As someone who has been using PhotoShop for years, when I first heard about (and started using) Canva I was skeptical.
Of course, along with thousands of other small business owners, bloggers and entrepreneurs I am now a big fan of Canva!
I used the free version of Canva for some time but eventually upgraded to Canva Pro.
I’ll help you answer the question, “Is the paid version of Canva worth it?”
This Canva Pro Review will Cover:
- How to access the Canva Pro free trial
- Canva free vs. Canva Pro feature comparison
- The Pros: Key features you get with Canva Pro
- The Cons: What could be improved with Canva Pro
- Canva Pro Pricing
- The final verdict on whether Canva Pro is worth it for your business
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This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only share products and services I have personally used and love. Disclosure here.
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Is Canva Pro Worth It?
Below I will walk through the pros and cons of Canva Pro, plus I’ll share if Canva Pro is worth paying for.
If you have questions about the functionality of features, make sure to ask in the comments below.
Okay, let’s begin!
First, Is There a Canva Pro Free Trial?
Yes! After reviewing all of the features of Canva Pr below I recommend signing up for the Canva Pro free trial so you can try the added features for yourself!
Then you can decide if the paid version of Canva is worth paying for.
Get a Canva Pro Free 30 Day Trial here…
Pros: What Do You Get With Canva Pro?
Here is a breakdown of all of the features that are far superior in the Pro version of Canva.
Have a read through the features that matter to you, to determine if Canva Pro is worth it. Also, ask yourself:
- Will certain features save you time and money so you can focus on other areas of your business?
- Will Canva Pro help you make money? (Hint: Canva template feature)
- Will the organization features of Canva Pro help you keep track of more projects?
- Do you love easy access to various design elements? Fonts, premium stock photos, graphic elements, videos, etc?
Have questions? Write me a note in the comments and I’ll reply as soon as possible.
Canva Features: Free vs. Pro
Before we jump into the details, here’s a high-level look at the core features available with the free version versus Canva Pro.
When directly comparing you’ll truly see the big difference in the free and paid plans.
Note: Everything you get in the free plan is included in Canva Pro, plus the additional features mentioned below.
| Features | Canva Free | Canva Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Photos, Videos & Graphics | 100,000s | 100 Million+ Premium |
| Fonts | 100s | 3000+ Premium |
| Upload Fonts | – | Yes |
| Templates | 250,000 | 610,000+ |
| Create Transparent Images | – | Yes |
| Remove Background | – | Yes |
| Magic Resize | – | Yes |
| Animation Features | 36 | 66 |
| Vector Image Creation | – | Yes |
| Brand Kit | 1 kit save 3 colors | 100 kits unlimited colors, fonts, logos |
| Create Templates | – | Yes |
| Social Media Scheduler | – | Up to 8 platforms |
| Storage (Folders) | 2 | Unlimited |
| Cloud Storage | 5GB | 100GB |
| Team Accounts | – | Up to 5 ppl per account |
| Team Folders | – | Yes |
Give some of these stellar features a test drive with a free trial…
Now, onto the details of Canva Pro features…
1. Over 100 Million Premium Stock Photos, Videos, Audio & Graphics
If you have the free version of Canva, yes, you do get thousands of free photos, illustrations and graphic icons included, however the difference with Canva Pro is you get everything the free account has + the 100 Million assets!
This makes finding that perfect image 10x faster so you can create your ideal design with ease.
With Canva Pro you can also save money if you are currently spending on other premium photo subscription sites.
One feature I really like with Canva photos/graphics is how easy it is to find the perfect image.
You can search by:
- Orientation (Square, vertical, horizontal)
- Colour – even use your brand colours hex code to find the perfect on-brand images
- Image type (Free, Pro or Premium)
- Simple drag and drop into your image template
To access illustrations and icons you simply click on ‘elements’ in the left dashboard and then search for what you’re looking for.
2. 3000+ Canva Premium Fonts, Plus Upload Your Own
I am a complete font nerd so this was one of the features that piqued my interest.
Since so many people use the free version of Canva, the benefit of having access to more than 1000 fonts means you can stand out from others on social media and Pinterest.
You can also upload your own fonts that you can get from places like Design Cuts and Creative Market.
3. More Templates
The free version of Canva has over 250,000 templates (pretty awesome), but with the Canva Pro account, you get these free templates, plus another 610K premium templates.
This makes designing for custom projects that much easier – you want to stand out from your competition after all 🙂
4. Create Your Own Templates That You Can Sell
If you want to sell Canva templates to increase your blog income or start a side hustle, the ‘template’ feature allows you to do this.
You can also create templates that your team can easily edit.
Learn more about this here: How to Sell Canva Templates & Make Money
5. Magic Resize
As you know, social media channels and your website have different image dimension requirements. Therefore this ‘magic resize’ feature is a massive time saver.
- Create your original image and choose the size or sizes you’d like to create.
- With a click of a few buttons, you have automatically created multiple new sizes.
- Create your own custom dimensions that you can use on your website.
