Why clients keep opening the wrong version of your work
You send the latest round, they reply about something you changed a week ago. It is not that the client is careless. It is that over a project you hand them a small pile of links, and nothing tells them which one is current. So they open the one nearest to hand, and you spend the call untangling which version you are both looking at.
Why it happens in the first place
The usual advice is that a Figma prototype link updates on its own, so this should never come up. That is true, but only for the narrow case where nothing about the link changes. Keep working in the same file, on the same starting frame, and the same URL will show the client your latest edits. The trouble is that real projects rarely stay that tidy.
Across a few rounds, the link tends to change out from under you for reasons that all feel sensible at the time:
- You duplicate the file to keep the old round safe. "Homepage v3" becomes its own file with its own URL, and now there are three live links where there used to be one.
- You rebuild the flow on a fresh frame. The new frame has a new
node-id, so the prototype link you copy this week is not the one you sent last week, even inside the same file. - You delete or rename the frame the old link pointed at. Now the client's earlier link opens onto nothing, or onto a frame you have moved on from.
- You send each round in its own email or message. The link is fine. The problem is that four of them now exist in the client's inbox, and the newest is not the one on top.
None of these is a mistake. They are just how iterating works. But every one of them leaves a working link behind, and a working link is indistinguishable from the current one until someone opens it and notices the date on the work.
The moment it actually goes wrong
Picture a three-week engagement. Week one you send a link to the first draft. Week two you send a revised link after their notes. Week three you send the near-final. Three messages, three links, all still live.
On Friday the client's stakeholder asks to see it. The client scrolls their inbox, lands on the first message because it has the friendly kickoff note attached, and forwards that one. The stakeholder opens week one, sees the spacing you fixed a fortnight ago, and leaves a comment about it. By Monday you are defending a decision you already reversed, to someone who has never seen the current work.
You become a human redirect. Every thread starts with "make sure you are looking at the latest one, the link I sent Thursday," and half the time that instruction gets lost too. The work is fine. The delivery is quietly making it look unfinished.
What actually keeps clients on the current version
Most of this is workflow, and you can fix a lot of it without any new tool. The goal is simple: give the client one destination, and make sure "latest" and "the link they have" are always the same thing.
- Keep one canonical link per client, not one per round. Decide at the start that a single URL is "the work," and resend that same one every time rather than minting a new one. If you must duplicate files for your own archive, do it in a way the client never sees.
- Stop resharing. When you finish a round, do not paste a fresh link. Send a short note that says what changed and point them back to the link they already have. Resharing is how a second live URL is born.
- Date or label the work itself. A small "Round 3, 28 July" on the cover frame means that even if someone opens an old link, they can tell at a glance it is stale.
- Retire old links out loud. If you cannot keep the URL stable, at least tell the client plainly that the previous link is dead and to delete it. An unretired old link will get opened.
That will carry you a long way, especially on a short project with one contact. Where it strains is exactly where Figma's own model pushes against you: the instinct to protect an old round by duplicating it, the fact that a new flow means a new frame and a new id, and the reality that you do not control the client's inbox once a link has left your hands.
One link that never changes
The cleaner fix is to make the link a stable address rather than a pointer at a specific file and frame. You hand the client one URL at the start of the project. When the work moves on, you change what sits behind that URL, and the client, opening the same link they have always had, lands on the current version without doing anything.
That is the idea Modulat is built around. The link is swappable: it never changes, you change what it points to. Replace last round's prototype with this round's, and everyone holding the link, the client, their stakeholder, the developer you looped in, is now looking at the latest work. There is no "make sure you have the newest link," because there is only ever one link.
The wrong-version problem is really a version-of-a-URL problem. Fix the URL, and the pile of dead links has nothing to feed on.
Two things sit underneath that and matter here. When you publish a change, Modulat can post to the client's Slack channel and name exactly what changed, so "the latest" is announced rather than assumed, and small silent edits do not spam them. And because the whole handover lives on one branded page rather than in a chain of messages, there is no older email to scroll back to. The prototype, the files and the notes are all at the single address you gave them on day one.
If you are still deciding what belongs behind that link in the first place, the piece on whether a portal replaces your Dropbox or Drive is worth reading alongside this. And the mechanics of getting a clean prototype link in the first place are covered in sharing a Figma prototype with a client.
When this is not worth solving
Plenty of handovers never hit this. If you are sending a single flow for a one-off look and there will not be a second round, one Figma link is exactly right and anything more is overhead. If your client is a single person who is good with their inbox and the project is a week long, the workflow habits above are all you need, and reaching for a portal is premature.
This starts to earn its keep when rounds stack up, when more than one person on the client side opens the work, or when the thing you are handing over is more than a lone prototype. The more people and iterations touch a project, the more surface there is for an old link to surface at the wrong moment.
Quick answers
Does a Figma prototype link update automatically when I edit the file?
Yes, as long as the link points at the same file and the same starting frame. Keep working in place and the same URL shows your latest edits. It goes wrong when you duplicate the file, move the prototype to a new frame with a new node-id, or delete the frame the old link pointed at, because then the link you send this round is a different URL from the one you sent last round.
Why does my client keep looking at an old version of the design?
Almost always because more than one working link exists and nothing marks which is current. Over a project you send a new link each round, all of them stay live, and the client opens whichever is nearest to hand, often an older message in their inbox. The fix is to keep one canonical link and stop resharing new ones.
How do I stop sending my client a new link every round?
Decide up front that one URL is "the work" and resend that same link each time instead of pasting a fresh one, or use a link whose address stays fixed while you swap what sits behind it. When a round is done, send a note describing what changed and point back to the existing link rather than minting a new one.
What is a swappable link?
A single URL you give the client once, where you change the content behind it as the work progresses. The link never changes, so everyone who has it always lands on the current version. It removes the pile of one-per-round links that the wrong-version problem feeds on.
Is it enough to just tell the client which link is the latest?
It helps, but it leans on the client remembering, and it fails the moment someone forwards an older message to a stakeholder who was never told. Labelling the work itself with a round and a date is more reliable, and keeping a single stable link removes the need to say it at all.
Design engineer and senior product designer, ten years of handing work to clients. Built Modulat after one too many handovers that made good work look careless.
Modulat gives every client one branded page that holds the prototype, the files, and the notes, on your own domain. The Figma plugin adds work to it without leaving the canvas.
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