My Experience with Icons8: Is It Worth the Hype?

I’ve been using Icons8 for about six months now. It’s been a mixed bag. Everyone keeps talking about how great it is to keep icons consistent across projects, but there’s some stuff they don’t tell you upfront.

How Everything Works

The whole thing runs in the cloud, which is usually fine. You get your files in SVG, PNG, or PDF – pretty standard. They do some automatic optimization behind the scenes, though I’ve noticed it doesn’t always work the same across different icon styles.

What bugs me is how they claim to support iOS, Android, and Windows guidelines perfectly. Sure, some of their icon sets nail it, but others? Not so much. With 1.4 million assets, they’d have this figured out by now.

Their search is weird. Sometimes, I type something super specific and get precisely what I need. Other times, I search for “home” and get random stuff that makes no sense. I’ve given up on search and browse categories now – it’s way more reliable.

The Design Side of Things

Here’s what I like – everything comes from their designers instead of being a random mashup from different people. They’ve got 45+ styles, and within each style, things look like they belong together. That’s huge when you’re working on bigger projects.

But here’s the thing – sometimes their styles feel limiting. You find something close to what you want but not quite right, and you can’t really mix styles without everything looking weird.

The interactive states are pretty sweet, though. Hover, active, disabled – all included and saved me probably 20 hours last month alone on a project where I needed consistent button states across about 30 icons.

Using This Stuff

The Figma plugin works most of the time. Sometimes, it’s fast; sometimes, it crawls. It depends on how many results you’re getting back. The Adobe plugins are okay but feel clunky compared to Figma.

For developers on my team, the API stuff has been solid. The SVG files are usually clean – not always perfect, but way better than what we used to get from other places. File naming makes sense, which helps when dealing with hundreds of icons.

I downloaded their desktop app thinking I’d use it when my internet sucks, but honestly? The web version is just better. The offline thing doesn’t have all the features anyway.

What’s Actually In There

Beyond the obvious UI stuff, they’ve got some particular collections—medical icons, finance stuff, education – that are pretty thorough. Social media icons are decent, though some feel dated.

One thing I use constantly is their cursor and interaction elements. Finding the right custom cursor can be annoying with other libraries when you’re building custom interfaces, but Icons8 usually has what I need. Different styles and statures are beneficial in keeping the whole user experience cohesive.

The educational licensing thing is cool if you’re a student or teacher. It takes forever to get approved, though – like three weeks for my friend who teaches design.

Quality Control Issues

Here’s where things get inconsistent. Some of their newer icon families are well done – perfect pixels, consistent weights, and everything aligned properly. But some of the older stuff? You can tell it hasn’t been updated in years. I’ve found icons with weird alignment issues or inconsistent stroke weights.

They do version control, which is nice. When they update icons, you can choose whether to use the new version or stick with what you have—probably saved my butt a couple of times when client projects needed to stay the same.

The metadata is helpful, including creation dates, usage stats, etc. Though honestly, popular doesn’t always mean good. I’ve seen overused icons that aren’t that great.

The Money Situation

The free version needs attribution links. It’s not a huge deal for most web stuff – stick it in your footer. But some clients hate external links, so you need the paid version anyway.

For smaller teams or freelancers, the free tier is pretty usable. I used it for three months before upgrading. The paid version gets you high-res files, no attribution, and extra formats.

Enterprise stuff costs way more, but if you’re a big company, it might be worth it for the custom work they’ll do.

Performance Reality

Loading speeds are usually fine. SVGs work great, scale appropriately, and all that good stuff. They’ve got servers everywhere, so international stuff works okay too.

I did notice slower loading during what seemed like busy times – probably when everyone’s at work and hitting their servers hard. Nothing terrible, just noticeable.

Learning and Support

Their tutorials are hit or miss. Some are detailed and helpful; others feel like interns wrote them. The blog has some useful stuff mixed in with obvious marketing content.

When I’ve had issues, their support has been responsive. Usually, could you get back to me within a day or two?

Real Problems I’ve Hit

Search is still frustrating. I’ll search for something I know exists and get nothing useful. Then, I’ll browse categories and find them immediately. Their algorithm needs work.

The free version limitations hit me harder than I expected. Once you start working on bigger projects, you need those high-res files, and attribution removal becomes necessary for client work.

Some industry-specific stuff just isn’t there. When I worked on a technical project last year, I had to make custom icons anyway because their collection didn’t cover what we needed.

How I Use It Now

I pay for the subscription because it saves me time overall. For teams doing lots of projects, it’s worth it. The free version might work fine if you’re doing one-off stuff.

I made style guides for my team so we don’t end up with random icon mixing. Documented which styles work for what, sizing rules, and when to modify stuff. Without that, you get chaos pretty quickly.

I check their updates once a month. They add new stuff regularly, though not all are immediately useful for my work.

Bottom Line

Icons8 solves real problems, but it’s not perfect. The consistency thing is legit – when you find a style that works for your project, you can get everything you need in that same style. The integrations save time. The variety is impressive.

But the search is annoying; the free version has limitations, and some of their older content needs updating. Suppose you’re doing lots of design work with icons. Don’t expect it to solve every icon problem you’ll ever have.