Canva Reviews

Pros

The quality of the included templates is amazing making it very quick to customise and produce your own publicity

Cons

The display area for the elements is very small and cannot be expanded so it can take a long time to find the best element to use

Pros

Canva is easy to learn, with a minimal learning curve. It's very user-friendly, offering a wide range of features, and Canva continuously updates and improves its capabilities.

Cons

There are few mock-up options. For more complex and specific design elements, the necessary tools may be lacking.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Illustrator

Reasons for Switching to Canva

I considered Adobe Illustrator, but I chose Canva because the learning curve is not steep.

Pros

The countless number of integrations that Canvas's software let's you choose from is AMAZING

Cons

The selection of graphics and photos is numbered unless you pay for them.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Acrobat Reader

Reasons for Choosing Canva

The capabilities on Canva surpassed Looka in all categories except for website building

Reasons for Switching to Canva

Hands down the best integrations and graphic library to choose from.

Pros

The ease and practicality of finding models, elements and resources, so that you feel like a designer who knows how to make models for companies through great resources, where over time you will be able to do better things than in Photoshop.

Cons

It needs a little more resources, so that we can get close to Photoshop when it comes to static images. Because many resources we have to do a "jump" to look like what we do in Photoshop and as a result we waste a little time.

Pros

Canva allows me the creative freedom to design a variety of assets, whether that be crafting content for social media posts, putting together booklets, creating posters or notecards, or brainstorming mood boards. It's extremely easy to use and learn to use. It's also very cost effective.

Cons

Sometimes features are limited or certain editors (like brightness adjustments or background removers) can be a bit touchy.

Pros

The thing that I value most about Canva as the Director of Brand Management is that it's so simple to use and accessible, allowing anyone on our team to produce designs of a high caliber without needing too much graphic design knowledge. It's easy for anyone to create visually attractive content fast with Canva's user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, whether they're creating presentations, social media graphics, internal papers, or marketing collateral. We can maintain consistent branding across all our visual communications and greatly increase our team's productivity because to its user-friendliness.

Cons

Canva's limited customization and sophisticated design skills in comparison to more professional graphic design software are my main concerns as the Director of Brand Management.

Pros

One, it is user friendly - I do not struggle to use it. Two, it has a very wide variety of templates, which are so usable and helpful. They are especially good for social media and for multimedia content creation.

Cons

I cannot upload long videos to edit. I would like to add a lot of videos, like you can do in Adobe Premier.

Pros

Canva is very satisfied with its various sources and editing that can be created, and its convenience and user-friendly.

Cons

We are paying for Canva's most expensive subscription. It feels a bit pricey, but it is worth it.

Pros

Canva is hands down the easiest photo editor, presentation maker, greeting card maker, invitation maker, etc. Just about anything that you can think of can be made on Canva easily and quickly more features are added pretty much monthly.

Cons

The background remover is good, but if you have to make a revision, it’s not as good as Photoshop. Pro is a little expensive in my opinion since most of the features that they offer on pro can be done for free elsewhere. For instance, the PNG’s and stock photos that they offer can easily be downloaded from different websites for free. The background remover is also a paid feature but personally, I think that Photoshop background remover is a bit better but of course photoshop is pricey and not feasible for everyone. I just think Canva pro is expensive for what it offers. The app is clunky but not horrible, use the desktop.

Pros

The versatility, lots of templates to use and the AI component for photos

Cons

Wish it was a bit cheaper with them putting their pricing up this month.

Alternatives Considered

PromoRepublic

Reasons for Switching to Canva

It was easier to modify and work in Canva than anything else I was looking at and I didn't have to be an expert to use the program.

Pros

Canva is incredibly easy to use, even if you've never worked with any kind of design software. It provides everything you need to design high-quality graphics of all kinds, whether you know anything about design or not. Their "Design School" videos and articles are useful for people new to design, but also for sparking ideas and jumpstarting creativity for experienced users. I use it myself, my company uses it, and I recommend it to all my self-publishing clients.

Cons

I have only two minor quibbles, and the way Canva goes, they'll probably have them fixed by the time this review comes out: I wish Canva kept a temporary list of the fonts tested in a particular design (even if they weren't chosen), and I wish the stickers were searchable, or appeared in search results. In both cases, I end spending a LOT of time scrolling.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Illustrator and GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)

Reasons for Switching to Canva

While I'm sure the other products I tried are great, their interfaces are complex. Since I'm a very small business, I just don't have time to learn something complicated while also doing the business of the business AND running and promoting the business itself. Canva's interface is simple, friendly, and intuitive, so you can jump in and begin creating in minutes.

