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 |
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.
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.
Canva offers three pricing plans. The Free plan includes the following.
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.
The Enterprise plan starts at $150 for five people. It includes everything from the Pro plan plus the following.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
If Canva doesn’t sound like the right fit for you, you may be interested in trying the following Canva alternatives.
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 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 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 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.
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.
Yes, Canva does have a free plan that you can choose to create professional designs.
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.
Yes, all free elements included in the Canva free subscription can be used for commercial and non-commercial use.
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.
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.
Yes, Canva offers an easy to use video tool for visual content creators who aren’t video experts.
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.
Yes, unless it has any stock elements in it.
Yes, if it doesn’t include unaltered Canva media. You can read more about licensing, trademarks, and commercial usage of Canva content here.
Canva offers several free resources for designers.
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.
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.
Canva is an application or a website where i can create anything for any platform whether it be Facebook or Instagram or Website. It has multiple uses for a designer and being a passionate designer, i use it every now and then.
There isn't much to dislike about Canva but if i think of it, there are a couple of things which needs some work for smooth editing. Like there is a limitation in the availability of stock photographic images and templates to work on whether it be for banners, posters, social media posts, etc. Apart from this, there are some alignment issues due to which we are unable to control alignment while designing. therefore, most of the designers are not in the favour of using Canva.
Canva is striving to bring in more number of Professional templates to cover their limitation issue. Also, they are trying to make the UI even more easy and convenient for those who are not designers or have the basic knowledge of designing or editing.
It is the best software for designing. We can choose frames, pictures, shapes, colours, templates of our choice. Can be uploaded and browse pictures also. Graphics Designing gets easier by the help of Canva
Nothing. I love to use it..and I love to make design on canva. This is very handy tool for beginners and once you become pro designer you can make an excellent banner using it.
It is solving my time taking problem. I used to take too much time to make a perfect graphic. But using Canva my time has shorten and at the same time I could make some amazing design.
Canva is very easy-to-use software with its simple drag-and-drop features. Anyone can make wonderful designs. From a logo to ppt, we can make various graphic related projects.
I am very satisfied with canva services, but if I have suggested some, then I would recommend they add some relatable stock images in their software, sometimes canva lacks in that thing.
If I have to make any logo or any blog-related banner, then by using canva i make those things in 2 minutes, and after completing the work, it is very easy to download those things from canva.
Easy to create beautiful and professional-looking designs
You may have to search a bit to get the specific design elements you're looking for
I'm not a professional designer, but I still need to make beautiful graphics for my social media posts. Canva makes it easy to design anything I need.
Canva is the best tool for quick graphic design, video editing, or making a one-page site. I have used the tool for the past 4 years and it has never been better. There are many temples you can choose form and it is easy to customize based on your preference. Learning these tools could help you build a career in social media or marketing coordination. I hight recommend people especially students to learn to use canva so the next time they need to make a presentation they will nail it.
The price might not suit everybody's budget but canva does give you a special price for some 2 worlds and their world county. Other than that there are not many things to dislike about canva.
It could be a problem if you don't have a good internet connection as canva is a full web application so occasionally there will be a bug on the editor and you need to restart it.
Easiness is using the feature. Different set of templates is available for all the requirements of an organization. For example, infographics, video tutorials, and business presentations. There are a lot of free elements present which can be used, also the color code of elements can be changed as per the organization's color code. The output generated for posters can be generated in different formats (PNG, PDF, JPEG etc.) For video content, exporting the output is easy and it gets exported at high speed.
For certain elements changing the color code is not permitted.
Helped our organisation in creating self paced video tutorials. Helped us to create poster for different events in organisation.
The best about Canva is that it contains a huge collection of readymade design layouts that can be utilized for making graphics for our social media channels. We can find a lot of ready-made videos and soundtrack them within this tool also to make great attractive content.
The only dislike with Canva is that it does not provide premium quality templates within its template library you need to upgrade your plant to paid one to get the benefits of those premium features.
Canva is helping us a lot in making quick and immediate graphics design for our company easily and effectively without putting too much time and effort, we can start making graphics on our own, no prior knowledge or experience is required to use this application. It helps us to save a lot of money and effort.
I love this design tool because it is a platform designed for any user; it is versatile and intuitive; the best thing is that it is not necessary to be a design professional; it has a wide variety of templates to choose from, the templates are excellent quality, it allows me to make high-quality designs such as invitations, flyers, brochures and many more, I love that it works with different formats such as jpeg, png, gif, it also has a variety of backgrounds, frames and templates, I love the depth and variety of its library, the content it has is beneficial and a necessary tool for the user, it is straightforward and effortless for the user to operate the platform.
At the moment, I did not find anything negative in the software.
The versatility and depth of the software make it a potent tool; I love the variety of templates and default designs that help you create a custom design from scratch; the software is highly editable, so I can customize my designs as much as I want, mind you with tools, I love the interface of the software, it is amicable and straightforward to understand, I love the variety of fonts, it links perfectly with other applications, it is easy to save the design made, I love its library, and it counts with a free version that makes it the best in its area.
