Curious about Canva Pro Pricing options and what is included? Wondering how it compares to other design apps? Maybe you’re looking for tips on how Canva Pro can help YOU in your dietetic business before you make the commitment to upgrade to Pro.
Keep reading!
Canva is the popular graphic design platform that allows users to create stunning visuals without the need for extensive design experience.
Whether you’re putting together a wellness presentation on plant-based eating or creating social media graphics to promote your recent blog post on phosphorus foods for your CKD audience, Canva can help. Or, perhaps you want to sell low-content books on Amazon KDP and you’re designing a cover for a mindful eating journal. Canva’s vast library of templates and tools makes it easier to create eye-catching designs and add a professional touch to any project.
In this article we’ll:
- Discuss Canva Pro pricing, annual vs monthly subscription
- Compare Canva Pro to other plans offered by Canva
- Highlight a few Canva features specific to Pro accounts, with examples of how to apply them to a dietetic business
- Look at Canva Pro compared to three other graphic design applications
Let’s get started!
Canva Pro Pricing Options
Canva offers a few different plans that you can choose from depending on your individual and business needs. Canva Pro is the paid subscription plan for individuals.
This pricing varies depending on the billing plan that you select.
- Monthly Plan: $12.99 per month, billed monthly
- Annual Plan: $119.99 per year, billed annually (which works out to $9.99 per month)
If you’re debating on upgrading to Canva Pro from the free version, Canva offers a 30-day free trial. In order to sign up for the trial, you will need to enter payment information. If you do not want to continue with the Pro version by the end of the trial, make sure to cancel anytime during the 30-day period to avoid being charged.
Note: Canva Pro pricing is based on the cost for one person only. Therefore, for 2 or more people you will need to upgrade to the Canva for Teams plan which we’ll cover next.
Canva offers 3 main plans to cater to its diverse user needs: Canva Free, Canva Pro, and Canva for Teams. Below is a breakdown of the features included with each plan.
Key Takeaways:
- Canva Free includes a large library of templates, photos and graphics as well as access to some of the Canva Magic, AI-powered tools.
- For Pro and Teams accounts, the library expands to include more templates, photos, graphics, videos and audio.
- Along with the extensive library, Pro and Teams accounts also have access to other premium features that we’ll cover in the next section, such as Background Remover and Magic Resize.
- Cloud storage increases from 5GB for Canva Free to 1TB for Pro and Teams
- Features included with Teams that are not included with Pro accounts are only related to things that would be beneficial when having more than 1 person sharing the same account, such as:
- Team reports and insights
- Ability to collaborate with others in real-time
- Design approval workflow functions within the Brand Hub
- Canva for Teams pricing starts at $14.99 per month ($149 per year) for up to 5 people with an added cost per person above the initial 5. This added cost varies depending on the number of additional people.
Are you new to Canva and not sure if you should upgrade to Canva Pro right away?
TIP: Start with the free version first. Familiarize yourself with the platform. As you get more comfortable with it and if you that you frequently want to use features (images, videos, design tools) that are only available with Canva Pro, then look into upgrading at that time.
While Canva is a user-friendly platform and does not require a background in design, as with any new applications, there is a learning curve. There are plenty of tutorial videos on Canva’s website to help you get started and other YouTube videos from Canva creators.
In addition to the 3 main plans previously discussed, Canva also offers Canva for Nonprofits and Canva for Education.
- Canva for Nonprofits
- Free for organizations with Nonprofit status
- Access to Canva for Teams features
- Canva for Education
- Free for K-12 school teachers, students and school districts
- Includes all of the Canva for Teams features
- Added features for educators such as LMS integrations and ability to share work and assignments with students
Both of these options have specific eligibility requirements. Each plan comes with access to all features that we’ve covered thus far and most of the features we’ll be highlighting next.
Benefits of Canva Pro Features (with examples)
The free version of Canva does indeed offer an array of templates, photos, and graphics to help create professional looking presentations, social media graphics, flyers, etc. more efficiently. However, upgrading to Canva Pro can be a game-changer for your business with the added features we’ll cover here.
Image and Video Background Remover
The background remover feature is a beneficial tool when it comes to creating polished, professional visuals. By removing distracting or irrelevant backgrounds from photos or videos, the focus is redirected on to the essential elements. Background remover can be applied to photos or videos in Canva’s library or ones that are uploaded by the user.
We can see an example below applying image background remover to create a social media post. In the example, image background remover was applied to Image A. Then the remaining focal point image of the hand holding the strawberry was used to create an Instagram post (Image B) promoting strawberry season.
Background remover enables users to remove specific parts of a photo, providing the ability to customize images and designs to fit the needs of the project at hand. Whether using this feature to create a graphic for Instagram, a presentation, or YouTube video, eliminating the “clutter” makes these projects more visually appealing and ultimately helps to convey the intended message effectively.
