Discover the Best Design Tools Beyond Canva

Canva is a popular online design tool that has made graphic design accessible to millions of users worldwide. It offers an easy-to-use interface and a vast library of templates, fonts, and images.

However, Canva might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Depending on your specific needs and preferences, you might find other design tools more suitable. Your needs and tastes might lead you to another design tool that’s a better match.

In this post, we’re gonna dive into some of the best Canva alternatives and explore tools that cater to different needs and use cases.

Canva Overview

Canva serves as a comprehensive design platform, enabling users to craft various visuals such as social media posts, presentations, and logos. Its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface is accompanied by an extensive collection of templates, images, and fonts. Despite Canva’s versatility, alternative tools tailored to specific design needs might be more appropriate for some users.

Best for custom graphics: Mega Creator

Mega Creator is a feature-rich design tool that excels in creating one-of-a-kind, customized graphics. Its advanced capabilities, coupled with an expansive library of design elements, make it a perfect choice for users who want to produce striking visuals that truly set them apart from the competition.

This powerful platform not only offers a wide range of templates but also provides a host of editing tools that allow users to fine-tune their designs down to the smallest details. With Mega Creator, you can easily manipulate shapes, colors, and typography to create graphics that are uniquely tailored to your brand identity or personal style.

Additionally, Mega Creator’s intuitive interface ensures that even users with minimal design experience can quickly master the platform and unlock their creative potential. The platform also supports collaboration, enabling teams to work together seamlessly on design projects, share ideas, and provide feedback.

Best for small businesses: Pixstudio

Pixstudio is a cost-effective design solution tailored to meet the needs of small businesses. As a platform that understands the challenges small businesses face, it combines a variety of professionally designed templates with a user-friendly interface, making the creation of marketing materials an effortless process, even for those without design expertise.

With Pixstudio, small businesses can easily craft promotional materials, such as social media posts, flyers, brochures, and email templates. You can easily and effectively communicate your brand message and engage your target audience.

The platform offers a vast array of design elements, including images, icons, and fonts, that users can leverage to customize their visuals and maintain a consistent brand identity.

Furthermore, Pixstudio’s intuitive interface allows users to quickly navigate through its features and tools, streamlining the design process and enabling businesses to save valuable time and resources. This efficiency is crucial for small businesses that often have limited personnel or tight budgets.

Pixstudio also offers seamless integration with popular platforms like WordPress, making it simple for small businesses to publish their marketing materials directly to their website or blog without any hassle.

Best for vector graphics: Drawtify

Drawtify is an exceptional choice for users looking to create high-quality vector graphics. This powerful design tool boasts a comprehensive suite of features, enabling users to effortlessly craft stunning visuals ranging from logos and illustrations to complex diagrams and infographics.

One of the standout aspects of Drawtify is its impressive array of vector editing tools, which allows users to create and manipulate vector shapes, paths, and text with precision. This level of control enables designers to produce scalable graphics that retain their quality and clarity, regardless of the size or resolution they’re displayed at.

In addition to its vector capabilities, Drawtify also offers a wide selection of pre-designed templates and design elements, such as icons, symbols, and patterns. These resources can be easily customized to fit your specific needs, helping you save time and ensuring a consistent look across your designs.

Drawtify’s user-friendly interface is designed to accommodate users of all skill levels, from beginners to experienced designers. Its intuitive layout and easy-to-understand tools make it simple to navigate, while built-in tutorials and tips guide users through the process of creating professional-grade vector graphics.

Another notable feature of Drawtify is its compatibility with various file formats, including SVG, EPS, and PDF. This versatility ensures that your vector designs can be easily exported, shared, and integrated into other projects without any loss in quality.

Best for Adobe users: Adobe Express

Adobe Express is a streamlined design tool developed by the creators of industry-leading software like Photoshop and Illustrator. This user-friendly platform is an ideal choice for Adobe users seeking a simpler, more accessible solution for crafting quick graphics without compromising on quality.

Built with the familiar Adobe interface, users can easily transition from other Adobe applications to Adobe Express, making the learning curve minimal. This familiarity ensures that Adobe users can quickly adapt to the tool and take advantage of its features to create visually appealing graphics for various purposes, such as social media posts, banners, and promotional materials.

Adobe Express offers a wide selection of professionally designed templates, as well as an extensive library of fonts, images, and other design elements. These resources enable users to create eye-catching graphics that align with their brand identity, without the need for advanced design skills.

