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Canva

Canva

Starting at $12.95 per month
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Overview

What is Canva?

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).

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Canva is a versatile design tool that has been widely adopted by individuals and businesses for various use cases. Users have found Canva …
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Honest Canva Review

9 out of 10
March 30, 2023
With Canva, we can create high-quality designs with minimal effort and time. Moreover, Canva offers a collaborative feature that enables …
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I'm Not Happy with the Service

1 out of 10
March 15, 2023
Was looking for a way to easily create social media posts for LinkedIn. In my experience Canva is impressive for creating graphics, but …
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Canva - For Everyone

9 out of 10
August 25, 2022
Canva is an excellent online graphic design tool for those who don't have any experience with graphic design. You can design anything like …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Pro

$12.95

Cloud
per month

Enterprise

$30.00

Cloud
Per Month Per User

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.canva.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Canva & Flourish Demo

YouTube

How to Use Canva in 2022 Beginner Friendly Guide + Live Demo

YouTube

Designing Blog Elements in Canva | The Journey

YouTube

Canva Demo - How Canva Works

YouTube

CANVA DEMO PARTY

YouTube

Full Demo of Kittl - Design Like A Pro...Thousands of Examples FREE No Graphic Experience Needed.

YouTube
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Product Details

What is Canva?

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).

Canva Videos

Best Free PowerPoint Alternatives
Introducing Canva

Canva Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(1459)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Canva is a versatile design tool that has been widely adopted by individuals and businesses for various use cases. Users have found Canva helpful in creating social media graphics, resumes, infographics, eBooks, and more. The platform offers limitless built-in templates and media options, making it easy for users to create cohesive and professional external marketing materials.

One of the key use cases of Canva is its ability to help businesses solidify their brand and expand their outreach. Sole proprietors and small businesses use Canva to create images for social media posts, e-mail headers, e-book designs, and PowerPoint slides. It is also used across different departments, including sales, executive offices, and marketing teams, to create content for announcements, event invitations, and community engagement opportunities.

Canva enables businesses to create high-quality designs without outsourcing, reducing costs for lean marketing teams. It is recommended to clients who don't have in-house graphic design capabilities. For example, restaurants use Canva to design menus, event posters, and print marketing materials. Businesses also rely on Canva to create marketing materials such as business Instagram and Facebook posts, logos, banners, and business cards.

Another prominent use case of Canva is in the creation of visual content for ministries and book projects. It allows users to present and promote their content in fun, vibrant, and high-quality visual formats. Canva is used to design blog banners, Amazon A+ banners, web banners, and social media images for book projects.

In addition to these use cases, Canva finds its application in designing ad mockups, graphs, infographics, handouts, flyers, social media visuals, email banners, and more. Its drag-and-drop editor along with various graphics options makes it easy for non-designers within an organization to create innovative presentations or promotional materials.

Overall, Canva's wide range of features and user-friendly interface make it a valuable tool for individuals and businesses alike, helping them create professional-looking designs without the need for extensive design skills or outsourcing.

