Canva Reviews & Product Details
Canva is an easy to use graphic design and video editing platform that lets users create, design, and publish original artwork using a simple drag-and-drop editor. The platform comes with thousands of design templates and layouts for numerous projects, including social media posts, presentations, videos, posters, flyers and more.
Canva is also often used as Photo Editing of choice in Marketing and Ecommerce tech stacks.
| Capabilities |
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|---|---|
| Segment |
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| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Mobile Android, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone |
| Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
Canva Pros and Cons
- Simplicity: Canva is delightful to use. You can search for stock images and videos in seconds, drag and drop elements into place, and experiment with a huge range of filters and effects.
- Free plan: If you’re not sure how many visual assets you need yet, you can start with the free plan and work your way up.
- Versatile: You can create a lot of different kinds of graphics easily with Canva, including logos, Facebook posts, email marketing templates, and landing pages.
- Convenient easy-to-use environment for beginners
- Thousands of templates, icons, photos, fonts and other assets
- You don’t get the full control with Canva that you get with more advanced marketing tools. There aren’t as many layers as possible and advanced features to explore.
- Can be a little slow as a browser-based product.
- Very limited editing options
- No layering or re-adjustment options
Are you a non-designer looking for graphic design software? If you need to create designs for your business, Canva is one of the top rated tools to choose. In this post, we’ll explore Canva’s pricing, features, and alternatives.
What is Canva
Canva is an online graphic design tool used by 55 million monthly active users to create visual content for offline and online marketing. Over 9,400 Capterra reviewers have given Canva an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars.
Canva offers hundreds of thousands of templates and elements you can use to create designs for personal or business use. Customize your visual content with your brand kit and media from your own library.
How Much is Canva
Canva offers three pricing plans. The Free plan includes the following.
- Over 250,000 free templates.
- Over 100+ design types including business cards, presentations, and social media posts.
- Free photos, logos, fonts, photos and graphics.
- Share, collaborate, and comment on designs with a team.
- Save your designs with 5GB of cloud storage.
- Share designs to multiple platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack, and Tumblr.
The Pro plan starts at $12.99 per month (or $119.99 per year) for up to five people. It includes everything from the Free plan plus the following.
- Over 100 million premium stock photos, videos, audio and graphics
- Over 610,000 premium and free templates with new designs daily
- Up to 100 Brand Kits with your companies colors, logos, and fonts
- Access to Background Remover and Magic Resize.
- Create templates from your own designs.
- Save your designs with 100GB of cloud storage.
- Schedule your social media designs on up to 8 platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack, and Tumblr.
The Enterprise plan starts at $150 for five people. It includes everything from the Pro plan plus the following.
- Use brand controls to manage your team’s access to apps, graphics, colors, logos, fonts, and uploads.
- Get approval on your designs with built-in workflows.
- Control what your team can edit and stay on-brand with template locking
- Save your designs with unlimited storage.
- Log in with single-sign on (SSO) and have access to 24/7 Enterprise-level support.
How to Use Canva
To get started on Canva, you will need to create an account using your email address, Google, Facebook, or Apple. You will then choose your account type between student, teacher, small business, large company, non-profit, or personal. Templates and additional resources will be recommended based on your chosen account type.
You can choose to start a free trial of Canva Pro or begin with the free version to see if it’s the right graphic design tool.
Designing with Canva
For your first design, Canva will suggest different post types to choose. Based on the type of account you set up, you will see template categories like social media posts, documents, presentations, marketing, events, ads, launch your business, build your online brand, etc.
Begin by choosing the type of post you want to create or searching for something more specific. Search by social network name, for example, to see a list of templates by post type on each network.
Templates
Next, you will be able to choose a template. Templates come ready to go, with customizable photos, text, and additional elements.
You can start your design by choosing a template, searching for a template, or working with a blank template.
Canva has a lot to choose from, so start with a specific search. If you’re in the horticulture business, you’ll find plenty of templates for a variety of post types just by searching for plants.
You may not find the perfect template, and that’s ok. Remember there are plenty of ways to customize any template. So choose the best fit and move on to Elements.
Elements
Inside the Canva designer, the Elements tab gives you access to lines and shapes, graphics, photos, videos, audio, charts, photo frames, and photo grids. You can use the search box on the Elements tab to search everything on Canva.
