PicMonkey vs Canva (Jun 2023) – Which Should You Choose?

Last Updated: June 8, 2023

I’m having a tough time choosing between PicMonkey and Canva? Can you please let me know which one is right for me?

If you have got the same question on your mind, you’re in the right place.

PicMonkey and Canva are two of the best and popular online designing tools that allow you to create stunning designs in minutes with ease.

Since both tools are great and easy to use – it’s hard to pick the right one.

However, I am using both tools for the past few years and have better experience to let you know which one you should choose and why.

In this article, my goal is to highlight the key differences between both plus I’ll break down the pros and cons for each platform to help you choose the right option for your designing needs.

We’ll compare PicMonkey vs Canva in terms of:

• Ease of Use
• The Editor & Interface
• Features
• Templates
• Integrations & Apps
• Pricing

Having said that, let’s take a look at the key differences of both tools first.

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PicMonkey vs Canva: What’s The Main Difference?

PicMonkey is built especially for photo editing so if you want to do mostly photo editing then PicMonkey is best for you but it’s not free. Canva is best for designing graphics, offers you 420,000+ ready-made templates, has more features and integrations than PicMonkey, and offers a free plan.

Comparing Canva vs PicMoney is like comparing Mac vs PC. Both are designed for different users.

In choosing between PicMoney and Canva, the better option for you depends on what’s important to you – photo editing or create awesome graphic designs of any type in minutes without graphic designing skills.

You should take PicMonkey as an easy to use Photoshop online alternative and Canva as an easy to use graphic designing platform for non-designers to create stunning designs of any type quickly especially because of the 420,000+ ready-made professional templates.

Overall, I recommend Canva over PicMonkey but it doesn’t mean Canva is for everyone.

You won’t be disappointed with either one but what matters is understanding the differences so that you can choose the right one that suits your needs — and that’s what this article will explain.

However, both offer a free plan so you can test them out fully before spending any of your hard-earned money. If you’re in a hurry, get started using the links below:

• Try Canva Free (30-days free trial)
• Try PicMonkey Free (7-days free trial)

Now, let’s dive into our comprehensive comparison below, starting with which one is easier to use.

Ease of Use

Most users use online designing & editing tools because they don’t have professional graphic designing skills. They want a platform that helps them easily create designs without hiring a graphic designer.

We know, both Canva and Picmonkey are well-known for their ease of use. But, how do we know which one is easier to use between them?

Let’s see how Canva vs Picmonkey performs in this regard.

Canva – Ease of Use

As I said earlier, Canva is a graphic designing platform (not a photo editing tool) and they aim to offer as many pre-designed high-quality templates as they can for almost any category you could think of so you can customize those templates and create your own stunning designs.

However, this doesn’t mean you can’t create stunning designs without pre-designed templates.

If you have the creativity and some experience in designing, you can create professional designs without the pre-designed templates but these pre-designed templates can be used by anyone that’s why their focus is primarily on producing as many templates as they can.

Since, Canva offers thousands of customizable pre-designed templates to choose from plus it has a clean interface which makes it one of the easiest to use graphic designing tools.

Picmonkey – Ease of Use

Picmonkey is also easy to use but since it’s primarily a photo editing platform, there is definitely a slight learning curve.

You will need to familiarize yourself with some basic Picmonkey features (similar to Photoshop) such as overlays, effects, exposure, colors, dodge, erase, brush tool, touch-up tools, etc.

Ease of Use – Winner: Canva

Unlike PicMonkey, Canva does not come with many photo editing features. This lack of features makes it very simple and easy to use. Even absolute beginners can quickly design stunning designs, especially because of the ready-made templates.

On the other hand, Picmonkey has a bit of a learning curve in comparison to Canva because of the photo editing features.

Hence, Canva is easier to use than Picmonkey.

The Editor & Interface

The biggest difference between Canva and PicMonkey is the editor and interface. Let’s compare the interface and visual editor of both tools.

Canva – Editor & Interface

Canva has a clean interface and it comes with a drag and drop visual editor which lets you play with different functionality easily.

Its drag and drop editor makes it super easy for anyone to create stunning designs in minutes with a live preview.

From the left side of the Canva visual editor, you can choose from the ready-made template or create a design from scratch, upload photos from your computer or social media channels, add photos offered by Canva, add or change font text, music, videos, or folders, apps, integrations and more.

Whereas on the right side, you can see a live preview of your design and from the top bar, you can download, share and resize your designs.

Its editing page lets you add multiple pages which means that you can create multiple designs without exiting the editing page.

Picmonkey –  Editor & Interface

PicMonkey also has a drag and drop visual editor and has a clean interface but since it’s especially a photo editing tool so its visual editor has a ton of photo editing features, and you may struggle a bit to get used to it.