Users commonly recommend upgrading to the pro option of Canva for social media managers and teams looking to ensure consistent branding across the Internet. Canva Pro is considered a cost-effective alternative to Adobe products, especially for smaller businesses with a lower budget. It is also suggested to try Canva for free to create custom designs and stay on brand. Canva is seen as an ideal tool for basic design work, logo creation, and creating social media graphics and web designs. Users suggest utilizing Canva to quickly generate images for digital campaigns and regain control over branding. Canva is recommended as the ultimate solution for companies without a graphic design department or individuals who want to create images quickly without relying on Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. For teams and companies that are not design-heavy, Canva Pro is recognized as an inexpensive and user-friendly option. Canva for Work is suggested for centralizing brand guidelines and creating social media posts or graphics. Users recommend accessing the tutorials provided by Canva for learning how to effectively use the platform and advise checking the license agreement for $1.00 stock photos before usage. While Canva cannot replace more advanced design software like Photoshop, it is still considered a valuable tool for those with basic graphic design skills. Lastly, users recommend ensuring that the team knows the appropriate colors and fonts to use and uploading logos in PNG format for easy integration.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 32)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am the main user of Canva in my department, however, I oversee other people that use Canva as well. Canva is only used within the marketing division. Canva allows me to quickly and easily create social media graphics, basic video clips, posters, flyers, and so much more - all without having to open PhotoShop, InDesign, or Illustrator. It also allows me to quickly and easily share designs with others and collaborate on projects.
  • Collaboration - it's easy to share your design with your team members
  • Design library - Canva has a ton of great stock photos, icons, videos, fonts, and patterns all pre-loaded and ready for you to use. Their search function works well to find these materials.
  • Templates - The sky is the limit when it comes to creativity and what you're able to build within Canva, but you don't have to be a graphic designer to use the software. You can easily create slideshows, presentations, flyers, etc - with their templates.
  • Brand kit - upload your logos, colors, fonts, etc so all of your designs are on brand.
  • Sharing and downloading - you can post directly to your social media accounts from Canva or download your materials in a variety of file types
  • The search function for photos needs to be expanded. It would be great to click the "view more like this" button and have it filtered to photos that look exactly like that one. Currently, it'll only take you to more photos by that same photographer, which is the most helpful.
  • Being able to resize elements like shapes would be great. Sometimes I need a specific sized rectangle and it's really hard to find one that's already built.
  • Sometimes things don't completely line up, even if I use the "align" tools.
  • Additional text editing options - adding superscript, additional bullet points, etc
I'll always recommend Canva to basically anyone that needs design software, but doesn't have the time, skillset, or budget for actual design software like the Adobe Suite. The most basic account is free and provides so many options for building content. I can't think of another free software that gives you so much room to grow, build, and design. Canva is appropriate for teams of all sizes. As a graphic designer, I thought I'd prefer to continue creating our social media content in PhotoShop, but Canva is much easier and quicker. Plus, I can copy and resize content so everything is guaranteed to fit the social platform that I'm designing for. In PhotoShop, I'd need to know that information off the top of my head.
Mandy Holverson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
This product is incredibly easy to use and requires very little creativity while also allowing for creativity if present. This program makes creating ads, videos, gifs, infographics, announcements, graphics, and presentations so quick and simple. This program increases your ability to output professional looking communication in a timely manner with or without consultation from other users or your team. The learning time is small and users can start creating nearly immediately with little to no training.

The program is priced extremely well and is accessible to nearly everyone from corporations to small businesses. Additionally, the company is always implementing new features and fixing any small issues or needs of consumers. Canva is always looking to the future and to more integrations with existing software or platforms.

I was especially impressed by their stock video selections and images. These do NOT cost extra like Adobe products but are perfectly acceptable for many applications though Adobe's stock video is often higher production quality. However, Canva's offering are still quite impressive for a presentation, other internal use or a smaller business. Personally, I love Canva and reccomend it to everyone to up their professional output.

  • Social media posts
  • Form creation
  • Presentations
  • Infographics
  • Some physical placement tools are hard to use.
  • Direct to print options are non-existent
  • Sometimes "search" acts a little funny
Canva is great for a presentation or to help you design a landing page and for social media posts. Canva may not be appropriate to design a logo or other material you need to be completely legally sound. Canva is not a graphic maker, it is a layout service/product. If you want to design logos or graphics from scratch, this is not the program for you or your company.
December 03, 2021