Again, Canva has a large library of elements to choose from, so be specific in your search query. You may also want to search in the following tabs to see various elements separately in the search results.
Photos
The Photos tab allows you to choose from millions of free, paid, and Pro-only stock photos.
You can replace photos on your templates to create a new look or to match a particular template to your industry.
Alternatively, you can use photos from another stock photography site or your own photos. Simply upload them in the Uploads tab.
Once you choose a photo, you can use Canva’s photo editing features to add filters, adjust the photo’s settings (brightness, contrast, saturation, etc.), crop, animate, and change the transparency.
Canva Pro subscribers have access to the Background Remover. This will remove backgrounds from stock photos in the Canva library as well as photos you upload to the Uploads tab.
Text
The Text tab allows you to add headings, normal text, and fancy graphical text to your design.
When you click on the text on a template, you’ll see options to adjust the font, font size, color, format, spacing, text effects (like shadows), and change the transparency.
Canva Pro subscribers can set brand fonts via the Brand Kit or the Styles tab. Enterprise-level controls will ensure that your team keeps visual content on brand.
Audio
Creating an animated image or video? Search for audio elements to add to capture user’s attention in social news feeds.
Alternatively, if you want to use audio from another stock site or your own audio tracks, you can upload them in the Uploads tab.
Video
Want to create video content? Choose from thousands of free and Pro-only stock video clips. You’ll find videos that range from a few seconds to two minutes long.
Similar to photos and audio, if you want to use videos from another stock site or your own videos, you can upload them in the Uploads tab.
Once you choose a video, you can use Canva’s video editing features to trim the video, flip it, and change the transparency.
Backgrounds
In the Background tab, you’ll find free photos specifically geared to act as backgrounds on your designs. Change out the background on a template to give it a more custom feel.
Styles
The Styles tab allows you to change the look and feel of your template quickly with different color palettes and font combinations. If you have a Canva Pro subscription, you can upload your brand’s custom colors and fonts to keep designs on brand.
Logos
If you have a Canva Pro subscription, you’ll have a Logos tab. Here, you can upload variations of your brand logo to use throughout your designs.
You can also create logos with Canva. Note that you can’t trademark logos with stock content in them.
Publishing with Canva
Free users of Canva can download their designs or share their designs to multiple platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack, and Tumblr.
Canva Pro subscribers can use the Magic Resizer to create multiple post formats from one design. For example, you can start by designing an Instagram post. Canva’s Magic Resizer can resize it for posts on other networks, Stories, Reels, and other formats.
Canva Pro subscribers can also use Canva’s Content Planner to schedule updates to up to eight profiles/accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack, and Tumblr.
Canva Teams
Canva Pro subscribers can work in teams to improve the visual content workflow. Designs can be created inside Canva and sent to the appropriate team members for approval. Teams can make comments, edits, revisions, and keep track via the version history.
Canva Print
If you create a design for offline marketing, Canva has a Print division to compete with companies like VistaPrint. They will print your designs on banners, wall art, mugs, t-shirts, business cards, stickers, invitations, cards, flyers, and more.
Canva Print is perfect for any business that wants customers to do some word of mouth marketing for them. Create designs people would want to stick on, wear, etc. Hand out business cards that people want to keep and share.
Canva Apps
Canva offers their own mobile app on the Apple and Google Play stores. Canva has earned a 4.9 out of five stars from over 3 million Apple users and a 4.7 out of five stars from over 188,000 Google users.
With that said, the mobile app doesn’t have all of the features you’ll find on the desktop browser version. Fortunately, you can access most of them via a mobile browser by going to the Canva website and bypassing the app.
In addition to mobile apps, Canva has apps and integrations that allow you to access elements from third parties. You can add maps from Google Maps, Emojis, photos from Google Drive and Dropbox, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, Bitmojis, and other popular visual content elements.
Canva Pros and Cons
Review networks like TrustRadius allow people to leave specific pros and cons about their Canva experience. Amongst the over 500 reviews, here are some of the highlights from the pros and cons users have identified.