Just like Canva, the main functions and editing options are on the left side, whereas from the top bar you can share, download or resize your designs.

On the right side of the editing page, you can see the live preview of your designs and do real-time editing.

As you can see, both tools have a similar editor but PicMonkey’s editor is slightly slower and lags sometimes.

Besides that, the main difference between the editor page of both platforms is that Canva allows you to create multiple designs on a single page whereas on PicMonkey you’ve to create a new page for each design.

Editor & Interface – Winner: Canva

Both Canva and PicMonkey offer visual drag and drop editors plus have a pretty neat and clean interface. 

Also, the editor of both tools is easier to use but PicMonkey’s editor still has the same learning curve especially because of photo editing features and functionality. 

Other than that, Canva’s editor is slightly faster than PicMonkey and lets you create multiple designs on a single page.

Features

Features are the most crucial factor to consider you need to check out while selecting a graphic designing tool.

Both Canva and PicMonkey offer many similar features to create stunning designs but there are some features you may need and one of both tools has whereas the other doesn’t.

Let’s take a look at the features of both platforms to know which one is better for your needs and offers more features to create professional designs.

Firstly, let’s take a look at the similar features.

Similar Features of Canva & PicMonkey

Let me explain each feature to you in detail.

One-Click Background Remover

Both lets you automatically remove the background of a photo instantly with one-click. All you’ve to do is to upload a photo and use the background remover tool, it’s gone. That’s it!

Let me show you how background remover works in Canva.

As you can see, how instantly the background of my photo is removed with just one click.

Now, let’s take a look at how background remover works in PicMonkey.

Magic/Smart Resize

Instantly resize your designs into custom dimensions or convert the current one to different design types such as Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube Thumbnail, or any other format at the same time.

Canva Magic Resize Overview:

PicMonkey Smart Resize Overview:

Brand Kit

Both let you create on-branded content with the help of Brand Kit. You can select your own fonts, set the brand’s colors, store your brand’s logo in the kit for easy access so you can produce designs that match your brand.

Canva Brand Kit Overview:

PicMonkey Brand Kit Overview:

Upload Own Fonts

Both have thousands of premium fonts by default but if you want a font that isn’t in the fonts library, you can upload your own fonts.

Invite Others 

Both allow you to invite others to your designs, you can add them as a contributor so they can edit and add comments.

Premium Fonts

In Canva Pro plan, you’ll have access to 3,000+ premium fonts whereas, in PicMonkey, you’ll have access to 100s of fonts.

Unlimited Folders

Create as many folders as you want to organize your designs.

Commenting

For verbal communications, you can comment on designs so your team members can do the modifications in your designs.

Features Canva Has But PicMonkey Doesn’t:

Set Download Quality

Canva lets you set the download quality of your designs, it means that you can download your designs in high, medium, or low resolution. The choice is yours.

Content Planner

It is recently to help you schedule your designs directly from Canva and it will post them automatically to your favorite social media platforms according to the plan you’ve set.

Animator

Canva Animator lets you animate your designs into different styles with just one click!

Canva Print

Create beautiful designs whether it’s a T-Shirt, Poster, Business Cards designs, or any other, and order a print of your designs with Canva Print. The Canva team will sustainably print and deliver it to your doorstep.

Video Editor

Canva offers you a free drag and drop video editor to make high-quality videos without being a professional video editor. You’ll have access to thousands of templates, animated graphics, free stock videos, and music tracks to quickly create short videos.

Features PicMonkey Has But Canva Doesn’t:

Photo Editor

PicMonkey is built especially for photo editing that’s why it offers you better photo editing features. With the help of touch tools, you can select the specific areas of your photo and apply it to skin, teeth, eyes, hair, and more to retouch your photos and produce stunning images.

For more details, watch out this video:

Features – Winner: Canva

No doubt, both offer you great features that will help you to create professional designs without high graphic designing skills. 

But, having important features like an animator, print services, video editor, and content planner make Canva a winner in terms of overall features. 

However, in terms of better photo editing features like touch-up tools, photo effects, filters, and colors, PicMonkey is the winner for you.

Templates 

Both Canva and PicMonkey come with ready-made templates to make it easy for you to create stunning designs.

However, you need to know which one has more ready-made templates and offers professional-looking templates.

Let’s see which one offers you more and better templates to create awesome designs.

Canva – Templates

Do you know why Canva is used by millions of people? Mainly, it’s because of two things.

1. Professional designed ready-made templates
2. Ease of use

No doubt, Canva has the best templates of any online graphic design tool. This is subjective to a degree but honestly, there’s no other graphic design platform that matches Canva’s clean, modern templates:

In terms of volume, Canva has significantly more templates than PicMonkey. Canva pro plan offers you 420,000+ templates with new designs daily.

