Canvas
Top Rated
Canvas
Overview
Recent Reviews
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
Popular Features
View all 13 featuresAssignments (41)
8.8
88%
Course authoring (41)
8.2
82%
Course catalog or library (38)
7.6
76%
Mobile friendly (40)
6.5
65%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
View all pros & consVideo Reviews
Leaving a video review helps other professionals like you evaluate products. Be the first one in your network to record a review of Canvas, and make your voice heard!
Pricing
View all pricingEntry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://forms.gle/v7YTSKfA6h1RcnSNA
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting / Integration Services
Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?
58 people want pricing too
Alternatives Pricing
Features Scorecard
Learning Management
8.1
81%
Product Details
What is Canvas?
Canvas LMS is a widely used learning management system by colleges and universities in North America. It delivers dynamic, engaging learning experiences, and boasts 99.99% uptime to ensure instant connection between students and educators.
Canvas Features
Learning Management Features
- Supported: Course authoring
- Supported: Course catalog or library
- Supported: Player/Portal
- Supported: Learning content
- Supported: Mobile friendly
- Supported: Progress tracking & certifications
- Supported: Assignments
- Supported: Compliance management
- Supported: Learning administration
- Supported: Learning reporting & analytics
- Supported: eLearning
- Supported: Assessments
- Supported: Live online learning
- Supported: In-person learning
- Supported: Micro-learning
- Supported: Video learning
- Supported: eCommerce
- Supported: SCORM-compliant
- Supported: Social learning
- Supported: Gamification
- Supported: GDPR Compliant Learning
- Supported: Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning
Canvas Video
What is Canvas?
Canvas Competitors
Canvas Technical Details
Deployment Types | SaaS |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Mobile Web |
Supported Countries | Global |
Comparisons
View all alternativesCompare with
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Canvas?
Instructure is an educational software company based in Sandy, Utah. It is the developer of the Canvas learning management system, which is a comprehensive software package that competes with such systems as Blackboard Learning System, SumTotal and Saba.
What are Canvas's top competitors?
What is Canvas's best feature?
Reviewers rate Assignments highest, with a score of 8.8.
Who uses Canvas?
The most common users of Canvas are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees) and the Higher Education industry.
Reviews and Ratings
(237)
Reviews
(1-25 of 83)- Popular Filters
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
May 02, 2022
Canvas Makes Learning Effective
Canvas is used to offer online and hybrid courses for students. It is used across the whole organization.
- Creating different course sections with effective course design.
- Creating assessments and learning measures tools.
- Work on third-party application integration especially browsers compatibility.
- Make more cost affordable for schools and Universities especially for those interested to switch from higher-cost LMS
January 07, 2022
Helpful Platform for Students
Canvas has been integrated into one of my businesses as a virtual and in-person learning tool to help students (and professors!) study more efficiently. It has enabled students of all ages to make significant progress in terms of computer access and independence. It also facilitates fantastic collaboration among teachers and disciplines. We use Canvas in ITI (information technology instrument). It was a collaboration between Amazon Web Services and ITI to learn cloud computing and Amazon Web Services, which is very useful for planning and teaching online classes. We also use the integrated system, which allows us to keep track of studies and student ratings, which is ideal for keeping our study system current.
- Provides internal communication
- Course assignment, and you can know your degree
- Zoom integration and can be used to schedule and store them
- The speed grader could be improved.
- [It] streamlined the setup process.
December 02, 2021
Canvas: A students evaluation
I am a student so I use it all the time. Teachers use it to post announcements, [assignments], theory, slides, Zoom Meetings[,] and more. It is very handy to have a quick overview of what you're supposed to do with the agenda. It can also be used to give out points and feedback. It has Feedpulse integration so students can leave the result of their feedback in an input field with the date of the day of the feedback. The Teachers then have the option to give it points.
- Being a means of giving feedback and points to assignments[.]
- Being [the] main hub for students where they can find all their stuff for school (assignments, points, slides, feedback)
- [Assignments] are dated and the agenda gives a quick daily/weekly/monthly overview for the deadlines across all courses[.]
