Canva is a popular, simple online graphic design tool. Users can import images, use templates to design banners and logos, or pay to use Canva's premium stock images/paid templates (elements starting at $1).
$12.95
per month
Freehand by InVision
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
Freehand, from InVision headquartered in New York, is an online whiteboard that enables teams to plan, brainstorm, and draw together. It aims to give everyone a simple way to visually represent ideas with charts, diagrams, and drawings. Whether for mind mapping, creating a customer journey map, or drafting up an org chart, Freehand can help teams make ideas and plans visual.
I didn't select Invision Freehand. I have used Miro the most in the past and I feel like you are dragging behind what they offer. From my experience, their text editing tools are easier. They provide the ability to vote on activities. Attaching emojis to things actually works. …
InVision Freehand is closing the gap and adding all the functionalities that some of these tools provide separately. In the race towards a one-stop digital design ecosystem, InVision Freehand is well poised to deliver and connect where others can't. I hope that with the news of …
They are suited to serve the non-profit space, offering premium features at no charge for up to 50 users. They provide tools for non-graphic designers that help to create appealing and attractive pieces. For those who are unsure about where to start with a project, Canva offers templates that can be edited to suit the current need.
InVision Freehand has quickly evolved to be a very robust solution for our pre-design process and collaboration with stakeholders and other product teams. It has brought a lot more hands-on workshopping opportunities and created engaging spaces for cross functional teams. Internally to our design org we are able to prototype ideas faster and generate insights or changes BEFORE going into more hi-fidelity design tools or processes.
It helps you find the right design and helps you start with the right template
It helps in creating for all platforms, basically you need to create the design only once and Canva takes care of the rest by resizing the design for whichever platform you want to publish it to.
It also comes with a content planner which is extremely helpful for obvious reasons. It relieves you from the hassle of posting when the right time hits.
There's a Brand feature which is also extremely fascinating as it helps you store all your brand information (even color) at the same place.
I have a hard time coming up with any improvements, perhaps increase the number of free elements to use in design.
Maybe, Canva should check if you start editing a previous document to see if you want to change the current design or create a new one as a clone of the current document (design).
I'm sorry, I really can't think of a 3rd. Overall, I really like working in Canva.
The resolution: Our webpage designs always pass the resolution threshold to where freehand starts to work its compression. During presentations, it can be a little embarrassing when we can't read the copy because it looks like potatoes.
Embedding videos: GIFs are only good to a certain point, and creating Vimeo embeds is tedious. I wish I could embed MP4s or web assets a lot quicker.
Touchpad panning: I can't tell you how many times I've "gone back" in my browser when I'm just trying to pan across the freehand. Has honestly made me wanna force quit on many occasions.
Sticky notes and text in shapes: Overall, it's really hard to use the sticky notes and text inside rectangles without the text just getting all over the place. It's different sizes, it gets too tiny, it gets way too big, and overall, it just doesn't look professional, even with a lot of fussing.
No ability to crop/mask an image. Nice to have, but sometimes we just need to delete a chunk off a screenshot, and it requires opening PS or taking a screenshot to edit anything.
Wish there was a way to have "internal comments" that are not visible to our clients.
The ease of use makes Canva a powerful tool for manipulating images, creating original content, and testing ideas without requiring the involvement of graphic design or more time-intensive image editing software such as Photoshop. While it doesn't have the full functionality of a mature software, such as Photoshop, The speed and simplicity of Canva makes it a necessity in a business of any size
Honestly as in any organization it's up to budget. I feel like every organization I go to I'm constantly striving to keep InVision as part of the main funded tools used by the team especially in a remote environment. I feel there is a push to move to Figma and Zooms new white boarding tool but I'm still not a fan of Zoom's tool. Microsoft also created a white boarding tool which has been buggy.
It is super easy to use, but it could be limiting if you're on a small device. It is easier on a bigger device because you can resize graphics and text easier than with your fingers on a small device. I do think it's perfect and easy for non-designers who don't have any training. As long as you have a good eye for visuals, Canva is a wonderful substitute for graphics programs on-the-go.
Color Selection can be tricky when changing colors for shapes and text I've seen other users struggle with creating sticky notes and getting text to fit in the box properly and had to abandon the tool for a workshop for this reason After having a demo, I learned of new features I wasn't using. I don't know it would have been intuitive to find on my own.
