Canva Lifetime is a scam (and what to do if you have an illegal Canva account)

You don’t have to go far to find Facebook groups proclaiming that if you join you can get Canva Pro for pennies.

Or Etsy and other creative marketplaces offering listings for “Canva Lifetime” subscriptions for a small handful of dollars.

Or people on Fiverr claiming they can turn your free Canva account into Canva Pro for just 5 bucks.

A gentle reminder that Canva Lifetime isn’t a thing. It doesn’t exist. Anyone trying to sell you a lifetime Canva plan is a scammer.

There is an absolute epidemic of fraudulent Canva subscriptions out there.

I see this happen a lot and the potential consequence if Canva catches the person selling “lifetime” or fraudulent pro accounts is for that account to be shutdown.

And yes, that could end up taking all of your designs with it.

Which is why I wanted to share a tutorial video about what to watch out for and the specific steps you should take if you discover that the account you’re on is fraudulent.

Don’t forget to join us in the How to Use Canva Facebook community, and be sure to grab your 45 day free trial of Canva Pro.

Resources Mentioned

• 45 Day Free Trial of Canva Pro

Transcript

There is an absolute epidemic of fraudulent Canva subscriptions out there.

You don’t have to go far to find Facebook groups proclaiming that if you join you can get Canva Pro for pennies… or Etsy and other creative marketplaces offering listings for “Canva Lifetime” subscriptions for a small handful of dollars… or people on Fivver claiming they can turn your free Canva account into Canva Pro for just 5 bucks.

I think many folks have forgotten that good old adage that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Here’s the bottom line in Canva’s own words:

Only purchases made through the official Canva website and apps are considered legitimate plans. Any plan purchases made outside of these official channels are considered illegal.

So if you don’t have a subscription that you setup directly through Canva, it’s not legit.

And “Canva Lifetime” doesn’t exist.

Folks who are selling plans outside of official Canva channels are typically putting you on a fraudulent account that makes you incredibly vulnerable.

I see this happen a lot and the potential consequence if Canva catches the person selling illegal accounts is for that account to be shut down… taking all of your designs with it.

To quote a Canva community manager who I checked with about so-called “lifetime accounts”:

We regularly do audits of our users. An illegally purchased subscription can result in the suspension and termination of the account, including the loss of the designs created. Any illegal accounts found may also be subject to a permanent ban from using Canva.”

All that to say… please only ever subscribe to Canva directly through Canva.

So what do you do now, if at this moment you are realizing that YOUR Canva subscription is fraudulent.

Here’s what I would recommend.

Step 1: Don’t beat yourself up.

It was an honest mistake and you are not alone — many have been taken in by these scam artists. Let’s just fix the problem now.

Step 2: Set up a brand new legal Canva account.

And make sure you set that up directly through Canva.com.

Or, if you want to set up a new account *and* take advantage of a 45 day free trial of Canva Pro at the same time, you can go to BrendaCadman.com/45days and it will enable you to sign up for a legal Canva Pro account with a 45 day free trial to test it out before you upgrade.

Step 3: Download any media that you uploaded.

If you’ve uploaded any of your own media, including images or video, and if you don’t have those images on your computer now, , you’ll want to download a copy of your media items so you can re-upload them into your new Canva account.

You can do that by hovering over an image or a video in your account, clicking on the 3 dots, and then choosing Download.

If you already have all of your media on your computer and you don’t need to download copies from your old Canva account, you can skip this step.

Step 4: Migrate your designs.

Once you’ve set up your new account, you’re going to need to move your existing Canva designs from the fraudulent account to your new, legal Canva subscription.

Unfortunately there isn’t a quick and easy solution to this challenge. There is no automated way for Canva to migrate your content over to your new account, but there *is* a way for you to accomplish this task.

You’re going to want to share each of the designs in the fraudulent account as a template, so that you can make a copy of the designs in your new account.

To do that, you’ll open the design you want to move, click on the share button, and then you’re looking for an option called “Template Link”.

You may see it listed in this area here, but if you don’t, just click on “More,” and then you’ll find a “template link” option here.

Copy and save that link because you’re going to need it when you have your new account open.

And then you’ll do this for every design that you want to move over to your new account. If you have a lot of designs, you may already be feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work ahead of you, and I’m not going to lie, it could take awhile.

Once you’ve compiled a list of all your design template links, you can logout of the fraudulent account and open your new account.

Then, you’ll click on each of your template links and when prompted, you can make a copy of your old designs in your new account.

A side note that if your new account is just on Canva’s free plan and you don’t upgrade your new account to Canva Pro, if any of your designs have Pro content in them, they will have watermarks on them and some of the designs may not be functional.

Step 5: Re-create your brand kit.

If you had a brand kit setup on your old account, don’t forget that you’ll also need to recreate your brand kit on your new legal Canva account. And once again, you’ll need Canva Pro or Teams to have access to the brand kit feature.

So in summary, your 5 steps are:

1. Don’t beat yourself up
2. Setup a new, legitimate Canva plan
3. Download any uploaded media that you don’t already have a copy of
4. Migrate your designs to your new account using template links, and
5. Re-create your brand kit

I sincerely hope you’ll never need to migrate your content to a new Canva account, but if you do ever find yourself in that position, I hope this tutorial gives you a plan of action to make it happen as smoothly as possible.