Resources Mentioned
- 45 Day Free Trial of Canva Pro (Affiliate Link)
- Canva Pricing (Affiliate Link)
Tutorial Transcript
Note: This transcript may include affiliate links.
This video will give you an overview of the differences between Canva’s free account and their Canva Pro account which is a paid service that you can pay for either monthly or annually.
I’m going to assume that you already have a Canva account, but if you don’t, the first thing you’re going to want to do is to set up that account and you would simply go to Canva.com and then you would sign up ideally with email.
I don’t usually like to connect my accounts to other accounts in order to log in. I would advise you just set it up with an individual email address and you’ll simply click on here, enter your name and your email address and your password.
Be sure to make note of all that information and then get started.
You’ll start with the free account and you will still be able to do a lot of what I show you in my tutorials and videos with Canva’s free option. However, in the spirit of full transparency, I also regularly highlight features or tools that require a Canva Pro account. For example, features like the Brand Kit or various Magic Studio tools.
So with that in mind, I would highly encourage you to consider taking advantage of a free 45 day trial of Canva Pro so that you’re able to take full advantage of all of the features. You can find more information about that at BrendaCadman.com/45days.
So let’s talk about the differences between the two plans, and Canva outlines them quite nicely on their pricing page which you will find at Canva.com/pricing.
The cost you see listed for Canva Pro is going to vary depending on what country and what region you’re in.
I’m not going to go over every single feature here but I do want to highlight for you what I think are the most important features that are available to you regardless of the whether you’re on the free or Pro version of Canva, and I also want to flag for you some of what I consider to be the most significant reasons to upgrade to the paid Canva Pro.
Design & Publishing
Whether you are on the free or Pro version, you will have access to a wide range of free stock images, videos and audio, plus over 1000 free fonts.
You’ll also have access to free Canva templates, over 100 different design document types, and the ability create designs with custom dimensions.
And all users have the ability to export their designs in a variety of formats.
What is only available on a Pro or Teams account in terms of design & publishing is…
Access to Canva’s entire premium stock library, and this includes not just photos but also all sorts of icons & illustrations, video and audio. I know that a lot of the illustrations I have used in social media designs and various worksheets have all been part of that premium library.
It indicates here that you can export designs as PDF, JPG and PNG files in both the free and paid plans, but what it doesn’t indicate here that is a key differentiator is that you can only download designs with a transparent background in the paid version.
Also only on a paid account is the ability to save your designs as templates, and to access the entirety of Canva’s template library, including premium templates, animations, fonts and videos. You do have access to a wide variety of templates on the free plan, but significantly more on Pro, which will give you far more flexibility in terms of designing great looking content in Canva.
Media tagging, that is the ability to tag your uploaded images and video with keywords for easier searching, that is only available on the Pro or Teams account.
You’ll also only have the ability to use Canva’s background remover tool if you are on a Pro or Teams account.
Plus there are a variety of other options here that are only available on a paid plan.
AI Tools
Under AI-powered design tools, you have access to a number of the features on both free and paid plans, though there are usage limitations that come with the free subscription.
However you’ll see here that quite a few of the Magic Studio features are only available on Canva Pro and Teams accounts, such as Magic Eraser, Magic Morph, Magic Grab, Magic Expand, and Magic Animate.
Additionally, the ability to resize a design into new dimensions included in Resize & Magic Switch is only available on a Pro or Teams account. You would use this if you wanted to quickly repurpose a design into multiple different dimensions. For example, if you wanted to take an Instagram post design and resize it for an Instagram Story or a Pinterest Pin or another social channel’s specific size requirements.
The resizing feature is one of the top features that had me willing to upgrade my account so long ago.
Collaboration
Under Collaboration, you’ll see that the Pro and Teams plans give you far more flexibility in terms of real-time collaboration and team management. If you use Canva as a solo business owner, this will be of less importance to you.
Brand Management
The primary thing to note under brand management is that brand controls, templates and brand kits are only available on Pro and Teams accounts.