Similar to background remover, Canva Pro also includes the feature to download designs with a transparent background. For instance, after creating a brand logo in Canva, save the image as a PNG file and click on the box option for “transparent background”. This gives the user the flexibility to then easily use the logo for branding on social posts, business cards, presentations, and handouts.
Extensive Library of Premium Content
Canva Pro offers access to the entire library of premium templates, stock photos, videos, audio, fonts and graphics. This content offers a time-saving solution that eliminates the need to start designs from scratch.
What is the policy on using the Canva content (stock photos, videos, etc.) for commercial use?
According to Canva’s Content Licensing Agreement, when Canva Pro users export a design, the subscription plan automatically grants users a Pro Content License for each piece of content used in the design. You can then use Canva designs for a wide range of personal and commercial uses.
Some of the things that you are allowed to do or make with designs that contain Canva content include:
- Advertising and promotional products (printed materials, presentations, video presentations, commercials, brochures, greeting cards) for promotion and/or resale, without any reproduction quantity limit
- Social media post or profile image
- Entertainment applications: books, book covers, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and videos
- Online publications: web pages, blogs, eBooks, and videos
- Prints for promotional purposes, resale, license or other distribution
The Pro Content License is another benefit of the paid subscription plan. Canva Free users need to pay $1 each time a piece of Pro Content is used in a design. By paying the fee, this also removes the watermark from the Pro content. While $1 may not seem like a lot of money for a license, if you find yourself frequently using content that you need to pay for, it may be time to weigh Canva Pro pricing benefits and upgrade.
As previously stated, creating and selling a design for use on merchandise or digital products, like books and eBooks, is allowed. A book cover is the first thing readers see, so it’s important to make it eye-catching and engaging. Canva’s extensive library of content, including book cover templates makes it a fantastic tool to create a stunning product.
By going to the Canva home screen and typing “book cover” in the search bar, you’re presented with over 4,000 templates.
TIP: To help narrow down the results volume, try including the specific book genre such as “children’s book covers” in the search bar. You can also filter the results by “Style,” (e.g., fun, minimalist, elegant, abstract, creative).
The vast collection of professionally designed templates allow the ability to customize layouts to fit branding and content needs. Additionally the library of templates serve as a source of creative inspiration that help empower users to experiment with various styles and designs. This ultimately helps in crafting engaging content that resonate with the audience and strengthens brand identity.
Content Creation for Social Media
Social media has become an indispensable tool for entrepreneurs to connect with their target audience, build brand awareness, and foster customer engagement. Through strategic use of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you can reach a wider audience, validate their ideas, and gather valuable feedback to refine products or services. Social media’s networking capabilities also provide opportunities to connect with potential partners, investors, and customers, fostering crucial relationships for business success.
For those looking to efficiently create quality content for various social media platforms, the Magic Resize feature offered through the paid subscription plan definitely makes Canva Pro pricing worth it. Instead of spending time recreating designs to fit the appropriate dimensions for each of your social media accounts, Magic Resize automatically resizes designs to fit each platform.
Another time saver benefit of Canva Pro is the Content Planner feature. Once you create social media designs in Canva, you can use Content Planner to coordinate the posts across the different social media platforms. This feature also provides social media performance analytics so you can monitor engagement (e.g., impressions, clicks, likes, and comments) across the posts.
Canva Brand Hub
The final Canva Pro feature we’ll highlight is the Brand Hub. Whether your business has one or multiple employees, the Brand Hub is another Pro feature that is worth looking into when determining if Canva Pro pricing is right for you.
The Brand Hub helps streamline branding efforts and enhance consistency. Components of the Brand Hub are:
- Brand Kit
- Brand Templates
- Brand Controls
The Brand Kit is the central place in Canva to store and easily access brand assets such as logos, colors, graphics, icons and fonts. When creating your next design for Instagram or a client handout, having a color palette and other assets already established makes the design process more efficient and consistent.
If you’re a dietitian who works with multiple brands, the Brand Kit is a must-have feature. You can create and manage up to 100 separate brands within the Kit, creating project folders for each brand. This helps ensure you’re using the right assets for the right stakeholders.
The other 2 components of the Brand Hub, Brand Templates and Brand Controls work best when collaborating with others. Brand Templates are pre-designed templates that you establish. Then you and your team can pull from these designated templates to quickly create social media posts, presentations, handouts, etc. This is another helpful feature to make sure all content is on-brand, no matter who is working on the project.
Brand controls refer to the ability to restrict use of colors or fonts outside of those specified in the Brand Kit. It also includes the function to set guidelines requiring approval before a design is published.
