Canva Review

Thursday, January 23rd

2025 Website Template Provider Reviews

Canva

• Searchable directory of website templates
• Great preview functionality
• No wait to publish to a Canva subdomain or a purchased/existing domain
• Website password protection
• Instantly make updates in Canva
• Embed the website into WordPress and other content management systems
• Insights of views, traffic, engagement and source country available
• Customer has full control over the entire process, including all of the website elements, images, content and logo

With social media's rise in popularity over traditional websites and with most people accessing the internet using a mobile device, Canva is an all-in-one design solution for employees, influencers, teachers, students, and the average person who has little knowledge of the technology behind the internet. For over a decade, Canva has made it a goal to make it possible for anyone to create and publish anything digital (or print), from social media to websites and beyond. Some might say Canva excelled more in dumbing down the art of marketing and design - but regardless of how you look at it, Canva has been very successful in its goal. While far from perfect, it IS possible for almost anyone to use their website templates and design a site.

Generous toward non-profit organizations and teachers

Canva offers their services completely free of charge for nonprofits, educators, and students. Canva has made the process to apply for a free account pretty much painless. We really love it when companies truly give back, and this is a plus for Canva.

Lots of ready-made templates

A quick perusal of the Canva website design spotlights shows hundreds and hundreds of one-page website templates that look professional and classy. These are templates that just need small adjustments and minimal effort to personalize them with your information. Whether you want to create a beautiful resume, set up a classroom page for your students, or plan a wedding, there are many choices that would appeal to almost everyone. You can further filter results to only show blue templates, for example. Other filters include style, theme, and price. Unfortunately, even with all these choices, most Canva templates…look like Canva templates. There is a uniformity to the designs that people recognize, and it may not be a good fit for you if you don't want people to know you are using a Canva template for your website.

Familiar drag-and-drop interface

Many people already use Canva for social media publishing, print publishing, and more, so it isn't a leap to delve into a simple website design with Canva. Using the same tools, teachers with absolutely no coding experience can create something that looks professional. It's all drag-and-drop and instantly updated in real-time. Using the teams feature, would-be website builders can collaborate together and update and change the website while talking to each other remotely.

Easy one-page website exporting, but anything else is difficult

Canva doesn't produce files for you to give to your web designer, but you can export code for your website to be embedded on a platform like WordPress or Moodle without too much headache. All updates occur in the familiar environment of Canva instantaneously. You can use a subdomain and allow Canva to take care of everything, or you can purchase a domain and publish it via Canva. Unfortunately, the ease of use comes with a caveat: you are limited to a one-page website unless you want to do research and employ unwieldy, time-consuming, and complicated methods.

Instant updates, quick turnaround time to produce a website

If you need a website in a hurry, if you are required to produce a website for a school project, or if you are a teacher who doesn't have time or energy to put into designing a website from scratch, Canva might meet your needs. You will never have to wait on a designer to update your content, as you can log in to Canva and instantly update your website without having to know or understand code or website design.

Keeps style continuity between your website and your social media

Because Canva designs are very similar, and because they have a branding feature, you can maintain the continuity of your brand across all of your digital and print content. From social media to presentations, from websites to print flyers and ads, everything will look similar. One downside to this is that Canva does have a "look.” No matter how professional and pretty Canva designs look, there is a sameness that can't be escaped. In short, people can tell when you've used Canva for your designs.

No SEO or other special features

Canva does not seem to have an option for true SEO. In fact, if you are hosted on their subdomain, you are most likely helping Canva's SEO more than your own. There are limited insights available about web traffic and views. Canva is trying so hard to be a design solution that it seems to ignore SEO or search ranking solutions. This wouldn't matter as much if your website traffic is going to come from social media, but if you are a legitimate business that depends on SEO or search rankings for traffic, Canva will not be the best fit.

Cost

Canva has four different pricing plans:

• Canva Free. This has a robust but limited library of images and other elements and is limited to 5 GB of storage.
• Canva Pro, $120 per year, single-person license. Includes unlimited templates, millions of photos, videos, graphics, and audio, brand kits, social content scheduler and publisher, 1 TB of cloud storage, and customer support.
• Canva Teams, $100 per year, per person. It includes everything in Pro, but you can scale your brand, make approvals for projects, and do real-time collaborations, and you can pay as you grow with your organization.
• Canva Enterprise, contact for pricing. This is a solution for large organizations that includes IP indemnity content control, license provisioning, and custom apps.

One of the best things about Canva is that the Canva Pro is available completely free of charge for teachers, students, and nonprofits.

Poor reviews

Canva, for all its name recognition and bells and whistles, gets consistently bad reviews for customer service. People complain repeatedly about paid-for products that were never delivered and a glitchy platform. Others had horrible issues with content that was altered or deleted by Canva. Still others complained that they had absolutely no response from customer service when they ran into Canva-caused issues.

Really bad AI and terrible search feature

Canva has decided to embrace the availability of AI on its platform, and customers aren't happy. AI elements look terrible, and there is no way to filter them out. Although Canva boasts literally millions of elements, you can only see them a few at a time. The search feature does not filter out premium results, so those with free accounts have to scroll through endless premium results they cannot use. It is a time-waster and an exercise in frustration.

Easy to sign up, hard to cancel

Reviewers of Canva repeatedly report being stuck with unwanted charges and no response from customer service. Some have had ongoing charges for up to 2 years when they canceled in the middle of the free trial. Still others complained of the spammy emails received even when they didn't complete the sign-up process for a free trial. Even if you don't have a paid account, customers report that when you cancel online, it doesn't take effect.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should

Canva had a goal to allow anyone to design...anything. It is a lofty goal, and their platform has made design accessible and achievable for almost anyone. However, this approach comes at a cost. Canva website templates all have a sameness that is inescapable. Because they've tried to do everything, they aren't able to focus on doing anything really well. As a result, everything from Canva is very vanilla and mediocre. Canva is passable but hardly an elegant solution. Canva offers instant websites, but it comes at the cost of quality and flexibility. If you create a website with Canva, you are stuck with Canva since it won't work without a subscription. Good luck trying to cancel that subscription. So many customers have complained about accounts that continue to exist for years after the initial cancellation request, which leads us to believe that you should expect problems if you decide to leave Canva. No matter how many solutions they offer, they don't contribute to a quality product. For these reasons, we can't recommend Canva as a website template provider.