Finding the best graphic design software is essential to maintaining marketing materials for any brand. Whether you’re a big business, small business, influencer, first time blogger, or anything in-between, you must have the ability to create visual aids that will allow you to convey your message to stakeholders and potential clients. To narrow things down, I started with the list of Canva Alternatives and found one that stands out from the rest, Snappa. For the sake of making things easy for anyone in need of super easy to use online graphic design software, let’s look at Snappa Vs. Canva.
Let’s start with the basic Snappa Vs. Canva introductions.
SNAPPA – the fast and easy to use Canva alternative.
Seriously. That’s the description used on their website. So what does that mean? They saw the platform created by the Canva team and decided to make it better, to meet the needs that their team saw a demand for.
Here’s what you can do with SNAPPA:
1. Edit graphics.
Use the super simple drag and drop editor to create highly engaging content. Their built-in image effects give you more control over customizing your graphic and make the process quick and easy.
2. Take advantage of their visual assets.
SNAPPA offers a huge HUGE collection of visual assets. We’re talking 500,000+ photos, 70,000+ graphics, and 200+ fonts. But here’s the best part… each of these are 100% royalty free and licensed for commercial use. This means that you don’t have to worry about an angry photographer or illustrator coming after you for some kind of copyright issue. #Phew
3. #TemplateLove
The in-house team of designers at SNAPPA has created hundreds of templates that are pre-sized and ready for you to use. Just find the one that best fits your needs and customize away.
4. Resize your graphics.
SNAPPA is throwing around the fairy dust here, as they allow you to magically resize your graphics. We’ll talk about this a little more later when we do the SNAPPA vs. Canva comparison, but let me just give you a little preview by telling you that this is a BIG DEAL. Magic resizing is way more than adjusting the # of pixels or cropping the graphic to fit your needs.
5. Upload your own images or graphics.
Go ahead and create gorgeous graphics, then brand them with your logo or a client’s logo. Maybe you’re a photographer and have a collection of images that you want to use for a marketing campaign. Perfecto! SNAPPA lets you upload your own images and use them when creating graphics.
6. Organize your work.
If you’re sick of scrolling through long lists of graphics that you’ve created, SNAPPA has the answer. Simply organize your files in folders. It’ll save you time and so much headache when you need to refer back to something you’ve created.
7. Import custom fonts.
There are over 200 built in fonts on the SNAPPA platform, but if you can’t find what you need – no worries. You’re allowed to upload your own custom font in order to create the graphics of your dreams.
8. Share to your social media platforms.
No download and wait time. Create your graphic and share it directly from the SNAPPA platform. Not only can you share instantly, but you can also schedule posts. They’ve created SNAPPA to become your one-stop-shop for all graphic needs.
9. Collaborate with your team.
With everything stored in the cloud and the ability to create and share from one platform, why waste time with emails and other communications? Link your team members to your SNAPPA account to make collaboration easy. You’ll be able to share files, fonts, you name it – you can share it.
10. Check out the tutorials.
SNAPPA wants to make it easy for you to create whatever you’ve envisioned. If you need help with one of their features or just can’t seem to sort out how to do something within their platform, no worries. Browse through their knowledge base or library of video tutorials and you’ll find the answer in no time. Check this out… (below)
As you can tell from the pretty hefty list above, SNAPPA offers a very powerful graphic design software solution. The features are robust and all-inclusive. If you need still graphics, they’re an excellent Canva alternative that should definitely be considered. Don’t worry, they offer a free trial. From there, there are two plans available – pro for $10 per month and team for $20 per month.
Now let’s talk about Canva – simply great design for you and your team.
Often auto-corrected to Canvas (such a pain), Canva is the leading online graphic design software solution. It’s well known amongst graphic designers, bloggers, business owners, everyone who wants to make something pretty. What you can do with Canva is very similar to the details listed above for SNAPPA.
