Is Canva Pro Worth It? What G2 Reviewers Think

Are you considering Canva as a solution to your growing design needs?

The software market is cluttered with an abundance of graphic design tools. But Canva stands out for its simplicity, versatility, and innovative features.

If you have a designer’s mind and want to paint a picture for your brand, Canva can be the right solution for you. It has already gained prominence in the market as a “designer’s favorite.” Ultimately, it is all about generating quality designs, and so far, Canva has thrived in the market. 

Canva is a highly accessible graphic design software and AI image generator that empowers brands and individuals to create stunning, professional-looking designs. Its easy and intuitive interface provides a respite from overly technical or code-heavy design software, which tends to be expensive and difficult. 

But how valuable is Canva for long-term use? Does it offer features that truly meet your business's demands? Or does upgrading to Canva Pro make more sense?

Let’s examine an in-depth guide based on G2 user reviews and see how it measures up. 

Canva ranks #1 for AI image generators as per G2's Summer 2024 grid report. Although it is a market leader, buyers are encouraged to consider individual needs while making a purchase decision.

Over 4,500 software buyers have reviewed Canva on G2. This article will review the cliffhangers of Canva app reviews and provide the necessary information to make the right decision.

Canva vs. Canva Pro: What are G2 users saying?

Canva’s free version is great if you are a beginner in graphic design. The tool can help you generate basic designs for most of your branding and marketing operations. With the vast repository of open-source templates, free credits, and stock photos, teams can create fresh graphics and improve their brand user experience.

However, for professionally adept graphic designers, Canva’s free version might not cut it. Designing core animations, complex flowcharts, and responsive graphics isn’t possible without upgrading to Canva Pro. 

To work on Canva Pro, users would need some background design knowledge and technical skills. 

All this said and done, is Canva Pro worth it? Let’s find out by looking at a side-by-side comparison of features of Canva Free and Canva Pro. 

What users like best:

Canva is very helpful for my design work. After using Canva Pro, my work has taken a speed boost. I can create designs with color codes, readily available graphics, and image editing options. These features are amazing, and customization is easy to implement.

- Canva Review, Yashvi S.

What users dislike:

Sometimes, even though I have a Canva Pro subscription, I might receive problems with logging in and saving designs.

- Canva Review, Pari P.

Canva Pro is more efficient and feature-packed than Canva. However, the basic and free version is still a viable tool that a diverse set of team members can work on to reduce dependency on brand marketing and content design teams. 

What do G2 reviewers like and dislike about Canva?

Is Canva safe to use? What does the market say?

Most of the G2 reviewers are generally satisfied with Canva. It has a short learning curve and provides easy tutorials to its verified users. The reviews state that Canva is a simple yet effective tool for teams to build creative artwork and visual narratives. 

G2 user reviews reveal that Canva has a user-friendly interface, a good asset library, good customer service, and AI-image generation features. The reviewers also claim that the app has less-to-zero compatibility glitches.

Let’s look at it in more detail:

What G2 users like 

Let’s look at some Canva functionalities that caught our attention due to their frequent mention in user reviews. 

• Variety of design templates: Canva has a huge repository of pre-made design templates for product marketing and product design teams. These templates can be stored in the personal brand kit and used for festive posts, brand promotions, and organic marketing.
• Simple and easy to use: Canva is intuitive and easy to use. Once you log in, the tool becomes self-explanatory. If you feel stuck in a project, there are easy design tutorials to learn more about new features.
  
• Drag-and-drop editing layout for easy assembly: Canva comes with a palette of drag-and-drop editing tools that enable you to customize your image as per the brand’s value proposition. You do not require any prior coding background for this. Simply drag and drop elements into your chosen template to make it more engaging.
• Support for multiple marketing materials: Canva provides several additional benefits, such as saved font type, font size, logo color, and background color, that help build consistent marketing materials. These features can be replicated across all your marketing materials to create a cohesive brand identity.
  

• Compatibility for graphic design: Canva enables you to build high-resolution graphics, vector art, and illustrations, all on a centralized platform. You can upload, edit, and modify your graphics directly on the app without breaking a sweat.
  

