Canva

Pros

I am not a designer. Last I draw or make something was 12 years ago. But with Canva, I can make a presentable graphics in 10-15 minutes. With my skill level (I used to use MS Word Clip Art tool and Paint), I should not be able to do anything at all.

True I havent been able to draw a masterpiece, but Canva is not for that sort of work, at least not that I know of. But if you are looking for a social media post, image for your blog post, poster, cover image, Canva can handle all of those. Sure, you still need to hire a designer if you are going to do stunning artworks. But the day to day grind to produce several images everyday, either professional or personal needs, Canva is there for you. You can even create memes with it!

Another nice surprise is, you dont need a paid plan to use Canva. Only the premium features and elements are paid. And to be honest, most users dont even need them. Even I haven't used the premium feature for myself. The free plan is more than enough, better than any other free tool in the market and a few premiums too.

Cons

There is absolutely nothing I want to change. This is simple, intuitive, free or very, very cheap. What more can I ask for??

There is some grumblings among pro-designers who use Canva about some high-level features being absent, certain export formats not there or background remoal option not available. But this is not Photoshop and we should not treat it like that. Also, last I heard, Canva is working very hard to add more functions to their toolbox.

Pros

The best part of Canva is all the available features they have for both free and paid plans. They are easy to use and you don't have to be a graphic design artist to create something amazing! The impact they've had on my business has been huge.

Cons

I feel like they could be better organization within the software itself. For example, better ways to organize uploaded pictures/videos etc. I also feel like the customer service could be a little more friendly and timely.

Pros

It's very easy to use and offers a ton of design content for free. You don't necessarily need to search outside of Canva for images but you can if you want. It's great for designing simple social banners or marketing materials quickly but there is a catch. They are trying to sell you printing services and their pricing is not competitive with quality printers.

Cons

I recommend Canva to clients who need to create social media marketing images. I have worked with clients who need me to print postcards, flyers or brochures that they designed on Canva and there are issues. Canva is trying to sell printing services. Their design templates are sized and setup for the printer companies they outsource to. If you design on Canva and download the files to send to a professional printer then those files are not setup correctly and require alterations to be printed. That's if there is room for alterations, but not all designs will allow for easy alteration so therefore the customer is forced to print on Canva at higher costs.

Pros

I love love love Canva - I use it for everything. Seriously....EVERYTHING I have designed wedding invites, thank you notes, monthly mailers, videos, social graphics, PNG's, JPGS, SO MUCH MORE! I also use them for printing marketing materials, christmas cards, posters, and more. They are amazing, the quality is great, I have only one time had a shipping delay and I print from them at a minimum monthly

Cons

Sometimes the platform is down and access is impossible, but they have a status page which is nice to keep myself updated.

Pros

It has a lot of graphic design tools that are easy to use even for people with zero design knowledge. You can access it from a pc or smartphone, which is very practical. It has a large number of vectors, a wide variety of default templates for anything, and many fonts to choose from. You can also create animations for your videos easily. It does NOT have annoying ads. In addition, it allows teamwork in the cloud, which is very important for this time of contingency.

Cons

The free version lacks cool features and the pro version can be a little bit expensive. In the mobile application, the option to share pdf is not available and if you compress the png image the image loses quality when sharing by WhatsApp.