Canva for the WIN!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Canva for social media content creation. Canva is easy to use in the creation of social media graphics custom-designed for the content that we share on our social media platforms. Canva makes creating and designing so much easier than using Adobe.
  • Template Variety
  • Functionality is Easy to Use
  • Professional Designs
  • Offers Variety of Tools
  • Search Term Functionality
  • Photo Searches More Accurate
  • More Elements/Shapes To Use
Canva has become so versatile that you can use it for virtually anything related to graphic design. It allows you to get creative in customizing your content yet also provides thousands of eye-catching templates to work off of and get ideas from. I haven't yet found a time where Canva wasn't suited for something I was specifically trying to do.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Canva has been a really intuitive graphic design software our employees have been able to pick up with extreme ease. Our ad specialists and web developers are able to easily create images without having to use expensive photo editing software, as well as not having to have previous experience with complicated image editing software.
  • Easily create graphics for website banners and images
  • Create professional-looking social media images from our phones
  • Quickly create engaging banner ads
  • Canva is great to create aesthetically pleasing documents, but it can be pretty clunky
  • The ability to easily remove image backgrounds would be a great tool to have so we don't have to upload are images to other free background removing tools.
Canva is really suited for applications that are relatively simple, such as adding CTAs to images or providing quick things needed to post on social media. It's typically not ideal for icon or logo creation or anything that has more complicated requirements. Such as angled cutouts to images or unique font styling.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our marketing department uses Canva on a weekly basis to create social posts. We would then share the creative internally for pier review and improvements before deciding on the best creative for a specific post. Canva is a quick and easy tool to use to create a post without wasting time.
  • Create posts with the correct dimensions for the specific social platform
  • Wide variety of useful graphics to make your post pop
  • Share creative internally for a quick review and modifications
  • When sharing a creative via email, sometimes the visual in the email is distorted in element sizes
  • The search functionality in the font selections is not great.
  • I would like a keyboard + mouse shortcut for zooming
Creating eye catching social posts and even infographics are super easy and quick in Canva. You can then share the creative with people in your team to get there input while they can even tweak the creative to show you what they mean in terms of suggested changes. These iterations can happen really quick with very little efforts from the reviewers
April 26, 2021

Can-do Canva

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Canva is a great tool to use for fast image content that doesn't require the skills of a graphic designer. We use Canva at multiple levels and departments to create content for publication across our website, social media, and direct communication. It's a great tool to have when you are short on time and want to get something out the door without using Photoshop. The ease of toggling between different layers, opacities, and image sizes is remarkable.
  • Create multi-layered graphics quickly using a simple interface
  • Set company colors and fonts so that every user has quick access to the brand style
  • Provides a large database of free-to-use graphics and templates
  • I'd like an integration that removes the background from an image in one click
  • There is no ability to collaborate on an image with someone else in real time
  • I would like to be able to resize a canvas once I've started working on it
It's well suited for small to medium businesses that don't have a full staff of designers available to create content at any time. It's a powerful tool to create content quickly for use on social media, in emails, on websites, and more. Power users of Photoshop and professional image software would likely find it extremely limiting. Large companies would be better off with enterprise-level software. Smaller companies would benefit greatly from the free option.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Canva is a fantastic tool in creative visual media that any professional might need. Finding new ways to present and promote your content is critical-- whether you are a marketing maven or an elementary school teacher. Your audience receives your content in fun, vibrant, high-quality visual formats. From posters to social media posts, it gives users every avenue to share their message in the way they want.
  • Inventive templates that update regularly.
  • Free and paid content, accessible to all.
  • Able to be used by students as well as adults.
  • Able to create multimedia content that is static or animated to suit your needs.
  • Courses to teach you how to create better content.
  • Limited download formats (jpeg, png).
  • Pricing for members who are not educators.
Canva is a fantastic resource for anyone who has limited time and resources but needs to accomplish many tasks at once. Through just this site, I am able to create classroom posters, header illustrations for my Google Classroom, a social media post welcoming students back, as well as a visually-attractive handout for parents to remind them of the most important facts heading back to school. I did not have to search the web for multiple sites, create multiple accounts, and learn multiple programs. It was all through Canva -- and the products were nothing short of spectacular.
Kevin Miller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I currently use Canva to design a wide range of marketing materials and assets for my agency as well as clients I support through my care plans. It addresses every need since it has so many assets ready at my disposal. From digital marketing to print assets Canva delivers with an exceptional editor and elements to use within it.
  • Large selection of templates.
  • Robust editor with many tools to fine tune designs.
  • Generous selection of free assets.
  • Paid assets that you actually want to buy and at a reasonable price.
  • Can't think of any reasons as they provide so much already.
Canva is suited for all levels of users from beginner without design skills and also professional designers. It has a range of tools that beginners will learn to pick up quickly and it comes with a pretty robust learning environment if you need it. If you run a business or event planning Canva is right for you.
April 14, 2021

