TrustRadius Insights for Canva are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
Canva is a versatile design tool that has been widely adopted by individuals and businesses for various use cases. Users have found Canva helpful in creating social media graphics, resumes, infographics, eBooks, and more. The platform offers limitless built-in templates and media options, making it easy for users to create cohesive and professional external marketing materials.
One of the key use cases of Canva is its ability to help businesses solidify their brand and expand their outreach. Sole proprietors and small businesses use Canva to create images for social media posts, e-mail headers, e-book designs, and PowerPoint slides. It is also used across different departments, including sales, executive offices, and marketing teams, to create content for announcements, event invitations, and community engagement opportunities.
Canva enables businesses to create high-quality designs without outsourcing, reducing costs for lean marketing teams. It is recommended to clients who don't have in-house graphic design capabilities. For example, restaurants use Canva to design menus, event posters, and print marketing materials. Businesses also rely on Canva to create marketing materials such as business Instagram and Facebook posts, logos, banners, and business cards.
Another prominent use case of Canva is in the creation of visual content for ministries and book projects. It allows users to present and promote their content in fun, vibrant, and high-quality visual formats. Canva is used to design blog banners, Amazon A+ banners, web banners, and social media images for book projects.
In addition to these use cases, Canva finds its application in designing ad mockups, graphs, infographics, handouts, flyers, social media visuals, email banners, and more. Its drag-and-drop editor along with various graphics options makes it easy for non-designers within an organization to create innovative presentations or promotional materials.
Overall, Canva's wide range of features and user-friendly interface make it a valuable tool for individuals and businesses alike, helping them create professional-looking designs without the need for extensive design skills or outsourcing.
Canva Reviews
12 Reviews
Other Services (except Public Administration)Consumer Services3Non-profit Organization Management8Philanthropy1
We have Canva Premium for Non-Profits, allowing our team to have up to 50 users receive premium features at no charge.
Pros
Collaboration - We can create templates that the whole team can use to suit their specific needs.
History - We maintain a record of our previous actions in various situations.
Great tools and features - Canva offers a robust set of tools and features that enable us to create visually appealing products.
Convenience - Once a product is created in Canva, we can place an order for printing right through Canva.
Cons
They can continue to work on being more intuitive. Our users spend time Googling how to do something in Canva that would likely be more readily obvious in other products.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
I currently use Canva to create graphics for my organization for events, social media, and our annual ad booklet. We had problems with low-quality graphics being made and Canva offers very easy templates that we can use. It is fast and visually appealing. Also, you can share directly to social media from Canva through the publisher and it makes everything easier.
Pros
Templates of designs
Color palette picker
Upload to social media right away or schedule
Cons
Elements could be better
The background remover doesn't work too well.
Positioning elements is difficult and glitchy sometimes.
Likelihood to Recommend
Canva is suited for small organizations working or needing social media graphics quickly. It can be used to grow your base and put out information about events in a clean and simple way with templates. It is less appropriate for large-scale organizations that need complex graphics. When you download it, it can be blurry a little bit and the elements are not as expansive as you would like.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Social Media (Non-profit Organization Management company, 51-200 employees)
Canva is used by our graphics and marketing team for social media and printed pieces. I also use it as a Manager for creating presentations and slideshows for donors and board meetings. It is an affordable and easy-to-use tool that creates beautifully compelling graphic pieces for presenting our nonprofit.
Pros
Free templates.
Easy to learn and use.
Able to create many different formats of graphics and presentations.
Cons
I would like an easier way to copy elements from one creation to another within Canva.
Likelihood to Recommend
Canva is well-suited to creating social media posts, graphics pieces for mailers, and presentations. It is not designed for more complicated or detailed graphics work, like editing or adjusting images, "photoshopping," etc. It works very well for small to medium-sized nonprofits without the budget to pay a professional graphics designer.
We use Canva to design various marketing materials, brochures, flyers, graphics, thank you cards, social media posts, etc. We do have an in-house graphic designer who uses a fancier software for more complex projects, however, Canva works great for the rest of us when her plate is full or we just need something that's quick and easy.