• Intuitive user interface: Canva has an organized and crisp user interface that creates a painless journey for the user. Through the search bar, users can access millions of global templates and reuse any of them in their graphic design workflow. Further, users can easily add body text, typefaces, and different animations to make their designs stand out.
  

• Sleek designs for business cards: Canva's business card reviews are quite prominent. Businesses are using photorealistic Canva templates to create digital and printed business cards. 
  
• AI text-to-image support: Over 79% of users recommend Canva for AI text-to-image features. The app provides a consolidated interface that includes an AI text generator for writing prompts and a standalone window to view, zoom in, out, and edit the generated images.  
• Exhaustive stock image uploads: You would never run out of stock image options with Canva. Even the free version offers over 3 million stock photos and graphics for you to choose from. Stock images can also be repurposed into posters, social media graphics, nonprofit banners, and so on.
  

• Support for social media posts: Canva can streamline your social media marketing strategy across Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Social media designers and marketers get auto-suggestions to develop newer graphics that help boost engagement across all channels.
• 24/7 customer service: Reviewers say Canva offers top-notch customer service. The customer service staff is approachable and assists businesses throughout the implementation process.

As I am in digital marketing, I need to create many digital assets for my campaigns and social media postings. Canva makes this easy for me with its wonderful templates and elements. Now, I don’t need a designer or editor. I can do everything myself. It is so easy and user-friendly that I can operate it easily from my phone as well as from my desktop.

- Canva review, Rahul J.

What G2 users dislike:

Most of the reviews favor Canva. However, some of them highlight the persistent challenges like confusion, cost, and a restrictive free version. Let’s look at these challenges in detail:

• Expensive: Canva pro can be expensive compared to free and open-source graphic design tools offering similar features. While small businesses and above can afford it, it is too much for an individual to invest in.
  

• Restrictive free version: Canva free has limited design credits, which make it unsuitable for professional use. Also, the images or videos edited on the free platform might be of lower quality.
  

• Limited capabilities: Canva has limited image editing and rendering capabilities. This is why you shouldn’t use it as a standalone tool for all your design requirements. Critical projects might require fast and efficient designing, which Canva doesn’t always provide.
• Limited assets: Canva has limited stock photo options and page layout options for teams. If you are working in high-paced B2B or B2C environments, this might hamper your content creation process and halt your design production.
  

Although Canva is ideal for basic design tasks, customers searching for more professional attributes might find it inadequate. Complex editing resources and features are relatively restricted when compared with professional design software programs.

- Canva Review, SEEMA C. 

What do G2 users say about Canva Pricing?

While looking at pricing options, it would be good to take a step back and gauge your business requirements. On G2, you can filter out Canva reviews based on employee size and business type to see if they coincide with your design requirements. 

Here are the top plans that Canva offers across small, mid and enterprise businesses:

• Canva Free: Canva Free would be ideal for early SaaS adopters and writers. It offers 1000+ design types, a drag-and-drop editor, AI-generated artworks and AI-generated text, three million stock images, design templates, and professional printing services. This plan starts at $0 per year for one person but still requires the buyer to purchase a subscription ethically.
• Canva Pro: Canva Pro is an upgraded version for expert graphic designers and data visualizers. It offers all of the Canva Free features plus new features. Users can access unlimited free templates, 100 million stock photos and videos, watermark and background removal, social media management, 24-hour customer support, file storage up to 1TB, image resize and translation, and 100 brand kits. The plan is priced at $120 per year per person.
• Canva Teams: Canva teams can be chosen for small to mid-sized sales and marketing teams. It includes all the features of Canva Pro and offers more team-centric features. Apart from all the features of the Canva Pro plan, it offers ISO certification and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, asset centralization, brand consistency, team reports and dashboards, online customer support, and project collaboration. The plan is priced at $100 per month per person and requires a minimum purchase of $300 for three people.
• Canva Enterprise: This plan is tailored specifically for large companies and enterprises. It can be a one-stop destination for all departments within an organization. Canva Enterprise can be suitable for businesses with growing online communities and market share. It revolutionizes the design process and provides in-depth design analysis for projects. Canva hasn’t revealed the quote for this plan. To know more, you can get in touch with their sales team.

