Canva, the popular graphic design platform, offers both a free version and a paid subscription called Canva Pro. If you’re a non-designer small business owner, you may be wondering if upgrading to Canva Pro is worth the investment. In this article, we’ll talk about some Canva Pro features that we think are pretty awesome and how they compare to what’s offered in the free version.
1. Template Library
Canva Free:
The free version of Canva offers a diverse selection of templates to get you started. You’ll find templates for various purposes, such as social media posts, presentations, flyers, posters, and more. These templates provide a solid foundation and can be customized to suit your needs. While you’re not able to access the whole template library with the free version, the ones available are still a fantastic resource, and definitely enough to get you started.
Canva Pro:
The pro version offers a ton more options for templates. When I was using the free version, I noticed that most of the templates I saved were premium templates and I wasn’t able to access them. That being said, I believe that the free version has plenty to choose from. While the pro version gives you a lot more options and varieties, I personally don’t think this feature alone is worth the upgrade.
2. The Brand Kit
Canva Free:
The free version of Canva lets you upload your logo so that you can use it in your designs.
Canva Pro:
The Brand Kit in Canva Pro allows you to upload your logos, choose your brand colors, and select your brand fonts, all in one convenient place. This centralized hub of your brand elements makes it a breeze to access and apply them consistently throughout all your designs. If you’ve ever tried customizing templates to match your brand by manually changing all the colors and fonts, you understand why this feature is my favorite. It honestly saves me so much time, especially when creating Pinterest and Instagram graphics.
I think my favorite part is that with just one click, you can apply your entire color palette to the design. No need to click on each element individually and change their colors to match your branding. You’ll be amazed at how much faster you can create a bunch of graphics with this one small change.
If you’re someone who creates graphics for other brands (such as virtual assistant, social media manager or Pinterest manager) Canva Pro allows you to create up to 100 different brand kits.
While having more templates to choose from is not necessarily worth the upgrade, this feature right here is *chef’s kiss*.
3. Magic Resize
Canva Free:
Not available.
Canva Pro:
Another time-saving feature! Magic Resize allows you to resize your designs to fit different social media platforms or marketing channels with one click, eliminating the need to recreate designs from scratch for each platform. If the image has different proportions you’re still going to have to move things around to fill the space better, but that’s all. Super easy and fast.
4. Background Remover
Canva Free:
Not available.
Canva Pro:
With Canva Pro, you have the ability to remove the background from images and graphics, creating a transparent background. This is incredibly useful when you want to overlay your designs onto different backgrounds or combine multiple elements seamlessly. This is a cool feature that can come in handy, but now that you can easily do this on your iPhone, it doesn’t seem like such an amazing groundbreaking tool. There are also tools like remove.bg and Adobe Background Remover that will do this for free. That being said, having the ability to do this with just one click right inside of Canva is very convenient.
5. Premium Stock Images and Elements
Canva Free:
You can explore a limited selection of free stock images, illustrations, icons, and design elements. There’s definitely enough here to get you started.
Canva Pro:
With the pro version, you get access to an extensive collection of premium stock images and design elements, elevating the quality and professionalism of your visuals. Just like with templates, when you have Canva Pro, you get a much larger selection of stock photos and elements. I do think there’s enough in the pro version, but being able to use the pro elements has definitely made my life easier. If you plan on using a lot of stock photos, upgrading to Canva Pro is 100% worth it. If you don’t upgrade, you can still find more stock photos on separate websites that offer stock photos like pexels.com (free) or istockphoto.com (paid).
6. AI Powered Tools
Canva Free:
Text to Image, Magic Edit, Magic Design, Magic Write, Presentations, and Translate are free for everyone to use.
Canva Pro:
Magic Eraser, and Beat Sync are only available for pro users. Some of the tools like Magic Write and Translate give you more uses/credits per month if you have the pro version.
Canva seems to be actively working on their AI tools and is constantly adding more options.