- It has Zoom integration and can be used to schedule and store them[.]
- It has [its] own video [platforms] like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, but it isn't that great (it doesn't like being used on Firefox for example). It has disconnection issues and the mic and camera sometimes [have] issues[.]
- When looking at points in the [assignment] overviews it only shows the total amount of points on the [assignment] but it doesn't show the given amount, you have to go to the [assignment] page to see these points[.]
- When an announcement is posted it takes a bit too many clicks to get there. The amount of announcements doesn't always update right. I could have already read an announcement but Canvas will still show it as being unread until I go to the page again.
December 02, 2021
Canvas, a great way to help teachers plan there tasks
We use it to [communicate] and plan most of the things in terms of tasks and deadlines. The only problems we stumble across are human errors. Canvas itself has almost no problems in my [experience]. Canvas has a lot of [possibility] you can use it for, [besides] that you can implement a lot of external things to make canvas even more [useful].
- Hardly no bugs or problems[.]
- Easy navigation on desktop[.]
- Clean design[.]
- The navigation is very easy and clear[.]
- Many possibility's to implement third party features[.]
- Great design[.]
November 05, 2021
Great LMS
We used it as a Learning Management System--I posted assignments and grades on Canvas, and students could use it to check their daily assignments, future assignments and assessments, and their grades. We used it across the whole school, so it was a uniform way for students and teachers to keep track of assignments and progress.
- Serves as online gradebook
- Helps students keep track of daily assignment
- Helps students keep track of grades
- Full school calendar/events
- Teachers seeing student grades in other classes
August 24, 2021
Dated Look, Not user friendly to set up
In my experience, this program is needlessly time consuming and clunky to navigate. I feel the interface is dated and the navigation is illogical. Considering how easy programs like Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams are to set up I am amazed this product is still being used at all. A recent district mandate is requiring that we shift to the Canvas Platform, and setting up my classes, even with the availability of a pre-made template as a starting point, has been nothing short of a nightmare. It is 3am and I have been trying to work around glitches that cause content added to one class to populate in another class casing me to have to go in and out of each class changing these overrides and saving my progress over and over again. That is after spending several hours trying to get it to stop changing ALL of my Quick Button links every time I changed one causing every link to go to the same (internal Canvas) page. School starts Monday, it is Sunday, and I am exhausted and livid. Would NOT recommend.
- Gets school districts to purchase a license to a subpar and redundant program.
- Causes over worked educations to become more overworked, free of charge.
- Hoodwinks people into thinking that a platform with all the design savvy of a 2001 blog builder site is worth their time.
- Improve interface and user friendliness
- Streamline the set up process
- Make it less cumbersome to copy course content into a second course, and more importantly, don’t cause changes made in said second course to duplicate I’m the first course.
- Pay the teachers who wasted countless hours of their unpaid time working on your program and getting nowhere.
July 29, 2021
Canvas is a teacher's best friend.
I am using it as a learning management system to teach four courses at Ball State University. All professors will be required to use Canvas starting in the fall semester, but I adopted it early to test and create my courses for the last two semesters. I am also taking a class where we are using it as our learning environment.
- User experience
- Organization and ability to create a course
- I love the modules function
- It's compatibility with Banner
- The speed grader could be improved
- Extra credit assignment feature would be nice
June 30, 2021
Great tool to manage classes
Canvas is actually being used by my school. Before we moved to Canvas, we have been used Moodle for years and although it is free, it costs a lot to maintain. So we were looking at different options. Canvas came to our sight very quickly and soo we decided to move to canvas. It has been great so far.
- Great customer support
- Very clear instructions
- Powerful features
- It came with a cost
- Some of the functions/features can be hard to find
- Navigation can be more clear.
We work with Canvas in our learning platform with the objective of facilitating academic teaching, which is extremely practical for planning and teaching online classes. We also take advantage of the integrated system that allows us to keep track of studies and student evaluations, which is optimal for keeping our study system up to date.
- This tool has a responsive web design, its adaptation to all devices facilitates access to the platform.
- It has a dashboard, which presents a detailed list of our recent activity and academic history.
