Canva vs Snappa: Comprehensive Analysis – Which one do You need in 2021?
Visual content has become the most prominent form of online marketing in the past few years. So much so that a designer of any level of expertise can’t avoid using it. Hard to believe? These statistics might just be able to convince you:
– According to Hubspot’s 2020 ‘State of Marketing Report’, 70% of surveyed companies invest in visual content. The number rises to 80% in the social media market.
– According to Venngage’s 2020 Report, all surveyed organizations project to use about 25% of their budget to create and organize high-quality graphics in 2020.
– Buffer’s State of Social report 2019, the percentage of companies that use do not use video content, went down from 20% to 14%.
Clearly, these companies understand the importance of visual content!
The industry needs more creative designers and content creators than ever before. Are
you a budding designer looking to learn stuff? Maybe you are a small business owner
who wants to create their own graphics.
Creating beautiful visuals and graphics has never been easier. There are far too many easy to use graphic design tools on the online market now. This is a problem on its own! There are far too many options for a beginner to choose from.
Two of the most popular online web-based design tools are Canva and Snappa. Besides Canva vs Snappa, you should check out our complete reviews for Canva and Snappa. We have worked really hard to point out all sides of these beautiful online graphic design tools.
Canva: A Dead-Simple Graphic Design Online Tool
Snappa Review- Better than Canva and Stencil?
They are both great software on their own, but which one is better? We’ll compare them side by side in this article. Alright, let’s dive into Canva vs Snappa and make it easy for you choose between.
What is Canva and Snappa?
Who can use them?
The target audience for both Canva and Snappa are predominantly non-designers and beginners. The never before seen rise in the need for visual content has created a market for ‘Design tools for Dummies’. Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom etc are too complicated and require practice and patience to master.
However, a large portion of the community wanted a simpler and easier way to design graphics. These users wanted less complexity and more user-friendliness.
Canva was one of the pioneers of this market. Snappa was aimed at local small businesses that wanted to make their own designs as easily as possible. A more experienced designer would, however, appreciate Canva more, owing to the bigger feature set.
Canva vs Snappa: Comparison of Primary Features:
1. Ease of Use
Snappa wins for simplicity and elegance.
Although both Snappa and Canva are aimed at a similar audience, Snappa prioritises clarity and ease of use over everything else. Snappa has an extremely intuitive and basic UI that appeals to non-designers unlike any other.
Canva has a slightly confusing feature set. They cannot be presented as abstractly as Snappa does. But, Canva lets you sign in directly with your Google, Facebook or Apple accounts without explicit signup.
2. User Interface/User Experience
Snappa wins for simplicity and elegance.
Snappa has the most basic and intuitive UI possible for a design tool. You can simply create an account and start creating designs in a couple of minutes.
No confusing navigation buttons, no exploration feature and no confusing suggestions. It Offers a seamless user experience even for the non-tech-savvy.
Pro: Ease of Use
Con: Too simple for complex designs
Canva has a great UI too. It has a search feature that Snappa doesn’t. It makes searching for resources simple and easy. Paired with a recommendation feed, Canva overwhelms you with templates tailored to your needs based on your recent designs. However, doesn’t group all its paid and non-paid resources in a way that is convenient for free-tier users.
Pro: Addition features
Con: Too much information for new users
Canva has a slightly confusing feature set. They cannot be presented as abstractly as Snappa does. But, Canva lets you sign in directly with your Google, Facebook or Apple accounts without explicit signup.
3. Templates
Canva wins hands down.
Snappa has over 6000 templates. It is available to all subscriptions including the free-tier without limitations. Most of Snappa’s designs are simple and elegant. They come in subtle and delicate colours that are pleasant to the eye. Most templates are structured for
- Social Media Posts
- Blogging and Infographics
- Headers and Banners
- Social and Display Advertisements
Pro: No access limitation for free users
Con: Limited collection
Canva has over 60,000 plus templates in its database. That is 10 times more than Snappa! Of this, over 8000 are available for free in the free-tier plan. You must either pay for individual templates or go for a paid subscription that gives you access to the whole collection for free.
Canva templates are beautiful, extremely diverse but more often have a crude color palette. Offers more variety and options such as:
- Social Media – Facebook posts and covers, Instagram posts and stories, Twitter cover, YouTube thumbnails and more.
- Personal – Make beautiful looking personal documents. Forget the plain-looking resumes, expensive invitations, post-cards and T-shirts.