Pros
Lots of templates to chose from
Able to download in multiple formats
User-friendly
Easy to upload your own images/logos
Automatically saves your progress
Cons
Almost too many options, it can be difficult to know to where to start
Only has certain fonts - there is a big selection, but they may not match your brand standards
Free version of Canva is not as robust
Likelihood to Recommend
Canva is a great tool if you want to quickly design marketing materials, but you don't have the expertise of an actual graphic designer, nor do you want to pay for one. Professionally, I've used Canva to quickly create sponsor thank you slides, one-pagers, web graphics, and even to help with formatting images. I had about 40 different company logos and I needed them all to be the same size/pixels for our website. I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but I was able to create a simple template in Canva and drag and drop each logo, and then save/download each file to get what I needed. Canva allowed me to do this pretty efficiently, it would have taken a lot more time (with a lot more frustration) in a different clunkier program. Personally, I've also used Canva to create a vision board and it made the process fun, simple, and efficient.
VU
Verified User
Program Manager in Sales (Non-Profit Organization Management company, 51-200 employees)
Canva is most consistently used in our Learning and Development department. All online employee training is provided via this department and Canva allows us to create various infographics, presentations, and training tools for application in our online learning environment. On a smaller scale, Canva is utilized by direct service providers to create contact notes, thank you notes, and promotional flyers for community events.
Pros
There are numerous available templates for creating a variety of educational and marketing materials.
User-friendly, lots of available "helps", can create teams for shared use and collaborative editing.
Extremely cost effective!
Cons
Canva could provide increased communication on benefits of team accounts, costs for upgrades services, and opportunities to pay in advance for easier billing.
Some basic symbols and graphics are only provided at cost, which seems like an unnecessary additional expense.
Periodic email updates on new features, products, or services would be helpful.
Likelihood to Recommend
Human Resources, Public Relations, and Training/Development departments of any size organization would most benefit from utilizing Canva. Clear and consistent messaging, which is also modern and professional, can be better managed by using Canva team sites. For smaller organizations, Canva is also useful for the promoting of services with high-impact and low-cost.
VU
Verified User
Director in Research & Development (Non-Profit Organization Management company, 1001-5000 employees)
Canva is primarily used within the Communications Department of our organization to create graphics for flyers and social media. It's really helped bridge the gap of making content for our social media while also not having anyone in the office who technically does that job (we have no graphic designers on staff). Canva has helped us come up with quality content by allowing collaboration on the wording and design of templates through the software options, so it allows a lot of teamwork throughout the department.
Pros
Ease of use.
Variety of options (photos, shapes, lines, etc).
Options for downloading.
Possibility of collaboration.
Pre-made templates.
Cons
Paid elements of Canva intermixed with free elements.
Structure of the application sometimes inhibits creativity.
Use of "teams" makes finding your designs difficult sometimes.
Likelihood to Recommend
Canva is an excellent software for beginner graphics. Due to the lack of complication, it's really easy for people who have never done graphics before to jump right into Canva and start creating designs. However, for individuals more experienced in the graphics abilities, it would definitely be frustrating. The application is very structured, and this lack of freedom may be irritating to someone who got their degree performing this type of work. In addition, in very professional environments, these designs can have an element of being "Canva-esque" and therefore may want to be avoided (essentially, people know you didn't spend money to create the design).
VU
Verified User
Manager in Social Media (Non-Profit Organization Management company, 11-50 employees)
Our marketing department uses Canva to create content for our newsletters, blog, and events. Canva allows our marketing team to quickly produce original content and get marketing materials out to our fundraisers in a timely manner. Without Canva, our organization would need to hire more designers or outsource some of our marketing efforts to a third party.
Pros
Canva has many different saved templates for a whole host of uses including newsletters, presentations, banners, and brochures.
Canva's drag and drop design tool helps novices create and develop content for our organization.
Canva has a useful feature that allows any created content to be ready for print.
Cons
Canva is easy to pick up and start using, but it takes a while to understand all of its features.
Canva is meant to be used for novice designers, not professional graphic designers. For professional graphic designers, its features and capabilities may seem too basic.