- An easy to learn and use interface
- It allows people with limited graphic design skills to create professional graphics
- Tons of templates so you never have to start from scratch
- Branding kits to keep teams matching the brand colors and fonts
- Ability to create visual content on the go
- Templates that cover a wide variety of uses and networks
- The ability to search for royalty free images, video, and audio without another service
- Missing advanced photo editing features like blurring or erasing a specific area
- Seemingly basic elements (graphics, shapes, etc.) and features are Pro-only
- Elements that fall outside of the design area are tricky to retrieve
- Newer features (like Canva presentations) need work
- The UI can be cluttered
- Users of Adobe tools may find Canva features limited
- Would like the ability to work with vectors, especially on logos
- No analytics when sharing designs
- Expensive enterprise pricing
- The artboard could be larger
- Everyone has access to templates/elements, meaning your graphics may not be as unique
Canva Alternatives
If Canva doesn’t sound like the right fit for you, you may be interested in trying the following Canva alternatives.
Adobe
Adobe has a suite of tools for beginner to advanced level graphic designers, photo editors, and video makers. One tool, Adobe Spark, is a Canva-like tool that makes it easy to create social graphics and videos. They offer a free plan and paid plans with premium features starting at $9.99 per month.
Those with graphic design skills may prefer tools like Lightroom and Photoshop for photo editing ($9.99 – $20.99 per month), Adobe Illustrator for vector graphics ($20.99 per month), or Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing ($20.99 per month).
Alternatively, you can get access to all Adobe tools for your visual content needs for $52.99 per month.
PicMonkey
PicMonkey is a Canva alternative that boasts better photo editing features and no hidden fees for premium templates or elements. With that said, PicMonkey does not offer a free plan. Their pricing starts at $7.99 per month for basic features.
Crello
Crello is a free graphic design tool that is similar to Canva. It includes thousands of templates and features like the photo background remover and brand kits. The app on the Apple store has an average rating of 4.7 stars from over 600 users.
Piktochart
Piktochart is a graphic design tool that focuses on infographics, presentations, and reports. Their goal is to help you turn data-heavy content into a compelling visual story. They offer a free forever plan plus pricing for premium features starting at $24.17 per month.
GoDaddy Studio
If you are a GoDaddy customer, you can access their free tool, GoDaddy Studio. This tool gives you access to thousands of customizable templates.
Similar to Canva, no design skill is necessary to create professional graphics. The app on the Apple store has an average rating of 4.8 stars from over 94,000 users.
Canva FAQ
Q: Is Canva for free?
Yes, Canva does have a free plan that you can choose to create professional designs.
Q: Does Canva have a watermark?
No, Canva does not place a watermark on your finalized images. You will only see a watermark on copyrighted stock elements in the Canva library unless you purchase the media or a Canva Pro or Enterprise subscription.
If you see a watermark on a previous design, it is because you had a Pro subscription and used a Pro-only template or element.
Q: Can I use Canva for free for my business?
Yes, all free elements included in the Canva free subscription can be used for commercial and non-commercial use.
Q: What is Canva good for?
Non-designers can use Canva to design a wide variety of visual content for online and offline marketing. They include social media graphics, presentations, business cards, reports, infographics, and much more.
Q: Is Canva better than Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator?
Canva markets itself as an easy to use design tool for non-designers. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are geared towards intermediate to advanced level photo editors and graphic designers.
Q: Is Canva good for making videos?
Yes, Canva offers an easy to use video tool for visual content creators who aren’t video experts.
Q: Is it worth paying for Canva?
Definitely, when you consider the number of Pro-only templates and elements. You can always start with the free version or cancel after the 30-day free trial if you’re unsure about the platform.
Q: Can I trademark a logo created in Canva?
Yes, unless it has any stock elements in it.
Q: Can I sell content created in Canva?
Yes, if it doesn’t include unaltered Canva media. You can read more about licensing, trademarks, and commercial usage of Canva content here.
Useful Canva Resources
Canva offers several free resources for designers.
- If you need to do simple edits, Canva has a free photo editor.
- Canva’s Color Wheel allows you to preview what colors go well together.
- The Palette Generator will generate a set of colors from an image you upload.
- The color meanings and symbolism guide can help you find the right meaningful color palette for your brand.
- The design size guide gives the current best sizes for graphics on social media, video, presentations, and more.
Additional Resources
If you want to five even deeper into graphic design, Adobe offers some insightful free guides as well. There are tips for various design types (tattoos, backgrounds, newsletters, logos, etc.) and use of graphic design principles, colors, and symbols.
Canva Review: Conclusion
Overall, Canva is an excellent solution for creators who need visual content. If you’re an experienced graphic designer, you will find their platform lacking in customization and other features – particularly vectors. But if you don’t have a lot of design experience, you’ll find Canva easier to use than advanced graphic design tools like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator for most projects.