7. Storage and Folders
Canva Free:
When it comes to storage, Canva Free provides you with 5GB of space to store your assets, including photos, videos, logos, and more. It’s a decent amount of storage for most users, especially if you primarily work with images and smaller files. However, if you frequently deal with larger assets such as high-resolution videos or audio files, that 5GB limit can fill up quite quickly.
Canva Pro:
The Pro version comes with 1TB of storage. With this much storage, you’ll have plenty of space to store and organize all your files, regardless of their size. Whether you’re a professional photographer, a content creator, or a business owner working with multimedia content, the increased storage capacity of Canva Pro ensures that you won’t run out of space anytime soon.
Having more storage not only gives you the freedom to keep all your assets in one place but also eliminates the need to constantly delete files to free up space. You can easily access and manage your larger files without worrying about storage limitations, allowing you to focus on your creative projects without interruptions.
I really like this feature because all my files are in one place and I don’t have to worry about downloading my files and storing them somewhere else like Google Drive or Dropbox. And if I ever need to edit anything I can locate the files and make edits quickly.
8. Social Media Scheduler
Canva Free:
Not Avaialble.
Canva Pro:
If you’re already using a social media scheduler, whether it’s a free version or a paid one, it’s worth considering the benefits of Canva Pro and potentially making the switch. The convenience and added features you get with Canva Pro make it a compelling option, and you may find that it offers everything you need at a comparable price.
One of the advantages of Canva Pro is the ability to eliminate extra steps in your workflow. Instead of creating social media graphics in Canva, saving them, and then downloading them to schedule them through a different platform, Canva Pro allows you to streamline the process by publishing your posts directly from within Canva itself.
Consolidating your social media graphics creation and scheduling into a single tool like Canva Pro can also help reduce costs. Instead of paying for a separate social media scheduler, you can potentially get all the extra pro features of Canva Pro for around the same price. This means you can enjoy the convenience of scheduling posts while also taking advantage of the other amazing features offered by Canva Pro.
9. Download Options
Canva Free:
You can export files as JPG, PNG, PDF Standard, PDF Print, MP4 Video, and GIF.
Canva Pro:
With Canva Pro, you have the advantage of downloading all the file types available in Canva Free, plus the addition of SVG files. What’s more, Canva Pro provides extra options for certain file types. For example, you can save PNG files with a transparent background, ensuring seamless integration into your designs. You also have the ability to download higher quality files and compressed versions. While the download options may not differ significantly between the free and pro versions, having this flexibility is certainly beneficial when creating files for various purposes like print, social media, and website graphics.
10. Support
Canva Free:
The free version offers email support. You can technically email them any time, but they might take up to a week to get back to you.
Canva Pro:
You get priority support from Canva’s customer service team as a Canva Pro subscriber. This ensures prompt assistance whenever you encounter issues or have questions, helping you make the most of the platform. Support is available 24/7 and you can usually expect a response within 24 hours. While I personally haven’t had the need to contact support, it’s nice to know that I can get a prompt response if I ever need help.
Is it worth it?
So, when it comes to Canva Free versus Canva Pro, the big question is: is the PRO version worth it? Well, it all depends on what you’re looking for in a design tool. After comparing the features, Canva Pro offers valuable additions that can enhance your design experience and save you time.
Canva Pro goes beyond the free version by providing an extensive library of premium templates, a convenient Brand Kit feature for consistent branding, time-saving tools like Magic Resize and Background Remover, access to premium stock images and elements, AI-powered tools, increased storage capacity, an integrated social media scheduler, additional download options, and priority support.
Considering its affordability at just $12.99 per month or $119 per year, I believe that Canva Pro is a worthwhile investment for individuals and businesses looking to elevate their design game.
If you’re still not sure if it’s worth it, sign up for a free 30 day trial and check it out! You can test all these extra features during your trial and decide if you’ll use them enough and if it’s worth it to you.