The charts and graph functions are a bit limited as users cannot input own data and there are not many options for customization.
Likelihood to Recommend
Canva is a wonderful software for making quick, professional-looking designs. The software allows even beginner designers to start creating with little to no training. The drag and drop design features are intuitive and easy to learn. However, for projects that require more complex and customized designs, Canva is not the best fit.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Marketing (Non-Profit Organization Management company, 1-10 employees)
I run a small online 3D printing service. Canva is used by only me. It solves my start-up's social media campaign design problems. Canva is an easy online tool to use. You can create leaflets, posters, business cards, banners, and other cool things with Canva. It is then very easy to share them online social media platforms. Or you could save them on your device. Canva has ready stencils or designs which are useful for projects.
Pros
Quick to produce social media content
You can use it on the cloud. No need for downloading software.
Canva has the ability to create content for different social media platforms. For example, you could create posts just fit for Instagram in square format.
You could write an e-book with Canva.
Cons
Canva's mobile app has more design restrictions than the browser app. It is a little bit hard to use on mobile devices.
Templates section could be broadened to other new business areas, like 3D printing.
Direct social media sharing options within Canva are limited to Facebook and Twitter. There should be other media options such as Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
Likelihood to Recommend
Canva is ideal for all kinds of businesses. But it fits perfectly for a new start-up company. I love that it's free. Of course, Canva has paid areas but for a first-time user, there's no need to pay. Canva has a developing interface. There have been a number of feature additions to it within the last year. Canva has limited photo editing tools, though. Thus, you might need another software to edit your photos.
We use Canva for quick on the fly designs, when we need to test a new idea or draw inspiration. We have found that while it is not a full-fledged design tool, everyone from professionals to beginners can use it and it is cost effective. It is mainly used by our marketing department and allows us to effectively design consistent branding images for our various platforms including print and online media.
Pros
The ability to save designs online automatically and share those designs with other team members is invaluable to us
The drag and drop functionality is very useful for quickly adding images or elements to a design that are not already available in the Canva platform
The mobile apps for various platforms allow us to see designs on the go and edit or change any designs
The branding option is great because we can use our own custom font and colors for different designs. Being able to duplicate and add our branding to different designs is a lifesaver
Cons
There are more templates and search functionality on the mobile apps than on the website. This is rather odd and makes the product a bit confusing to use. We sometimes have to find a design idea on the app then save it and use it on the web app. Would be easier if the ability to find designs was just baked into both web and mobile apps.
While it is a versatile design tool, Canva does not allow you to import just any fonts. Our team has had to find other workarounds to use the library of fonts we have as they cannot be imported into Canva, despite the functionality being advertised.
Being unable to import or export vectors or design files lets Canva down. As a tool that can be used by almost anyone, it needs some advanced features for professional designers. If we could export designs with layers or import them it would really make our workflow much easier.
Likelihood to Recommend
Canva is best suited for anyone looking for a quick online design tool. Social media managers and web designers can benefit a lot from it. As well as small business owners who may not have money to hire a designer. For medium-size business and Enterprises, there are more advanced tools that can fill in the gap. We have found that Canva is a good alternative tool to Adobe's suite of products for quick design and also cost. However, for teams larger than 10 users, you may want to consider other alternatives.
I could not run my business without Canva. Though I am also a graphic designer, I can spend a fraction of the time creating something in Canva than if I were to create the same thing in Illustrator. I can make a social media graphic in less than a minute. I use Canva to showcase my resume samples on flatlays. I use Canva to make infographics, eBooks, social media headers, and more for my clients and myself.
Pros
Ease of use: ANYONE can use it. ANY. ONE.
Design options: There are so many design elements and free stock photos to use, I am still finding new things and I've been a user since 2013.
Simplicity: Things are simple to use and to learn. It's not "harder than it should be" like most Adobe design products
Cons
Some design features would be nice: The paid version has some extra features but in general, there are some things it can't do, like curve text around a shape for example.
Likelihood to Recommend
When you need to create something attractive in a flash that you will use to post online, use Canva! For print jobs, use an Adobe product. The colors in Canva are only hex/RGB, no CMYK.