One of the most critical elements to consider when building a brand is design. It will help you stand out from the competition and elicit your prospects and audience's desired emotion or feeling. However, if you're not developing visual content for your website and social media platforms, you must rethink your approach!
Oh, wait! You don't have to be an expert in graphic designing. You just have to gain basic knowledge about some of the most convenient graphic design tools.
Let's check those out!
What is Canva?
Canva is a popular DIY design tool that offers a collection of various templates and layouts from which you can generate graphics for your website, emails, and social media platforms.
How much does Canva cost?
Canva offers three subscription plans.
Free Plan: More than 250,000 templates, over 100 design kinds, thousands of pictures, graphics, numerous fonts, and 5GB of cloud storage are all included with the Canva Free Plan.
Pro Plan: Canva Pro costs $119.99 per year and includes brand kit upload options, one-click Magic Resize for images, over 420,000 templates, 75 million photos, videos, and graphics, design saving for team use, 100GB of cloud storage, and social media scheduling for seven platforms, in addition to all of the free features.
Enterprise Plan: Canva Enterprise costs $30 per month per person and includes all Canva Pro features and additional enterprise-centric tools.
Is Canva Premium worth it?
Yes! Canva Premium Version is worth purchasing since it has impressive features, photos, and backdrops that make graphic designing for beginners more convenient. In addition, it gives flexibility in exploring and experimenting in designing with its top-notch features.
What are the best alternatives for Canva?
There are humongous graphic designing tools available for beginners that are worth getting your hands on.
Let's check out the list of Canva alternatives that you can use to create and modify graphics, regardless of your graphic design skill level.
Crello
Thousands of ready-made templates and simple editing options let you speed up the creative designing process in Crello.
Key Features:
Crello's Animation Maker feature sets it different from the other Canva competitors, as it provides users with animated templates and objects to create more exciting photos and videos. Crello also offers a vast template and image library, which includes graphics and a variety of possibilities for different online content types and platforms.
Pricing:
Crello is free to use, but Animation Maker features are reserved for Pro members.
Crello Pro costs $7.99 per month & billed annually.
Visit: https://crello.com
Simplified
You can easily edit your designs with Simplified's resource collection, which includes millions of photographs, thousands of fonts, and a range of design elements.
Key Features:
Simplified allows you to use AI to remove backgrounds, generate animations, and resize photographs with a single click. You'll never need to use more than one tool again! You may also use in-app publishing and scheduling, which allows you to generate and publish all of your marketing material from one place.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Pro Plan for small teams costing $8 per year
The business plan costs $24 per year.
Visit: https://simplified.co
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Pixelated
Pixelied is similar to Canva, except it comes with thousands of pre-made themes and icons, millions of stock pictures, and a suite of photo-editing tools such as one-click background removal.
Key Features:
Pixelied offers a couple of features that differentiate it from other DIY graphic design tools. With its mock-up editor, you can generate impressive product mock-ups for your brand. You may also transition between workplaces, each with its own assets, designs, and team members.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Pro plan at $7.95 per month.
Visit: https://pixelied.com
Pixlr
Pixlr's picture editing features are exceptional. Pixlr makes picture editing easier, quicker, and smarter than ever before, making it a viable alternative to Adobe Photoshop.
Key Features:
Its AI Cutout button allows you to eliminate backdrops with a single click. In addition, you can use light streaks, dust specks, and glitter to create accents or textures to your images.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Paid Plan costs $4.90 per month, billed annually.
Visit: https://pixlr.com
Tyle
Tyle's excellent video and picture editor feature allow you to quickly generate high-quality video and posts. All you have to do is pick a template and insert your media and content. Following that, you can promptly change each layer to tailor your film to your liking.
Key Features:
Well, you don't need to record your own video or take your own images. Tyle provides access to three million free stock photographs and video clips.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Paid Plan starts at $31 per month
Visit: https://tyle.io
RelayThat
RelayThat is an excellent choice for developing your own branded images for landing sites, social media, and marketing when you don't have a lot of time to spend as a designer.
Key Features:
RelayThat will offer several design sizes and formats for different platforms when you input your brand materials. RelayThat is an excellent tool to use if you need additional template alternatives or tested design tips. And you can pick from thousands of available royalty-free photos. It also has picture SEO skills, which can help your photos rank higher in organic search results.