- It gives educators the ability to create content to evaluate and upload grades to the system, allowing students and representatives to monitor grades and teaching methods.
- Canvas is a software that is easy to access and operate through the web or application, but it should be taken into account that in order to create course content from scratch, training is needed since this area is not easy to do by yourself and the platform does not offer tutoring in this regard.
- The user must have a stable internet connection as the system does not have auto-save, a slight fluctuation in the connection automatically generates the loss of information.
- It offers few options to customize profiles, which makes it difficult to identify students at times.
- Unfortunately, this software has a very bad customer service, since complaints, via email or phone call, have not been answered within three days, which hinders and hinders the smooth and continuous learning process.
We have used Canvas as an education platform. It was integrated with the employees job training and education for the continuing learning program. Canvas is a great platform to combine and aggregate all the learning activities, information and courses. Canvas is used across the local schools in the area and have used it on a number of occasions for that as well.
- Canvas is great for keeping all the learning and education tasks, info, assignments, etc in one place
- The discussion options are helpful
- The messaging system with instructors and students/employees is great
- The grading options work well
- It's a little difficult at first to use
- For some reason my log in has trouble working at times. Not sure if its a server issue or something else.
- The video and recording tool could be better
April 22, 2021
The all-in-one Learning Management System that DELIVERS.
Canvas has been integrated into one of my companies as a virtual and in person learning platform to streamline learning for students (and teaching for teachers!). Not only does Canvas streamline learning across disciplines, classrooms and settings but also has allowed for students with differing computer access skills to learn how to access information and files within similar electronic organizational structures. It has allowed for bounds of progress in computer access and independence for students of all ages. It also allows for wonderful collaboration between teachers and disciplines.
- Creativity options for teachers to create a virtual space that still has fun graphics and accessibility options.
- Canvas has versatility in viewing options for assignment due dates such as the calendar built in feature as well as the dashboard options to display upcoming and due assignments.
- Allowing teachers to create community with each other and collaborate in each-other's space.
- Discussion platforms within classrooms for students to communicate with each-other and with their teachers.
- Easy messaging portal within each virtual classroom.
- Canvas is challenging to use when creating your classroom as a new user (Must know basic editing and get acquainted with the Canvas page editing page, many will need training to get set up).
- Does not always save students' work adequately (no built in auto-save feature) unless using an external PDF annotator or word processor program.
- Canvas should create template classrooms or class pages that make getting started easier for teachers and new users.
We use Canvas across our organization - it is the standard learning management system and the only one supported at our institution. It is used by every academic department and is critical for achieving our goal of providing a modern, accessible, and flexible educational environment for our students, faculty, and staff.
- Learning management - Even as the educational landscape rapidly shifts due to current events, Canvas is a great LMS for providing a consistent learning environment for students.
- Mobile accessibility - Students can access their courses on Canvas from a variety of devices, including their smartphones.
- Rich content - Instructors have the ability to create dynamic and engaging content for their courses.
- Support - Response times for tickets and other support requests have increased over the last year.
March 13, 2021
Canvas - A full palette of online education tools!
Canvas is used by the entire school I am taking classes at. It provides an online instruction module, attendance, grading and file distribution point for users. It seems to be closer to a "one stop shop" for online education than others that are currently available. I am familiar with Canvas, Google Classroom and Skyward.
- Provides internal communication, not requiring an outside message or email system.
- Includes a file sharing structure for instructional materials within the system.
- Provides a grading platform that is viewable by students and instructors alike.
- Getting used to the platform takes a little effort. Not quite plug and play.
- File names used to be truncated - but that is fixed now.
March 10, 2021
Canvas is a good value for money
Canvas is used across the school as our primary learning management system. We have integrated it with our student information system and setup a templated course shell for every course taught in a semester. Most faculty use it to deliver course materials, schedule, assignments and grading. We have also integrated it with Zoom for video conferencing and that has helped tremendously with student engagement and remote course delivery during the pandemic.
