As a cybersecurity expert and tech writer who creates a lot of digital content, I rely heavily on graphic design tools for blog graphics, presentations, social media ads, and more. After years of using Canva‘s free version, I recently upgraded to Canva Pro and wanted to provide some insights on whether it‘s worth the price.
Brief Overview of Canva and Canva Pro
For those unfamiliar, Canva is a leading graphic design platform used by over 100 million people globally. The free version lets anyone easily create stunning graphics and content with premade templates and basic editing tools.
Canva Pro provides premium features tailored more for marketing teams, content creators, bloggers and solopreneneurs who need to take their visuals to the next level.
Some key differences between the free and Pro versions:
Canva:
- 250,000 free templates
- Basic editing tools
- Limited asset library
Canva Pro:
- 300,000+ premium templates
- Advanced editing tools
- 75+ million stock photos, graphics and videos
- Brand kits, interactive content, presentations and more
As you can see, Canva Pro unlocks much more advanced functionality tailored for power users who need to maximize their productivity and content quality.
Detailed Analysis of Key Canva Pro Features
Let‘s do a deeper dive into some of the most valuable features you unlock by upgrading to Canva Pro, based on my firsthand experience as a subscriber:
Brand Kits
As a blogger dealing with clients in the cybersecurity space, brand consistency is crucial. With Brand Kits, I can save my brand fonts, colors and logos so I can instantly maintain visual consistency across numerous graphics for my personal blog and client content. This saves an incredible amount of time and mental overhead.
Massive Asset Library
I frequently need to incorporate images for blogs and social media ads aligned to tech and cybersecurity content. With Canva Pro, I gain access to over 75 million premium stock photos, graphics, videos and illustrations that make finding relevant, high-quality visuals effortless. This massively accelerates my content creation workflow.
Advanced Photo Editing Tools
Whether I want to isolate subjects from busy backgrounds using Canva‘s background remover tool powered by AI, fix blemishes in headshots or enhance image brightness/contrast, the advanced photo editing capabilities are invaluable for polishing images to truly make them pop before publication. This can be incredibly tedious to do manually in Photoshop or GIMP.
Animated & Interactive Content
I periodically need to create animated videos and presentations for keynotes, social media ads or just more engaging blog posts. With Canva Pro I can quickly turn static graphics into eye-catching animations in just minutes without any formal video editing experience. It also helps break up blocks of written content with interactive elements to reinforce core ideas for my audience.
Team Collaboration Features
At times I bring on freelance writers and designers to help accelerate content creation for clients. With Canva Pro, we can simultaneously collaborate in real-time while retaining total brand and style consistency. The admin tools also let me control permissions so I don‘t have to worry about someone inadvertently messing up our core brand style guide.
Overall the features dramatically enhance what is possible both in terms of content quality and creation speed/workflow.
Breakdown of Canva Pro‘s Straightforward Pricing
Here is a full overview of the pricing options:
For Individuals
| Monthly Subscription | $12.99/month |
| Annual Subscription (Best Value) | $119.99/year (Saves $36/year) |
For Teams & Enterprise:
| 5 seats | $150/year |
| 10 seats | $875/year |
| 20 seats | $2,325/year |
| 50 seats | $6,425/year |
| 100 seats | $12,425/year |
Larger enterprise pricing available upon request as well. Volume discounts make Canva Pro extremely cost-effective for larger teams.
Compared to hiring freelance designers which can easily cost over $100/hour, you end up saving thousands for equivalent design outcomes by building in-house skills with Canva.
Who Can Benefit Most From Upgrading to Canva Pro?
Based on the premium features tailored to streamline and scale content creation, here are the core types of users who can gain tremendous value from Canva Pro:
- Entrepreneurs & Solopreneurs – Create polished graphics, social media content and presentations to establish credible branding and attract customers all without professional design skills.
- Bloggers – Design beautiful featured images, graphics and pins to drive traffic and social engagement.
- Social Media Managers – Easily produce loads of creative branded content across multiple platforms to delight followers.