Pricing:
The Pro Plan is $25 per month.
Visit: https://www.relaythat.com
Piktochart
With their library of data visualization templates, Piktochart specializes in assisting you in creating charts, graphics, and infographics.
Key Features:
Piktochart is known for its simple data visualization tools, but it also has templates for making social media posts and presentations.
Piktochart's free plan has limited access to different templates, so upgrading to the subscription tier if you plan to perform a lot of infographics and chart creation with this tool is a good idea.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Pro Plan starts at $29 per month
Visit:
https://piktochart.com
Colorcinch
Colorcinch is a powerful picture editor and cartoonizer that is easy to use, attractive, and free. You may utilize over 50,000 vector designs and icons, as well as over 1.5 million stock photographs.
Key Features:
Colorcinch allows you to resize, improve, and convert your images, as well as apply unique effects, filters, and overlays.
Pricing:
Free (Offers Upgrade)
Visit: https://edit.cartoonize.net
DesignBold
Another popular tool that may be used as a Canva substitute is DesignBold. It offers a broader stock photo library than Canva.
Key Features:
DesignBold features have a similar user interface like Canva; however, it has a more extensive stock picture library. It also offers a new collection of templates you may utilize for marketing/branding.
Pricing:
It is absolutely Free (Offers Upgrade)
Visit: http://www.designbold.com
Photopea
Photopea is a free, easy-to-use web-based graphic editor for image editing, web design, and image conversion.
Key Features:
It offers a wide variety of design features that a beginner can easily use. It works with all the web browsers, including Opera, Edge, Chrome, and Firefox. Furthermore, this is ad-supported software, and you do not need to register to use it.
Pricing:
It is absolutely Free
Visit: https://www.photopea.com
Snappa
Snappa is another DIY graphic design tool with a lot of templates to select from, royalty-free photos, and the opportunity to submit your own branded images to use in your projects.
Key Features:
Snappa stands out from other tools as it allows you to import your own unique fonts and publish your designs immediately to social media without leaving the app. But, unfortunately, Snappa limits free users to five downloads per month, and free users can't post photographs on social media. Hence, its Pro subscription is a better alternative if you want full access to all of your designs and the ability to share images on social media straight from Snappa.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Paid plans start at $10 per month and are invoiced yearly.
Visit: https://snappa.com
Venngage
Venngage offers a large number of distinct templates. As a result, this is an excellent design tool for anyone with a range of visual design needs, from social media photos to cards and postcards to reports and presentations.
Key Features:
Venngage also publishes a lot of instructional content on their blog to share best practices and fresh information with their community, which might help you improve your DIY design abilities even more. Venngage's primary use case is data visualization and infographic content production.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Premium Plan begins at $24 per month, payable annually
Visit: https://www.venngage.com/
PicMonkey
PicMonkey has powerful picture editing tools that allow users to do creative things with their photos, such as sophisticated editing, effects & filters, and collage creation.
Key Features:
PicMonkey is used for picture editing. It does have some templates and design elements to utilize as well. PicMonkey gives you a seven-day free trial to try it out before you have to pay for the Basic or Pro memberships.
Pricing:
The Basic Plan costs $7.99 per month.
Visit: https://www.picmonkey.com
Visme
Visme is one of the most flexible Canva competitors, allowing users to create exciting presentations, infographics, papers, movies, graphics, and more.
Key Features:
This design tool streamlines the content production process by offering simple templates, millions of photos, thousands of icons, and more than 50 charts and data widgets. You may also add video or audio, as well as embed anything. It's also simple to edit and customize.
Visme's Basic Plan is free, but the Paid Plan includes limitless projects, additional storage, and crucial features like the slide library.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Paid Plan costs $15 per month and is invoiced yearly.
Visit: https://www.visme.co
Easil
Easil has some of the most extensive image editing tools and a variety of templates for multiple platforms and web content types.
Key Features:
Easil allows users to upload their brand assets and develop their own templates for other team members to produce their own branded photos. Users may even print photographs directly from the application if necessary.