What users like best:

We love the interface, it's easy to use. The templates save time on designing. Collaboration tools and integrations make working with the team seamless and allow Canva to be easily implemented into our work environment. The various pricing options make Canva our go-to graphical design and video editing solution. We use it many times per week.

- Canva Review, Tisagh C.

What users dislike:

Well, actually there are a few things I dislike about Canva. But if we should have to write it, then the price scheme is the same for all countries. Not all countries have the same buying power. People who live in lower-income countries are less likely to afford the Canva price.

- Canva Review, Oral T. 

What G2 users think about Canva features

Reviewers on G2 have highlighted different features of Canva and explained what worked and what didn’t. Referring to this featured list can allow you to align your expectations with this design tool. 

Here are the most popular features of Canva.

1. Variety of banner types

Canva offers multiple banner variants to support your marketing and customer acquisition processes. You can search for banner templates for websites, featured images, social media posts, display ads, and newsletters, and shortlist the best-suited banner for your business. You can also customize the banner and change animations, font style, typeface, and body text. 

2. Font selection

Canva provides the entire list of known system fonts that exist in your word processor. Not only that, you have the option to use multiple fonts within the same block of text to give a unique angle to your visual. You can also save your font type, size, and color options for different brand kits.

3. Stock image library

Reviewers have also recommended Canva for direct integration of brand graphics into brand assets. According to them, Canva has a robust global repository of predefined images that can be deployed for any brand hailing from any sector, such as retail, automotive, or healthcare. From carousels to seminar decks to advertisements to newsletters, Canva can be a one-stop shop to fuel your brand ideas and start something new.

4. Shape and clip art

Canva offers a global repository of various geometrical shapes and interesting clip art that elevate graphics. Reviewers also claim that these shapes add a touch of spunk to your graphic and help you draw audience connections for your brand. 

5. Template usage

Template usage enables you to track insights into your template consumption. The “active user” metric enables project owners to understand how many current designers use Canva. The template usage metric can give insights into the most preferred template and speed up the production of digital or physical media.

6. Layout editor 

Canva also provides drag-and-drop layouts or webpage layouts. It embeds some features of a web content management system (WCMS) to help users envision their brand website through a new lens. Users can drag and drop content layout elements into the visual editor and put together engaging visual assets. The Layout Editor is simple, intuitive, and easy to use. Reviewers claim that you can use it even if you don’t have a coding background. 

7. Ad sets

Canva’s advertising sets can be used to run ad campaigns via social media channels. Users can store their font, graphics, and call to action for every ad and create carousel sets to post as a story, sponsored ad, or pop-up. These ad sets can be customized according to the marketing and branding standards of companies to help create a consistent visual experience. 

8. Graphs and charts

Canva provides several graphs and charts to view and study historical data. These charts can be used to build data-driven visualizations and dashboards. By using insightful graphics in your content, you can become more relevant to your audiences. 

9. Export as different file types

Canva files can be saved, downloaded, and exported as other file formats. Users can save them as .pdf, .png, .svg, .doc, or .docx files and set the required resolution for their images. These files can also be transferred from one system to another without losing any of their contents. 

To get a more exhaustive review of Canva's best features, visit the features section and evaluate the list against your own preferences. 

How to use Canva’s AI image generator to supercharge your creativity

Canva has recently launched its AI-powered image generator, which designers can use to produce newer, fresher, and more personalized designs right from the get-go. The AI image generator by Canva works on a super-resolution generative adversarial network (SRGAN) that crafts extremely tailored, high-quality images. 

Anyone can use the functionality, be it an individual hobbyist or a content designer, to build efficient and attractive designs and take their work to a whole new level.

Reviewers on G2 have praised Canva for its affordability, user-friendly interface, and less noisy designs. They claim that the tool offers high-scale and photorealistic visuals and compare the quality to popular art generators like Adobe Firefly, Craiyon, Midjourney, and DALL-E, which have been eminent names right from the beginning of the technology. 

