If you have a small business and want a relatively reliable and robust graphics design software then Canva might just be the right one for you. This now software giant offers thousands of free templates to use for your business. Its tools range from social media posts, cards, brochures, slides, posters, to simple video editing. If you don’t need complicated graphics tools from Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, then this will suffice for your budding small business or personal needs.
What exactly is Canva?
Canva is an online graphics editing software. It has 3 tiers for users, there’s a free tier and a couple of paid tiers that let you use premium templates. It might be the easiest web tool out there (at least for us). It comes with a ton of features. But, where it shines with its ease of use, it lacks advanced features. Whether this lack of advanced features will depend on your needs. For the most part, we use Canva for most of our graphics needs.
Canva in a Nutshell
Pros
Professional-looking design elements
Drag-and-Drop Design
Tons of integration with other tools and resources
Millions of users = Tons of tutorials
The Free version is good enough for casual users
Cons
Overuse of Designs
Pay for some good features
The mobile app has less than half the features of the desktop version
Free vs. Pro vs. Enterprise Plans
There are 3 tiers you can avail yourself on Canva, Free, Pro, and Enterprise.
The Free Plan offers most of the basic features of Canva. It offers a decent amount of templates you can use including options for photo and video editing. The good stuff comes from the Pro and Enterprise Plans where these tiers offer all of the advanced features including the nicest design elements and templates on Canva. The only difference between Pro and Enterprise Plan is collaboration. Canva Pro is for individual users who want all the premium features. Canva Enterprise has all the premium features plus an option to collaborate with multiple users. The Canva Enterprise Plan is best for agencies and corporations with multiple users who need to work on the same stuff seamlessly.
For design, Canva is plenty enough tools for both inexperienced and experienced designers. Canva has a web version and an app. Of the two, the web version is preferable because it offers more flexibility in design. It is best for those who are looking to make quick graphics that they need to print or publish.
You can start designing from scratch or choose a template and work from there. Design elements like shapes, cartoons and text are practically just drag-and-drop. Anyone can use this software although it would be better if you know a bit about design. If not, there are thousands of templates on different themes you can work on or get inspiration from.
Canva is integrated with social media websites so you can go and post directly from there.
What We Wish Was Available on Canva
Canva might be great at drag-and-drop stuff but it doesn’t offer much customization on drawings. You can use all kinds of fonts for text but you can’t draw. You’re going to have to use the existing ones available from the website or you’re going to have to draw elsewhere, save your drawing into a .png, and then copy and paste it on Canva.
After using Canva Free for a while, you’re going to feel that a lot of what you use is also used by other people. Now site visitors might not even notice the repetitive use of graphics. But if you’re using the templates all the time, you will notice other people use these too!
I find the mobile app hard to use. I’ve barely used it. I hope that they make it more user-friendly in the future.