- Syllabus management
- Course assignment
- Grading
- Canvas app
- Assignments can be improved
- Backend integration and reporting
March 08, 2021
Canvas: The LMS for Everyone
Canvas is our LMS for students in grades 5-12 (approximately 1,000 students and 150 faculty). It is the central hub for organizing assignments, sharing content, managing grades, and our current hybrid distance learning model. It is considered an essential technology tool/core application for our institution and students, faculty, and parents rely on it for structuring our academic program.
- Many popular third-party educational apps have LTIs that integrate with Canvas.
- The gradebook has a Mastery Learning option for recording progress against a set of academic standards.
- The UI is very intuitive and even non-tech savvy users can use it effectively with minimal training.
- Their integration with Big Blue Button was a bust for distance learning. Would be great to see them collaborate with Zoom or Google Meets.
- Their "feature request" process is slow and cumbersome at times because it relies on user "up votes" to get ideas addressed by the developers.
- They seem to have a lot of turn-over with their staff. We get a new Customer Success Manager far more frequently than with other vendors.
March 08, 2021
A consistent and powerful platform
Canvas [is being used] across the organization. We are able to streamline certain course delivery for all of the stakeholders.
- Simple design interface.
- Basic analytics for organization and courses.
- The simple function for each module within the system.
- The should be a possibility of having at least three basic colors for customization.
- More local service support for Malaysia.
- Pricing is still quite expensive for now although not as expensive as BB.
March 06, 2021
Canvas LMS - Intuitive and Powerful
Canvas is our institutional learning management system - minimum usage standards such as accurate gradebook set up, attendance, and syllabus upload are mandatory for all coursework. Fully online and blended programs are also offered - it is the only LMS in use at our institution.
- Simple and intuitive interface
- Mobile friendly and intuitive app for both students and teachers
- Integration with third party tools
- Rubric usage for forums is clunky, as is using rubrics for formal grading anywhere in the system
- Peer review, while promising, is nearly impossible for most faculty to set up correctly. A big disappointment for us
- Set up and accommodation for mastery learning, ungrading, or other alterantive grading structures is challenging
August 12, 2020
The perfect LMS out there
Canvas is used by most universities. At times Moodles can be used as an alternative. Depending on the requirements of the department. It houses courses in a structured and easy to manage format. Allowing students to proactively do their assignments and access course material with ease. Teachers can create and manage course modules efficiently and with ease. An extremely efficient platform that bridges the communication gap between instructors and students. Its integration with third-party tools makes it easy for the administrator to keep the platform up-to-date with the university requirements. A well thought out idea that is helping millions of students all across the world and improving how education is delivered.
- Simple and user friendly user interface.
- Third-party solution integration.
- Ease of course management.
- Inbuilt discussion forum.
- Lack of inbuilt video conferencing tools.
- Quizzes should have proctoring and browser locked capability.
- Mobile app can get have glitches.
- Notifications are missed at times.
At my institution, we use Canvas across the entire campus. We used a different platform when I was a student, so Canvas was an adjustment for me to switch to as a staff member. A colleague of mine suggested Canvas to our central Distance Learning office a few years ago, and the agreed to look into it as an alternative platform. It took a while to implement, but has been great! With the new switch to remote learning due to social distancing, Canvas has been more valuable than ever. We are utilizing it for classes and coursework, as well as organization and information sharing. We are engaging students through video, and sharing resources with constituents. I am certain that we would have a myriad of issues with any other provider during this time. I'm very thankful we have Canvas!
- Canvas allows users to personalize pages and ensure institution brand is kept true. Our Canvas pages look just like everything else our institution creates.
- Canvas allows for multiple users to full sites, that have different permissions. This allows us to assign teachers, teaching assistants, and other student users. Everyone has access in a different capacity, to make different changes, so management is easy!
- Canvas allows students to share documents within their classes, so no need for outside document-sharing platforms. Students in the past were using Google-Docs to create "group work" material that could be edited in real time. Now, Canvas allows students to access that material directly from the site. This makes remote group work run much smoother!
- I use the Canvas App as a part-time graduate student, and the functionality in the Discussion Board posts is a little off. I have to post discussion board posts often, so I find myself entering the information from my phone sometimes. After one or two sentences, the text lags behind. I'll be 3-4 sentences into a thought, and the text is still finishing the first line. This requires me to stop and let the text catch up, which often breaks my train of thought. I've noticed the same thing on my iPad - so I think it's strictly an App issue.