Canva for the win!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Canva is used across the board for everything, and that's the beauty of it. It can be used for email marketing, creating menus, creating social media posts. Literally, anything that needs graphics or images, this is your one stop shop for everything. It has it's own graphics, fonts, colors, you can add your logo, create your brand colors, save brand fonts, so it makes branding your content even easier. There are so many templates to choose from and saves us time when putting together social media ads or posting to our website.
  • Great and easy to use templates for everything!
  • Beautiful illustrations to use for free (with paid subscription)
  • Group collaboration on projects. Easily save and send for comments from the team
  • Branding kit so you never have to search for fonts or colors, they're always right there
  • I'd like to be able to resize a project more easily, or have the ability to use instagram sizes that are outside the usual square post
  • I have only had it happen once, but it did crash on me once, which was upsetting.
  • it does everything I need it to, so its hard to find a third area for improvement. They're constantly updating.
Any situation where you need to create any kind of media, Canva is great for. I think it excels in building out items for a website, marketing email or social media posts. It is great for teams that work on design elements together because one person can trade-off to another mid-project and it updates that fast.
Kristi Porter | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Canva for most all of my design needs such as blog and Pinterest graphics for my blog posts and social media images for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I also use it for creating flyers, PowerPoint presentations, cards, and numerous other things. Anytime I have to create an image, either from scratch or based off of a previous image, I turn to Canva first. It is an incredibly handy tool with an enormous amount of templates, allowing everyone to be a designer. And they are always adding new features like stock images, making it a tool I constantly turn to and recommend.
  • TONS of templates so you don't have to create from scratch, but customize to your needs
  • TONS of pre-created "elements" for us like illustrations and shapes to give your graphics more oomph
  • Recently incorporating more stock photos making it a one-stop-shop for graphic needs
  • Lots of terrific features even for the free plan
  • It is a bit of a learning curve, particularly if you aren't familiar with design programs. But once you get the hang of it, you can do some really cool stuff.
  • It's nice to have the auto save feature, but sometimes I forget to "save a copy" for a new design and accidentally save over my original. That took me some time to get used to.
  • As a Mac user, I'm very used to Control Z or copy/paste functions, and they don't always work well in Canva, so it takes some adapting from current habits I don't often think about.
  • I completely understand them needing to make money, but some of the elements and illustrations they want you to pay for seem pretty basic at times or there are limited free choices. Once in a while, that trips me up.
I recommend Canva all the time to peers, friends, and clients! If you don't have a graphic designer on your staff or can't afford to contract all your graphic needs out out, Canva is a terrific solutions! Even when you have the money, it's also great for when you need to create something quickly and don't want to take the time to contract it out for a fast turnaround. And there are so many templates to choose from, and you can almost always find what you need or adapt it to fit your needs. At it's core, Canva allows pretty much anyone to be a designer!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Canva to create social Media graphics. Our social media graphics tended to be repetitive in nature, but Canva helped us keep them fresh and interesting. It was only used by our marketing department. It was very helpful to be used when our more experienced graphic designer’s were busy.
  • Ease of use
  • Current on trends
  • Easy to adapt
  • Needs better organization
  • Needs better search functions
  • Needs an easy way to zoom in and out
It is well suited for a computer savvy person with good taste but no professional graphic design skills. It is less appropriate for a graphic designer needing a powerful tool.
Lilian Masvutu | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Canva is a great software that is being used by different people in different departments within our organisation. It has managed to solve our design issues in-house instead of sourcing for graphic designers externally. As a marketer, I am able to design flyers and brochures to share our products with our customers. Our Human Resources department has also designed certificates that they give at our service awards and as appreciation for those that have excelled in a particular task. Our operations department has used Canva to design our quarterly magazines which they circulate internally. Using Canva has significantly reduced our costs in terms of advertising since we are now doing it in house.
  • Designing flyers, magazines, certificates and a lot of marketing materials like brochures, company profiles, etc.
  • It also has the advantage of creating design specific materials like a LinkedIn header or Twitter post/poster
  • You can also create GIFS
  • The fact that before you can include you picture on your design you have to first upload it on Canva. This is boring, and I'd prefer to directly upload the picture into the design without having to upload it into Canva then selecting it from Canva to paste it onto your design
  • The mobile app should ensure the same functions and features that are on the desktop version. For example, when you click back in the mobile app, half the time your work is lost
  • Resize the design without having to upgrade
Canva is suited for virtually all marketing work. It encompasses a lot of products/designs so once you start using it you will discover it is well suited for both small and large organisations. You are able to design flyers, brochures, company profiles, resumes, magazines. I do not think there is any scenario in which Canva is less appropriate. However, if an organisation requires a lot of graphics maybe using other software may be better.
November 25, 2019