It provides many ready templates for me to use, which helps me stand out as a creative person. Additionally, I can create whatever design I want from scratch with the help of all the tools. I love the variety of fonts, gifs, and stickers and the ease of adding photos, text and the best feature is grouping.
One thing that makes utilizing Canva hard is its premium membership. It cost a little high plus, the moile canvas can be more easy it gets hard to use it on phone
I can make whatever I want on Canva, from business cards to informational posters to invitation cards. It is helping me save money on hiring professionals to design for me. Canva is making my job easy.
Canva is easy to use it has template for all kinds of advertisements and other use as well (inphographs, videos,flyers,etc.)
I can not think of any,it helps me with my business
It helps me because I have very little design skills. Also with the templates provides you the right sizes for the different formats.
Love the images all included. Love the tools, love the experience - I am a huge Canva fan. As a non-designer, this tool really allows me to get creative and make things actually look good, easily.
Not much... I have some issues when downloading multiple versions of the same design, but that may just be my computer and internet. Other dislike, there are limits on how much you can move items and they will auto snap to an invisible grid line that sometimes you want to go between. Otherwise, it's great!
I need quick imagery for email headers, landing pages, impact reports and more. And Canva let's me do that easily! Before I would always have to shoulder tap our design team who, frankly, should be (and is) way to busy for this little stuff from me. They have helped us set up industry specific templates, and from there, Canva and I do the rest!
I like how simple Canva is to use. I do not have a marketing background but have been thrown into some marketing interactions on our website and using Canva is easier than any system I've had to use before.
One thing I dont enjoy is how when building a website I cannot merge PDFs as clickable links onto the sooftware. I have looked everywhere online and havent been able to find anything.
We are overloaded here at work and canva has been a lifesaver with the ability to get other people in the office access to the software without having to go into weeks of training on how to use it.
I love that Canvas AI is easy to use. The platform is designed to be user-friendly, with a simple drag-and-drop interface that allows me to upload and analyze images and videos quickly.
There really isn't much to say here... I do feel like the pricing structure is a bit complex. It would be nice if they provided unlimited access to features for one fee.
Canvas AI benefits us by offering customization options, so we as a business can train the system to recognize specific objects or features unique to their business.
Canva is the most helpful graphical design software on the web. Due to their vast array of designs and templates, you will find one for every document or project needs you will ever have. What I like best is that they have all sorts of designs that students and even professionals need for their work. Additionally, I can search for keywords on the topic I want, and there will always be a template that suits my needs. Even for social media purposes, there are also Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube photo templates.
I don't particularly dislike anything about Canva. However, it can be improved by integrating video editing tools into the recording studio functionality of the website itself. This is so that I can directly edit the recorded videos I insert into my presentations. This problem always arises wherein I cannot crop clips in the middle of my recordings to edit out the bad parts and shorten the video as needed.
Canva has been my go-to graphical designing tool from my university days until I am already working. It has provided me with fast and ready-to-use templates that I utilized on all of my projects and presentations. It has given me creative inspiration, especially on the days when I cannot think of proper designs for my projects. Lastly, it also helped me on my job-hunting days because I also got my resume and cover letter templates from Canva.
Easy to use templates for all types of social media and other graphic needs
Takes a little practice to get good at it without design background
I use Canva primarily for YouTube Thumbnails. I have used the built in AI for ideas in docs and with magicwrite. I also have edited short clips for social media.
Canva has the best templates, and it is very easy to use. It provides all kinds of tools that I need to create a design. Very user-friendly and has the best features
The free version of Canva sets some limits for users. Additionally, it it hard when It's server is down I have to wait.
Canvas features are helping me be creative, and it benefits me by helping me get recognition for my innovative designs. It provides ready designs that is saving me time with extraordinary results.
The premium features: Social media scheduling and calendar The library of stock images How simple the website is to use and navigate around It's Australian made
It's a bit tricky once a social media post has been scheduled on the calendar to edit the image without losing the wording
My lack of design skill It allows me to create cool social media posts
It is a very easy-to-use tool for people who need things to be easier to use and make things faster simultaneously. I feel this is an essential tool for content creators and people like Make, who create many templates using this tool.
