The Quiet Fraud: When Prototypes Replace Real Sites

They told us tools would set us free. That design would become easier, faster, more collaborative. That clients would be dazzled by interactive mockups before a single line of code ever made it to production. And in some ways, they were right. But here we are—five years deep into the Figma era—and what we’ve actually built is something far murkier: a design economy where a click-through prototype, embedded into a live website, is increasingly passed off as the finished product.

This wasn’t the plan.

But the plan doesn’t matter anymore.

Somewhere between convenience and constraint, the handoff between design and development disappeared. And instead of fixing it, we built detours. That’s how Figma prototypes end up inside Squarespace. Not as a staging preview. As the final site.

Not because it's the best choice.

But because everyone’s too tired to argue.

The Myth of the All-in-One Designer

Today’s designer is expected to ideate, wireframe, prototype, animate, build, launch, market, and sometimes even run client analytics. That’s not a job. That’s a team.

But rather than pushing back, many designers are duct-taping together tools like Figma and Squarespace in an effort to meet expectations that should’ve been thrown out years ago. The prototype becomes the product. The proof of concept becomes the actual concept. And suddenly, embedding a half-finished idea starts to feel like a deliverable.

This isn’t empowerment. It’s erosion. It’s the slow death of craft under the weight of speed.

The Figma Illusion

Figma has done something strange to the culture of design. It made prototyping feel like building. That infinite canvas, those lifelike interactions, the ability to click through pages as if they were real—it tricks clients (and sometimes even designers) into thinking the job is done.

But it’s not.

Figma’s strength is clarity. Communication. Direction. It’s the rehearsal, not the show. When we start pasting those rehearsals into production sites, we confuse representation for reality.

This Isn’t a Hack. It’s a Surrender.

Embedding a Figma prototype into Squarespace is pitched like a productivity trick. A clever shortcut for showcasing work or impressing a client. But look closer and it’s something else entirely. Designers are shipping prototypes because that’s the only thing they can ship.

Not everyone wants to learn how to code. And not every team has developers lying around. So instead of stretching toward something real, we shrink the definition of “done.” We wrap a design file in an iframe and call it a launch.

It’s not dishonest. But it’s definitely diluted. And what’s worse? Clients are starting to expect this. They're no longer surprised when you send over a Figma link instead of a live site. They're relieved. No DNS changes. No hosting. No QA. Just pretty pages that click when you poke them.

That’s not web design. That’s presentation.

Why This Keeps Happening

Let’s talk about the real reasons.

First, tool culture. Figma wasn’t built to replace the web. It was built to model it. But like any tool that gets too good at pretending, it starts to become the thing it mimics. People began skipping the build phase because the prototype looked close enough.

Second, platform fatigue. The average designer now needs to navigate Figma, Webflow, Framer, WordPress, and sometimes even hand-coded CSS. That’s five jobs. And most of them don’t pay five salaries. So people cheat. They skip steps. They settle.

Third, client indifference. For small businesses, startups, or personal brands, a clickable prototype that lives online is good enough. It loads on mobile. It has animations. It shows effort. What’s missing—performance, accessibility, maintainability—isn’t visible until something breaks.

And finally, speed. The pressure to deliver fast, look polished, and stay under budget makes shipping a Figma embed feel like a win. But it’s not speed. It’s skipping.

When Designers Become Magicians

Designers are trained to make things look easy. That’s the whole point of the craft: invisible labor. But when you embed a Figma prototype in place of a real website, you’re not hiding effort—you’re hiding absence. There’s no SEO. No backend. No scaling. Just a façade.

The audience sees a slick site.

What they don’t see is that nothing behind it works.

You can’t fill a form. You can’t publish a blog post. You can’t update pricing. You can’t grow. Because you don’t have a real system—you have a skin.

And once you make this move, walking it back is hard. Suddenly the expectation isn’t to build. It’s to perform the illusion of building.

The Cost of Never Shipping Real Work

Designers lose leverage. When you only deliver frames, clients assume that’s the limit of your skill. When you cut out devs, you lose partnerships that can make your ideas scalable. And when you normalize prototypes as products, you teach the market that design’s job ends with “looking good,” not “working right.”

But the biggest loss isn’t reputational.

It’s relational.

You don’t build trust by sending a Figma file with hotspots. You build it by solving real problems. By showing a site survive traffic. By updating copy on a CMS. By watching a product live through its first real user complaint.

None of that happens in a prototype.

A Glorified Screenshot in an iFrame

Let’s be brutally honest: if your portfolio site loads a Figma file instead of real HTML, you’re not running a website. You’re showcasing a flat simulation of one. You’re linking people to an idea. Not a product.

Yes, it moves. Yes, it looks sharp. But it’s still a mockup—just cleverly disguised with browser chrome and zoom controls.

We’ve just found a new way to keep the work inside the sandbox, while pretending it’s on the stage.

What Needs to Change

Designers need to stop apologizing for needing help.

If your idea needs a developer, say so. If your prototype needs a CMS, ask for one. If your workflow needs more time, charge more. If your skillset stops at design, own that—and partner up with someone who can bring it home.

Because right now, too many designers are overextending into tech they don’t love, burning out, and delivering half-baked solutions just to feel in control.

You don’t have to be everything. But what you do deliver should be real.

So What Do You Show Clients Instead?

Not every project needs a production-grade system. But every project deserves honesty. If you’re not delivering a real site, don’t act like you are. Say it’s a prototype. Explain the next steps. Price accordingly.

If your site is a Figma embed, disclose it. Tell the client what it can and can’t do. Offer the option to build it out. Better yet, partner with someone who can.

But don’t wrap a prototype in a bow and call it launch day. That’s a silent downgrade for the entire industry.

No More Pretty Lies

We’ve all gotten too good at pretending the mockup is enough. But it’s not. Not for users. Not for clients. And not for ourselves.

A design that can’t live, breathe, and break is just a mood board.

It’s time we stop dressing it up like a site.