Convenient Canva

Shelly Burr | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Canva occasionally for a quick social media post. We also recommend it to our clients that don't have the in house graphic design capabilities that we do. We create templates for users so they can have a consistent look and feel for their brand while making it easy to enter an image and save it out.
  • Nice images free and for purchase.
  • Easy to use.
  • It makes you look very professional.
  • I would say adding video but have recently discovered that I can do this.
  • It would be nice if I could manage a user account under my account, so I could log in one time, but switch over to access client's accounts if needed.
Canva is very well suited for making great social media posts that stay on Brand, and it's very user-friendly. It's easy to size photos for different platforms like Facebook, Instagram. You can also easily use stories. It makes adding text elements very easy, with many choices for styles as well.
November 05, 2019

Canva? Can-do!

Gigi Greene | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I introduced our company to Canva after being introduced to it myself at a previous position. We use Canva in our sales department when we are creating marketing content for our events and flyers to be used during our events. It's user-friendly and allows us to make changes quickly when clients request it. In the past, we used Word or Publisher in order to create our flyers and marketing materials, but Canva is a lot more user-friendly than either of those and creates really quality results.
  • Canva is really user-friendly. It's easy to maneuver and understand.
  • It allows for a wide variety of design choices.
  • The program really does make your work look professional and neat - even if you're not a marketing genius.
  • I wish there were guidelines as there are in Publisher so you can line things up exactly. The program can be a little finicky and it can be hard to get things just right.
  • I wish there were a search function when looking for templates or themes. There is one for pictures and background graphics, but it's a bit hard sometimes to navigate the templates.
Canva is great when you want to create a professional looking flyer or piece of marketing material, but do not have a lot of design experience. It makes it extremely easy to create something that looks professional and clean with minimal effort. There's a bit of a learning curve, as it can be tricky to maneuver details sometimes, but once you get the hang of it, it's a great program.
Matt Graf | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Canva is a really awesome tool for making graphic design projects (like flyers) super easily and conveniently. It really is amazing how easy they have made it to create things like flyers. I'm convinced that anyone at all could do it, even those who would not consider themselves to be tech savvy.
  • Easy to use
  • Designs are clean and professional looking
  • There are plenty of free template options
  • I would always like to see more free options
  • Nothing else comes to mind
Canva is the perfect tool for anyone who wants to make things like flyers but doesn't have the expertise, skills, or time to make them from scratch on their own. It makes doing these simple graphic design projects so easy and user friendly. I would highly recommend it for anyone at all.
Rachel Green | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Canva is an easy-to-use design web-based design software. Canva is used by our marketing team internally to create designs for a variety of mediums: handouts, flyers, social media, email banners, infographics, case studies, etc. Canva's simple-to-use and friendly functionality allow our entire team to contribute to design (following brand guidelines) easily.
  • Canva is easy to use for beginners or people with little design experience. Other tools such as Adobe Illustrator can be overwhelming to the beginner designer, but Canva is easy to learn.
  • With a paid version of Canva, you can set up branding colors and font for your profile, helping everyone that interacts with and designs in the tool create collateral that aligns with your brand.
  • Canva offers a variety of free and paid images (illustrations and photography) that your team can use, if you do not want to create a piece entirely from scratch, saving you time.