- Canvas has so much to offer, that it can be overwhelming. When I was first assigned as a TA of a course, I had no idea where to start. It's not that Canvas is not user-friendly, but it definitely has a level of understanding that must be done before you can even begin. I wouldn't just assign a student to start using it and assume they could "figure it out", which means that we have to allow for training to be done when we expect anyone to use it. This just means a little more time and energy on the user, which is sometimes not always possible.
- Using the People tab within a course is kind of pointless for me. This may be a setting at my institution, but when I look at the "people" in my class, I can't actually contact them. I can pull up their profile, see what sites they are enrolled in, their bio and their "links" - but there is no secure "send message" button from this landing page. I think that is a missed opportunity. I know there are other ways to send messages, but it seems that it would be pretty useful to add a contact button on the people tab.
April 22, 2020
Canvas Review
Canvas is a learning management system. It houses everything for all of my courses. This includes my face-to-face, hybrid, and online classes. Canvas helps me organize my course into modules. In each module, I have information pages, discussions, assignments, and assessments. Canvas also includes a calendar and gradebook. Moreover, Canvas has a messaging system so I can message students in my courses.
- User friendly: I found it easy to figure out how to use Canvas
- Variety; there are a variety of types of assignments an instructor can create
- Organized: the tools help you organize your course
- Sometimes messages are delayed
- It does not have it’s own video conferencing tool
- Would be nice if there was a way to message groups of students based on a risk factor
April 22, 2020
Canvas could be better
Our whole organization utilizes Canvas for student classes. It helps students understand what assignments they have, their grades, etc.
- Assigning work
- Sending messages
- Displaying grades
- Differentiating for particular students
- Setting up groups for the teacher's side of things
- Not intuitive
March 20, 2020
Canvas is great for new online learners
I use Canvas for a graduate program I am enrolled in. All of my classes and professors work through Canvas to support online learning. It's a useful platform. Most importantly, as someone who has never done online learning before, I find the platform easy to use. It allows me to access all of my school work in one place.
- Organization.
- Communication with professors.
- Hosting online materials.
- If you send a message to a teacher, there is no record of the message until they write you back.
- The Zoom features are confusing.
- Not all of the teachers are as tech savvy as the students. This is user error, but more training would be helpful.
February 20, 2020
Paint Your Ideal Class with "Canvas"
Canvas is being used by all faculty and students at Kansas State University. It is used to organize classes in an online platform. It allows students to download and upload assignments, and it allows professors to grade assignments as well as organize grades in a timely manner. To conclude, it gives faculty and students alike remote access to the class material.
- It organizes students' grades in a timely manner.
- It gives students notifications about upcoming assignments.
- The notification feature could be improved upon as the professor has to put the due date as "midnight" otherwise the assignment will be automatically erased from the platform.
- The audio recording feature has its technical issues. I have never been able to use it correctly.
February 18, 2020
Canvas
At Northwest, Nazarene Canvas is used as our learning management system. I use this at NNU as a student. I previously used Canvas from the admin side, where I was putting in classes and helping teachers create content. Canvas allows teachers to publish their courses online in a user-friendly platform. Students can then engage with the course material and each other throughout the class. Canvas also allows students to submit homework online and for teachers to publish grades so that students can see it.
- Ease of student use
- Completed assignment tracking
- Journal function
October 29, 2019
Canvas is a pretty good LMS.
Canvas is the default LMS we use at CWU (our university).
- Canvas is extremely flexible. I think that is both its greatest strength and perhaps a bit of a weakness.
- Canvas is getting better at allowing instructors to duplicate individual assignments. That's a big improvement.
- Canvas integrates well with Crocodoc for online paper commenting and grading.
- Canvas has great import functions.
- It would be great if we could deal with multiple assignments at a time.
- Better visibility of how students see a course would also be helpful.
- Searching for rubrics is really bad. The rubrics from the current course should default to the top. As it now works, the user has to search through every course ever taught to find a rubric.