In the past I've been able to just import Font Awesome and custom icons into https://icomoon.io/app and create a custom kit that way. That's something that has existed for free for quite some time now with support for png/svg/font exports. It looks like the Font Awesome guys just put a price tag on an existing idea. Is there something novel about this that I'm missing?
There are definitely some similarities with other services, no question. But we think about icons differently and we think we can solve the problem better. (For instance, you can copy and paste vectors directly out of Illustrator CC. And watch the number of icon sets, we're about to add lots more.)
We're going to keep making things better and better.
I used to use icomoon, now I use fontcustom - using a free tool like that in combination with the noun project (thenounproject.com) I pay for only commercially used icons once ($1/icon usually). What's nice about that as a non-designer is I can prototype for free and only pay when I'm confident enough to move forward with the idea commercially.
I'm not sure what the advantage of a $49/year subscription fee would be when this option already existed.
Yeah my thoughts exactly. I love icomoon. It makes bringing in vectors from illustrator 0 hassle. Sure there are a few nuances here and there, but like you said, it's free.