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Canva review conclusion

Overall, Canva is a really solid, easy-to-use app that is packed with features that make designing visual assets simple. Whilst not always a substitute for a professional graphic design tool or video editing application, it is considerably easier to use than such tools, and in many contexts will do the job just as well as them (and more cheaply, too).

The main downsides of Canva are the fact that it’s output formats are limited; there’s no way to back up projects; and support is email-only. Of those three flaws, the output formats issue is the most significant, as it limits your ability to start a design in Canva and have it finished off by a professional designer in another app. But given how cheap Canva is, it’s hard to feel too annoyed by these omissions.

I’ll leave you with a summary of the key pros and cons of Canva, and you’ll also find some information on some alternative tools below.

Our overall rating: 4.6 / 5

Key pros and cons of Canva

Pros of using Canva

It’s extremely good value — for a very small monthly fee you and several other users can get access to a host of design tools and millions of bundled graphics, photos and videos.
The Canva features are extremely easy to use, even if you don’t have any graphic design skills.
The free plan is very usable, and even comes with support.
Its brand kit option and the way it lets you upload your own photos and typefaces make it easy to ensure brand consistency across designs produced in Canva.
It provides a fantastic way not just to create promotional material, but, thanks to its graphic features, statistics too.
If you’re on a ‘Canva for Teams’ plan, you’ll find that Canva makes it extremely easy to collaborate on designs.
Its ‘Magic Resize tool’ makes it extremely easy to create lots of visual assets at once.
Canva’s mobile app is extremely functional and is particularly good for creating ‘on-the-go’ visuals for social media marketing purposes.
It provides an easy way to produce one-off printed items.

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Cons of using Canva

The formats you can output your visuals to are quite limited, with the lack of an ‘export to PSD’ option being a particular concern.
Canva is an online graphic design tool — so if you don’t have Internet access, you won’t be able to work on any of your designs.
There’s no obvious way to back up your projects.
There’s no phone support.
The range of apps and integrations provided is fairly limited.
The free version, while generally very useful, doesn’t let you export images with transparent backgrounds.

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Alternatives to Canva

There are quite a few alternatives to Canva available.
Browser-based alternatives

In terms of browser-based apps, key alternatives include Visme, Adobe Creative Cloud Express (formerly Adobe Spark) and VistaCreate (formerly Crello). These are similarly affordable graphic design tools that let non-professional designers create visual material easily. (We’ve yet to review all of them but we do have Visme vs Canva and Adobe Express vs Canva comparisons available.)
Adobe apps

It’s tempting to think of desktop Adobe applications like Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere (and other tools you get in an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription) as direct alternatives to Canva. But they are actually quite different beasts.

While Canva comes with a built-in library of graphics, stock photos and videos, when using the Adobe apps, you often have to source assets ‘outside’ of them. But they are nonetheless great tools for putting visual assets together with, and at the end of the day, considerably more functional than Canva.
Web design tools

Although Canva can technically be used as a web design tool, the truth is that there significantly better platforms available for building websites — just a few examples include Squarespace, Webflow, Wix and Shopify.

Now…over to you
Got any thoughts on our Canva review? Our any questions you’d like to ask about the tool? Leave them in the comments section below.