The best thing about canvas is that its very user friendly and easy to understand and learn
The recently introduction of pro and paid along with free version is something I don't appreciate
It make creative designing very easy and one who is not much into graphic designing can also do it with ease using canva
Everything, I simply love it, everything is good, the options and the features all are pocket
Nothing to dislike about it, everything is good about it.
Content strategy, bringing out the creative genius in me
The large variety of templates available for each occasion is the best option in Canva. Whether it is business presentations, office meetings, introductions you get many templates and various objects available to make your poster design more creative and colorful.
Text editing is not as smooth as expected. I faced difficulty adding text boxes, writing, resizing the text and even moving the reader from one place to another. The whole design or object gets transferred during the text editing; maybe that can be improved. Even the
I use canvas for my business events and poster designing. We used to design posters/ headers for presentations and business meetings, and for that, we used canvas to design very interactive, creative, and beautiful posters and wallpapers per the requirement. Using canvas is very easy and perfect for all events.
There are a variety of voices, genders, and accents.
I am waiting for them to add pauses to the ultra-realistic voices.
Canva is where I create my professional videos. I love that platform!
It's so much faster than Adobe Illustrator
I dislike nothing. There's nothing on the market that can compare.
We need to design social posts and outbound marketing material quickly. This tool fits the bill and keeps our customers happy and impressed.
Drag and drop elements is the best parts in canva the size of the elements increase and decrease simple, and the template collection they have there was lots and lots of templates it was very usufull when you don't have any idea how to create some post
In the video creation Colum, when we press space for the video play, the canvas interface places a video over the existing video. And finding some essential elements like shapes without filling a little hard, I kept scrolling to see that it takes little time as I expected. Please enable custom shape creation.
The first best problem is I don't know what I have to create for social media posts; I have only the content; canvas templates solve my problem of thinking about the design colour elements. It took less time to consume. I selected the template, altered very few pieces, texted and pasted my content time uploaded my image. No need to spend time on design. Second part: it has some image editor tools like background remover and smartmokeups. These tools give a significant benefit to me. I don't want to go for other tools to remove the background; the process is also straightforward. For the smartmokeups, we place our edited or recreated image into mokeup like the person using our software; it was beneficial and complete I don't want to go for other tools to edit these settings, so less time is taken for editing.
Canva is the most accessible app for photo editing, slides, and any creative document. The platform is super user-friendly, and you do not need design experience to create something that looks great.
Some essential functions are behind a paywall, so in light of accessibility, I think there should be more free options. Also, sometimes the app is buggy, so when moving image a few pixels over, it completely shifts where I do not want it to go.
Canva is being used at our work instead of Photoshop because we can access multiple accounts, and no matter the design level/expertise, it's easy and self-explanatory to use.
The amount of design templates it has makes me love it. I used the pro version in my organization for more than a year and we found canva very helpful. We created certificates, report cards, presentations, and even employee experience letters.
The only thing which makes me a little nervous is when I make a copy of a file and start working on it and mid-way I close the file. When I look at that file as a thumbnail, it won't show me the changes, making me feel worried if the changes were saved or not. The changes are always saved but it just takes a long time in reflecting on the front end.
I am a master's student now and I need to regularly make group presentations. We love the designs and are able to collaborate and work. It also saves time as the template kind of gives me a ready to work template, so no worry to design.
One thing that is very helpful with Canva is its user-friendliness. Even first-time users can understand the and navigate almost all features, and the effort in posting in social media platforms is like a breeze, super easy.
For now what I dislike is the search box when creating new designs. When I search for terms for a certain project, and decided to choose for categories like photos, or templates, my search term will disappear, and I will need to type again my search term.
All my social media posting dilemmas, as well as the auto size, adjust to any platform have been solved. Really quick posting, from Facebook to Linkedin, everything can be posted within seconds.
Canva is a platform that provides graphics and animation content easily. Canva has a lot of design tools available as compared to other sites, with the help of this we can easily design and download videos, PPT, business cards, etc.
This is a good tool it is easy to use it is very useful for me
Canva can be used even without less graphic design experience, it can be used without computer and complex software.
Very simple and easy to use. They can make anyone a designer overnight! They have so many great templates to create ANYTHING.
Sometimes the design size isn't clear and you have to resize multiple times for the project you are doing. I also do not like how many windows it opens.
Having a design place in one place. Social, video, pdf, cards, you name it you can make it in Canva. They are making it easy for anyone to be able to do design work.
What I like most about Canva is that I can develop my creativity and imagination; I can find everything I need to do templates, draws, posts, and stories, and the best part is that I started using it for free. Every change I make gets saved automatically, so I do not have to worry about that, and I can share everything with my friends, co-workers, and teachers. Also, more than one person can do something in one design simultaneously; Canva is the best!
For now, I think that I'm delighted with canva, and I cannot find something that I dislike, I use Canva always to do presentations and projects, and I don't feel limited because I'm not premium yet.
The problem that Canva is solving for me is the number of resources, options, and tools that I can use; also easy to use; It's a fantastic app where I can find inspiration from others and create my projects.