Pros

I am not a designer. Last I draw or make something was 12 years ago. But with Canva, I can make a presentable graphics in 10-15 minutes. With my skill level (I used to use MS Word Clip Art tool and Paint), I should not be able to do anything at all.

True I havent been able to draw a masterpiece, but Canva is not for that sort of work, at least not that I know of. But if you are looking for a social media post, image for your blog post, poster, cover image, Canva can handle all of those. Sure, you still need to hire a designer if you are going to do stunning artworks. But the day to day grind to produce several images everyday, either professional or personal needs, Canva is there for you. You can even create memes with it!

Another nice surprise is, you dont need a paid plan to use Canva. Only the premium features and elements are paid. And to be honest, most users dont even need them. Even I haven't used the premium feature for myself. The free plan is more than enough, better than any other free tool in the market and a few premiums too.

Cons

There is absolutely nothing I want to change. This is simple, intuitive, free or very, very cheap. What more can I ask for??

There is some grumblings among pro-designers who use Canva about some high-level features being absent, certain export formats not there or background remoal option not available. But this is not Photoshop and we should not treat it like that. Also, last I heard, Canva is working very hard to add more functions to their toolbox.

Pros

I started my marketing business with the idea that I'd grow it with remote staff. I realized that meant I'd need to find a design solution that gave me the power of Illustrator without the cost and the necessity if installing software. Enter Canva, the cloud-based designer's Swiss army knife. With Canva, I can be in Buenos Aires, add a member to my team in Los Angeles, and get them straight to work...regardless of whether they're subscribed to Adobe's suite. Furthermore, the Canva interface has gotten much more robust over the years: smart guides, excellent export options, direct access to stock images – so the need for us to turn to Adobe is less and less.

Cons

Generally, the Canva team has really built an excellent product, so there's not much I can complain about. However, there is one small, nuanced thing I'd really like. With security and privacy becoming so important now, I would love to have two-factor authentication through an authenticator app. Canva does have 2FA through a text message, but my team travels a lot and our phones have been lost or stolen often. But we all have 1Password on our computers to generate security codes, which would have saved time, so adding an authenticator option for 2FA would be incredibly useful.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Illustrator

Reasons for Switching to Canva

Canva's subscription-based, cloud design solution made hiring new remote designers easy for my business. The other tools we browsed were powerful, but required licenses, training, and more cost. In the end, we chose the cloud because we'd never have to update software, pay for large updates, train employees, worry about incompatible hardware, and finding a separate cloud to host our work.

Pros

1. Super easy to use. I use Canva to create my daily content. It's fast and easy to use.
2. Canva has built-in tools to remove background, controlling exposure, which is very helpful for my quick design.
3. Canva provides free resources (premium pictures, photos, design elements) that I can use freely. So simple that I don't have to buy stock photos. It's instantly available within the platform.
4. It has the presets & templates size for Instagram, youtube thumbnail, Linkedin banner, etc. Ready.
5. It has presentation templates as well!

Cons

1. The cheapest premium plan only has 1 brand preset. I find it difficult to switch among brand because the cheapest premium plan only allows me to have 1 brand preset. (default color, font, logo, etc). Hence I need to change manually when I do different design from different brand. However, you can choose the more expensive subscription plan if you have this kind of difficulty.

Alternatives Considered

Slidebean

Reasons for Choosing Canva

Before, I used AdobePhotoshop. However, I switched to Canva because of these factors: 1. Cheaper price 2. in-app free images stocks available 3. Easy navigation & could based Canva is not suitable to do advanced editing though. You can't do liquify, curve, skew, extreme filter, and more advanced feature that Photoshop can.

Reasons for Switching to Canva

Slidebean is quite expensive, and it has limitation. For almost the same performance, I prefer Canva to Slidebean. It saves my money on annual Slidebean subscription. (I used Slidebean last year, but I no longer renew it).

Pros

Canva allows you to make great images without being a graphic design expert. I have now used it many times to handle simple things, such as organizing cute Instagram pictures to more complex designs for our new marketing materials. If I sound enthusiastic, it is because of me.

Cons

Event allocation is handled by canvas, but events of replaced content need to be handled by themselves.
Relying on expectations, high fidelity cannot be achieved, and performance decreases when canvas is long. And Canva only edit some details in the design, such as movement and auxiliary lines. Sometimes the platform loses the speed.

