Canva Pro: Should You Upgrade & Is It Worth It? (In 2020)

Last Updated: June 25, 2020

I dove deep into the Canva Pro plan to uncover the good, the bad (and the ugly) to let you know if it’s worth the extra investment or not.

If you’ve been using the free plan of Canva, you know it’s the best online tool for creating designs, right?

But you’ve probably wondered whether paying for Canva Pro is worth it, or if it’s better to stick with the free plan and save money.

So make sure to read this review until the end. That way you can make the best decision for you.

Here’s what I am going to cover in this article:

• What is Canva Pro?
• Canva Free vs. Paid
• Is Canva Pro Worth It?
• Ease of Use
• Pricing
• Pros and Cons
• How to Upgrade to Canva Pro?
• Final Thoughts

If you’re short on time, just look below for an at a glance overview of the most important information you should know about Canva Pro and free plan.

Let’s get going!

Canva At A Glance

Now before going to dig deeper let’s start with the basic question, what the heck actually is Canva Pro?

What is Canva Pro?

Canva Pro is a premium version of Canva, it comes with far more helpful benefits including 400,000 free photos, premium templates, team functionalities, unlimited storage, create transparent backgrounds, resize your designs, and much much more.

Many of you may know what type of designs you can make with it, but for those who are new may know that you can get layouts for almost any designs.

Whether it’s a social media post, presentation, invitation, documents, blog banner, and so much more, they got it ready for you with the perfect dimensions.

Canva is used and loved by more than 15 million active users around the globe who have made more than 1 billion designs.

According to them, more than 10,000 organizations create designs with Canva Pro, and some of the popular ones are:

Unlike other tools, it is available for both web and print media design and graphics.

Canva Free vs. Paid

The free plan of Canva is a legitimate option for most people who create simple graphics and don’t mind the limitation that comes with it.

Don’t get me wrong – you can also create good designs with a free plan but as I already said, you can’t get access to the advance features of Canva Pro.

Let’s take a look at what those features are and what both plans have to offer.

Canva Free Benefits

The free plan includes: 

So, these are the basic features you get with the free version.

Canva Pro Benefits

Now, let’s take a look at the benefits of using the pro plan:

Every feature of the Canva Pro plan is helpful but the first three features are probably the big draw of the Canva Pro plan. 

Being able to create animated gifs & professional looking designs, resizing, and transparent images in seconds is a huge benefit of Canva Pro.

Watch out a quick glance at them in this video.

Canva Print

Besides all that, you get a service from Canva known as Canva Print which allows you to print your designs and order them if you want.

Here’s a quick introduction of Canva Print:

For more information, head over to the Canva printing page.

Is Canva Pro Worth It?

The Canva Pro is definitely worth it if you don’t want to hire a graphics designer and looking for an affordable easy to use tool to create stunning designs in minutes by yourself without graphic designing skills.

However, the free version is useful as well, but it comes with limited benefits, so if you don’t mind the limitation that comes with it, then the pro plan is not worth it for you.

Canva helps you to create awesome designs – but if you are using the free plan of it, you’ll know that it tries to upgrade to its premium offering regularly. 

What I figure out is that many people are happy with the Canva Pro plan, so you can also give it a try for free at least.

Canva Pro costs only a few bucks a month, and it got such a good value for money feedback from users.

Personally, I recommend to try out Canva Pro 30 days free trial and then make your decision whether it’s worth it for you or not.

Is Canva Easy to Use?

The first thing you should always look when choosing graphic designing tools is how easy it is to use, right?

Graphic designing tools or software often struggle to combine power with ease of use, but Canva has excelled in this crucial area.

It is as easy as that – you don’t need graphic designing skills, hire a professional designer for your projects and a high budget.

All of these make Canva a quick and affordable way of creating professional-looking designs.

The good news is that they have a free trial of 30 days, so you can try it out yourself to see if it’s the right tool for you or not.

Canva Pro Pricing

Canva offers three pricing plans:

• Canva Pro monthly plan costs $12.95 per team member per month.
• Canva Pro annual plan costs $9.95 per team member per month, it is billed as one payment of $119.40.
• Canva Enterprise plan costs $30 per team member per month.

The pro plan is good for individual or small business owner while the Enterprise plan is for larger teams who need advanced features and collaboration control.

If you select the yearly plan of Canva, you’ll get a 23% discount compared to the monthly plan.

The monthly and yearly plan offers the same features but the pricing is different.

Now we know how much is canva pro but the question is:

What is the benefit of Canva paid plan compare to the free plan? Let’s discuss this.

Canva Pros and Cons

No matter which tool you use, there will be some pros and cons, but you must know what they are before choosing a tool.

