The small business Swiss Army Knife for professional graphics editing and collaboration on a shoestring budget.
October 23, 2017
The small business Swiss Army Knife for professional graphics editing and collaboration on a shoestring budget.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Canva
We use Canva across our organization. While we have both corporate and individual licenses for high-end suites like Adobe, Canva allows us to collaborate quickly and easily, including with clients, some who have very little or no graphics experience. Similarly, while my own graphics background is extensive those in our organization who do not have a lot of experience with editing tools are able to jump in and start using Canva and collaborate both within and across teams with very little help. It's incredibly intuitive and has a huge range of resources, making it the go-to tool to quickly spin up everything from blog headers and social media assets to complex marketing brochures and presentations with incredibly professional results. The ability to share templates and resources so easily makes Canva invaluable. I've spent a great deal of money on graphics apps over the years, but Canva (at a fraction of the cost) has become my "go-to." The same can be said within our organization.
- Canva allows you to spin up incredibly professional looking images quickly. The massive library of templates allows you to select a base look and feel that already applies solid design principles, making it easy to change text, swap out images and customize the look and feel on the fly. It closes the gap between novices and intermediate user output very quickly.
- It's a really affordable app. While you can drop thousands on pro suites like Adobe Photoshop, the learning curve is daunting. The free version of Canva gives you plenty to work with without ever spending a dime. Choosing to step up to the "Canva for Business" plan was a simple choice because of the low-cost threshold and high ROI. It also allows you to go month-to-month if you're trying to determine if it's a good fit (which doesn't take long).
- Canva makes collaborating simple. Both our Customer Experience and Marketing Teams share designs back and forth with ease. Our Customer Experience team is able to do the same with clients. The permission levels make it easy to share either a single asset or an entire folder with others. It's an essential part of our project management toolkit.
- One of the biggest points of frustration is Canva's flat folder structure. Because we use the app so heavily you quickly become bogged down trying to find an asset in the stack. Nested folders would make organizing elements and production pieces a lot easier. At the moment, this is the single biggest time sink, and easily fixed.
- Being able to move assets between my "personal" Canva account and my "business" account would be handy. Sometimes I end up creating a resource on the fly only to realize I've done it on the wrong account, with no apparent way to move it from one to the other.
- While Canva has a really low price point, it can add up as we bring more and more users in to collaborate. It would be helpful for Canva to offer discounts based on higher numbers of users. This isn't a problem with Adobe because so few people have the ability to use their apps. However, Canva's simplicity and utility make it useful to many more people within and organization, and while the ROI is significant, the cost can be too when scaling it up.
- The number of truly usable images in their free library is scant, and the ones offered at a cost tend to be of very poor quality. While the paid "Canva for Work" account gives you more options at no cost, there are limitations, with the biggest again being the lack of quality options. I work around this by using public domain and creative commons resournces like Unsplash and Pexels, but this can be time-consuming (having to go from one outside resource to the next, and then uploading them). It really cuts into the ROI. If Canva wants a place to improve, boosting their internal library is low-hanging fruit.
- As a small business person, Canva is saving me thousands. Canva's massive library of presets for virtually any social media and business communications resource makes it invaluable. Public domain and creative commons libraries like Unsplash and Pexels extend the range of Canva's usefulness without adding a dime to the budget. These two resources are the perfect partners and have taken both my personal and organizational budget down by hundreds of dollars a month. When you're a resource-constrained startup this is critical.
- Canva has reduced the amount of time it's taking me to produce high-end marketing and communications tools by at least 50%. I can spin up a blog slider in minutes, and a full corporate brochure in under an hour, with both looking like they were done by an agency.
- Canva has reduced both the amount of time it takes to produce client assets and the cost of doing so. We've yet to do a case study to determine the ROI, but it's significant, freeing up critical resources on our team. When you're a startup, this is a game-changer.
There are real contrasts between high-end suites like Adobe and Corel. Canva isn't meant to compete with their ability to produce high-end custom graphics. What it does well is produce the most common content at lightning speed, with a high degree of professionalism, and at a fraction of the learning curve and cost. With more direct competitors like PicMonkey and LucidPress I find Canva easier to use, and more cost-effective. It's a solid collaboration tool with very little friction.