If you’ve recently seen a price increase announcement from your website platform and felt your stomach drop, you’re not alone. A lot of small business owners are reassessing their website costs right now, especially when their site doesn’t appear to generate enough leads, sales, search visibility, or other measurable value to earn its keep.
Canva websites come up as an option in these conversations, and for some people, it’s the right move.
If your site is still small, gets little traffic, and mainly exists to explain what you do and how to reach you, moving to Canva may be a reasonable way to cut costs. The decision gets more complicated once your current site is already bringing in visitors, collecting leads, or connecting to other parts of your business. Either way, there are a few things worth checking before you cancel anything.
I spent many years running a website development agency, and I’ve watched businesses walk away from more than they realized during a platform switch. I’d rather point out the hidden complications now than have you discover them after you’ve already cancelled your current platform.
Four Things to Check Before You Cancel
If this is a side hustle or an early-stage website without much traffic, no forms, booking tools, or other integrations, and little content to rebuild, a lot of what follows may not apply to you, and a Canva website may be a solid option with relatively little risk. If you’ve got a more established site, these four questions are worth sitting with before you make the call.
Is anyone finding the site?
Check whether people are landing on your site through Google or links from other websites. If the answer is no, or the traffic is negligible, you have much less to protect. If a handful of pages do get regular visitors, jot down their addresses before you move anything. Canva doesn’t offer the same redirect tools as a traditional website platform, so if those exact page addresses don’t exist on your new Canva website, the links will stop working.
Is the site connected to anything important?
Make a list of anything your site currently does beyond displaying information, things like a contact form, a sign-up form for your email list, booking tool, or checkout. If these are just buttons linking out to another tool, like a Calendly page or a Stripe checkout, they’re usually easy to set up again on a new site. If a form submits directly through your current site or connects automatically to other software, check whether Canva can recreate that same connection before you assume it will carry over.
Do you know where your domain is registered?
Before you cancel anything, find out where your domain is registered and make sure you can log into the account that controls it. Also check whether your business email runs on that same domain. This is the one I’ve seen go wrong the most: changing your domain settings without checking this first can knock out your business email along with your website, sometimes without any warning until it happens.
Is there anything you need to save?
Save your page copy, original images, contact information, and any form submissions or content you’ll want later. Canva has no import tool, so you’ll be rebuilding your pages rather than transferring them directly.
If your site gets little traffic, has no important connections, and mainly serves as a simple online presence, moving to Canva is a low-risk decision. The more jobs your website is already doing, the more carefully you’ll want to weigh the savings.
Make Sure Canva Can Do What You Need
Canva websites are well suited to simple, focused web presences, but they do have real limitations: no native blogging, no built-in e-commerce, limited integration support, and no way to move your site to another platform later if your needs grow. My posts on what a Canva website is and Canva website limitations explain those limitations and trade-offs in more detail.
If none of those limitations apply to how you’re actually using your current site, the switch becomes a much easier call.
What About the Cost?
Here’s where Canva’s pricing stands out for someone in this situation. Canva isn’t the only alternative worth considering, but it has an obvious advantage for anyone already paying for Canva Pro: replacing the website platform wouldn’t add another subscription.
You can publish a Canva website on the free plan using a Canva-provided web address, and that may be enough for a new side hustle, a temporary project, or a business that mostly sends people to the site through direct links. It also gives you a way to build and test the site before paying for anything.
If you already own a business domain, I’d recommend keeping it. A familiar, branded address is easier to share, and it means anyone who already knows your web address can still find you. Connecting your own domain does require Canva Pro (or another eligible paid plan).
If you’re not on Canva Pro yet, a free 30-day trial lets you build and test a Canva website with your own domain before deciding whether it’s worth the ongoing cost. That’s a reasonable way to figure out whether Canva Pro would replace your current platform subscription at a lower overall cost.
If you’re already on Canva Pro for your content and design work, connecting your existing domain to a Canva website is part of what you’re already paying for. No extra subscription needed.
One note: Canva does offer domain purchasing through their platform, but I’d recommend registering your domain separately from any website platform, including Canva. I’ve used Namecheap for years, and it’s still my go-to recommendation.
If you ever want to move to a different platform later, having your domain sit with an independent registrar means one less thing to untangle.
If You Decide to Switch to Canva
Keep the current site live while you build and test the new one. Any overlap between the two may cost a little extra, but it prevents a gap between taking the old site down and having its replacement ready.
Save everything you want to reuse: your text, your images, and any form submissions or contact details you need.
Build and test the Canva site fully, checking every page, link, form, and button, on both desktop and mobile.
Connect your domain last. Once the new site is ready, connect the domain to it and confirm that both the website and your business email are working before you cancel the old subscription.
If your old site gets meaningful search traffic or has other sites linking to it, confirm your important page addresses can be recreated before you cancel. If a page moves to a new address, it won’t automatically preserve the search visibility and inbound links it built up at the old one.
A Note on “But WordPress Is Free”
When website costs come up, WordPress often gets mentioned as a free alternative, and it’s true that the software itself is free, but a WordPress website is not. My own site runs on WordPress and I love it, though I’ve also invested in a custom theme and pay a monthly retainer to my developer for maintenance, security updates, and ongoing work. The software is free. Running the finished website usually isn’t.
WordPress can still be affordable for someone comfortable managing hosting, updates, backups, and troubleshooting themselves, or for someone who already has reliable technical support. But it’s not automatically the cheapest option for everyone, and if you don’t have those skills or that support already, the cost of getting someone else to handle it (or the time it takes to learn) is worth factoring in.
Whatever platform you’re weighing, compare the real total cost, not just the advertised subscription price.
The Bottom Line
Switching to a Canva website can be a sensible way to cut costs when your current site is small, gets little traffic, and mainly gives people a place to learn about your business and get in touch.
The decision deserves more caution once your site already attracts search traffic, collects leads, processes sales, or connects to important business tools. In that case, continuing to pay the higher subscription may be less costly than rebuilding the site and losing some of what it already does for you.
Understanding what you’re leaving behind will help you decide whether Canva can realistically take its place.
For a fuller picture of Canva website limitations, my post on Canva website limitations every business owner should know covers everything in detail. And if you’re still deciding whether a Canva website is the right fit for your situation, Who Should (and Shouldn’t) Use a Canva Website walks through the decision more broadly.