The ability to setup and use the Canva brand kit feature is an enormous reason why I believe the Pro account is so important for business owners, and it’s probably one of the biggest reasons why folks using Canva to support a small business will end up choosing to upgrade from the free Canva plan to Canva Pro.
Storage & Access
On a free plan, you will only have 5 GB of storage space for your designs and media while Pro and Teams accounts allow for up to 1 TB of storage.
Depending on how much you use Canva, this may not be an issue. But if you do upload a lot of images or video, you may find yourself running into that storage limitation.
There is currently no feature available to indicate how much storage space you have left, but you should receive an alert message if you do hit that maximum allotment. Also note that media in the trash folder does not count towards your storage totals at this time.
In terms of creating custom folders, you can create an unlimited number of folders on all plans, though the number of items you can store in a given folder does differ. While it’s not indicated here, at last update, free users could store a maximum of 200 items in a folder whereas Pro users could store up to 1000 designs or images in a folder.
Support
Then under Support, there’s not a lot of difference here, though Teams plans have priority level support.
Non-Profit & Education
The last thing I want to highlight about the free versus pro account is that you might actually be eligible for a free Canva Pro account.
Canva Pro is available for free to nonprofits and to schools and you’ll find that there are dedicated pages with more information for both of those categories, under the Plans and pricing option in the menu at the top of the page here.
So if you are an educator or part of a non-profit organization, I’d encourage you to check out the eligibility requirements and the process for applying for a free Canva account.
Top 5 Reasons to Upgrade
To wrap up, I thought it might be helpful if I gave you a summary of what I believe are the top 5 reasons for business owners currently on a free Canva plan to upgrade to a Canva Pro subscription.
At the end of the day, if you want a way to create graphics and marketing materials in Canva that look consistently more polished, branded and professional, you’re going to really think about whether it’s time to upgrade.
Yes, you 100% can use Canva’s free subscription for many of the uses you’ll have.
And even if you never upgraded to Pro, you’ll still find a tremendous amount of value in Canva’s capabilities.
However… in order to have the ability to create the most professional looking graphics possible, in the most efficient way possible, you may find yourself running into repeated instances where you need Pro to achieve the marketing goals you have for your business.
So here are some of the biggest differences that I think make it worth investing in as a business owner.
The Brand Kit
The ability to setup and use the Canva brand kit feature, which includes the ability to upload your own custom fonts.
You won’t have access to the brand kit on a free Canva plan, whereas on a Pro plan, you can create up to 100 brand kits, which will come in handy if you are creating images and marketing materials for multiple businesses. And on a Teams account, you can create up to 300 brand kits.
Premium Stock Library
Access to Canva’s entire premium stock library. That includes not just photos but also all sorts of icons & illustrations, video and audio. I know that a lot of the icons I have used in social media designs and various worksheets have all been part of that premium library.
Full Template Library
Access to the entirety of Canva’s template library. You do have access to a wide variety of templates on the free plan, but significantly more on Pro, which will give you far more flexibility in terms of designing great looking content in Canva.
Transparent Backgrounds
You can only download designs with a transparent background in the Pro version.
This is going to be important if you’re creating a graphic in Canva that needs to have a transparent background, without a white square behind it.
So for example, if you’re creating an icon or illustration that you want to blend seamlessly on your website.
Or if you are using Canva to create a logo, this will be important as well.
Resize & Magic Switch
And finally, Resize & Magic Switch. While Magic Switch enables you to transform Canva designs into other document types or to translate them into other languages, as I mentioned earlier, for me the most important aspect of this feature is that you can quickly resize a design into new dimensions.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, I’d recommend that you ask yourself… How much is your time worth?
Consider how much time you’ll be clawing back that you can use to focus on tasks in your business that make you money, or that you just really love to spend time doing.
Try Canva Pro for 45 Days
If you haven’t yet upgraded to Canva Pro, I encourage you to give it a try. Learn more about how to get a free 45 day trial of Canva Pro at BrendaCadman.com/45days.