A lot of people write some pros and cons online – usually with user-generated reviews which is fine but I will share my personal experience with Canva Pro.

So, here are the main pros and cons that I think you can expect to encounter if using Canva.

Pros of Using Canva 

Let’s start by looking at some of the advantages of Canva.

#2 – Interface 

The interface is straightforward and easy to use, it’s got a clean, modern interface, and the layout is clean, professional and user-friendly.

Here is how the Canva Pro homepage looks like and quick overview:

• Create Design: By clicking on Create a design, you can select any type of design, whether FB post, presentation, or any other template, and also select custom dimensions.
• All Your Designs: Everything you design will appear there.
• Templates: From here, you can discover free and premium pre-designed templates.
• Photos: From here, you can discover free and premium photos.
• Print: It allows you to create and order professional prints delivered straight to your home, but currently, it’s only available in few countries such as US, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Europe, New Zealand, Mexico, Southeast Asia, and India.
• Brand Kit: Organize and customize key elements of a brand’s visual identity from here.
• Design School: From here, you can find tutorials and courses, etc. to learn everything about Canva.
• Create a team: It allows you to invite team members.

#3 – Predesigned Templates

There are thousands of pre-designed templates available which is a huge plus because you only have to customize it.

Simply select any design, whether a social media post, advertisement, presentation, or any other design and it just needs to be customized according to your liking.

The templates are professional and flexible, and you can change the photos, colors, font, add elements, icon, and much more!

#4 – Integrations

Canva allows you to integrate with different popular platforms, and these are:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Youtube 
• Google Maps 
• Dropbox 
• Pexels 
• Pixabay 
• GIPHY

Integrating with the platforms saves your time to do things right from Canva, such as sharing your photos or saving your designs in Dropbox with one click.

Besides that, you can add Emojis and Embeds media in your designs just by pasting a link from different platforms.

Once you click on Embeds, you will see a screen like this.

#5 – Collaboration

One of the benefits especially for businesses is that they can work together on Canva, inviting a team is an excellent way to collaborate with peers on any project

Sending invitation is pretty simple, you just need the person’s email and give them access as a member and administrator.

📝 Note: There is (free) Canva team and a Canva Pro (paid) team, both are free but if you upgrade to pro one, you’ll have access to all essential tools for creating on-brand designs.

#7 – Access To Millions of Photos

As I already said, Canva provides millions of free and premium high-quality photos to create beautiful designs.

The pro user gets access to more than 50 million premium photos that you can download and use anywhere, whether it’s for social media ads or blog posts.

It’s great because you don’t have to pay per photo or for the expensive stock subscriptions to publish fresh content.

📝Note: The majority of the images will be free for the pro users, but still, there’ll be some photos for which you have to pay $1.

Cons of Using Canva

Now, let’s talk about the negatives of Canva.

#3 – Poor Search Results

Finding images, elements, or graphics is not user-friendly, especially for free users.

Maybe you are searching for free elements or graphics, but since there is not any filter option so you’ll see free and premium elements or images but mostly the premium ones.

#5 – No Offline Feature

One of the main downside of Canva is that you can use this tool only when you have an internet connection. 

If you have a poor internet connection or looking for an offline graphic designing tool, then Canva won’t be an option for you.

Instead, it’s better to learn and use Photoshop in these situations 🙂

However, Canva has a desktop version for both Windows and Mac that you can download but still you can’t use it without internet.

How to Upgrade to Canva Pro?

So, if you made your decision to jump to pro plan let’s know how to upgrade to it.

1. Head to the Canva.com in your browser and click on “Pricing“.

   

2. Now choose any plan by clicking on “Try for free” and sign up with Facebook, Google, or email if you already haven’t.

   

3. After that, you’ll see a screen like this, click on “Try it free for 30 days“.

   

4. Now, select a monthly or yearly plan and proceed through the payment with your credit card, and you’ll become a Pro member.

   

Don’t worry! You won’t be charged until your free trial ends, and also you can cancel your trial at any time.

That’s it!

Enjoy using it for a month and then decide whether you want to stay with the pro plan if you find it useful.

Here’s a quick video as well.

Final Thoughts: Should You Upgrade?

Canva makes it very easy to create stunning designs for your project – and you can do it within a few minutes without graphic designing skills.

Its pre-designed templates give you a huge advantage because you can customize them easily using a drag-and-drop tool.

I only recommend it for small businesses/individuals who don’t have the resources to hire a designer and want to do designing on there own quickly and easily without any experience.

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Which feature of Canva Pro from today’s post you are excited to use first?

Are you going to animate your image or use a transparent background feature?

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.

FAQs

Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, meaning if you go through them to select Canva Pro and then purchase the product, I’ll earn a commission at no additional cost to you, which helps me to run this blog. Read more.