Besides that, its templates are neatly organized into different categories.

Now, let’s talk about PicMonkey’s templates.

PicMonkey – Templates

PicMonkey also offers you ready-made templates but compared to Canva, the templates aren’t as professionally designed as Canva. This is because PicMonkey is especially a photo editing platform, not a graphic designing platform.

In terms of volume, PicMonkey doesn’t clearly mention how many templates it offers but claims to have thousands of templates.

However, PicMonkey has significantly fewer templates compared to Canva.

Besides all that, PicMonkey doesn’t offer tons of categories to choose from and its templates aren’t very well-categorized.

On the other hand, Canva covers tons of categories to choose from and its templates are neatly organized into different categories.

Let me show you the templates of both platforms and how they organized them into categories.

First, let’s take a look at the “Facebook Posts” category templates on Canva. Here’s what it looks like:

Now, let’s see PicMonkey’s ready-made templates and its organized categories.

So, you’ve seen the templates of both platforms and how each one organized its templates.

Canva’s ready-made templates are professionally designed and very well organized, whereas PicMonkey templates aren’t as stunning as Canva and its templates are not well organized as well.

When looking at the Facebook Posts templates or any other, you’ve to either scroll down and look for the category or search for the category design types as I did above for Facebook Posts.

Templates – Winner: Canva

Canva comes out as a clear winner in terms of great-looking templates, and a better-organized category. Even PicMonkey’s templates aren’t quite as nice as Canva’s free ones.

Integrations & Apps

It is simply not possible for any online graphic designing or photo editing tool to include everything. That is when the third-party tools and integrations come in handy.

Let’s see how Canva and PicMonkey perform in this regard.

Canva – Integrations & Apps

Canva comes with many third-party integrations and apps to help you add powerful features to your designs. It is integrated with:

• Embeds – Copy and paste a web link to embed media in your designs. For example, embed a YouTube video, Twitter post, or anything else to your designs via a link.

• Pexels & Pixabay – Choose from millions of stock photos and videos and add to your designs for free directly from Canva.

• Cloud Storage – Integrated with cloud storage services such as Google Drive and Dropbox so you can import or export designs straight from Canva.

• Social Media Platforms – To publish or share your designs straight to social media platforms directly from Canva.

• Mailchimp – Save your designs straight to your Mailchimp account to use them for your next campaign. For example, you can create an email newsletter banner with Canva and use it in your Mailchimp email campaigns.

• Editing Extensions (PhotoMosh) – For editing extensions, Canva is integrated with PhotoMosh to enhance your images with cool effects like a glitch, pixelate, slice, and tons of other effects. However, some extensions are designed by Canva for its users such as Background remover, and Duotone.

• HubSpot – The Canva Button brings the Canva editing experience right into the HubSpot platform so users can design stunning graphics and publish to their favorite marketing channels directly from HubSpot or import files from HubSpot right into your Canva designs.

So these are some of the main integrations and apps that Canva support.

However, besides that, there are many third-party apps and integrations such as Flickr, Box, Bitmoji, Typeform, Smartmockups, Pixton, and much more.

PicMonkey – Integrations & Apps

Unlike Canva, PicMonkey doesn’t support tons of third-party integrations and apps. However, it is integrated with:

• Social Media Platforms – PicMonkey is integrated with social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr just to share your designs.
• Google Drive/Photos – Integrated with Google Drive & Google Photos to store your PicMonkey’s designs.
• Buffer – Schedule your PicMonkey’s designs via Buffer.

So, these are the integrations PicMonkey supports.

Integrations & Apps – Winner: Canva

Canva is the clear winner here with support for hundreds of third-party integrations and apps at your fingertips. PicMonkey, on the other hand, has very few integrations in comparison to Canva.

Pricing

For most users, pricing is the major factor in deciding on choosing a graphic designing platform.

Let’s look at how much Canva cost vs. how much PicMonkey cost and what’s included in each pricing plan.

Canva Pricing

Canva offers two pricing plans: Pro and Enterprise. Canva Pro plan costs $12.95 per month or $9.95 per month which is billed annually as one payment of $119.40 for up to 5 persons. The Enterprise plan costs $30 per user a month.

It’s important to know that Canva offers you a forever free plan but there will be limitations with the free version.

Since Canva has a free plan and you might be wondering, should I upgrade to the Pro plan or stick with the free plan?

If so, check out my detailed guide, Is Canva Pro Worth It & Should You Upgrade?

However, Canva offers you a free trial of 30-days for both plans (Pro & Enterprise) so you can test out everything for free before paying.

By the way, you can cancel your plan at any time and you won’t be billed before your free trial expires.

Now, you might be wondering, what’s included in each plan and which paid plan is best for me? Let’s discuss this.