- Marketing Professionals – Quickly design on-brand display ads, blog ads and more to fuel campaign performance.
- Students & Educators – Engaging animated presentations and interactive content allow for much more stimulating delivery of messages and lessons.
- Nonprofits – Rally supporters and promote your cause by effortlessly creating professional, inspiring visual content designs even with limited resources and no creative experience.
The common thread is that these groups frequently need to produce loads of custom graphics and content where the enhanced creative capabilities, brand control, and ease-of-use accelerate productivity 10x over hiring designers.
Canva Pro Accessible Virtually Everywhere
I personally publish content and manage campaigns from a variety of devices and locations. With Canva Pro you get platform flexibility with availability across:
- Any web browser
- iOS and Android mobile apps
- MacOS and Windows desktop applications
So whether I‘m at my desktop writing a blog post and need to quickly design a header graphic on the fly, or traveling and have a social ad idea that needs mocked up, Canva Pro has me covered with multi-device creation capabilities.
Weighing the Major Pros and Cons
Based on firsthand experience, here‘s my assessment of the major advantages and potential limitations depending on user circumstances:
Key Benefits
- Massive time savings – By putting thousands of templates, brand assets and design tools in one place, you skip tedious steps allowing you to create in minutes vs hours or days.
- Enhanced brand control – Easily maintain visual consistency across unlimited graphics without constantly recreating color palettes and sizing/positioning elements like logo lockups.
- Expanded creative possibilities – Interactive content, animated videos/presentations and advanced image editing empower you to bring creative visions to life beyond static designs.
- Accessibility across devices – The ability to design on any device allows you to create whenever inspiration strikes rather than losing ideas due to lack of access to your editing tools.
- Cost savings – A full creative team and suite of design tools would cost thousands per month making an individual subscription extremely cost-effective.
These factors add up to a phenomenal return on investment for serious content creators and marketers.
Potential Downsides
- Added monthly/annual cost – For casual users, an ongoing subscription fee may not produce enough value to offset the price depending on use frequency.
- Learning curve – While Canva prioritizes ease-of-use, unlocking the full capabilities still requires an initial ramp up to understand the more advanced creative options.
For very infrequent users just looking to design the occasional graphic or social post, the free plan may suffice their needs. But for power users, the benefits vastly outweigh these minor limitations.
Who Should Upgrade for Maximum ROI?
Based on my hands-on experience backed by Canva Pro‘s tailored features, here are the specific personas who gain the most immense value:
- Solopreneurs who need to single-handedly design everything for their business idea from logo to website.
- Bloggers who aim to grow traffic through aesthetically engaging content and pin designs.
- Social media managers tasked with continually feeding followers fresh content.
- Entrepreneurs who need polished investor slide decks and advertising creatives fast without hiring agencies.
- Educators transforming static lesson plans into interactive engaging presentations.
- Marketing directors managing multiple campaigns and design needs across websites, ads and social.
The added creative firepower, brand control, content flexibility and ease of team use provides these roles immeasurable return on time and financial investment.
Final Verdict – Well Worth the Upgrade for Serious Users
For casual users who just design the occasional graphic, the free Canva plan will likely suffice their needs.
However, the Canva Pro feature set is an absolute game-changer for entrepreneurs, bloggers, social media managers and overall content teams who continually create a high volume of designs.
The amount of creative possibilities unlocked, combined with massive time savings and brand oversight makes the relatively low subscription fee pay for itself extraordinarily quick.
It empowers single users or entire teams to punch way above their weight class in terms of producing professional, polished graphic content at a fraction of the cost of hiring designers and agencies.
So for anyone who relies heavily on Canva as an integral content tool, I highly recommend taking advantage of the 30-day free trial to experience the Canva Pro benefits firsthand.
Just be warned – once you realize the unlimited creative potential now at your fingertips, it will be impossible to revert back to the free plan. The productivity boost is just too substantial if visual content is core to your role.
Have any other questions on my take assessing Canva Pro‘s value? Ask away in the comments!