Canva's text-to-image also offers picture morphing, style and structure replication of uploaded images. But you would need to upgrade to Canva Pro. The upgraded features are magic media, magic switch, portrait generator, and magic morphing.

Alternative software categories for Canva

As most businesses realize the significance of creating a visual storytelling experience through brand design, the need for graphic design software grows. Today, there are a lot of options that you can explore for easy graphic design setups.

Here are some alternate graphic design categories that you can explore depending on the size and goals of your business workflows.  

1. AI image generators: In contrast to traditional design software, these tools are being adopted at a fast pace. They generate personalized, high-quality, and artistic images that users can refine according to their wishes. By simply writing textual prompts, users can produce multiple image variations in one go. They require no personal adjustment or editing and generate results similar to those of Canva or any graphic design tool.
   
2. Drawing software: Drawing or sketching software has been an engineer’s favorite in building prototypes, CAD design, or project dummies. These software help create visual models of any real-life object and render 3D images across teams. It also promotes image rasterization and 3D modeling.
3. Desktop publishing software: These tools create page designs and layouts for digital and print media. They can create proficient, professional, and sleek frameworks for print media like magazines or digital media like infographics on websites.
4. Vector graphics software: These tools are used to craft vector art, which is a combination of unidimensional horizontal or vertical lines. Vector graphics or vector art is a high-quality and high-resolution image that builds customer sentiment and brand value. Some examples include brand logos, intricate human sketches, and so on.
5. Flipbook software: These tools convert pre-selected images from PDF to HTML to create digital playbooks or embeddable flip books for websites. They also create interactable media for websites in a carousel format so that companies can provide a snapshot of their product literature on their websites. 

Still wondering whether Canva is good or not? Take a look at the most common software queries that surf up while evaluating Canva for business needs.  

Canva: Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Does Canva have an AI image generator?

Yes. Canva’s online text-to-image AI generation tool lets you craft engaging and intricate designs through an AI text generator interface. It is an open-source tool that anyone can use to design, edit, modify, repaint, and annotate images. Canva’s AI image generator has more features, like a magic switch, magic morph, image styling, and structuring. The user can replicate, replace, and repair personal image uploads to make them more upscale and photorealistic.

How do you generate an AI image with Canva?

Canva works on underlying DALL-E and Imagen by Google Cloud. These algorithms empower users to generate illustrative designs. The users have to specify parameters like resolution, image ratio, pixels, and brightness along with the standard prompt. For sections that the user isn’t satisfied with, they can submit follow-up image prompts to adjust the image.

What is the difference between Canva Pro and Canva?

Canva can be deployed and installed for free. It is suitable for simple designs and styles. Canva Pro offers a larger selection of templates, more security and storage, and fresh icons, shapes, and clipart for users. It is priced at $15 per person per month.

How can Canva be implemented to support marketing workflows?

Canva can be a team-wide tool that your sales and marketing teams can use to encourage consistency and standardization in visual content. Using Canva templates, you can scale website marketing strategy and social media management. Canva is a go-to tool for brand and digital marketing teams to standardize brand themes and logos. 

Canva can be used to create social media graphics, thumbnails, Instagram posts, LinkedIn images, infographics, graphs and charts, and many other assets. The best part — non-designers can build these assets without even upgrading to the pro version.

Does Canva support 3D rendering?

Canva is a 2D design software that doesn’t support computer-aided rendering. However, you can stack Canva with your design ERP implementation to build 3D prototypes. Integrating it with 3D modeling software or building information management software like Revit, Blender, AutoCAD, and SketchUp can help import and improve 3D designs.

Straight from Van Gogh’s condo 

Canva unleashes the inner painter in you, regardless of your lack of experience as a designer or an artist. It can support your content story with heartwarming visuals so your audience has something to hold on to. It connects you with your audience, makes you a better professional, and brings out the creative parts of you. 

Canva has empowered more than 4,500 software buyers to generate effortless designs without relying on overpriced painting and drawing software.

Now that you’ve evaluated unbiased G2 reviews for Canva, take a look at the top 10 Canva alternatives and competitors to make an informed purchase decision for the ideal graphic design software.