One of the key advantages of Adobe Express is its seamless integration with other Adobe products, such as Creative Cloud, Photoshop, and Illustrator. This compatibility allows users to easily import and export assets between applications, streamlining their workflow and enhancing overall productivity.

Furthermore, Adobe Express supports cloud-based storage and collaboration, making it simple for teams to work together on design projects, share ideas, and provide feedback, regardless of their location.

Best for quick creation: Picmaker

Picmaker is an online design tool that prioritizes speed and efficiency, enabling users to create impressive graphics in a matter of minutes. Its extensive library of templates and user-friendly interface make it an ideal choice for individuals and businesses with tight deadlines or fast-paced work environments.

One of the standout features of Picmaker is its streamlined design process, which allows users to easily navigate through its tools and resources. With a simple drag-and-drop functionality and a plethora of customizable templates, users can quickly generate professional-looking graphics for various purposes, such as social media posts, blog images, and marketing materials.

In addition to its vast template library, Picmaker offers a wide selection of design elements, including fonts, icons, shapes, and images. These resources enable users to further personalize their graphics, ensuring that their visuals align with their brand identity or creative vision.

Another advantage of Picmaker is its real-time collaboration capabilities. This feature allows team members to work together on design projects simultaneously, streamlining the creative process and enabling more efficient communication and feedback.

Picmaker’s cloud-based storage system also ensures that users can access their projects from any device, at any time, making it a convenient solution for those who require flexibility and mobility in their design work.

Best for professional charts and graphs: Piktochart

Piktochart is a specialized design tool specifically crafted for creating professional-quality charts, graphs, and data visualizations. Its intuitive interface and diverse range of templates make it simple for users to develop visually appealing and informative graphics that can enhance any presentation, report, or marketing material.

One of Piktochart’s key features is its extensive selection of pre-designed templates, which cater to various industries and use cases. These templates provide users with a solid foundation for creating impactful data visualizations, while still offering ample customization options to ensure the final product aligns with their brand identity or creative vision.

In addition to its template library, Piktochart offers a comprehensive suite of data visualization tools that enable users to create a wide array of charts and graphs, such as bar charts, line charts, pie charts, and more. These tools allow users to easily input their data, customize the appearance of their visualizations, and even add interactive elements to engage their audience further.

Piktochart also supports the import of data from various sources, such as spreadsheets, CSV files, and Google Sheets. This seamless integration simplifies the process of transforming raw data into engaging and informative visualizations, saving users valuable time and effort.

Lastly, Piktochart offers a range of export options, including high-resolution image files, PDFs, and even HTML files for web-based presentations. These various formats ensure that users can easily share their data visualizations with their target audience, regardless of the platform or medium.

Most ideal for WordPress users: Stencil

Stencil is a design tool meticulously crafted for WordPress users, offering seamless integration with the popular content management system. This powerful tool enables users to create and insert captivating graphics directly into their blog posts and pages with remarkable ease, streamlining their content creation process.

One of the standout features of Stencil is its user-friendly WordPress plugin, which allows users to access the design tool right from their WordPress dashboard. This integration simplifies the process of creating and adding graphics to blog posts and pages, as users no longer need to switch between multiple applications or manually upload images.

In addition to its seamless WordPress integration, Stencil boasts an extensive library of professionally designed templates and design elements, such as icons, fonts, and stock images. These resources provide users with a strong foundation for crafting visually appealing graphics that resonate with their target audience and enhance their overall website aesthetics.

Another advantage of Stencil is its compatibility with various image formats and sizes, ensuring that users can create graphics optimized for various platforms and purposes. This feature is particularly useful for social media marketing, as users can easily adapt their graphics to meet the specific requirements of each social platform.

Moreover, Stencil offers time-saving features such as the ability to save and reuse custom templates, as well as the option to create and manage multiple brand profiles. These features help users maintain consistency across their projects and streamline the design process.

Best for photo editing: PicMonkey

PicMonkey is a versatile design tool that specializes in photo editing, making it an ideal choice for users looking to enhance and manipulate their images before integrating them into their designs. The platform offers a wide array of photo editing features, empowering users to create stunning visuals for personal or professional use.

One of the key strengths of PicMonkey is its extensive suite of photo editing tools, which includes options for cropping, resizing, retouching, and color correction. These tools enable users to make precise adjustments to their images, ensuring that they achieve the desired look and feel. Additionally, the platform offers a range of filters and effects that can instantly transform photos, adding depth, character, or a specific style.