“I love Canva and all the options available (let’s face it, they’re kind of endless) for digital use! When it comes to printing products created in Canva, however, I feel there’s big room for improvement. I’ve printed business cards, paper newsletters, and invitations created in Canva, and have been really disappointed. Luckily the local printing company I use has a graphic artist who’s a rockstar and has fixed all the alignment and funky sizing issues that came with my Canva downloads.” – Jessica Pennington, www.mrspenningtonforyourthoughts.com
Here’s a quick breakdown of the bonus tools offered by Canva:
1. Photo editor.
Within Canva, you have the ability to crop, rotate, and filter any images that you upload to your library.
2. Color palette generator.
Similar to the color matching tool at any hardware store, the color palette feature allows you to define your brand’s color scheme by uploading a single image. It’s a pretty cool feature that can help with design ‘block’ – check it out here.
3. Font combinations.
‘Typography Made Easy’ – this tool helps you find font combinations that will fit your brand. Begin with a starter font that you already know and love, then pick from one of four accent fonts provided by Canva. What makes this tool incredibly helpful, is that it doesn’t just show you the name of the font that will look nice with the original one you chose. Instead, it gives you a visual (of course) of what it will look like within your design. That way you can choose from a limited number of excellent options.
Another interesting feature about Canva is that they offer a pretty vast marketplace where you can find all kinds of templates, photos, and icons that you don’t see within the platform on a ‘usual basis’. Once signed up, you’ll also receive regular emails that include designs curated just for you. It can be super inspiring when you’re having a less than creative type of day.
“Canva is an easy and free way for anyone to design graphics. This intuitive program helps you step by step create gorgeous graphics with your photos in the background or their photos.” – Sarah Lafountain, www.cookwith5kids.com
“I’ve been using the free version of Canva for my blog and for my husband’s online business. I am so impressed with how quickly I can come up with designs that look and feel professional. I love playing around with new ideas and, once we can generate enough income, I look forward to upgrading my account to a paid version.” – Ingrid Snydal, www.mysomethingwonderful.com
Let’s be honest, Canva is the leading graphic design software for a reason… the platform is amazing. Its design is simple and easy to use. The templates are gorgeous. The font combinations are beautiful and the selection of illustrations and photos available for use sometimes seem endless.
“If you are still looking I would love to add a quote! I am currently working in social media marketing and I love using Canva to create quick and easy images to post on Facebook, Instagram, and twitter! The images are always super eye appealing and their templates are great but also super easy to customize! I have gotten lots of complements on the graphics I have made using Canva!” – Kaylee Richard
“I love how easy canva is to use and how that you don’t have to know a lot but can still create beautiful graphics, posters etc. I also love that I can use the app on the go to add my watermark before adding photos to social media.” – Arjaye Breuer
But here’s the thing, there are Canva alternatives for a reason. Graphic design software is not a one-size-fits-all solution. If that was the case, we’d still all be using Photoshop with limited design options and files trapped on our computers. Ready to start the SNAPPA vs. Canva comparison? Let’s go!
Both SNAPPA and Canva offer excellent solutions for any general graphic design software needs. But what exactly is different and why should you choose one over the other? Here are a few factors you should consider when making the choice of…
SNAPPA vs. Canva – which is the best graphic design software?
1. Membership price.
Both SNAPPA and Canva have free account options. Where they differ is with what’s included in the free plan.
SNAPPA is all-inclusive. There are no micro-invoices within the platform. This means that you get to use all of the photos, illustrations, fonts, and templates that you want without having to pay extra fees. Here’s the catch. The free plan only includes one user, five downloads, and two social media accounts. So you’re quite limited with what you can do once you’ve created gorgeous graphics.
Canva on the other hand can be used to download as many graphics as you’d like every single month. There are no limits. There are, however, micro-invoicing opportunities for the ‘premium’ photos and illustrations included within the visual assets library. You may find yourself paying for small upgrades within the platform but at least you aren’t limited to five downloads.