  • Canva does not allow you to underline text. That might not seem like a huge issue, but it is a tedious task to manually underline text with drawn lines.
  • Canva had a security breach, and all of their users had to change their login information and passwords. Security breaches are never encouraging, and I'm glad our team downgraded from the paid version so that our payment information is no longer attached to our account.
  • Canva should allow you to save your favorite illustrations or photos in a folder so you don't have to search terms and scroll for them every time.
Canva is well suited for a designer with little experience that is looking to create something quickly without sacrificing quality. For larger design projects (Press Releases, Infographics, Case Studies) and anything that is website/blog based I recommend having an experienced designer use Adobe Illustrator and/or Photoshop to create those designs following brand guidelines.
Shawn Strasburg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Canva to create social media images and thumbnails for our clients. Canva is extremely easy to use with a drag and drop editor options to create anything from graphics to PowerPoint presentations. Canva includes shapes, charts, images and other graphics that will aid in making your presentation or graphic above the competition.
  • Social media templates.
  • Correct sizing for Pinterest graphics.
  • Overlaying text on photos.
  • Charts and graphics are customizable.
  • I don't have any suggestions for improvement. I truly love using Canva.
Are you in dire need of some social media graphics for a client? Canva is the best design service that takes the headache out of designing. All you need to do is choose from one of the available templates or make a custom-sized canvas to fit your clients needs. Next use the supplied background and font layouts bring your vision to life. These layouts are packed full of different fonts and flyer templates, depends if you want a complete template or just a nice background to start Canva has you covered.
Scott Walker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Canva in multiple ways:
  • To create good looking social media posts.
  • Proofs or ideas for branded stationary/business cards.
  • Attractive poster formats.
Typically, Canva is used by myself and others in my organization that aren't graphically talented. We can either use these products directly (which we often do for the social media posts) or send them to the graphics department to make a production-level version. This way, we can take some jobs off the plates of the graphics department and keep all departments more agile.

This helps our business in allowing us to have a shorter production lead time and more agile, independent departments. Our social media posts can go from idea to production in a few minutes while retaining an attractive and professional appearance. Our Graphics Department doesn't get bogged down trying to create a new product or translate the vision of one of the non-design staffers.
  • Social media posts: The gallery of social media posts are great. We usually use the templates to show off reviews and testimonials, sale alerts, or new products.
  • Business Stationary: The gallery has plenty of great templates to create business stationary such as letterhead, internal memos, and business cards.
  • Design ideas: If you need something that looks professional but you aren't a great designer, Canva offers a wide selection of templates and ideas for you to piece together something that looks great. You can then use this as the production item, or send this off to a graphic designer to create and polish.
  • Quick and easy editing: The design editor is pretty simple with a point and click interface. You don't need to be familiar with Photoshop, InDesign, or other programs, Canva makes editing pretty easy.
  • Perhaps it is a function of a higher pay-tier, but the ability to export the finished product into a different filetype would be helpful. Currently, it exports into .jpg, .png, and .pdf. Being able to use .doc, .eps, or .indd would be advantageous.
  • Though Canva features a great font selection, it would a nice to be able to upload a font for use in the product.
Canva is great for quick, easy, and attractive pieces. This is best used by those that have a good eye for what looks good, but not the technical skills in Photoshop or Indesign to create the finished product. This is great for jobs on the go, quick social media shares or document creation.