What I love is you can create multiple new sizes all at once, which you can see in the above screenshot.
**Want to try Canva Pro FREE for 30 days to see what you think?!
Try Canva Pro For FREE!
6. Canva Pro Brand Kit
Create up to 100 brand kits with your Canva Pro account, which is ideal if you do freelance or client work in Canva.
In the brand kit section of Canva Pro you can:
- Upload your logos
- Save your brand colours so you can easily access them when designing
- Upload your brand fonts + other fonts you might be interested in trying
- Since I love fonts so much I have over 17 I have uploaded directly to my brand kit. I use these for clients, my work projects and personal projects)
- Create multiple colour palettes for different projects
This will end up saving you a lot of time when designing graphics, so you’re not searching for your design assets. The brand kit also ensures you can easily stay on-brand with all of your designs.
I personally love the brand kit as here I can also save all of my client’s brand colours and logos as well.
Note: If you are a freelancer or VA you can upload loads of different client logos, colour palettes and fonts, which is a huge bonus!
What the free version of Canva has: You can save just 3 colours to your brand kit, but you aren’t able to upload fonts, logos or more brand colours.
To learn more about how the Canva Pro Brand Kit works click here.
7. Animator Pro
Animate any design with ease. Then you can save it as a GIF or MOV file.
This is perfect if you want to create animated pins. The free version does come with a few settings however Canva Pro comes with more which means your designs will stand out amongst the majority.
Canva Pro: 13 element animations and 14 page animation options
Free Canva: 6 element animations and 7 page animation options
8. Organize Your Designs With Folders & 100GB of Storage!
As bloggers and online entrepreneurs you have many different things you’re working on, so setting up folders for your various projects is a complete lifesaver.
I personally have folders set up for:
- Facebook groups
- Individual Clients
- My two different websites
- Personal designs
- Printables
- Canva pin templates I sell
- Social Media headers
- Pinterest board covers
Canva Pro Storage: Unlimited folders and 100GB of cloud storage
Free version of Canva: 2 folders and 5GB of cloud storage
9. Team Accounts
Pay for Canva Pro once and you can add 4 additional people to your team account!
This is big savings for small businesses or any solopreneur who wants to share designs with a client or VA.
This works out to the cost of a latte a month for each member of your team.
* The Canva template feature is great to share in team accounts so others can easily collaborate on projects together.
Other Notable Features for Canva Pro
- Simple creation of transparent images
- Background remover
- Create vector images with SVG save function
- Team folders
- Easy to share templates
- Social media scheduler for up to 8 platforms
Cons: What Could Be Improved with Canva Pro?
Brand Kits
UPDATE! I’m happy to say that this feature has now been added – now with the ability to add up to 100 brand kits!
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I would love the option of creating multiple brand kits, instead of them all sitting in the same place
This way I could have separate kits for each website and each of my clients. This would help streamline the process a little more.
Currently, I save all client assets and my assets in one brand kit, so I hope this will be an enhancement that is available in the future.
Canva Pro Pricing: How Much Does Canva Pro Cost?
How much is Canva Pro?
$9.95 US per month (when paid annually) for up to 5 people, which includes all of the features I reviewed today (and more)!
Month-to-month pricing is $12.99.
Canva Pro Free Trial: How To Access
The best part is you can try Canva Pro to see what you think of the features!
Then decide if you want to upgrade.
To sign up for a 30 day trial of Canva Pro click here>> Try Canva Pro For Free Today!
The Final Verdict: Is the Paid Version of Canva Pro Worth It?
If you are a small business, entrepreneur, blogger or freelancer who is looking for a cost-effective, professional (and easy to use) platform for your designs, then YES!
So, is the paid version of Canva Pro worth it?
Time is money and just the sheer amount of time that Pro saves you is completely worth the upgrade from Canva free to Canva Pro.
The free version of Canva is still a fantastic tool, but with the added premium features of Pro, including the ability to sell Canva templates, it will streamline your design process so you can move on to other parts of your business.
Have Questions About this Canva Pro Review?
Ask in the comments section below…
Related Design Resources & Articles:
- How to Sell Canva Templates
- 25 Pinterest Templates – Easy To Edit in Canva
- Before Designing New Pinterest Images – Do These 3 Things
- How To Design High Performing Pinterest Pins
- 17 of the Best Free Stock Photo Sites For Content Creators
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Thanks! I appreciate every single share 🙂
Thanks for this breakdown, I was curious about upgrading. I think I might this year, the additional features are intriguing!
Thanks for the great review! I’m a Pro customer and feel like I really get my money’s worth, but always love to hear about all the features to make sure there’s nothing I’ve overlooked. Great post!
Hi Kathy! It’s fantastic isn’t it?! What are your favourite features?
I am with you – When I first heard about/discovered Canva, I was quite reluctant for no other reason than the fact that I was a photoshop fan that didn’t see a readily available free program online meeting my needs. However, it didn’t take long using it before I realized what all the buzz was about!
Exactly! I still love PhotoShop for other projects, but for my blogging needs, Canva is where it’s at!
