Frequently asked questions

NextStitch is embroidery software that runs in your browser. You draw shapes, set text and trace pictures, see every stitch before it is sewn — as a simulation and in 3D — and export a file for your embroidery machine.

No. NextStitch runs in a current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari on your computer. Editing and the stitch preview run on your own device; importing files, lettering, cloud projects and exporting machine files go through our servers.

Yes, for ready-made designs; the editor is made for a computer or a tablet. It has a great many tools and settings, which need room and a mouse or a pen; on a phone's screen they are cramped. Without the editor, a phone does well: browse Designs, personalise one in the Configurator with a name, a date or your colours, and Stitch now downloads the file for your machine straight away. Send it to your machine with the maker's app — for a Brother Skitch PP1, Brother's Artspira — or copy it to a USB stick.

Nine machine formats: PES and PEC (Brother, Baby Lock), JEF (Janome, Elna), EXP (Melco, Bernina), VP3 (Husqvarna Viking, Pfaff), XXX (Singer), DST and TBF (Tajima) and U01 (Barudan). Nearly every machine also reads DST, but DST carries no thread colours — prefer your machine's own format.

Your machine's manual has the last word: a few older models read fewer formats. Choose your machine in the editor and Export offers only the formats it reads, its own first. More in Export your first file.

Yes — about 40 machine formats, among them PES, DST, JEF, EXP, VP3, XXX, HUS, SHV, PCS and SEW. A file's stitches stay as they were digitised: you can move and recolour them, but resizing a digitised design by more than 10 % is flagged, because its density does not change with it. See Machine files.

Download it and copy it the way your machine takes files: on a USB stick, by cable or with the maker's app. For a Brother Skitch PP1, download a PES file and send it with Brother's Artspira app.

More than 60 home and multi-needle machines from Brother, Baby Lock, Janome, Elna, Bernina, Husqvarna Viking, Pfaff, Singer, Tajima, Ricoma, Melco and Happy, each with its hoops. Well-known models:

• Brother: SE700, Skitch PP1, NQ1700E, PE900, Innov-is NV880E, PR680W
• Baby Lock: Flare, Array, Altair 2, Meridian 2
• Janome: MB-7, MB-4Se, Memory Craft 500E, Memory Craft 9850
• Elna: eXpressive 830L, eXpressive 850
• Bernina: B 500, B 700 PRO, B 790 PRO, B 990
• Husqvarna Viking: Designer Topaz 40, Designer Sapphire 85, Designer Epic 3, Designer Topaz 65
• Pfaff: creative icon 2, creative 4.5, creative icon 3
• Singer: SE9180
• Tajima: SAI, TMEZ-SC
• Ricoma: EM-1010, MT-1501
• Melco: EMT16X
• Happy: HCS3-1201 Voyager, HCD3e-1501

Add your own under My machines in your account, or work in a generic hoop size. A design larger than the hoop is shown under Problems before you export.

Yes: a PNG or JPG is traced into shapes on your own device, and you choose how many colours to keep. Logos, clip art and drawings with clear areas work best; photos with soft gradients do not make good embroidery. SVG and DXF artwork comes in as shapes straight away. See Trace a picture.

Fill covers an area row by row, with an underlay beneath it; satin gives a smooth, raised column for borders and lettering; running stitch draws a single light line. Textured fills give an area a look of its own, and appliqué sews placement and tack-down lines for fabric pieces. See Stitch types.

Yes. The stitch preview shows the needle path in sewing order — play it back or drag through it — and a 3D view shows the threads on the fabric. Export tells you how long the design takes to sew at your machine's speed and how much bobbin thread it uses. See Scrub the stitch preview.

Yes. Pick the thread line you sew with — Madeira Classic Rayon 40 and Polyneon, Isacord, Sulky Rayon 40, Floriani Polyester 40, Robison-Anton Polyester and three Brother lines are built in — and snap every colour in your design to its nearest real thread in one click. Keep your own collections under My threads. See Match your threads.

Twenty-five outline font families — script, swash, blackletter and Roman capitals among them — sewn as satin along each letter's strokes, and two fonts digitised for embroidery. Text can follow an arc or any path, and a monogram of one to three initials can stand side by side, as the classic trio, fill a circle or a diamond, or be set into each other, in a frame from a circle to a scalloped oval. See Lettering and Satin (area).

Yes: add a font sold as a zip of letter files. It stays in your browser — our server keeps nothing of it. See Your own embroidery fonts.

Under Designs: open one in the editor, or personalize it first with a name, a date or your colours in the Configurator. Stitch now downloads a design as a file for your machine straight away, without opening the editor. Keep the ones you like in My designs.

On every plan, the Pro trial included, you may embroider them for yourself and give them away. On Pro, a one-person business may sell up to 500 embroidered items a year that it embroiders itself; on Studio, without a limit, employees included. The design files themselves may never be passed on or sold, nor used to train AI. The design licence has the details.

You do. You keep all rights to the artwork and designs you create, import or export; we use them only to provide the service you asked for.

The editor is open to everyone, without an account. A free account lets you save and download: it starts a 14-day Pro trial with every Pro feature, no card and no automatic renewal. After the trial, machine files, manufacturer thread palettes and personalised templates need a paid plan; your saved projects stay.

Pro costs €12 a month or €108 a year; Studio costs €39 a month or €351 a year — prices including VAT, and a year costs nine months. Paid plans are not on sale yet. See Pricing.

Yes: a subscription runs for the period you booked and renews unless you cancel before it ends. As a consumer you also have a statutory right of withdrawal — see the withdrawal instructions.

Wherever you choose when you save: in your account, in folders, with a 30-day trash for anything you delete — or on this device, as a project file (.nextstitch.json) downloaded at every save, which you open again with File ▸ Open from file….

It sets one cookie, and only when you sign in: the sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in. No script can read it and it is not used to follow you anywhere. Where reach measurement is switched on, it uses Plausible, which works without cookies and records only the page, where you came from, your country, your browser and device type and a few product events; you can opt out at the end of the privacy policy.

Files that are only read or converted — machine files, palettes — are processed and not kept. Cloud projects stay until you delete them or your account; fonts you add stay in your browser. Suggestions from an AI service are off unless you turn them on for an import. The privacy policy explains each step.

Yes, in the account area, with your password. You can download your data there first.