I have yet to encounter Canva being offline in at least 6 years of using it regularly. They also announce well in advance if there may be upgrades to the code and the hours during which there may be issues accessing the service.
For availability, we never have to even think about whether inVision Freehand is going to be available for us to work with. There has never been a time when we have opened up the application and had any issues of any kind. I can't imagine why anyone would work with a platform that is unreliable. inVision Freehand is realibel, stable, and getting better all the time. Whether it's their built-in tools or the expanding of Templates to work with Freehand has been a reliable go-to platform for us.
I haven't ever had issues with a slow-loading site and there haven't been any lag issues within the software. There have been maybe a handful of times over the past six years where I have tried to upload a large image and it will slow down as it loads the last megabyte, but I have yet to have the system time out or require any interference by me
It is a little slow when bringing artboards from Sketch to Freehand using Craft. I have had some issues loading and redrawing pages when I have a lot of images on my freehand board. It gives me an error message while I am in the file and starts to reload and redraw all the photos again. Not sure if it has a limit on how many images it can handle on a board at a time.
Overall, Canva is easy to use, easy to train others to use, allows for creativity with a professional look without enormous associated costs. The mobile apps works almost as easily, but at a minimum allows for easy review and downloading in a pinch. Really, anyone can learn to use Canva quickly and will immediately benefit from the results.
I haven't had to use the support team for anything, which is great news because that means the product usually works as expected! In terms of online support, I've been able to find videos that show how new features work. Also, many of the people I work with have experience with the tools so they are a great resource for me.
Remember to download the mobile app onto your phone for easy image manipulation on the go. Adding company colors, logos, and typefaces to your company account is an easy process. When images are uploaded, these can also be shared between accounts within a company, as can canvases you've created for easy editing among teams.
The implementation is pretty much easy-peasy and plug-n-play. We simply download the applications and install, signed in and were good to go. I really cannot imagine that there would be anyone who would have any difficulty whatsoever in getting started in more than just a few minutes. It's really how implementing these officewide improvements should always go.
Canva is faster and easy to use. There aren't complex menus like Adobe products and everything is generally intuitive. Menus are mostly open and visible or relatively small. Small changes to the program add to it's usability rather than detract. I also appreciate that Canva helps the user become more creative through use. By giving you editable examples through templates you can choose to re-design something ir create something from scratch w/ a similar concept or feel. Canva often gives me ideas that I can implement into my design or into the entire project even. I also like how Canva is intuitive in it's approach. The program gives you suggestions when it comes to graphics, etc. without getting in your way if you know what you already want
Miro (formerly Realtime Board) is the original product concept for this tool and I used it for 3-4 years for product development. Invision is aesthetically a carbon copy of the tool but lacks in fine usability controls. We actually didn't choose Freehand, it just came as an added tool under our Invision subscription. It's helpful but knowing the previous tool, it's been a hard sell because it's just not as good. Again, it's really fine tuned usability things like navigation, zoom, switching from tool to tool, selecting and deselecting, etc
Getting set up with inVision Freehand was super simple. We figured how many of our team members were going to be using it and we set up our account knowing that. There were no negotiations, contract hassles or anything that would have been a waste of our time, efforts or resources.
Very easy to add accounts and share content between them. Collaboration is also easy to manage and can be done on a project-by-project basis. The cloud-based software means it is incredibly fast to add a coworker and have them editing images within minutes. A live internet connection is required to access Canva so this is something to consider if expecting to use the software while on journeys without access to wifi etc
Not everyone in the company has access to Invision, and they can't view the links I provide to them. I also wish everyone could view a file without logging in to the enterprise account. It comes in handy when I am doing focus-group studies or other studies with our customers that don't have Freehand. Unfortunately, if that is possible, I don't know how to do that.
As far as ROI is concerned, Canva has proven itself time and time again as having a positive impact for business.
Just yesterday, I had to prepare an hour-long presentation on the fly; the great reviews of the presentation and the materials (all made in Canva) only served to advertise for Canva and it proves that Canva is a smart investment.
I don't think in the time that I have been a Canva pro user that I can say that my ROI has been negatively impacted. Highest recommendation. The software more the casually pays for itself time and time again.
