Canva transformed the design industry by offering user-friendly graphic design tools to people of all skill levels, enabling even non-designers to produce stunning designs. While Canva excels in creating presentations, blog images, social media posts, and basic photo editing, its recent acquisition by Atlassian has increased prices, limited features, and attempts to sell more to customers.
Making free digital assets is still possible with Canva's DIY approach. However, the introduction of Canva has been followed by a surge in alternative options, some of which offer free services. In contrast, others boast a more intuitive interface or exclusive features that may require payment or cannot be found on Canva. Note that professional-level tools like Adobe Photoshop are not included, as they need a substantial amount.
If you are looking for a budget-friendly option or seeking a new design experience, the following list of the best Canva alternatives may assist you in your search.
1. Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark presents an impressive range of features, making it a top choice for those seeking a Canva alternative. It's part of the Adobe ecosystem, yet you don't need to own other Adobe products like Photoshop or InDesign to use it. There is even a free plan available, and the premium options are more affordable compared to Canva.
The free version has some limitations, but it provides access to thousands of free icons and images. Creating social media and marketing designs is unrestricted, though the designs will be marked with the Adobe Spark watermark.
Features:
- Extensive template library for creating unique designs, including options for social media graphics, presentations, photo collages, and more
- Ready-to-use templates for special events such as holidays and sales
- Branding feature to apply your logo, color scheme, and font to all designs in Spark
- Sharing capabilities to collaborate with others or seamlessly transfer designs to other Adobe Creative Cloud programs
- A rich collection of backgrounds, icons, photos, and other digital assets
- Convenient download option for generating designs in PNG, JPG, or PNG formats
- Seamless integration with Google Drive for storing all designs
- Easy resizing tool to adjust the dimensions of a previous design for platforms such as Facebook or Instagram
Pricing:
Free Plan – $0.00
Premium Plan – starts at $9.99 per month
2. Visme
Visme is slightly pricier than other Canva alternatives, yet it focuses on complex designs such as infographics and marketing materials. It excels in producing charts and widgets for internal use and team collaboration, making it especially useful for social media marketers. With its collaboration features, it is ideal for working with your entire team.
Features:
- Stylish templates with pre-designed layouts for creating infographics, charts, and more
- Consistent brand management with the brand kit feature.
- Compatibility with PowerPoint for importing and exporting.
- Privacy options available in some plans
- Extensive library of images, audio, video, illustrations, GIFs and more
- Team collaboration features such as comments, annotations, user roles, and folder permissions
- A streamlined organization with tools like a file manager, analytics, and team sharing
Pricing:
- Basic – free
- Starter – $12.25 per month
- Pro – $24.75 per month
- Teams – contact sales
3. Crello
Crello has an interface similar to Canva, with a convenient search bar for accessing thousands of templates and pre-sets dimensions for designs like Facebook posts. While offering a free plan like Canva, it limits you to 5 design downloads per month. You have the ability to add elements, set color schemes with the branding kit, and easily place objects and text boxes anywhere in the design module through drag-and-drop functionality.
Features:
- An efficient image cropping tool to cut out any desired section
- Eye-catching photo filters to instantly transform the look of your design
- Rotation and flipping capabilities for images.
- A quick background removal tool
- Creative effects such as frames and speech bubbles.
- A wide range of design elements, including shapes, stickers, and badges
- Audio editing features to add music to pictures and audio to videos
- A vast selection of over 30,000 design templates for various needs, such as blogs, headers, social media, business cards, and marketing
Pricing:
- Starter – free
- Pro – $10.00 per month
4. Stencil
Stencil is a photo editor that is user-friendly and sleek, generating high-quality images without the complexity of software like Photoshop. It's perfect for small businesses that don't require advanced features for their visual content.
Features:
- Advanced design tools such as color picker, live previews, and safe areas
- Direct Instagram posting through SMS feature.
- Wide social media sharing options
- A wealth of photos, templates, quotes, fonts, icons, and graphics at your disposal
- 100+ pre-set sizes for seamless integration on various platforms like social media and presentations
- Integration with Buffer for scheduling social media images through Stencil
Pricing:
- Free – $0.00
- Pro – $9.00 per month
- Unlimited – $12.00 per month
5. Snappa
Snappa is a great choice for creating graphics for social media and personal profiles, as well as for bloggers. With pre-made templates for easy-to-achieve ideal dimensions and access to millions of free high-resolution photos, the design process is made quick and efficient. Although its pricing is a bit higher than Canva's, Snappa offers some exclusive editing features.
Features:
- A user-friendly interface with a vast collection of free templates
- An extensive library of high-resolution images and graphics
- Direct connection to social media and Buffer
- Option to upload custom fonts
- Support for collaboration and multiple users
- Efficient background removal tools
Pricing:
- Free – $0.00
- Pro – $10.00 per month
- Team – $20.00 per month
Bottom-line
Considering Canva alternatives is a wise choice if you're looking for a cheaper and more user-friendly design tool. From Adobe Spark to Visme, these options offer similar features, so your choice largely depends on interface preference. The good news is, each of these tools offers a free version, allowing you to try them out and select the one that suits you best. If you're still unsatisfied, there are many more options available, such as Easil, Fotor, Piktochart, BeFunky, DesignBold, Desygner, and Venngage, among others. However, not all of these options may provide a free trial version.
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