Are you looking for an image editing tool and want to find out if Canva can be your best fit? Well, here is a detailed Canva review to help you make that choice.
Find out if Canva can help you meet your graphic designing needs. And, if yes, should you go for the paid plan or stick to the free one.
I started working with Canva a few years back to edit images for blog posts and social media accounts. And soon, it became a part of my routine. With its amazing features and great user interface, anyone can fall in love with this tool.
There definitely are a few recommended improvements. Despite that, Canva is a catch. Want to know how, let’s keep reading!
Canva Review – Pros and Cons
Here are the pros and cons of Canva.
Pros
- Great for those who are from non-designer background
- The free version is available to get you started right away
- Wonderful resources, a vast library, easy to use editing tool makes it all a breeze
- Let’s you integrate various apps
- Brand kit available
Cons
- No audio or video calling with collaboration
- Limited capabilities with video editing
- Requires you to connect with the internet
What is Canva?
Canva is an app for designing graphics. The tool helps users create fascinating visual media without much effort. Therefore, anyone without any prior experience in designing can use this app to get the job done.
You can use this tool for creating images for social media posts, short videos, posters, brief presentations, and whatnot. Using the plethora of customizable templates along with the free images, users can get a lot more creative than otherwise.
Whether you are a small business with a limited budget to hire a designer or a freelancer, doing everything on your own, this tool will help ease your workload.
With its vast template options to choose from and a large image library, you can start right away. Or try the free workshops by Canva to know about the best practices.
How Does Canva Work?
Available in a web version and as a downloadable app, Canva gives you the flexibility to work as you want. The downloadable app is compatible with Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Chromebook.
Essentially, there are three ways Canva help you to get started!
First is its template, the pre-designed and uploaded layouts for various design aspects.
Then comes the elements of Canva. These are the images, gifs, videos, and other media assets you can use to create your designs.
Lastly, it’s Canva’s user-friendly editor. With drag-drop design, working with the editor is a breeze.
But this is not it! Those who love doing it themselves can create their custom templates and designs too.
Who Can Use Canva – Is Canva for You?
To put it precisely, anyone and everyone can use Canva. However, the tool aims at helping those who either are a novice or wants to complete their design projects quickly.
Hence, Canva is for small business owners, solopreneurs, freelancers, and marketers. And, expecting very sophisticated designs from Canva like other professional tools such as Photoshop won’t be justified at all.
But that’s the catch here. Canva is to help users avoid going through the steep learning curve and let users with no background in editing graphics create media files. Or else, there wouldn’t have been any need for such a platform after all.
Canva Review – What Are Canva’s Best Features?
Canva comes packed with many features, some basic and a few excellent ones. Here is a glimpse of some of the wonderful features that are commonly used by designers.
Brand Kit for Maintaining Consistency
As the name suggests, Canva gives you access to Brand kits. These are the set of guidelines for logos, color palettes or other assets of branding. Just note that this feature is not available with the free version.
Using Canva, you can preset a few parameters such as fonts, brand’s name and more to reuse with your designs.
Happy to Collaborate!
This feature had to be there. In today’s time when most of us are working from home, online collaboration on projects has become a part and parcel of daily work. And Canva makes this possible.
Users can collaborate to work on the same file in real-time. The admin can provide the editing rights or just maintain the viewing rights, depending on the needs.
With collaboration in place, Canva certainly can do better by introducing audio or video calling features when editing together. Currently, it does not even allow screen sharing.
Great Editing Tools
As discussed, the drag and drop editor makes choosing easy from the array of images and template library. In addition, it’s not just the images that you can design with Canva. But a lot of other things too.
For instance, business cards, flyers, blog banners, posters and more.
Wait! It’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can even animate images and share your designs directly to social media accounts.
In short – To know what it’s worth, you must use it first!
Integrate Apps with Canva
Canva helps you integrate with other apps such as Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.
Apart from that, users can import images from Facebook, Bitmoji, Giphy, and various websites.
Plan Your Content with Canva
I personally love this feature. There are other content planner apps. But when combined with Canva, it becomes even more powerful.
You can plan your entire calendar of social media posts with Canva. Click on the ‘+’ sign to either add a media file created in the past or create it right away.
Which One I Must Choose – Canva Free, Pro or Enterprise Plan?
Canva offers three price plans for users. The plan starts with a free version. Then there are two paid plans.
As you might expect, the free plan comes with limitations and does not require you to make any payment for the subscription.
On the other hand, the Pro plan is $12.99 per month. In this plan, you can add up to five users to the account.
Lastly, it’s the Enterprise plan that is $30 per user per month. To avail of this plan, you must register a minimum of 25 users.
There are two more plans designed specifically for nonprofit institutions as well as verified teachers. Although these are free but require submission of a form with proof.
When it comes to choosing between these plans, the use case is simple. Those with limited use of the tool can easily survive with the free plan. However, if you wish to use advanced tools such as brand kit and many other features, you must switch to the Pro plan.
The Enterprise plan, however, is for companies with over 25 designers working on the platform.
To compare plans, visit here.
Canva Review – The Verdict
Undoubtedly, Canva is a very impressive tool for designers, especially those who want to complete the job faster. Created for users with no background in designing, Canva features an easy learning curve.
You must explore the app to know what it can accomplish. I hope this Canva Review nudge you to go straight to the app.