Pros

Simply put, Canva has changed my life, and career. Being a blogger, I need to design a lot for my content. Specially, when it comes to creating infographic, Canva is unbeatable. You can choose from tons of professional templates and easily shape your imagination. Whether you need to design a photo for facebook, twitter or blogpost, Canva has everything tp support you. Honestly, it made my life easier. I can easily access tons of resources from stock photos to mind-blowing icons, Canva has everything right in the place so that I don't need to struggle a bit. The download options are also pretty much handy. In a nutshell, if you don't have enough design skill, still you can do some great professional looking design when you have canva in your side.

Cons

I think there are still rooms for development. Canva should think about bringing more stock photos, videos, etc. They should also develop a well-organized internal filling system. Updating the tools to make our life easier would be a plus point as well. Besides, the photo retouching capabilities of Canva should also be improved. The photo adjustments control of Canva is not up to the mark yet. If they improve these few things, Canva will be truly invincible in the design tool industry.

Pros

Canva is the first tool I tried when I was working in business development, I wasn't skilled in graphic designing at that point of time( Now I run a digital marketing firm)
So straight to the point canva is a straight forward, simple online graphics tool that offers a mountain load of templates and stock photos.
* It provides one month trial period that's a lot time if you compare Adobe spark or Poster My wall
*So you create business proposal/posters/social-media posts without any graphic design skill
* offers canva enterprise for bigger teams, canva team management also pretty easier.
* Upload and download interface is pretty easy and saves a lot of time
* they have added new features in terms of photo effects ( like BadTV, glitch, liquify etc)
* and notable customer support(email) they will sort your issues and help more customised integration- in my case I needed my regional fonts in Brandkit they have integrated it successfully.
* If you are in to Social media management role their content planner is pretty easy to use

Cons

*The one thing I felt as a designer is creatives are linear, you know when you design with adobe platform your creatives are smooth with accurate edging and toning.
*The photo adjustment tool can be more improvised

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Creative Cloud Express

Reasons for Choosing Canva

Needed more design centric creatives , Canva designs are too easy to copy my clients demanded unique graphic designs.

Switched From

PosterMyWall

Reasons for Switching to Canva

First it was offering trial period of one month, by that time I became pro at designing with canva.

Pros

This is a key tool for my creative team. Social media, flyers, presentations, investor pitches, sales pitches... anything and everything goes through Canva. It is SO easy to use that you need no onboarding. We constantly get congratulated on our designs, and they are most times just templates adapted to our branding. SO many options to choose from, it's great for when you're on a creative rut.

Cons

Nothing, I absolutely love Canva and cannot recommend it enough.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Photoshop

Reasons for Choosing Canva

No difference in the easiness of use, options, countless templates... and PRICE!

Switched From

Adobe InDesign, Shutterstock Editor and Adobe Photoshop

Reasons for Switching to Canva

The cost and the fact that Canva has no comparison for social media and presentation creation

Pros

Canva 2.0 remains the standard of excellence in online graphics creation for beginners through intermediate skill levels. Canva 2.0 widens the left-side margins of the app, allowing images and items you are searching for to appear larger on the desktop version. Once you find the "Find Templates" menu selection, you indeed have a VERY nice selection of graphics templates organized into a wider variety of categories than before.
If you peek at the APPS icon in the lower left, you'll see a large selection of great tools such as animation and gif creation, transparent backgrounds, image resizing, larger stock photo library etc., but they require the paid per month subscription.

Cons

Removal of the template selection screen. Asking the user to guess what the exact template style is by typing in an expression or description of the template, is a needless step backwards, all in pursuit of a cleaner looking interface.. If you want to enter your own design dimensions (say 1280x7200 pixels) the box for that is gone.
Yes, FIND TEMPLATES is quietly there on the left side of the screen, but I didn't notice it until I had used Canva 2.0 nearly a dozen times. This could end up being better than Canva 1.0 if they install a guide for newcomers, showing users where they've moved these commonly used tools to.... It's a bit conceited when designers believe their products are so well engineered that they think they need no instructions.

Pros

Easy to use: I used canva to create social media images, Social media cover pages/headers, PDF presentations and ebook covers(and ebooks). I've also used Adobe spark, Photoshop and Illustrator to do the same thing but Canva is a lot easier to use. Photoshop and Illustrator require some level of experience to figure your way around it when creating designs especially for social media, but Canva comes with lots of templates so all I have to do is select a template and modify it.

Mobile App: The Android app has definitely gotten better, at the beginning of the year, it was a bit unstable so I had to use the mobile site which was the most frustrating experience of my life. The app is a lot better now and I use it weekly to create social media images and ebook covers

Lots of Design options(Templates): Another thing I like about Canva, especially compared to spark is the number of templates available for each design. For example there are different templates for IG story, Facebook post, Social media image (800x800px), Instagram image (1000x1000px). NO matter how stuck I am design-wise, when I go through their templates I always find something that catches my eyes and suits the concept my client wants.

