Three Months With Midjourney: A Real Review

My friend runs a branding studio. Half her projects need fast first drafts.
She started using Midjourney last year. I tagged along a few times. Let me share the real experience.
Pricing First
Midjourney now starts at $10/month. That’s the basic plan. She uses the $30/month standard plan, which generates images much faster.
The basic plan has long queues. She takes too many jobs to wait around. She upgraded to standard right away.
What Works Well
Generation speed is genuinely fast. One prompt in, four images out in under a minute.
She often uses it for pitch drafts. Before client meetings, she throws together a few concept images. Clients respond to that instantly.
Style variety is real too. Cyberpunk, watercolor, minimal line art. Just swap the keywords and it switches.
I tried it myself a few times, just for fun. I typed “a cat sitting on the moon drinking coffee.” The result had surprising atmosphere.
What Doesn’t Work
First problem: it draws nonsense sometimes.
Complex scenes, especially multiple people interacting, often get wrong finger counts or weird poses. She says this happens regularly, not occasionally.
Second problem: inconsistent style.
Same prompt, run on a different day, can produce a completely different color tone. She works on branding projects that need visual consistency. This is a real headache.
She eventually found a workaround: feeding a satisfactory image back in as reference using --cref to lock the character. It helps somewhat, but it’s not foolproof.
Third problem: prompts need multiple rounds of editing.
She says it’s never right on the first try. Usually three to five revisions, adding or removing keywords, adjusting weight symbols.
This process takes real time. If you think one line of text gets you a perfect image instantly, you’ll likely be disappointed.
Real Use Case
Her studio’s current workflow: Midjourney for concept images, Photoshop for refinement, then illustrators handle final details once the client approves direction.
She says Midjourney saves “communication costs,” not “production costs.” The final deliverables rarely use raw AI output directly.
One time she took on a bubble tea brand project. The client couldn’t articulate what they wanted. She generated a dozen variations in thirty minutes. The client picked one color tone, and that set the whole direction.
This kind of rapid iteration is where she finds it most valuable.
What I Haven’t Used
She mentioned the team plan has collaboration features, like shared prompt libraries. Neither of us has used this much, so I won’t comment.
Some people use it for e-commerce product shots. She hasn’t taken on that type of work, so I can’t speak to real results there.
Bottom Line
Midjourney works well for fast concept generation. Good for designers, social media visuals, early-stage pitches.
Not ideal for projects requiring precise detail control or strict visual consistency.
Her conclusion: it’s a great “inspiration generator,” not a “final output generator.”
I maintain an AI tool directory at saas.pet (https://saas.pet), updated automatically every day.
Next up, I’ll write about Notion AI and my own experience using it for weekly reports.