so bloggers need to push subscriptions the most.

Most bloggers and creators pushing Creative Fabrica subscriptions probably have subscriptions themselves.

Maybe they subscribed when it wasn’t terrible or they subscribed determined to embrace everything. They expected the charge.

When a blogger or creator buys a product because they want to promote it, they are not on a consumer level.

It’d be different if a blogger/creator bought a product to see if it’s worth promoting, but this is rarely the case.

Bloggers/creators promoting Creative Fabrica have not had typical consumer-level experiences with the company.

Otherwise, they’d not be promoting it.

They’d be posting about how it’s a scam. Like Feedspot.

People who benefit from scams tend not to criticize them, or even consider them scams.

What I’ll be doing moving forward

I have to admit I might subscribe to Creative Fabrica down the line, depending on my font options, as a last resort.

Prior, I will look for similar fonts. I will contact the font creator directly and ask if I could buy a commercial font license from them directly and pay via Gumroad, Kit, Ko-Fi or similar.

Because they have options that could help them earn more for their work instead of the chump change marketplaces like Creative Fabrica decides they deserve, with little transparency of how the maths works.

And I prefer not to support companies that exploit creators.