For larger applications that require the use of a lot of brand-specific assets, use a proper design program and someone trained to use it. Canva does not replace a graphic design department or agency.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Canva is used mainly by our online marketing folks. We use it to create social media headers (LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook), thumbnails for video content, blog post headers, one-page overviews (PDF) and other graphics. The main reason we use this software is that a non-designer type of person can quickly jump in, find a template which introduces a really nice color schema, font family and graphics that work for our project. We have also uploaded our official color palette so these colors are incorporated when we initiate a new design.
  • Canva allows us to create very professional art for our online presence in many ways.
  • Canva also outputs the graphics in the way we need: .png and .jpg for online articles and social media and .pdf for print or collateral material.
  • It has almost no learning curve. Sign up and try a project with it, it's super easy to get into.
  • You are able to start with a free level that gives you a lot of features. We used the free one for quite some time to make sure it was the proper tool for us and then we went "PRO".
  • We'd like to be able to tag and classify our past graphics in folders in an easier way. For some reason, we aren't able to use the drag and drop function while using FireFox. This maybe a cache or cookie issue on our side which we are looking into.
This is great for online content. If you produce youtube videos, blog posts, or really any social media posts, the quality of the thumbnail or social media header is crucial. Also, if you need to output a social media header in many formats - this is the perfect tool. In most cases, you can choose the social media app you are creating for and Canva will automatically set the size in pixels so you can get started right away. We used to have templates of each social media app and this would change. We now let Canva do this for us now.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our marketing department uses Canva to create content for our newsletters, blog, and events. Canva allows our marketing team to quickly produce original content and get marketing materials out to our fundraisers in a timely manner. Without Canva, our organization would need to hire more designers or outsource some of our marketing efforts to a third party.
  • Canva has many different saved templates for a whole host of uses including newsletters, presentations, banners, and brochures.
  • Canva's drag and drop design tool helps novices create and develop content for our organization.
  • Canva has a useful feature that allows any created content to be ready for print.
  • Canva is easy to pick up and start using, but it takes a while to understand all of its features.
  • Canva is meant to be used for novice designers, not professional graphic designers. For professional graphic designers, its features and capabilities may seem too basic.
  • The charts and graph functions are a bit limited as users cannot input own data and there are not many options for customization.
Canva is a wonderful software for making quick, professional-looking designs. The software allows even beginner designers to start creating with little to no training. The drag and drop design features are intuitive and easy to learn. However, for projects that require more complex and customized designs, Canva is not the best fit.
Ben Rubenstein | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Canva to create quick graphics for social media - both as a replacement tool for more intensive design in Photoshop, and also as a testing ground for images to see what will work in the various formats. It's helpful in saving time going back and forth with design, and saves some of the learning curve of more complicated design tools.
  • Custom templates that enable you to lock down elements of an image (such as a logo placement) to ensure that images remain consistent.
  • Consistently updated image sizes to keep you in compliance with changing social media standards.
  • Quick and easy creation and download process.
  • Template/image sharing can be a bit clunky - I've run into issues where another user was unable to edit what I'd shared.
  • It'd be nice if I could integrate it more with my social media calendar to bring images from creation to sharing even more quickly.
  • Pricing for some of the designs is a little expensive.
Canva is great if you don't have a dedicated designer on your team, or need to create images quickly outside of a typical design process. It's also useful for organizations that have many users that need to create brand-compliant images. It doesn't take much training to get up and running.
July 03, 2018

