The design software market leaders Canva and Visme both offer a comprehensive set of graphic design tools. Those range from templates for presentations, infographics, and social media posts, to hundreds of elements you can add and paste onto your designs that can be made with each software’s drag-and-drop editor.
In this article, I test the Visme and Canva software by making an infographic based on my recent article on Crypto scams. I also review the editors’ template banks, sharing options, and value for money (with a focus on free features). Spoiler alert: there is a winner.
Test results
Here’s an infographic I made in Canva and downloaded as a JPG file. I selected it from a bank of infographic templates.
And here’s one made in Visme:
This infographic was also based on a template on offer. I selected it from the “How-to infographics” subsection in Visme. However, I couldn’t download it as a JPEG or a PNG without paying for the premium, so this is a screenshot of that infographic. Naturally, the fact that Canva allows free downloads of your work is a winning point for the latter.
Template bank and tool kit
Both providers have comprehensive template banks for social media, business and marketing images, posters, presentations, and other designs. Some templates are only available in premium modes, but Canva has a bigger range for free of over 200k, whilst Visme only offers 10k for free.
Both Canva and Visme offer hundreds of graphic “elements” such as geometric figures, royalty-free images, audio, and video. Many of them can be added for free, but some are only available with premium subscriptions. With Visme, there are more options for data visualizations than with Canva. Canva, however, offers recommendations for elements based on the ones you’ve selected, which Visme doesn’t do.
Sharing and integration options
In Canva, it’s easy to share your work with the rest of the team – you can just enter the email address of the person you wish to share your folder with. With Visme, it’s as simple as Cavna, but it is only available on the “Business” pricing plan.
Canva offers a decent suite of social media apps it can integrate with — Instagram, Google apps, Facebook, YouTube, etc. It also works with photo-enhancing apps like Duotone and Frames. Overall, there are about 100 integrations with a lot of additional features. It also offers a content planner, where you can schedule your designs to be posted — a useful feature for influencers and marketers.
Visme also offers some integrations, with apps like YouTube, Vimeo, Google apps, Giphy, HubSpot, and Slack. However, most of its integrations are aimed at retrieving and sending content to and from the web services.
https://twitter.com/VismeApp/status/1495835911405379588
You can export from both services in JPG, PNG, PDF, MP4, and GIF. Canva also offers SVG and PPTX. Meanwhile, Visme allows HTML5 downloads, which allow you to convert your project into a website; Canva doesn’t have this feature. However, Visme downloads aren’t free, whilst Canva’s are.
Free vs. Premium Features
I made a few points to summarize the free and premium features of both Canva and Visme:
- Both platforms have some templates and graphic elements in free mode, and others in premium. As I already said, Visme only allows downloading your work when you have a premium account, whereas Canva allows you to download it with a free one.
- Canva offers collaboration for up to 5 people in the “Free” mode whereas Visme only unlocks team features within the “Business” package.
- Storage space in Canva’s free mode is 5GB, whilst Visme’s is only 100MB.
Editor’s UX
For both Canva and Visme, the tool kit is available in your browser (unlike Adobe, which requires downloading), so you need an Internet connection to use both. You can use Canva on Windows, Mac, and mobile devices (iOS, Android). Visme is only available on desktop browsers.
Both Visme and Canva require you to sign up and create an account to use their software. With Visme, every time you start a design, you get an inspirational quote which I found a bit irritating myself. But otherwise, the UX in the drag-and-drop editor isn’t too different in the two tools.
With Visme, however, all the elements are split into categories — photos, graphics, and multimedia. I found this to be slightly more convenient than Canva, which groups all such elements into a single category and you have to filter to find the one you need. In this case, though, it’s a matter of personal preference.
Pricing
Visme offers several packages:
- Personal for $12.25 per month which includes downloads, 24/7 support, 250 MB storage
- Business for $24.75 per month, which includes everything in “personal” plus 3 GB storage, more download options, brand kit & collaboration features
- Enterprise – customizable.
Canva also offers several pricing packages:
- Pro for $9.99 per month, which includes over 400,000 templates, brand kits, hundreds more visual elements, 100GB of cloud storage, social media scheduling, etc.
- Enterprise for $30 per month and for a minimum of 25 people, which includes all “Pro” stuff plus multiple brand kits, team collaboration & control levels, unlimited storage, etc.
Yes, all added team members will have access to Canva Pro as well. You can check our pricing here > https://t.co/3gArojqvBN. Hope this helps! ^sr
— Canva (@canva) October 30, 2021
Conclusion
Based on my tests and analysis, I would say that Canva is the overall winner of this comparison, thanks to its comprehensive free mode, affordability, large storage, and social media automation. That’s not to say, however, that people who are willing to pay a premium wouldn’t benefit from Visme. I believe it to be more suitable for teams and organizations rather than individual freelancers and people who use social media for marketing purposes. For the latter group, Canva is the best bet.
Photo credit: The infographics were created by the author in Canva and Visme for TechAcute. The feature image is owned by Canva and has been provided for press usage.
