Canva is an accessible and intuitive graphic design platform for individuals, entrepreneurs, and small business owners of different skill levels seeking a straightforward way to create professional-quality designs. It has acquired a large, dedicated user base since its release in 2013. Due to its popularity and affordable price point, many DIYers, hobbyists, and newbie self-taught designers are also drawn to it for side hustles and work-from-home start-ups. The beauty of Canva is that it successfully helps small business owners create professional-looking designs, reducing their need to hire a professional designer. Like many skilled graphic designers, I have a love-hate relationship with Canva and have developed strong opinions about it. Despite my frustrations with it, I still consider it a great tool for small businesses and even use it myself. In this post, I will explore its strengths and its limitations.
Canva’s Pros: The Appeal of Simplicity and Accessibility
Affordable: When Adobe Creative software, the industry-standard, is overpriced and prohibitive and traps the buyer into lengthy contracts, Canva offers an affordable option for small business owners with tight budgets. Adobe has long been the go-to software for creative professionals. It has many applications covering an array of creative needs, such as graphic design, video editing, web design, and photo editing. Adobe uses a subscription model for its software with pricing as follows:
- Adobe Month-to-Month Pricing:
- One application for $34.49 per month
- The complete package of all applications for $89.99 per month
- Adobe Annual Contract Pricing:
- One application for $22.99 per month or pre-pay $263.88 for one year
- The complete package of all applications for $59.99 per month or pre-pay $659.88 for one year
- Excessive fees charged for early cancelation (Adobe, 2024)
Most creatives require two or more applications to meet their needs, so the majority must get the more expensive option whether they need all the applications or not. On the other hand, Canva Pro has a single price of $15 per month and also offers a FREE option with limitations (Canva, 2024).
Easy to Use: The complexity of industry-standard professional creative software is a barrier to entry for small business owners new to graphic design. Adobe has many applications for different purposes. Depending on your needs, if using Adobe, you may need to learn at least two, if not more, applications. Also, each program is complex, with many features that give you complete control of all design aspects. Canva has an intuitive interface for non-designers, giving them a simplified yet robust version of design software. Canva’s ease of use makes it more accessible to business owners who are not professional designers, do not have a design team or design budget, and do not have time to learn more complex software.
Templates and Resources: Canva provides various resources within its framework to make creating designs quick and easy, which prevents the need to hop from one program to another or look elsewhere for additional resources like stock images and fonts. Canva has over 610,000 templates: about 350,000 premium templates and about 250,000 free templates. Canva includes a wide range of typefaces, each with various font styles and weights. It also has a library of elements, including stock photos, videos, illustrations, icons, shapes, and doodles. Canva has limited video capabilities: creating videos with transitions, animations, text overlays, and effects, trimming, cropping, and adding multiple audio tracks. Canva also includes several applications, such as QR code generators. Advanced features such as AI-powered tools, interactive components, and social media-specific templates make Canva even more versatile. With custom charts and graphs or the ability to add clickable links, Canva helps users produce engaging and impactful designs for print and digital media.
Time-Saving Features: Canva has several features that help save your valuable time and make design work faster and more efficient. You can quickly select and move elements with the drag-and-drop functionality. One of my favorite features is the one-click resizing, which instantly adapts a design for different platforms, such as resizing an Instagram post for Facebook. Canva’s brand kits save even more time—you can set your brand colors, typefaces, and logos, and apply them to any design with a single click. You can even click to shuffle through multiple variations and color choices. Additional tools like templates, the social media content planner, and real-time collaboration further enhance productivity.
Collaboration Features: Canva is a great platform for teams or businesses with multiple locations that share assets to maintain a consistent brand. Canva makes it easy to share designs for collaboration or final viewing. Several users can work on a design at the same time and see real-time changes, with each user marked by their own cursor. Team members can share their input by leaving comments directly within Canva designs, and they can request feedback or revisions. Teams can use brand kits and shared folders for brand assets to facilitate branding collaboration. Role-based permissions and template locking allow sharing while preventing unauthorized edits. Canva integrates with third-party tools like Slack, facilitating further communication and streamlining workflows. Version history allows team members to see what others contribute and what changes have been made.
