Canva Review: Ultimate Graphic Design Tool for Non-Designers

Canva became popular for simplifying and expediting graphic design. As a freelancer and dedicated user, Canva has played a crucial role in my graphic design journey.

Founded in 2013 by Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, Canva initially faced challenges and had a steep learning curve. However, in 2014, with Guy Kawasaki as their chief evangelist, Canva’s user base tripled, and significant improvements were made to their marketing, web app, and user experience.

By October 2014, Canva had over 1 million monthly users. Now, with 55 million users, Canva, once a small startup, is valued at $15 billion.

Canva’s reputation is impressive, but is it truly deserving? Let’s walk through the platform to conduct a thorough assessment and provide an unbiased Canva review.

Canva App Review: A Gift For Beginners

Canva’s popularity as a leading graphic design software today stems from its ability to facilitate the creation of distinctive and authentic visuals.

In just a few clicks, you can produce flyers for your business marketing, thumbnails for your YouTube videos, and even design clothing merchandise using the T-shirt templates.

Fun Fact: You can craft a YouTube thumbnail in Canva in under 5 minutes, ensuring it meets the correct dimensions, aspect ratio, and format specifications.

Getting started with professional graphic design software can be challenging. Additionally, finding tutorials and how-to guides for software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and others requires extensive research.

Canva offers a library of 8 tutorials and 8 courses covering a range of topics including design, marketing, and branding. These resources are available to all users free of charge.

Canva’s Design School provides something for everyone to learn, with insights from industry experts like Gary Vaynerchuk and Joe ‘Mulga’ Moore, offering the best tips and tricks in the field.

Canva has made significant improvements to its user interface, which was not the easiest to use in its early years. The recent upgrades have resulted in a sleek, simple, and easy-to-understand UI.

Additionally, Canva offers free and unique templates for various graphic design needs, including social media posts, personal events, business stationery, and marketing campaigns.

Canva regularly tracks your interests on the platform and makes relevant suggestions in the ‘Creators You’ll Love’ and ‘Trending Near You’ sections now, which limits searching and speeds up creation.

The most crucial upgrade must be the addition of app support for all major operating systems. Few other free graphic design suites offer free-to-download apps for Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS.

Download Canva App:

• For Mac
• For Windows
• For iOS
• For Android

Canva Review: Plans & Pricing

Right now, Canva offers three different plans to its users. From the Free version to the Enterprise Plan, Canva targets a wider audience with these varying plans.

Free 

With the Free plan, you get over 250K templates, numerous stock images, 100+ graphic designs, and 5GB of cloud storage. It also includes a limited version of Team Collaboration.

The Free plan is best suited for individuals with limited graphic design needs. It’s also a good catch for any freelance designer.

Pro 

Canva dubs this their ‘Best Value’ plan, and we wholeheartedly concur. At $119.99 per year, you receive many graphic design treasures.

Along with everything from the Free plan, the Pro plan has over 100 million stock videos, audio, images, gifs, and graphic styles. It also has more templates and more cloud storage. The three most notable inclusions are:

• Background Removal
• Image resizing
• Automatic social media content posting (For 8 Platforms)

Note: For one person.

Note: Offers a free 30-day trial period to try all the Pro features.

Canva for Teams

Canva’s biggest plan currently available is the Enterprise plan, which may be excessive for individual users. This plan offers the best Team Collaboration features, unlimited cloud storage, and 24/7 tech support. Additionally, it includes everything in the Pro plan.

However, the cost is nearly triple that of the Pro plan at $300 per year (for 5 people), and the price increases with the number of team members. Nevertheless, given that it can serve as a comprehensive graphics platform for your entire team, it is worth considering.

Two Free Plans

Canva offers two additional free plans for educational use. Whether you are part of a non-profit organization or a student needing Canva, you can access its premium features without cost.

Top Canva Features

Listing all of Canva’s features would be endless. Instead, we will highlight the ones we love.

This is our favorite among the new features that Canva received after the revamp. With over a hundred fonts to choose from, you can enhance the aesthetics of your design.

In these free fonts, Canva offers pairs to keep the visuals pleasing while writing text in different sizes.

Note: Pro users have the freedom of uploading and using their fonts, provided they have the license.

2. Elements

Now, using the Elements tab, you can add different elements to the design you create on Canva. 

Audio/video clips, charts, frames, and more- the extensive Canva library has many graphic assets that you can use to complement any design.

3. Massive Cloud Storage

This Canva tool outperforms all other online graphic design software. The Free plan has limited storage capacity, maxing out at 5GB. However, the Pro and Enterprise plans are excellent at 1TB, especially considering the price.

With a simple sign-in, you can access all of your designs anywhere on any device.

4. Apps Directory

Canva offers advanced app integration, allowing you to import/export designs and images across all major social media platforms. Support for Google Drive, Google Photos, and OneDrive makes transferring data from any cloud storage you use easy.

Canva also works with some of the best stock photo websites like PixaBay, Pexels, pixx.io, and more. That’s why Canva has one of the biggest stock image libraries in the graphic design suite game.

Naturally, all the main social media platforms, from Facebook to Pinterest, allow you to share your designs directly from Canva.

Fun Fact: You can now add your Snapchat Avatar to your designs with Bitmoji.

5. Brand Kit

Canva recently added a brand new feature called Brand Kit. Using this feature, you can create every single graphic asset of your brand.

Digital marketers and small business owners can greatly benefit from this feature as it helps maintain consistency in marketing and branding strategies.

However, since it’s still a relatively new feature, it does have its drawbacks. Limited color options and generic templates may result in less unique branding graphics. Beginners should invest some time in understanding Brand Kit.

6. Content Planner

This is a great tool for creators. Canva Content Planner enables you to schedule content postings. Designs made on Canva or imported from other sources will automatically post to your chosen social media platform at your specified date and time.

When creating designs, click on ‘Schedule’ to configure everything.

Next up, choose the platforms you want to post on.

And it’s that simple. Write a caption if you’d like, and then click on Schedule Post. Canva will automatically publish it on your selected channel at the scheduled date.

And just like that, you can plan and schedule an entire week, month, or year of social media posts.

7. Animate

You can animate images, texts, elements, and anything you add to your designs. Free plan users have fewer animation choices than Pro users.

Canva Features That Need Improving

Canva is a prime example of not taking on too much. Their focus on being the first in everything has undermined their main selling point, the “freemium” tag.

Canva gained popularity by offering more than its competitors at a lower price. Now, they are shifting more features to the Pro and Teams versions, causing the Free plan to lose value.

Additionally, some features require immediate improvement.

1. Internet Connectivity

Our biggest problem with Canva is that it is an online-only suite. Even though they launched apps for every major device, Canva still requires an internet connection.

That’s not a prompt you want to see when paying $119/year. 

2. Customer Support

For a web app, Canva’s customer support is a bit disappointing.

The Chat offers to let you chat with a person, but it only leads you to their Help Centre.

Then comes Canva Support, which will eventually solve your problem, but the process is lengthy.

Canva Pros & Cons

All that said, we feel that the pros outweigh the cons. The value that Canva has to offer for its price is outstanding.   

Conclusion

Canva is among the top online graphic design suites, if not the best. It has drawbacks, but it can swiftly become your primary program once mastered.

While I acknowledge its limitations in creative choices, it also enables beginners to showcase their artistic talents.

Moreover, at its current price point, and with these new features, entrepreneurs, influencers, and freelancers can accomplish a great deal with minimal effort.

FAQs