SNAPPA offers two upgraded membership options. $10 per month for PRO (1 user) and $20 per month for Team (up to 5 users). Both allow you to download an unlimited number of graphics each month, save your designs in organized folders, upload custom fonts, and integrate with your Buffer account.
Canva offers an upgrade to a pro membership which is $12.95 per month, per team member. This gives you access to the premium collection of photos and illustrations, allows you to organize your designs within folders, magically resize designs, save color palettes, and gives you priority support.
2. Resizing designs.
This seems like a pretty basic thing. You create a design and it’s not the right fit for where you’re using it. Simply go back and adjust, right? Wrong. Well, depending.
With SNAPPA, you can go in and magically resize your designs when using the free account. This means that each of the elements will be automatically adjusted within the new constraints of your pixels in a way that should generally look and feel ‘right’. (That’s the magic part.)
Canva has the same feature, but you have to pay for it. Not just for the magic, but for any kind of resizing at all. So let’s say you create a basic 3×3 design and you now want it to be 3×4, no bueno. If you’re in the free account you’ll either need to upgrade to the pro plan or start over from scratch within the constraints of a new design. #PainInThe____
Why does this feature matter? It’s more than just the ‘oops’ when it comes to sizing. Resizing your designs is incredibly helpful if you are creating multi-purpose graphics. Let’s use this article as an example. If I want one graphic for Facebook, one for Twitter, one for my blog, and one for Instagram – I’ll have to create four different files with a paid account in Canva in order to optimize my presence on each platform. If I upgrade my Canva account (or just use SNAPPA), I can ‘magically’ resize my first design and create four separate designs without having to do all the foot work. Get it? #ProblemSolved 😉
3. The user experience.
So SNAPPA has this section of their website where they actually take Canva customer feedback and address how they are better. Something we’ve all likely wanted to do but never actually implemented, right? haha. Anyways… here are a few of the items reported as ‘reasons why customers switched’ that define the SNAPPA vs. Canva debate.
Canva is clunky.
Basically saying that the Canva platform is slow and tough to navigate. I’ve not found this to be a serious issue unless dealing with very large images, but to each her own, I suppose. SNAPPA claims to move ‘as fast as you do’ without cursors that freeze and images that take forever to render.
Share to social media instantly.
It’s true. You can’t share graphics directly from Canva instantly or share future posts. If this is something that you find to be an important feature or something you’d really like to take advantage of within your graphic design software, then you’ll need to turn to SNAPPA which gives you the option to connect your account with Buffer and share or schedule all kinds of social posts.
Free templates that are easy to find.
Canva doesn’t give you the ability to search through templates without being on the featured plan, so spend a lot of time scrolling through $1 photos, graphics, and icons. I typically end up downloading free images from a separate site and importing them into Canva. Now that I realize there’s an option, I may have to reconsider my choices and how I spend my time. SNAPPA allows you to easy search through their collection of over 500,000 visual assets that are all free to use.
No learning curve required.
This is something that both platforms claim but can only be verified on an individual basis. SNAPPA does not have a ‘design school‘ which can be considered good or bad depending on your design abilities. If you need inspiration or tutorials, you’ll be grateful for all sources of inspiration – be it from blog posts, newsletters, or templates within the design platform.
All inclusive.
We talked about membership pricing but this is a little different. You should know that with SNAPPA, everything is included. No extra charges here or there. Canva has extra charges built into their business plan. They expect you to want to upgrade to use their collection of ‘better’ visual assets. The price isn’t high (typically $1 each) but you should be aware of the built in micro-charges before you start relying on Canva as your go-to graphic design software.
Who wins in our SNAPPA vs. Canva debate?
The two platforms are very similar and offer an excellent product. When it comes to choosing the winner for SNAPPA vs. Canva, it comes down to one thing. How many designs will you need to create? If it’s 5 or less, head over to SNAPPA. If you create designs on the daily and need to download regularly, Canva is the choice for you.
What do you think? Do you agree with our winner choice? Tell me in the comments below.
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