Canva is a popular, simple online graphic design tool. Users can import images, use templates to design banners and logos, or pay to use Canva's premium stock images/paid templates (elements starting at $1).
$12.95
per month
Whimsical
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Whimsical is a visual workspace application from the company of the same name in Denver, allowing users to create collaborative wireframes, mindmaps, flowcharts, and sticky notes.
$12
per month per editor
Pricing
Canva
Whimsical
Editions & Modules
Pro
$12.95
per month
Enterprise
$30.00
Per Month Per User
Pro
$12
per month per editor
Business
$18
per month per editor
Enterprise
$240
per year per editor
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Canva
Whimsical
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
17% discount for annual billing on Pro and Business plans.
They are suited to serve the non-profit space, offering premium features at no charge for up to 50 users. They provide tools for non-graphic designers that help to create appealing and attractive pieces. For those who are unsure about where to start with a project, Canva offers templates that can be edited to suit the current need.
It's extremely well-suited for rapid wire-framing of concepts, as product teams can quickly collaborate on any idea and create a visual blueprint of it. Whimsical could provide more intuitive feature prioritization templates. The current templates lack the necessary detail and could be further enhanced from a UI/UX standpoint.
Canva exports in a wide variety of software extensions in exceptionally high quality images. The pro license even allows .svg and background-less exports.
Canva's pro license has a terrific set of available fonts that are easily matched or are exact matches to other web fonts. Basically, in a word, Canva gives its (pro) customers an easy-to-use and cross-compatible set of design options. Everything is customizable.
For me, Canva shines in its usability. There are variety of preset, pre-sized canvases. As a designer, marketer, presenter, educational technologist or even if you are just getting started, Canva has its UI and UX geared toward each level of user.
Canva's strengths are with its original features and the fact that even the most novice user can produce a professional looking design in little time.
The ease of use makes Canva a powerful tool for manipulating images, creating original content, and testing ideas without requiring the involvement of graphic design or more time-intensive image editing software such as Photoshop. While it doesn't have the full functionality of a mature software, such as Photoshop, The speed and simplicity of Canva makes it a necessity in a business of any size
It is super easy to use, but it could be limiting if you're on a small device. It is easier on a bigger device because you can resize graphics and text easier than with your fingers on a small device. I do think it's perfect and easy for non-designers who don't have any training. As long as you have a good eye for visuals, Canva is a wonderful substitute for graphics programs on-the-go.
Whimsical is overall very easy to learn and remember. One issue with the usability occurs when you attempt to move connected boxes around the workspace. Frequently connections break or do not add easily, causing further disconnects. You can manually fix these issues, but it's a oprobem that seems would have an easy fix
I have yet to encounter Canva being offline in at least 6 years of using it regularly. They also announce well in advance if there may be upgrades to the code and the hours during which there may be issues accessing the service.
I haven't ever had issues with a slow-loading site and there haven't been any lag issues within the software. There have been maybe a handful of times over the past six years where I have tried to upload a large image and it will slow down as it loads the last megabyte, but I have yet to have the system time out or require any interference by me
Overall, Canva is easy to use, easy to train others to use, allows for creativity with a professional look without enormous associated costs. The mobile apps works almost as easily, but at a minimum allows for easy review and downloading in a pinch. Really, anyone can learn to use Canva quickly and will immediately benefit from the results.
I reached out to support, as I was interested in possibly investing in the organization, and they quickly and happily informed me they are a bootstrap organization and do not take on investors at this time. The swift response and information readily available for my consumption was extremely helpful and shows how solid the team behind it is.
Remember to download the mobile app onto your phone for easy image manipulation on the go. Adding company colors, logos, and typefaces to your company account is an easy process. When images are uploaded, these can also be shared between accounts within a company, as can canvases you've created for easy editing among teams.
Adobe products, well compared to Canva has a wide and long learning curve. Adobe spark almost comes close to Canva but lacks these tiny features that Canva focuses on to make the product irresistible to use. Canva also does a great job organizing and recording the designs in cloud so that it might increase the efficiency of Social Media management. Canva also provides features for designing ebooks, travel brochures etc which couldn't be easily done in Adobe. So finally, from a personal perspective, Canva ended up being the first choice.
ClickUp's mind mapping tool was very basic and hard to use from my perspective. Whimsical was by far easier and did what I wanted for a SaaS/cloud-based mind mapping tool. Xmind is fine as a desktop app, but updating the app was a pain whereas, with Whimsical I don't have to worry about that. Also, I wanted to continue working on a mind map wherever I was, even if I didn't have my laptop or device with me and Whimsical allows me to do that.
Very easy to add accounts and share content between them. Collaboration is also easy to manage and can be done on a project-by-project basis. The cloud-based software means it is incredibly fast to add a coworker and have them editing images within minutes. A live internet connection is required to access Canva so this is something to consider if expecting to use the software while on journeys without access to wifi etc
I think Canva has had a very positive impact on our designs in that there is consistency with colors and fonts and approved school logos across all publications.
Since I am a only one user of many, I can't really speak about reduced costs or risk mitigation. But, I believe it has increased efficiency because our media department can access the designs done by other departments easily and make changes or corrections as necessary to keep the "brand" consistent.
I have not tried to use it on my phone, but I would think it would make it easy to work on designs no matter where you are.
