Chances are you’ve heard of software like “Photoshop” or “Illustrator” and technical terms such as “.PSD” and “vector”. If you’re not familiar with advanced design tools and terminology, you can easily feel intimidated when it comes to graphic design for your projects. As a creative person, entrepreneur, freelancer, or marketing professional, you undoubtedly need to design all kinds of creative materials and this is where Canva comes to the rescue. In this article, we tell you about all that Canva has to offer, including our opinion on both the free and paid services, the Canva pro price, their free trial , as well as ways to save on subscription costs.
Canva is a website that offers various graphic design tools and templates for all kinds of creative needs. In their own words, “Canva makes designing quality creative assets easy for everyone“. Among the graphic materials you can design are resumes, infographics, slideshows, graphic elements for social media, among dozens of others. Using Canva is free – however, you’ve probably seen that Canva also offers a paid Pro version. We will go into detail on both the free and paid versions – so let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Free Canva Account
Canva offers several of its tools and hundreds of its templates for free. To access these, you must simply create a free user profile. This is what you will see as a free registered user:
There is a menu on the left that allows you to go to the home page, an access to a specific project’s portal, a page with all available free templates, as well as two free-to-use apps (which are Smartmockups and Product Photos, two impressive tools that combine the best of artificial intelligence and graphic design. Smartmockups allows you to transform photos of your products into mockups showing how they would appear in a user setting, while Product Photos allows you to create professional photos of your products with various backgrounds just simply uploading the photos you wish to transform.
Templates available on Canva
Many of Canva’s features are free, and we’re not exaggerating when we say that this site doesn’t skimp on what it offers to its free users. These are the major categories of templates you can find as well as the most useful templates under each of them:
Professional and Business Templates
- Resumes/CV Templates
- Business Cards Templates
- Digital presentations
- Invoice Templates
- Agenda Templates
- Video Presentation Templates
- Powerpoint Alternative Templates
- Reports Templates
- Media Kit Templates
- Project Proposal Templates
Social Media Templates
- YouTube Thumbnail Templates
- YouTube Banner Templates
- Social Media Images Templates
- Facebook Cover Page Templates
- Facebook Stories Templates
- LinkedIn Banners Templates
- Instagram Stories Templates
- Twitter Cover Image Templates
- WhatsApp Status Templates
- TikTok Video Templates
- Twitch Overlay Templates
- Twitch Banners Templates
- Twitch Panels Templates
Templates for Marketing
- Logo Templates
- Poster Templates
- Banner Templates
- Flyer Templates
- Moodboard Templates
- Catalogue Templates
- E-book Templates
- Storyboard Templates
Resources for Education
- Certificate Templates
- Infographic Templates
- Class Schedule Templates
- Name Tag Templates
- Timeline Templates
- Flash Cards Templates
- Weekly Schedule Templates
- Worksheet Templates
- Yearbook Templates
- Bookmarks Templates
- Explainer Video Templates
- Lesson Plan Templates
As you can see, simply the free version of Canva gives have access to an endless number of tools and templates. However, if you need to take your graphic creation to the next level, Canva Pro opens the door to even more services, tools and templates, which we’ll tell you about below.
Canva Pro
As we already mentioned, Canva Pro offers you unlimited access to premium content and design tools. In this section we show in more detail you all the advantages Canva Pro has to offer.
Stock Assets Library
In our opinion, this single feature of Canva Pro singlehandedly justifies its cost. You get access to over 75 million stock files for your projects as part of your subscription – this includes stock images, illustrations, icons, video, and audio! Discover tens of millions of premium images, videos, graphic elements and audios all in one place. With these images made and designed by professionals, it’s easy to find high-quality content without the stress of having to create the content yourself. If you compare the subscription cost of Canva Pro to just the cost of a subscription to one of the popular stock library materials, you’ll realize the savings and value this single feature of Canva Pro represents to its users.
Brand Kit
Canva Pro’s Brand Kit allows you to create a document that compiles and standardizes the visual elements of your brand, including fonts, logos, colors, among others (click here to learn more about what a brand kit is). With this Pro tool you will be able to define your brand identity (from scratch or by compiling in one place the elements you already have) to obtain a uniform look in all aspects of your brand. This way, you and your team will always have a unified visual reference to refer to so that, no matter who creates what, there is a consistent look and feel across both internal and external materials. Read more about Canva’s Brand Kit here.
Background Remover for Images and Video
How many times have you needed to remove the background of an image or video and wondered how to do it? You can do it with software like Photoshop, but you have to learn how to use it. The Background Remover tool included in Canva Pro helps you do it with just a couple of clicks – this tool will save you a lot of time and money!
Content Planner Tool
Canva Pro’s content planning tool will help you manage all your social networks from Canva. This means you won’t have to post content individually across multiple networks. Instead, with a couple of clicks you will simultaneously publish everything you want in an efficient and centralized way. You will also be able to check the performance of each post and campaign with a dashboard included in the tool. This is a great alternative to Hootsuite and similar tools, which represent an extra cost for a benefit that Canva Pro offers you as part of everything you get as a subscriber.
Magic Resize™ Tool
Let’s say you have your logo designed for the dimensions of a Facebook cover image. If you need to share it on Instagram or use it for your company’s LinkedIn profile cover image, you’ll need not only a tool like Photoshop, but also figure out what dimensions are needed for whatever other platform you need to use it on. Canva’s magic resize tool saves you these two steps by automatically adjusting the dimensions of your artwork based on the platform you choose in the tool. It’s really a matter of one or two clicks.
Canva Pro Price
Canva Pro is offered in two payment plans:
Monthly Payment: $12.99 USD/€11.99 Euros per month
Annual Payment: $119.99 USD/€109.99 Euros per year (more than 20% savings than with the monthly plan!)
If you plan to use Canva Pro within your company or organization, you can opt for Canva for Teams. These subscriptions allow more than one person to access the same account and include extra tools to help collaboration between team members. Pricing varies depending on your needs and the size of your team, so we recommend reading more about these plans here.
Canva Pro Free Trial
Canva Pro for Free?!
Here’s one question which we have seen asked often: can you get Canva Pro for free? And there is one case where the answer is YES. This is in the case of Canva for Education. Students and teachers in elementary and high schools can get access to a Pro tool with customized features for their needs. If you are a teacher or student, read more about how to check your status and activate Canva for Education here.
We hope you find this article useful when deciding if you need a Canva Pro subscription. In conclusion, a free Canva account itself offers you an incredible amount of free tools and templates for all your creative needs. Canva Pro, on the other hand, offers you an all-in-one creative tool for your personal or professional projects at an absolutely reasonable price. As we said, the benefits like the multimedia stock library or the content planning tool itself justify the price of this subscription. When you take into account that all these tools are included along with an unlimited selection of premium templates, it’s clear that Canva Pro is a service that will bring you a lot of value for a low price! If you were interested in this article, check out our creative reviews and coupons section – bookmark it, as we’re always adding new reviews and offers for you!