As an experienced blogger and educator, I have had the opportunity to delve into the world of digital design, exploring a myriad of tools aimed at creating visually engaging content. Whether you’re designing a blog post graphic, an engaging social media post, or a compelling infographic, the importance of an intuitive and comprehensive design tool cannot be understated. Canva, for instance, has been a go-to for many due to its ease of use and an extensive library of templates.
However, whether you’re in search of different features, looking for something more tailored to your needs, or simply want to shake things up, you might be considering other Canva alternatives. Fortunately, the digital design space is filled with innovative tools that can transform the way you create your content.
In my journey, I’ve had the chance to experiment with various design tools, each with its unique strengths, capabilities, and distinctive features. I’ve identified a few of these as the best Canva alternatives, which may just elevate your design process and output.
Apps Similar to Canva
Here is a list of some of the best Canva alternatives out there:
1. Adobe Express
Adobe Express is definitely my go-to design tool and one of the best Canva alternatives that empowers users to craft various content such as flyers, resumes, social media videos, and even TikToks and Instagram Reels.
Leveraging the power of Adobe Firefly AI, Adobe Express simplifies the creation process and enables users to produce extraordinary artwork with ease. The platform offers features like photo and PDF editing, marketing content creation, and unique AI tools for tasks such as removing backgrounds.
Adobe Express is user-friendly with a drag-and-drop interface that allows for the seamless combination of clips, artwork, and music, ideal for creating standout social media videos, even for those with no prior experience. Furthermore, it provides thousands of professionally-designed templates and Adobe Stock assets, including videos, photos, and music, all free and easily accessible.
A standout feature is the text-to-image and text effects tools, powered by Adobe Firefly. With these, users simply input text, and Adobe Express generates corresponding images or effects. The platform also supports real-time collaboration, enabling teams to work together on Adobe Express files to save time. It even integrates with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, providing access to linked files and ensuring updates sync across all platforms, whether you’re working solo or as a team.
For students, Adobe Express offers a free plan that includes basic editing, photo effects, and the ability to create content such as social media posts, flyers, logos, banners, and more. No credit card is required for this plan.
Overall, Adobe Express is not only a formidable alternative to Canva but in many ways surpasses it, offering a wide range of innovative features and capabilities. It caters to both novice and experienced users, making content creation easier and more impressive than ever before.
2. Venngage
Venngage is a robust infographic and visual design platform, making it a noteworthy Canva alternative. This platform allows users to create professional infographics, project visualizations, and more in just a few simple steps.
With Venngage, users can choose from over 7,500 professional templates, customizing them to suit their specific needs. The platform features a simple yet powerful editor where users can enhance their designs with over 3 million stock photos, 40,000+ icons, and a vast array of charts. These visual resources, including 2000+ diverse icons, are sourced from Pixabay and Pexels.
A key feature of Venngage is its collaborative function, which allows team members to work together on designs in real time, facilitating feedback and alignment. Once a design is complete, users can easily share their creations or download them in various formats such as PDF, PNG, and PDG HD. Business users also have the option to download in HTML and PowerPoint formats for convenient sharing via email or as a PPTX file.
Furthermore, Venngage simplifies the creation of diagrams, flowcharts, and mind maps. Its smart editor auto-resizes diagram shapes as you add, edit, or remove text, and you can easily copy and paste shapes and styles in just a few clicks.
As of the provided information, the pricing for individuals is $16 for Premium, and for educators, it’s $99 per year. Overall, Venngage is a user-friendly, versatile, and powerful design tool, making it a strong contender for those seeking alternatives to Canva.
3. Visme
Visme is a comprehensive graphic design tool that offers a range of features beyond those found in standard design applications, making it a robust Canva alternative. With an intuitive, feature-rich, drag-and-drop editor, Visme allows users to create professional and captivating presentations, infographics, social media graphics, and more.