Canva’s Cons: Understanding Canva’s Design Limitations
Storage and File Management: Canva has an all-inclusive browser-based structure. Everything you need and use in your designs must be uploaded to and used within Canva’s structure. That means you cannot save native Canva files locally, and all photos and other design elements, even additional fonts, must be uploaded to Canva’s framework for use. You cannot link to design elements saved locally to conserve storage. Canva Pro gives 1 TB of storage, while the free option gives only 5 GB of storage. While 1 TB may sound like a lot of storage, it can be limiting. It may be plenty for individuals and small business owners, especially those who use it primarily for social media graphics and do not need to store projects indefinitely. They can export a JPG or PNG for a post or even store those files on their hard drive after deleting the working Canva file. However, this can be problematic for a professional designer or larger-scale agency if they were to use Canva primarily. They typically keep their working files indefinitely and back them up periodically, as they may need to refer to or reuse them in the future. I would like to see Canva offer an option to upgrade storage space without upgrading to another pricing tier, but Canva does not offer this solution. Currently, 1 TB is the maximum storage across all paid accounts, even for the enterprise tier.
Lack of Customization and Advanced Design Features: Canva is a tool that simplifies complex design processes for those without a design background. While Canva simplifies design for beginners, advanced features like detailed typography adjustments or professional-level photo editing are best achieved with specialized software like Adobe. Some tools are simplistic compared to professional design software and achieving precise adjustments may not be possible in Canva. For example, Adobe products allow fine control over kerning and leading, down to adjusting individual letter spacing, while Canva only lets you adjust an entire text block. Canva also offers limited photo editing, with background removal and basic adjustments, but lacks the precision and control of Photoshop.
Additionally, Canva has no painting features like Procreate, so creating unique, advanced illustrations in raster format is impossible. Canva also has limited vector capabilities, which I will address later. While professional designers may use more specialized tools for complex tasks, Canva remains valuable for many design aspects—especially if you want to create something quickly or on a budget. While Canva might not offer the full range of capabilities of professional design software, it still facilitates users to easily create stunning visuals for marketing, social media, and business needs.
Ownership and Licensing Concerns: Ownership and licensing are very limiting when using Canva. Individual elements within Canva’s element library are licensed stock, meaning they cannot be redistributed, resold, or used in copyrighted or trademarked designs without significant modification. Creating a unique arrangement of elements might allow you to claim ownership of the design. However, the individual assets still belong to Canva. For undisputed full ownership of any design created in Canva, the user should upload and use their own elements for designs and refrain from using the element library. Since Canva is layout software, you will need additional software like Procreate, Photoshop, Illustrator, or Affinity Designer to create your own unique elements. Pro users can access premium elements, while Free users can access fewer elements. If you downgrade from Pro, any Pro elements used previously in designs must be replaced to maintain access.
Limited Vector Graphics and Logo Design: Canva is more robust than desktop publishing software for graphic design, but it has many limitations compared to Adobe products. One very significant limitation is the lack of vector graphics capabilities. Canva includes a selection of pre-made vector shapes and icons in its element library. Canva licenses these elements, which cannot be edited at a complex level or be included within copyrighted or trademarked designs. If exporting a PDF, text and some simple shapes will be vector, but Canva does not offer true vector export options (e.g., SVG, EPS, or AI file formats). Vector formats are ideal for logo design. While Canva allows the combination of simple shapes, it does not support the nuanced vector manipulation or layer controls necessary for custom vector design, such as manipulating individual anchor points, creating custom paths, adjusting Bezier curves, or working with a vector mesh. Professional software offers the greatest flexibility for more intricate, scalable, unique, and copyrightable logo designs and illustrations.
Color Spaces, Printing, and Color Separations: Canva originally was a software service intended to create digital graphics, such as graphics for social media. This is still what it does best. Canva has added printing services but still operates in RGB (Red, Green, Blue). The RGB color space is ideal for designs for display on screens. It lacks CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) support, which is crucial for accurate print colors and control. This can cause color inconsistencies when printing designs like logos or marketing materials. Canva also does not have Pantone or color separation capabilities, limiting its use for high-quality printing methods such as screen or offset printing like newspapers. Designers often need to export designs to other software like Adobe for proper color adjustments, but this extra step can lead to color shifts. This is especially important for industries and branding requiring consistent color reproduction.