No Branded logo on my final design

Cons

Limited Logo design options: Technically you can design a logo in Canva, realistically Canva is really not the best place to design a logo as almost all their logo templates look the same.

Undo/Redo Design: Maybe I have bad luck but the undo/redo option almost never work on me on the desktop site (It works just fine on the android app). Sometimes when I delete an element either on purpose or accidentally, when I undo it to get the element back, the undo option doesn't work and sometimes takes me much farther than I expected (I've ended up with a blank space more times than I can count). Same with the redo button.

Reload design: I'm not talking about times when I'm working on a design and I have to leave my desk for thirty minutes, and when I come back I see the prompt that tells me my last change (or something like that) wasn't saved and I need to reload the design. This has happened so often I always save my design before leaving, But I'm talking about how when I'm working on a design and all of a sudden I'm told the last few seconds were not saved and I need to reload the design. This happens to me at least once every two weeks and ALWAYS on the desktop site and never on the android app.
The android app is so stable that once I was working on a design and my data ran out but I continued without any disruption and even when the wifi was turned on there was no prompt to reload my design.

Pros

Canva has demystified design to the point that I'm starting to fear for my job! (Just kidding, but only kind of). Canva has been a lifesaver! So many people on our team wanted to make their work look better, but didn't have a place to start. They were never going to be able to master the Adobe Creative Suite, and even those who had put time into learning it did not necessarily have an eye or instinct for design. Canva has made it possible for those people to create great looking documents, slide presentations, and graphics with no prior experience. The pre-made templates, color palette suggestions, and embedded assets including photos and icons give you everything you need. All you have to do is drag and drop!

Cons

When we first started using Canva, it wasn't as advanced as it is now. They've added tons of great features that has made the design capabilities more intuitive. If you've been using the Adobe Creative Suite, though, you might find it hard to switch into it or switch back and forth between the programs since it doesn't offer the same keyboard shortcuts you're used to. Another thing you might find annoying if you are only a free user is how much content is behind the paywall. Even with a paid account, there are plenty of assets that are only for purchase, so you have to be careful when making your design. The only other thing to be aware of is that Canva is not an InDesign replacement, it doesn't offer functionality to handle formatting text-heavy documents with ease. But it is a great Illustrator substitute for entry-level designers just looking to help themselves and their work go to the next design level.

Pros

I love almost everything about Canva. First, it is incredibly easy to use. Although I have a background that includes design, I was able to teach my sister to use it within about 5 minutes. The tool is incredibly user-friendly and very intuitive, so it's almost like you're guided through the design process.

Second, I love that I can have a different folder for every client, and then designs within that folder. For example, Client A has a folder, and within that is a file for Instagram posts, for in-store flyers, and for hand-out postcards. Client B has a folder, and within it is a file for video thumbnails, Instagram posts, and website featured images. It helps to keep me organized, and each one has its own branding.

Third, with the ability to resize for different outlets, it's easy for me to create every post I need in every size I need, with some small adjustments. Amazing.

Fourth, Canva has great templates for all kinds of designs. The templates are completely adjustable to your branding; in fact, sometimes, I just use them for inspiration.

Finally, Canva has a plethora of free (and paid) images and icons that make designs pop or just add that little something extra that you need.

Overall, Canva has saved me so much time over the past three years that I've been using it. What would have taken me an hour in QuarkXPress now takes me about 15 minutes in Canva, because it's all right there, and it's so easy to use.

Cons

I have only a few complaints with Canva. The first is probably on their product roadmap—I wish that I could merge files. At this point, I can move any design into a folder. But I can't move a design in File A to File B, even if they're the same size. Here's why I find this is problematic: Let's say I have a file of Instagram designs (1080x1080) for Client A, and I want to convert just the first of the designs into a video thumbnail (1920x1080). And I already have a file of video thumbnails for Client A. So, I either need to recreate the Instagram image into my file of video thumbnails, which is silly and duplicates work. Or I need to copy and resize the whole Instagram designs file, delete everything but the first page, and then make the small adjustments to get it the right size. Ideally, I would be able to then take this newly designed image and merge it into my Video Thumbnails file. But I can't do that. So now I have a handful of random files, which becomes slightly cumbersome. Nit picky, yes, but it would be so helpful to do and a real time-saver.