One of the key features that sets Visme apart is its advanced data visualization tools. With over 40 charts and graphs, customizable flowcharts, an interactive map builder, an easy-to-use table maker, and a variety of customizable data widgets, users can transform data into engaging and visually pleasing graphics.
Visme provides access to thousands of stunning, professionally-designed templates across 20+ categories, enabling users to create high-quality infographics, web and social media graphics, flyers, interactive projects, presentations, whiteboards, wireframes, logos, charts, magazines, and more. A unique feature is its intuitive, draggable bottom bar in the infographic maker, which allows for easy adjustment of the infographic length to suit your content.
Visme offers a free plan, perfect for users wanting to test the platform and get a feel for its offerings. For those seeking more advanced features, paid plans start at $12.25. The Starter plan is ideal for beginners in visual graphic design, while the Pro plan provides extensive design features.
4. VistaCreate
VistaCreate is a free graphic design tool that provides thousands of free templates, making it a competitive Canva alternative. With VistaCreate, you can simply pick a template, customize it to your needs, and either post it or print it, using design to tell your brand’s story uniquely.
Among its features are over 150,000 professionally-designed templates, providing the inspiration needed to create daily content. Its vast library is continually updated with new templates for social media, web, and print formats. Furthermore, it hosts a substantial library of design elements including fonts, music, animations, illustrations, backgrounds, and objects.
VistaCreate’s Creative Assets feature provides access to over 70 million royalty-free stock photos, videos, and vectors with the Pro plan. Its Brand Kit and Styles features allow you to upload and easily access your brand colors, fonts, and logos, with the ability to pull colors from templates and apply them to your own designs.
VistaCreate also includes animation and video editing tools, enabling you to engage viewers with video posts and animated text effects, transitions, and objects. Other notable tools include a background remover and a Sticker Maker for showcasing your product on a clean background or creating image stickers.
The tool’s resizing feature, available with VistaCreate Pro, allows you to easily adjust your design for different social media and print formats, eliminating the need to recreate designs. With VistaCreate, you can also post or schedule designs for social media and even send certain print formats for printing through VistaPrint, which includes doorstep delivery.
VistaCreate also supports team collaboration, allowing you to invite up to 10 people to join and work on projects simultaneously. In terms of pricing, there’s a free Starter plan and a Pro plan priced at $10 per month.
5. Piktochart
Piktochart is a versatile graphic design tool that allows users to create high-quality infographics, reports, presentations, posters, and videos, serving as an effective alternative to Canva. It’s designed to be user-friendly, enabling you to produce professional-grade designs without requiring extensive training or graphic design experience. With Piktochart’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor, users can craft infographics, brochures, or presentations in just a matter of minutes.
A significant advantage of Piktochart is its seamless integration into your workflow. You can download your visual content in PNG and PDF formats, and share them via email. If you create a presentation, you can download it as a PPT file, allowing for offline presentations using software like PowerPoint.
Piktochart offers a user-friendly approach to data visualization. You can copy-paste data into the graph maker, upload CSV or Excel files, or even link a Google sheet. This feature turns complex data into clear, understandable visualizations, including charts, graphs, and interactive maps.
A notable feature of Piktochart is its video editing capabilities. Piktochart Video makes video editing as straightforward as editing text. You can automatically transcribe, add subtitles, and crop videos for optimization across various social media channels, all within a few minutes.
Piktochart offers a free pricing tier, which is great for beginners looking to enhance their visual communication skills. It also provides options for students and educators who need to manage their visuals in a scalable way.
Final thoughts
As we’ve discussed, while Canva remains a popular choice for many due to its simplicity and robust template offerings, exploring alternatives like Adobe Express, Venngage, Visme, VistaCreate, and Piktochart can provide you with enhanced capabilities and new creative possibilities. These platforms offer distinct features that cater to various aspects of design work, from advanced data visualization and collaborative functionalities to specialized content like interactive maps and professional infographics. .