I live by this software; I feel Canva AI is as of now. Nothing to dislike about this product, but I will suggest them to improve the stability of the tool and add more and more features
Canvs AI helps our organization sift through many open-ended responses to unlock nuanced customer feedback and broader trends that I wouldn't have spotted with the naked eye.
I am not a graphic designer but with the help of canva i can create my job post banner and design very easily and attractive. They have great templates according to your requirements. Will give 10/10 for this.
No dislike for me as i am not designer any graphic designer or web designer can say dislikes points. I am very much happy while working on canva. I never thougt that i can also create creative design.
As a HR person i have to be always active for job posting so with the help of canva i can design my own job posting templets for posting and ad running on job portals and get easily data of candidates.
It's ideas and posting calendar, you can manage all your social media posts and schedule them over there it very easy and reliable they don't miss schedule also suggest up coming events
They should include more videos in stock sections because video are trending for social media strategy also, they should consider adding more video templates for quick edits
We regularly post social media posts and ads Canva give us new design ideas for posts branding and logos, as social media marketer i have regularly find trending topics and Canva helps me in that
Canva has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for even non-designers like me to create professional-looking graphics, presentations, and marketing materials and videos. The drag-and-drop editor and pre-made templates save time and effort. Every company must have
Maybe have also zoom like feature in order to have sometimes communicate when they work remotly. Maybe the have it but I am not aware as user. Its a must have addition to already great platform
Creating Videos, it really helps creating corporate presentation with premade templates that are very good and very rich in terms of offers. Further you dont have to be IT or tech savvy to use it and get great results.
I like how incredibly easy and quick it is to do just about anything on canva. The templates they offer are also great and allow you to design things well even if that's not your gifting.
I think the filing system in canva could be a little better. With both the designs you make and the images/videos you upload, it is kind of difficult to keep things organized.
Canva allows me to quickly and beautifully create ads and image graphics that would otherwise take me a really long time to do. They have great templates and features that make this simple.
Canva has helped me unleash my creative side when it comes to marketing and any/all graphics needs behind the scenes for our business. I have never used a more USER-friendly program when it comes to editing & creating pictures, images, memes, videos, docs & more!
I don't think there is anything I dislike about canva!!
It has made marketing way easier! On top of that, it helps in the office behind the scenes including making team meeting slideshows!
Multiple format for downloading the edited photo from pdf to jpeg. All types of filter and photo editing attributes are available plus all sizing available for youtube, instagram etc.
Little bit costly and it can make one of the best video editing tool also, just required good filters for video editing.
canva is solving one of the main problem of easiness of photo editing. It helped me to learn editing from zero.
EVERYTHING! I love ever feature, graphic, template, color.....I love it all! It has been a tremendous help with content creation and time!
I can't think of anything negative at all. Sorry.
First, it helps to give you the best options for time management and also for creation. Some days the creativity just doesn't flow like it does on other days and the templates help so much.
I really like how easy is to build designs from scratch into canva, also the huge ammount of templates, resources and figures you can use into canva. I enjoy a lot the process of creating new things into it.
Even though their premium plan is well worth it's money, it can get a bit pricy when you add up a lot of teammates, I also don't like that some of the pro features sometimes don't work as expected.
Canva is helping me create pitch-decks, ad images, instagram post, and other type of graphic design resources in a colaborative manner with my team. It also serves as my design rule system holder for everything regarding fonts, colors, imagery etc..
The drag-and-drop features that allow you to see your design instantly help you to create what you envision. The variety of elements and "made-to-go" templates make it easy to do exactly what you want.
You can't search by element/template designers. Over the years, I've discovered fabulous designers, but I must star their work in order to find designs that might work for future designs.
Canva allows me to focus on the day-to-day marketing thereby giving me the opportunity to save for more expensive marketing campaigns designed by professionals.
I personally use this tool for Social Media purposes from my clients. It's free and with a lot many templates. You can buy it paid version also, but there is much to explore in its free version. It's super user-friendly, also Canva offers a lot many tutorial videos too. Its new AI features are amazing, you can even create videos also with super cool animations. Apart from social media, it allows you to create flyers, Posters, Banners, and a lot many tools. It's an all-in-one tool to cater to your social media needs.
If Canva can bring some image generation features like Microsoft designer then it will be a great help for designers.
It makes m life easy, I can create social media calendar with easy I can even create videos for my social media purpose its has a build in media library and its huge and super useful