Before we talk about which plan should you choose, first let’s discuss what’s included in each plan so you’ll have a better idea of choosing the right plan for your editing needs.

Canva Pro plan includes:

Brand Kit

Magic Resize

75 million+ Photo & Graphics

Animator

Content Planner

Set-Download Quality

Upload Own Fonts

Unlimited Folders

Background Remover

100GB Storage

420,000 Templates

Canva Print

Premium Animations

3000+ Premium Fonts

Save designs as templates for your team to use

I didn’t mention every little feature but these are the main features the Canva pro plan includes. However, all the features I discussed above (in the Features section) are included in the pro plan.

On the other hand, Canva Enterprise plan includes everything Pro plan has, plus:

I hope you now have a better idea of which plan is best for your editing needs but if you’re still not sure then let me give you my recommendations.

You Should Choose Canva Pro Plan If:

• If you’re an individual or small business owner with a team of few people (1- 10) then I highly recommend you choose the Canva Pro plan.

You Should Choose Canva Enterprise Plan If:

• If you’re a business owner and have a company with more than 20+ members and need advanced collaboration controls then you should choose the Enterprise plan.

Now, let’s talk about PicMonkey pricing plans.

PicMonkey Pricing

PicMonkey offers three pricing plans: Basic, Pro, and Team. The Basic plan costs $7.99 per month or $72 billed annually, the Pro plan costs $12.99 per month or $120 annually, and the Team plan costs $33.99 billed monthly at $11.33 per user or $300 annually.

The annual plan saves you around 23 – 26% but I don’t recommend choosing the annual plan first.

Instead, you should try PicMonkey free for 7 days and then decide whether the monthly or annual plan is worth it for you or not.

We’ll talk further on which plan should you choose but first let’s talk about what’s included in each plan.

PicMonkey Basic plan includes:

PicMonkey Pro plan includes everything the Basic plan has, plus:

PicMonkey Team plan includes everything Pro plan has, plus:

Now, let’s talk about which plan you should choose.

You should choose a PicMonkey Basic plan if:

• You don’t need features like smart resize, background remover, brand kit, unlimited storage, uploading your own fonts, and access to stock photos from iStock by Getty. But, can get access to all of PicMonkey’s editing features and download images in JPG or PNG format or share designs with others.

You should choose the PicMonkey Pro plan if:

• You’re an individual and need features like smart resize, background remover, brand kit, unlimited storage, uploading your own fonts, and get access to download images as JPG, PNG, or PDF, and share your designs with others then I recommend you to choose the Pro plan.

You should choose the PicMonkey Team plan if:

• You have a company with multiple employees or a team of more than 3 users using PicMonkey and you can offer them a PicMonkey premium account license but the billing is tied to a single payment method controlled by you.

For most users, the PicMonkey Pro plan is the right option but you can try Basic or Pro for free with a 7-day trial before you buy.

Pricing – Winner: Canva

Again, Canva beats PicMonkey in terms of pricing and better value for money. Both offer you three plans to choose from but the difference is that Canva offers you a forever free plan, whereas PicMonkey doesn’t offer a free plan.

Besides that, Canva is slightly cheaper than PicMonkey and has more integrations & features (except photo editing features) which makes it a much better value for money platform.

It offers a free plan, more integrations, features, designs options with a user-friendly interface, 420,000+ premium ready-made templates to choose from, 75 million+ photos, videos, elements, and graphics all of this at a slightly lower price. 

Conclusion

Both Canva and PicMonkey have strengths and weaknesses.

But, considering the criteria I set above, I can confidently say that Canva is a way better option than PicMonkey. Here’s how I would summarize:

• Canva offers you a forever free plan whereas PicMonkey doesn’t and comparing the features and integration of both, Canva can be a slightly cheaper option for you than PicMonkey.
• Canva’s editor is much more stable and fast — you may prefer PicMonkey’s editor but I would suggest you keep in mind some of the frustrating things such as sometimes lags and slow editing experience.
• Canva has more features and integrations but PicMonkey tends to do a better job when it comes to photo editing features.
• Canva offers you significantly more ready-made (420,000+) premium templates with much better templates and customization than PicMonkey.

It’s worth mentioning that this doesn’t mean PicMonkey is bad. It’s more about how good Canva is.

Overall, Canva is today’s winner, though.

Both are excellent platforms, but Canva edges the battle with its free plan, better templates, and structured editor with a user-friendly interface, more integrations, features, templates all of this at a slightly lower price.

However, since PicMonkey is designed especially for photo editing so if you need better photo editing features and touch-up tools such as remove red-eye, whiten teeth, skin whitening, and more photo editing features like that then I recommend PicMonkey over Canva.

I hope this article helped you compare PicMonkey vs Canva but if you still have any questions let me know in the comment section.

Thanks for reading this article! See you soon.

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