Canva for Marketing

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I'm using Canva on a weekly basis to easily create strong graphic images and promotional material. I'm a book author with a following on social media, which is where I primarily use this material. Canva makes it easy to create images such as Twitter of Facebook headers, or graphic images I can use on apps such as Instagram. It's often used as a way to get information out, instead of relying on text alone.
  • Helps to easily create graphic images
  • Is able to be used widely across different social media.
  • Allows you to incorporate stock or personalized images
  • Some of the image integration can be difficult, and can mess up color schemes
  • The search function is weak
  • I'd like to see it more cleanly separated in different social media forms. Making it searchable to find templates for each one
Canva is a great program for people like me, who often have information they need to share via social media. Rather than spending many hours on programs such as photoshop, Canva provides ready-made templates that I'm able to personalize. This save so much time. If you're a great artist and want something completely personalized, it might not be the best program. But to save time and create material quickly, there's no beating it.
Nathan Sichilongo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Canva for quick on the fly designs, when we need to test a new idea or draw inspiration. We have found that while it is not a full-fledged design tool, everyone from professionals to beginners can use it and it is cost effective. It is mainly used by our marketing department and allows us to effectively design consistent branding images for our various platforms including print and online media.
  • The ability to save designs online automatically and share those designs with other team members is invaluable to us
  • The drag and drop functionality is very useful for quickly adding images or elements to a design that are not already available in the Canva platform
  • The mobile apps for various platforms allow us to see designs on the go and edit or change any designs
  • The branding option is great because we can use our own custom font and colors for different designs. Being able to duplicate and add our branding to different designs is a lifesaver
  • There are more templates and search functionality on the mobile apps than on the website. This is rather odd and makes the product a bit confusing to use. We sometimes have to find a design idea on the app then save it and use it on the web app. Would be easier if the ability to find designs was just baked into both web and mobile apps.
  • While it is a versatile design tool, Canva does not allow you to import just any fonts. Our team has had to find other workarounds to use the library of fonts we have as they cannot be imported into Canva, despite the functionality being advertised.
  • Being unable to import or export vectors or design files lets Canva down. As a tool that can be used by almost anyone, it needs some advanced features for professional designers. If we could export designs with layers or import them it would really make our workflow much easier.
Canva is best suited for anyone looking for a quick online design tool. Social media managers and web designers can benefit a lot from it. As well as small business owners who may not have money to hire a designer. For medium-size business and Enterprises, there are more advanced tools that can fill in the gap. We have found that Canva is a good alternative tool to Adobe's suite of products for quick design and also cost. However, for teams larger than 10 users, you may want to consider other alternatives.
Deven Bhagwandin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Canva when I need to resize and edit photos for my client's websites. I also use Canva to edit and resize photos for my client's social media profiles. Last, I use Canva for images to include in various marketing materials. Canva solves a number of problems for me. One is that I use a Chromebook, so image editing software is limited. Also, I have very little graphic design skills, so the templates, layouts, fonts, and elements are extremely useful to me.
  • I like that I can use filters and alter colors to match any brand that I'm working on.
  • I like that I can upload any of my images and edit from within Canva.
  • I like that I can download my edited images in a number of formats (.PNG, .JPEG, PDF)
  • Within the Elements> Grids, I'd like to see more options for grid layouts.
  • It would be nice to be able to create your own "illustrations" so that you're not limited to the ones Canva provides.
  • Possibly update the frames section, too. Some of them are outdated and a bit cheesy.
Canva is well suited for amateur graphic designers, small business owners who need to create their own graphics, for kids & schools. It is not well suited for creating custom, high-quality graphics. Overall, it's a great product and I feel it's the best on the web right now (for amateurs).
Marcelo de Vasconcellos | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Canva is an easy and quick way to create graphics for most social media platforms. At my organization, we constantly had journalists asking graphic designers for small images to go along with posts on social media. Canva allows them to make such images themselves. In my other role as a lecturer at a local university, I teach young musicians the first steps on building an online presence and for them, Canva is invaluable, since it allows people without graphic design training to create compelling images. Even for professional designers using Canva for quick creations it can be easier than opening and editing an image in Photoshop.
  • Easy to understand
  • Quick to get results
  • The templates and styles are visually pleasing
  • The search function could be improved, perhaps taking inspiration from Google Image filters.
  • It would be interesting to see some kind of Photoshop import/export function.
It is particularly well suited to people active in social media, but who lack design training. Actually, anyone who constantly has to create simple images (including slides and report covers, for example) quickly can benefit from Canva.

However, Canva is not the best option if you need to make adjustments in the photos. It is not a tool for merging images or creating complex visual effects. This kind of work will require a full graphics package like Photoshop or Illustrator.
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