If you are looking to get started using a publishing / creation application, Affinity Publisher is the one to go for. With a quick learning curve on all the basic functions, you'll be flying in no time. And then there is a whole heap of great features to get into as you become more comfortable with the software. The only down side is if clients are using Adobe programs, there are sometimes problems working with imported layers, but this is minor compared to the ease of use and features.
If you are a small business or even a small team within a larger firm, Venngage is extremely useful. Larger enterprises, with in-house designers or multiple design stakeholders, may not find the offering appropriate as it's THAT easy to use that it could lead to folks going outside the lines of official, corporate-mandated brand guidelines. That said, for small businesses, this is absolutely the best tool I have come across (after trying many from Adobe Spark to Canva and others), and for the monthly price of $49, you cannot beat the amount of original graphics and materials you are able to produce, without having any prior "design" experience to boot
Venngage comes with a good suite of templates for starting projects from. For anyone working with infographics, getting started is usually 3/4 of the battle and having a good set of templates to choose from is a nice feature to save you time searching the internet.
Venngage makes it easy to change colors on most of their shapes, lines, backgrounds, etc.. ie., it is simple to customize in Venngage, which is incredibly important if you have a large team of users and not a great deal of time to train them in working with these types of tools.
Venngage's auto-save feature is not only one of it's best assets, but it has saved our team many times! Not all competitors have this feature and when you're working with precision as intricate as you typically are with an Infographic, auto-save is imperative!
On closer inspection, many templates were the same.
I also found it a little difficult to edit for my purposes, which included being able to show more detailed analysis, for example, placing excel data in the file.
If you want to download in an editable manner, such as into Powerpoint, which is currently offered in beta production, you had to upgrade beyond the $19 charge to a more costly business plan.
There were constant email bots asking me to upgrade. I then went to cancel the subscription and the refund has been refused, after three emails explaining my situation.
I understand Venngage wishes to grow its business, but refusing refunds is not the way to do it. They should be trying to develop fans, not frustrated business people exploring this new product. I believe the Customer Service personnel should be empowered to do the right thing. If this poor customer service had not happened, I would have tapped this product from time to time for catch graphics. Now instead, I am steering clear and using products such as Canva
Our team typically uses other online resources instead of contacting developers/manufacturers for support. That being said, there is a forum and a growing, vibrant community of users available to answer questions and "make the switch." A simple "whatever function we used to use in Adobe InDesign," followed by "Affinity," usually gets us on the right track to an answer. YouTube and their forums are our team's go-to sources for help.
I think that the attention that I get as a small business owner from Venngage is excellent. They quickly respond to questions and provide information that helps to resolve the issue that I am having.
Affinity Publisher is a more cost effective way to achieve the same goals as InDesign and Quark. I'm sure there are various differences that Affinity may lack, however we have yet to run into one that our business has needed, or even recognized. It has completely replaced any desktop publishing for our organization without issue.
We prefer Canva but feel Venngage is easier for us. In comparison to Adobe, we prefer Venngage because of the ability to have everything in one system and not have to jump around.