Second, and this is probably on the roadmap too, I would love to be able to copy an element/text/style from one design and paste it into another that is in a different file.

Finally, also probably on the roadmap, is to be able to bulk delete pages in a file. I can bulk download them but not bulk delete. Would be another big time-saver.

Pros

Easy to use tool and user-friendly especially for those without any designing and video editing skills.
Perfect Images and Video and Templates for quick designs and videos.
A lot of vector images and elements with free commercial use.
All my designs are being saved in my account and no need to download them as PSD or something like this.
You can undo any changes and I like the work History option ( still beta but, so far so good ).
Amazing free to use fonts and font styles with different colors.
Free one month trial and you can cancel it anytime you want without any charges on your credit card or PayPal.

Cons

In costume dimensions, you can't create designs more than 5000*5000 px.
On the project page, you can't have more tools like for example layers, effects, background...etc.
Not enough tools like the Erase tool, Selection tool, Remove Background tool, Color Hunt tool...etc
Don't have a lot of text styles and effects to choose from.
No stroke tool to add Stroke to the elements or the text.
You can't marge two or three layers together ( you can group them but, it's not like margin them and making them like one layer not three layers in one group ).
You can't work with a transparent background.
not enough video effects and transactions to chose from to add them to your videos.

Pros

Canva is one of the best marketing, branding, and design software you can ever enjoy. in fact, to be honest, I have used this software/platform for more than 2 years and have made lots of money from their design templates using the Canva platform.
Looking at Canva desired features, it has a welcome plan called "Free Plan " and a Pro trial version ( paid plan) when you upgrade. The free plan has almost 80% great content and design at your disposal, free to use. In fact, I have been enjoying this free plan for a very long time now because of its additional features of paying at the point of download. This is what I mean. when you need to design with premium content, at the point of downloading such content, they will ask you to download such great content just for $1 which when compared to other software, makes it your great choice to choose. On the other hand, the Pro Trial version is one which when you subscribe to, will give a 30-day free trial before billing you. The pro version is offered at a token of $12.95/month as at the time of writing the review. The pro version has great features such as collaboration in real-time and sees changes as they are made in real-time,75 million-plus premium photos, videos, and elements, 3000 plus premium fonts, 420,000 plus premium templates, 100GB storage, premium animations, background remover, and magic reseize, brand kits plus extra folders and many more. The software/platform is very easy to use and can be integrated into many apps.

Cons

Though this software requires regular upload of videos, templates, elements, photos, and many more. I can boldly say that canva is equal to the task because they update and upload new free and paid feature elements and designs. Therefore it has no cons.

Pros

We need no basic computer knowledge to customize this software, even without being a graphic designer by profession. A new designer or a new youtuber can easily use this software, just within one or two days, with some tutorials, available on youtube. Canva provides us with all endless efforts to resize the project for PDF for our branded content. Adding video, adding music, adding cool titles are super simple. Thousands of elements are also free to use for our commercial purpose and our professional youtubing although the pro-version of this software is not, at all, much expensive for a new beginner. The free use of all the digital assets like endless templates, graphics, copyright free images, videos, variety of fonts are all available in variety of formats to export our project for the creation of our business reports and project reports. Canva is also admirable for all free and pro creative services like video editing, photo editing logo designing, web banner designing, poster making, social media posting thumbnail making ----- what not ? All the features like the removal and replacement of background, layer, frames, resizing project, light adjustment, color adjustment, blur effect, filter editing are truly amazing for all our social media platforms, but also for our commercial purposes, according to the requirement of a new beginner to give the design professional looking. The most commendable feature of this software is that all the saved projects remain as usual

Cons

The symbol of watermark can not be removed from the project by following any trick if we don't get the pro-version to use. During downloading multiple files, the automatic compression of the files into a zip file and downloading as a single file, the limitation of traits for video editing, the limitation of filter during editing photo, the blockage of some features (for instance : shapes and frames ) and some songs seem to me to be the prime drawbacks of this software. It needs more modification for a new user to make the software more user-friendly. Besides, the manipulation of digital projects, after being downloaded is absolutely impossible to the users. The free users of this software need to be with more features in variety of graphics, images, templates. Mainly, whatever whatever I want to focus is that the photo editing traits are also not as much as we need for youtube videos. The authorities, concerned need to modify the photo adjustment tool in this software. Some designs look somewhat blur as they lack their uniqueness. The support team should be more aware of their customer support, at least, for their pro-version users. As much as I know, a regular upgradation system requires to be more developed from now onward. Last but not least, I really pant for the new development of this software for more acclamation.