I really love using Canva Pro, so many great and easy features, perfect for non-graphic designers like me!
Hey Karen! Agree 🙂 It makes designing fun for everyone.
I use Photoshop as well and have been toying with the idea of switching to Canva so it’s easier to collaborate on graphics with my team members. Does the pro version of Canva have more image editing features? That’s the one big thing I use in Photoshop – I’m constantly editing images to recolor part of the photos to match my branding more (adjusting the hue/saturation/etc of just parts of the pictures).
Hi Brandi! Canva Pro actually has some decent image editing settings. You can adjust brightness, saturation, tint. blur, etc. Of course PhotoShop has more options and I still use PhotoShop, but I love Canva for creating templates I can sell, creating video pins, plus accessing all of the pro images and elements in the program makes it super fast to create.
Hi, I tried the free trial pro for 30 days and I haven’t got time to use it that much but I would look into it in the future, thank you for the review.
I agree with you! I think if one is really making use of one’s blog as an income generator, investing in Canva Pro is a safe bet. Thank you for this post! I found out the benefits of canvas pro because of this :”)
I’ve been trying to decide on this so thanks for the good info!
I have been SO on the fence about Canva Pro. This looks so enticing! I have Adobe, but Canva is just so much easier!! Thanks for the inside look 🙂
I definitely agree with this post! Canva Pro has changed my life!!
I just finished my free trials ddfinl and I would definitely agree that Canva Pro is worth it 100%. I love the premium photos that you can use and the fonts as well!
I never knew you could search for pictures by color! That changes everything!
It took me a while to work that one out too! It really helps speed up the process when looking for images.
Canva is a lifesaver! I’ve previously worked with Adobe creative suite in the past as a designer, but once I switched to Canva I never looked back.
Hi Rebecca! I agree with you. I love that I can save all my designs in one place too. It definitely speeds up the process 🙂
Canva is a great tool. However I upgraded to Pro and I am so happy I did. It offers so much more flexibility in terms of being able to create graphics for that reflect your own brand.
I just love Canva Pro.
Hi Joy, Completely agree with you. I couldn’t imagine not using it in my business.
I’ve been using Photoshop since 2004 and absolutely love it. BUT when it comes to creating pins for Pinterest you can’t beat Canva 🙂 Kris
Agreed! I’m a long-time PhotoShop user as well but Canva definitely wins when it comes to creating graphics quickly! Have a good one Kris!
Agreed +1 – Canva is great for quickly turning around those specific tasks. If I was new to the game I could see using Pro, but I’ve been using Photoshop for 20 years, and I quickly get frustrated with what Canva can’t do.
Hi Dave – I don’t think you can compare Canva Pro to PhotoShop as they are so different! Absolutely Canva Pro can’t do everything PhotoShop does, but on the other hand it offers so many features that PhotoShop doesn’t. I think all in all Canva Pro is great for small businesses. I personally use both 🙂
I’ve been using Canva Pro for more than a year and It’s one of my favourite tool to create any kind of design. So, fast and easy. Especially for creating Social Media Graphics and Blog Post banners.
Hi Govind, I agree – such a helpful tool. I also love how organized you can be with the Pro version! It definitely makes designing graphics that much easier 🙂
Thanks for this. I’ve been thinking about going pro, but never quite sure.
Hi Natalie, You can always try the free trial (link in this artcile) and see if it’s for you 🙂
Can someone who purchase your template and have a pro account on canva share or resell your template to others on their behalf? Can we avoid that?
I do not allow people to resell my templates. This is for personal use only. As far as how to avoid this, it should be stated in your legal documentation.
I upgraded to Canva pro when I created my blog and I LOVE it. It’s so much better than the free version with a lot more options!
Hey Emma – agreed! I just paid for another year this week. It’s a major resource for my business 🙂
I was thinking of upgrading to Canva pro lately. But wasn’t sure if I should buy or not. This review is helpful. Thanks for sharing
Hi Jais, You can also give the free trial a go and decide from there!
I’ve only ever had the pro version, thus I highly suggest that you get the pro version. Canva makes my blogging journey much easier as a creative.
I’ve been using Free Canvas for a long time now, I love how easy it is to use. I wasn’t sure if I should upgrade, but your breakdown is really appreciated and will make my decision easier! Thank you 🙂
It’s definitely worth giving the free trial a go and then you can decide. It’s fun trying the different features 🙂
Canva Pro is one MUST have an expense for my blog. This is a great review of Canva.
Hi Crystal – Absolutely! The amount of time it saves alone is a must. Thanks for the feedback!
Unless a person uses it constantly and consistently, paying a monthly fee is a waste of money. That’s why I never buy any software on a monthly/yearly fee basis.
If Canva had a one time purchase, I’d go for it.
I use Canva every day and the affordable price is well worth it. Especially as they are constantly adding new features, fonts, templates, photos, etc. Other programs have a one-time fee (Affinity Photo), however, it’s completely different software – nothing like Canva.