Canva Pro Review: Canva is a graphic platform founded in Perth, Australia, by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams on 1 January 2012. It was introduced to help people design various graphic elements for their websites and social media accounts at ease. By using Canva, one can build Logos, Thumbnails, Featured Images, Posts easily. The platform is free to use. However, Canva also offers paid subscriptions like Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise for extended use of their amazing library.
I came across Canva in 2017. Since then, I’ve been using Canva for every creative need of mine. That includes my Website design, YouTube and also my social media accounts. The process of creating them used to be a hectic task. Canva made it easier than any other software out there, including Photoshop.
How Canva Made It Easier Than Photoshop?
Before Canva, doing those tasks requires a highly skilled professional who knows some fancy tools like Photoshop and Illustrator. I’ve been using Photoshop since college and trust me it requires more time to master it. With Canva, everyone can design easily. Unlike Photoshop, Canva doesn’t require more time to mastering its basics. All you need is a basic knowledge of Microsoft Paint, Internet Browsing, Basic Layering, Graphic Symbols and their usages. If you know all these, you are good to go with Canva.
Canva also contain about 420,000+ pre-designed templates and the number gets increased day by day. These templates are predesigned by professionals and the user can change them according to their needs. For instance, changing the font, colour palettes, background and the user can also add some graphic elements as well. Believe it or not, these templates drastically reduce the time to get on the right track in a creative process.
For instance, you want to design something creative for your school competition. Instead of banging your head onto the wall for ideas, you can simply search for the school-related templates in Canva. Once you find something great, you can simply choose the design and start working on it easily. In the creative process, getting the right idea can help a lot. Canva helped me a lot with this. This may be the reason why Canva is still thriving in the creative business and gaining huge profits.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it’s better than Photoshop or Illustrator. It just gives hope for the people who don’t know how to utilize them easily.
Canva Free:
Canva offers its tools and services through Free and Paid subscription models. The free tier subscription can be accessed by simply signing up for a free account. You can also use your Gmail or Facebook account for that. In the free subscription tier, you get access to the following elements.
You can almost get anything above just for free as long as they don’t have a ‘Crown’ or ‘Pro’ sign on it. To access those premium elements, you have to upgrade your account to Pro.
Review: Canva Free
Canva Free tier is good and posses some unique graphic elements, fonts and images. You can use them all in your designs without paying a penny. Even the free templates are also good and have the potential to give your design a good vibe. By using the free tier subscription, a user can access graphic elements and also access stock images as well.
Since May 2019, Canva announced the acquisitions of Pixabay and Pexels, two free stock photography websites from Germany. It enabled Canva users to access their extensive photo library filled with stock images for designs. Canva gives access to that library for free users as well. You can also do many things in the free tier without any restrictions.
- Drag and drop elements.
- Upload your images.
- Select a custom size for your designs.
- Download image in different formats & high quality.
I started designing in Canva with a free tier and I got no complaints at all. The designs that I made with free account turn out to be amazing and spell bounding. If you are a beginner, my advice is to go with a free tier.
Canva Pro:
Canva Pro is the premium subscription tier where it offers everything in its library for individuals and smaller teams. You can find the subscription costs below. Please do note that all These prices were updated on 2-JUN-2021. If you want to know the updated prices according to your region, you can check them out here.
Canva Pro Review
Canva Pro Review: By upgrading the free account to pro, you’ll get unlimited access to everything in the extended library of Canva. This extended library can only be accessed by pro users. The library is filled with premium images, music, videos, and elements, and some additional features like the Background Remover, Magic Resize, version history, and more.
I recently upgraded from free tier to pro and the experience has been amazing for me. When you are on the free tier, you are restricted to some amazing content and you keep on search the web for their replacement. Before purchasing a pro subscription, I used to do that all the time and that swallowed my time a lot. Sometimes the replacements can be found easily and sometimes not. I even used to do photo manipulations in photoshop, if the replacement has got some unnecessary elements.
But, with Canva Pro, you will not be doing that and everything you need is right there with a simple search option. The graphics in Canva are great and fits everything within your imagination. One of the best parts is that this library gets updated and new elements get added to it every day.
The premium templates are amazing and neatly designed. Some of the premium designs resembled just the way I wanted them to be with some font and colour changes here and there. The time to make a design was drastically reduced due to Canva Pro.
Here’s how to upgrade:
1. From go to the homepage, click the button to upgrade at the bottom of the side menu.
2. Click to choose between monthly, yearly, or yearly paid in monthly installments, yearly paid in monthly installments payment plans.
3. Select a payment option from the drop-down menu.
4. Enter your details, depending on your selected payment option, and complete the upgrade.
Canva Pro Review: Final Words
Canva is an amazing tool and has the potential to save a huge amount of time in designing something. The designs that came out of Canva (no matter pro or free) can compete for professionally designed images using tools like Photoshop or Illustrator. People don’t need extensive training to use it. All you need is some creativity, a pinch of imagination and a keen eye to catch the right template. If you have them, the sky is the only limit. By using Canva, you can design professional-looking graphic images within no time. The pro tier removes the restriction and will help unlocks your creativity.
However, I suggest every beginner try the free tier first and trust me, you’ll end up taking pro just like me. It’s the final step, Canva is an awesome tool and a huge time saver.