Check out our full article here where we explore both PicMonkey and Canva in a head-to-head battle.

Best for teams: Easil

Easil is a design platform specifically tailored for teams, offering a suite of collaboration features that facilitate the creation and management of designs within an organization. With its wide array of templates and team-centric tools, Easil is the perfect solution for businesses with multiple designers collaborating on projects.

One of the standout features of Easil is its robust collaboration functionality, which includes real-time commenting and feedback, as well as version control and access management. These tools enable team members to seamlessly communicate and work together on designs, streamlining the creative process and ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

Easil’s asset management system is another essential feature for teams, allowing users to upload, organize, and share design elements, such as logos, fonts, and images, within their organization. This centralized resource library ensures that all team members have access to the necessary assets, promoting consistency across projects and saving time by eliminating the need to search for files in multiple locations.

Another advantage of Easil is its support for role-based permissions, which allow administrators to control access to specific features and projects based on individual team members’ roles. This functionality ensures that users only have access to the tools and projects relevant to their responsibilities, simplifying the design process and reducing the potential for errors or miscommunications.

Easil also offers a variety of integrations with popular tools and platforms, such as Slack, Trello, and Dropbox, which help to further enhance the collaborative experience. These integrations enable users to seamlessly incorporate Easil into their existing workflows, saving time and increasing efficiency.

Canva Alternative Comparison

Design Platform	Best For	Key Features	Pricing
Mega Creator	Custom Graphics	Advanced features, extensive library of elements, editing tools, intuitive interface, collaboration support	Varies, visit Mega Creator for pricing details
Pixstudio	Small Businesses	Budget-friendly, professionally designed templates, user-friendly interface, integration with popular platforms	Free, with paid plans starting at $7.95/month (Visit Pixstudio for more details)
Drawtify	Vector Graphics	Comprehensive suite of vector editing tools, pre-designed templates, user-friendly interface, compatibility with various file formats	Free, with Pro plan at $8.99/month (Visit Drawtify for more details)
Adobe Express	Adobe Users	Lightweight design tool, familiar interface, integration with Adobe ecosystem, cloud-based storage and collaboration	Free, with premium features available through Adobe Creative Cloud subscription
Picmaker	Quick Creation	Vast library of templates, easy-to-use interface, fast design process, real-time collaboration, cloud-based storage	Free, with paid plans starting at $9/month (Visit Picmaker for more details)
Piktochart	Professional Charts and Graphs	Intuitive interface, range of templates for data visualizations, import of data from various sources, multiple export options	Free, with paid plans starting at $24.17/month (Visit Piktochart for more details)
Stencil	WordPress Users	Seamless integration with WordPress, easy graphic creation for blog posts and pages, compatibility with various image formats and sizes, time-saving features	Free, with paid plans starting at $9/month (Visit Stencil for more details)
PicMonkey	Photo Editing	Comprehensive photo editing tools, filters and effects, layering and masking	Plans starting at $7.99/month (Visit PicMonkey for more details)
Easil	Teams	Collaboration features, asset management, role-based permissions, integrations with popular tools and platforms	Plans starting at $7.50/month (Visit Easil for more details)

FAQs

Canva vs Crello: which is the better option?

If you are debating on going with Canva or Crello, we have written a full breakdown of why you might choose one over the other.

Get all the info on what we think of these two platforms here.

Is Canva or PicMonkey better?

The choice between Canva and PicMonkey depends on your specific needs. Canva is an all-in-one design tool with a wide range of features, while PicMonkey focuses primarily on photo editing. If you need a comprehensive design platform, Canva might be the better option. However, if you require advanced photo editing capabilities, PicMonkey could be more suitable.

Check out our full article that explores the main features of each here.

Is Canva bad for designers?

Canva is not necessarily bad for designers. It offers a user-friendly interface and a vast library of resources that can help streamline the design process. However, some professional designers might prefer more advanced design tools like Adobe Creative Cloud or Affinity Designer, which provide more granular control and advanced features tailored for professional use.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while Canva is a multifaceted design tool, it may not be the ideal choice for everyone. Investigating the top Canva alternatives allows you to discover a design platform that specifically addresses your requirements and preferences. If you need advanced photo editing functions, real-time collaboration features, or tools designed for a particular niche, rest assured that there is a design tool available to help you effortlessly produce eye-catching visuals.

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• Canva vs. Crello: Ultimate Design Showdown