How to Best Leverage Canva
Small Business Owners: While Canva isn’t designed for intricate projects requiring industry-standard tools, its ease of use and efficiency make it perfect for quick, everyday designs. Canva excels at its original function—graphic design for digital and social media—making it ideal for small business owners needing routine, high-volume marketing assets like social media posts, blog headers, email graphics, and event invitations. For wellness businesses and medical specialists who frequently need to engage their audience with fresh marketing materials, Canva’s speed and ease of use make it a great option for quick content like appointment reminders, health tips, or seasonal promotions. Building a brand kit within Canva to maintain consistent colors, fonts, and logo usage for a cohesive look and a professional and consistent appearance for your marketing efforts is extremely helpful and saves time.
Many businesses start with Canva to build their brand visuals and later collaborate with professional designers to take their branding to the next level. For those who need more specialized capabilities, working with a professional designer can complement the groundwork laid with Canva. For business owners who love Canva’s flexibility, working with a professional designer can elevate your most critical projects while letting you continue managing your day-to-day design needs. Outsourcing complex designs and major projects like logo design and brand identity to a professional graphic designer ensures high-quality, scalable designs that elevate a brand’s credibility and save money in the long run by avoiding the need to redo designs later. Mistakes in DIY design can lead to costly revisions, particularly if a professional needs to be hired later. The rework costs and time spent on corrections can be much more expensive than starting with a professional designer. Consider professional help with such foundational assets to ensure that your business presents itself consistently and with the professionalism that builds trust in healthcare. While Canva empowers users to create visually appealing designs, some technical aspects—like file setup for print or proper color selection—are best left to professionals to ensure quality and consistency in important projects.
Newspaper and Other Print Advertising Design: Newspaper and other print advertisers are more frequently creating their own ads to save time or costs and because they know what they like and want, but they may unknowingly encounter challenges. Working with the in-house designer can help avoid common pitfalls. Common issues I often see and fix as the Creative Director at a newspaper are:
- Incorrect dimensions.
- Low-resolution files.
- Copy that is too small to read in print.
- Color choices that make the ad hard or impossible to read in print or affect the ad’s ability to stand out to the reader from the page.
For quick and visually appealing layouts, Canva excels, especially for newsletters or smaller publications. However, larger complex print materials often benefit from advanced tools that provide precise control over layouts, color, and typography. Newspapers especially require precise color management and separations, which Canva does not handle well. These challenges often require extensive editing or complete redesigning of the ad to meet print standards, which a more experienced professional designer can anticipate and resolve upfront. Sales teams sometimes encourage advertisers to DIY their ads, not realizing the technical challenges this poses. By working closely with the designer or design team, we can better guide advertisers toward polished, print-ready results.
Professional Designers: Even professional designers can and do use Canva. I certainly do. As a freelancer, I can identify with small business owners’ needs and love Canva for the same reasons. I also need to produce routine high-volume designs like social media graphics for my own marketing needs. I create all my social media graphics for posts in Canva. I also use Canva to generate QR codes, even for projects I make outside Canva. A Canva account, even a free one, is handy when dealing with Canva users because they sometimes send you their Canva creations. You can create custom templates for social media posts and other digital assets for your clients’ brands. You can also build and sell templates online to help other small businesses. While Canva is a valuable tool, professional designers still need advanced software for complex projects like logo design and brand identity, but they can still keep Canva as a supplement in their toolbelt.
Conclusion
While Canva is an invaluable tool for small businesses, including the wellness and medical industries, its advanced design and print quality limitations may hinder success in some areas. Canva is a fantastic tool for small businesses to handle digital tasks affordably and efficiently. However, for important branding and printed marketing materials, investing in a professional designer ensures your business maintains a credible and polished image and avoids costly mistakes. By leveraging Canva where it excels, and outsourcing complex designs, small businesses can maintain both quality and efficiency.
References
- Adobe. (2024, October 16). Creative Cloud for individuals pricing changes. https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/subscription-price-increase-2023-individual-plans.html
- Canva. (2024, October 16). Pricing. https://www.canva.com/pricing/