The Brand Hub not only saves time by providing users with a base of assets to get started with rather than starting a blank page, but also ensures that every piece of content created aligns with the brand’s identity. This is not only important for brand recognition, but trust-building with your audience as well.
How does Canva Pro Pricing Compare to Other Graphic Design Apps?
There are a whole host of online graphic design tools with similar features to Canva. This section takes a look at how the Canva Pro plan stacks up against a few of its competitors: Adobe Express, Stencil and Visme. All of these tools are similar to Canva in that they do not require the user to have a graphic design background in order to efficiently produce high quality work.
The table below shows how Canva Pro pricing compares to the monthly subscription plans offered by these three competitors for individuals (not teams). In addition, the table shows which plans offer a free trial.
| Canva | Adobe Express | Stencil | Visme |
| Canva Pro$12.99/mo | Adobe Express Premium$9.99/mo | Stencil Pro$15/mo Stencil Unlimited $20/mo | Visme Starter$29/mo Visme Pro$59/mo |
| 30-day free trial | 30-day free trial | No free trial Offers: 7-day money back guarantee | No free trial |
*Prices listed are for the monthly subscription plans only. Each site offers a discount when purchasing the annual plan vs monthly.
Note: All four of these platforms offer a free plan that provides limited access to templates, design assets and other features.
While we’ve already covered the features that Canva has to offer, let’s take a closer look at the other three design tools.
Adobe Express Premium
Adobe Express formerly known as Adobe Spark, offers a Premium plan that is comparable to the Pro plan offered by Canva.
Their features include:
- Extensive Library – templates, design assets, Adobe fonts, royalty-free Adobe Stock collection photos, videos, and music
- Create and manage your brand – colors, font, logo
- Ability to share templates and assets with Creative Cloud Libraries
- Design effects – background remover, resize images
- Video effects – reverse video, change speed, trim, mute audio
- Create an animated 2D character- lips and gestures sync to pre-recorded dialogue
- Import PDFs and enhance by adding text, images, brand logos, etc.
- Adobe Firefly – generate images and text effects using AI-power
Stencil
Stencil offers 2 paid subscription plans to choose from. The main difference between the 2 plans is related to storage capacity, meaning the amount of images you can create and save.
Stencil features include:
- Extensive Library – photos, icons, graphics, templates, and fonts
- Upload Your Own Fonts
- Instant Image Resizing
- Safe Areas – borders to see where it’s safe to put content, so nothing gets cut off
- WordPress Plugin – create images from your blog
- Instagram SMS – send images directly to your mobile device to share on Instagram
Visme
Visme also offer 2 paid plans, Starter and Pro. Both are noticeably more expensive compared to the three other graphic design tools listed in the table above.
It is worth noting that with the Visme annual subscription, there is a significant savings when purchasing the full year compared to the monthly plan. Therefore, signing up for the annual plan may be the better route if selecting the paid version of this tool.
In comparing the Starter and Pro plans, the Pro plan offers greater storage capacity, brand kit capabilities and an increase in downloading options (video, GIF and PPTX).
Visme features Include:
- Extensive Library: templates, images, video, audio, and animated illustrations, icons, and characters.
- Brand Kit (Pro only): manage/upload fonts, import brand assets, create brand color palette
- Charts and Data Widgets: translate data into to simple visuals, stats and figures
- Image Background Remover
- Presentation recording abilities
- Text-to-Image AI Generator
For each of the three design tools discussed here, the features listed present a snapshot of what each tool offers. Most of the features listed above may only be accessed with the paid plans, although there are a few that can be used with the free version of the tools.
Not sure which graphic design tool is right for you? Here are some things to consider.
- Does the tool offer a free version or free trial?
- What is the cost for the subscription plans?
- How user-friendly is the platform?
- Does the tool require the user to have graphic design experience?
- Are there tutorials on YouTube or the site itself with helpful tips to get started?
- What are the conditions of the content license for commercial purposes?
- What features are offered and do these features meet the needs for my business?
- For example if you need help creating infographics more efficiently you may want to focus on tools that offer an extensive library of infographic templates and blocks.
While learning to use multiple graphic design platforms can be time consuming, you may find that trying out the free versions of a couple different ones will help you decide the best option for your business. Perhaps you’ll even find a combination of tools that works best, using one for images and another for video creation.
Final Thoughts
Whether crafting social media content, designing book covers, creating presentations or other health and wellness content, graphic design tools like Canva are beneficial for those seeking to amplify their visual storytelling and professional branding. Canva Pro pricing specifically, is comparable to similar graphic design apps available. While it is not necessary for everyone to upgrade to Pro or Premium versions of these popular design apps, hopefully this article has provided some food for thought as far as new ideas, or things to keep in mind if you are on the fence about upgrading. For additional reading, check out The Dietitian Editor blog.
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