Easil also provides customers with access to its stock photographs. You can also use Easil to create GIFs in addition to static images.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Paid Plan costs $7.50 per month per member
Visit: https://about.easil.com
Desygner
Desygner is yet another Canva alternative, compatible with both iPhone and Android, and gives you an incredible design experience.
Key Features:
It has a right-hand sidebar and a drag-and-drop editor. You may edit PDF files and create logos and produce social media visuals and blog photos.
Pricing:
Free Plan (Offer Upgrades)
Visit: https://desygner.com
Befunky
Befunky is used by most people who want to do graphic designing easily. The program has a drag-and-drop editor and powerful photo-editing features for creating amazing photographs.
Key Features:
Photo Editor, Collage Maker, and Designer are the three design modes available. The first allows you to edit your photos, the second will enable you to make amusing collages, and the third will enable you to create graphics for social media or your blog.
Pricing:
Free Plan (Offer Upgrades)
Visit: https://www.befunky.com
Animaker
Non-designers who wish to make animation and live-action videos can use Animaker.
Key Features:
Animaker allows users to create and modify live videos, short films, and GIFs. It includes a significant number of professionally designed templates and the most comprehensive library of animated characters, properties, backgrounds, icons, photos, movies, and more.
Pricing:
Free Plan to download 5 Videos with Watermark per month
Visit: https://www.animaker.com
Stencil
Stencil is a free Canva alternative that allows you to design graphics for your website or social media networks quickly.
Key Features:
It features a variety of browser extensions that allow you to simply highlight text or capture a picture for use in your design projects. In addition, it has over 100,000 quotations to pick from for use in social media graphics. However, Stencil provides fewer templates than the other tools, so if you need a template to get started, Stencil may not have as many.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Paid Plan costs $9 per month and is invoiced yearly.
Visit: https://getstencil.com
Fotor
Fotor combines powerful picture editing with a design interface similar to Canva's, allowing users to alter photographs and utilize them to create designs swiftly.
Key Features:
Fotor also offers video tutorials on its website so that users may continue to study and improve their skills using the program. In addition, users can begin with Fotor's Basic membership, which includes basic editing and advanced design skills.
Pricing:
The basic subscription is $8.99 per month.
Visit: https://www.fotor.com
Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is a significant rival to Canva in the market. This tool can make your design experience awesome.
Key Features:
Adobe Spark offers thousands of professional templates, as well as Adobe's royalty-free library and best-in-class layouts, colors, and fonts. Adobe Spark even allows you to create entire web pages and short videos quickly.
Pricing:
Free Plan (Offer Upgrades)
Visit: https://spark.adobe.com
DesignCap
DesignCap tool assists in creating professional designs such as infographics, flyers, and graphics for social media.
Key Features:
Thousands of high-quality templates are available, as well as a large variety of drawings, shapes, and striking fonts. The user interface is pretty similar to other tools like Canva, with a drag and drop builder and a right sidebar.
Pricing:
Save up to 5 designs for free.
Visit: https://www.designcap.com
Gravit Designer
Gravit Designer has both basic and advanced functionality. Its user interface is relatively similar to Photoshop, Sketch, and GIMP.
Key Features:
Layers, drawing tools, grouping, shapes, text, effects, and other features are included in Gravit Designer. So if you want to create anything from the ground up, this is the tool to use. It does, however, have some pre-made blog articles and social media picture templates.
Pricing:
Free Plan (Offer Upgrades)
Visit: https://www.designer.io
Artboard Studio
This tool is not like other Canva alternatives, but it has some extremely cool features to help you with graphic creation.
Key Features:
Artboard Studio allows you to quickly and simply create professional product mock-ups. You may also use this tool to generate real-time interactive presentation slides.
Pricing:
Free Plan with a restricted number of templates.
Visit: https://artboard.studio
Doka.Photo
Doka.Photo is a simple design tool that allows you to alter photographs rapidly without leaving your browser.
Key Features:
Crop, apply filters, alter brightness, contrast, exposure, and saturation, add text, and resize your photographs are all possible with this tool.
Pricing:
Free
Visit: https://doka.photo
Design Wizard
Design Wizard allows you to create video and picture designs quickly. Two editors are included in this: a static graphic editor and a video editor.
Key Features:
Layers and artboards are included in their design tools. In addition, they have over a million premium photos, as well as hundreds of high-quality movies, drawings, and graphics in their database.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Pro Plan Costs $9.99/ month
Business Plan costs $49.99/ month
Visit: https://www.designwizard.com
Luminar AI (7 days free)
Luminar is a total picture editing solution for Windows and Mac that works as a standalone application and a Photoshop and Apple Photos plugin. RAW compatibility, batch processing, image organization, rating tools, and sophisticated image editing capabilities are all included.
Key Features:
All of Canva's capabilities are also accessible in Luminar. Luminar lets you edit an image's geometry, tweak contrast, saturation, and exposure. It comes with over 80 pre-installed Looks, and you may add more from the Luminar Marketplace. Luminar is more than a simple picture editor. It makes content-aware changes using artificial intelligence algorithms. For non-destructive and selective editing, it uses layers and masks.
Pricing:
Plan costs $69
Visit: https://skylum.com
Xtensio
In only a few minutes, you can create an incredible, engaging, and professional website with Xtensio. The best aspect is that you don't need any design experience.
Key Features:
You can easily select from over 100 different themes, modify color schemes, add your content, and much more. It's pretty adaptable and allows you to drag and drop anything quickly. Furthermore, its interactive modules are tailored to meet your specific business requirements.
Pricing:
Free
Visit: https://xtensio.com
Photoshop
It's no surprise, given that this tool has been a top graphics generator for many years. You've mastered graphic Design if you've mastered Photoshop. Brushes and macros creation are just a few of the unique capabilities contained in the resource that isn't present anywhere else than Photoshop.
Key Features:
The tool assists you or your team in creating outstanding designs and photographs. The lack of templates and examples, issues with photo importation, and a little complex language are all potential downsides. Furthermore, Photoshop is not the cheapest tool, so be prepared to pay some cash. You can have seven-day free trial.
Pricing:
It costs $239.88/year
Visit: https://www.adobe.com
Shutterstock Editor
This online editor is for individuals who want their information to be organized and classified. The platform is designed in such a way that you will never get confused.
Key Features:
Editorial, Fashion, Symbols, People, Vantage, and more types of free photos may be found here. Furthermore, when you sign up, your own photo collection grows every week.
You can get the most out of your ideas with good customization, high-quality image, icons, vectors, and music.
Pricing:
It's free
Visit: https://www.shutterstock.com/editor
Polarr (Free Demo)
Polarr is ideal for people who like a one-of-a-kind, custom-made design. Unfortunately, it lacks ready-to-use templates, pictures, and fonts.
Key Features:
Polarr allows you to edit images and see your photographs in the Polarr Album Plus. Polarr is similar to Photoshop a little, although it still relies on the user.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Paid Plan- $3.99 per feature, per month
Visit: https://photoeditor.polarr.co
Pablo
Pablo is a fantastic tool to use if you're searching for a simple method to generate and update your social media posts. The website is designed in such a way that you will never have any issues with it.
Key Features:
You may utilize the suggested photos, upload your own, modify their sizes, apply interesting effects, and select from various typefaces. You may share your desired logo or image with your friends and co-workers on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter as well.
Pricing:
Free+Chrome Extension
Visit: https://pablo.buffer.com
Summing Up
Well, in this competitive digital era, you need a designing tool if you're a marketer, an online business owner, or a content producer. Of course, Canva is a fantastic tool, but you should always be on the lookout for better options, and the above-mentioned design tools are excellent Canva alternatives to choose from.
I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.
About Chase Austin
I have spent 10+ years writing stories and marketing them. I’ve failed and succeeded over the years, and these are some of my tidbits on how I started my author business, perfected marketing, and more.
Here you’ll find resources to help you kick more ass with your words. No fluff, only actionable tips, and tricks if you are looking to make a living through writing, or just use it as a side hustle.
Things I like: Long walks, Reading about anything and everything, Telling stories and chess.
Visit me at www.thechaseaustin.com. Want to say hi, email me at contact@thechaseaustin.com.
Wow, Chase. This is an awesome resource! I'm on information overload! Do you have any favorites in the amazing list? What do you use?