- Business – Professional looking websites, logos, invoices, business cards and proposals.
- Marketing – Posters, flyers, menus, brochures and infographics.
- Education – Lesson plans, worksheets, certificates, bookmarks and class schedules make Canva a great teacher’s tool.
- Trending – List of trending sections.
Pro: Sheer amount and variety of available templates
Con: Limitation based on subscription
4. Comparison of language support
Canva wins.
Snappa’s web tool is only supported in English.
Canva supports multiple languages. Actually over 30 languages! From Afrikaans to Hindi. This is one of the reasons Canva is increasingly popular around the world. You can change it by navigating to account settings > preferred languages.
5. Collection of other resources: images, videos and more
Canva Pro wins. Snappa Free wins.
Snappa has a collection of over 4 million HD photos and graphics. It is free across all subscriptions. However, it does not have other forms of multimedia resources like stock music or videos. All resources are royalty-free.
Canva has about over 60 million stock images, photos, videos, and graphics in its data. Yes, 60 Million! But free users only get access to a ‘few hundred thousand images’ according to Canva. Additionally, Canva has an assortment of various kinds of music and stock video footage. This makes it easier to create more engaging visual content with Canva (Pro). And yes, all resources are royalty-free.
6. The Versatility
Canva is better. Relatively.
Compared to classical design tools like Adobe Photoshop, both Snappa and Canva are not as powerful or versatile. Canva, however, is has a bigger feature set than Snappa.
Making Canva more appealing to more experienced designers who want to make more unique content. Snappa sticks with the most basic features for simplicity’s sake.
You can add clip art, frames, music, animation, charts and videos with Canva. Snappa does not have the above features.
7. Team Collaboration
Canva wins.
Are you looking to buy your design team an online web tool subscription? Then you might want to consider Canva over Snappa. Here is why.
Sharing of designs that are in progress with anyone is not possible with Snappa. The only way to collaborate in Snappa to buy a Snappa Team subscription. Even then each team can only have up to 5 members.
Some features of Snappa’s Team Plan are
- Design Folders – Common folders to store graphics that will be available to the entire team. It can be viewed, downloaded or edited by the rest of the team. This saves the team the pain of sorting and sharing files during the process of designing. Reviewing progress is made extremely easy.
- Share Assets – Custom visual assets like pictures, logos, icons, specific designs, custom fonts are all now one click away from being shared with the team.
- Team Fonts – Fonts of supported types are easily shared and managed in the tram workspace.
- Team Colours – Sharing hex codes for colours is a thing of the past. With a simple colour picker gradient tool, it is much easier to share colours with Teams.
- Managing Team Members – Team members privileges and access can be managed. Admin privilege can be granted to multiple members at once.
Canva however, lets users share designs via links at no cost. All you have to do is click on the get shareable link from the ‘your designs’ section. The link can be used by anyone to edit or patch up your design. Or there is a ‘share’ button on the editing page. This lets you share the graphic in the following manner
- Share a link to edit
- Share a link to use as a template (Pro feature)
- Share a link to view
The real advantage is that Canva also has a free team feature. Team members can be added via email invitations or invitation links. The team owner can selectively promote members to admin to give them extra privileges. The free teams feature lets you create 20 teams with up to 3000 members. The pro subscription brings a few additional features to teams like
- Promoting members to the role of ‘Template Designers’.
- Also, Pro teams can make the most out of the ‘Brand kit’ feature. It lets teams design and store resources like brand colours, logos and fonts.
8. Social Media Integration
Canva wins.
Both Snappa and Canva allow you to integrate social media accounts. Snappa lets you link to these social media accounts directly
- Bffer
Other social media accounts except Facebook and Twitter are not directly supported. Snappa does, however, support Buffer. Buffer is a social media management application that lets users schedule posts to social media accounts. It supports – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
Canva supports more direct integrations than Snappa.
- Facebook pages and group
- LinkedIn profiles and pages
- Tumblr and Slack
The designs can also be stored with cloud services with just a click. Some of the supported services are
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- Microsoft One-drive (Beta)
Other forms of downloads include printing posters, cards, flyers and tags. Further, you can embed and create websites with the designs. All these in just a few clicks.
9. Supported Platforms
Snappa only operates as a web-based design tool.
Canva, in addition to the browser-based tool, also has mobile versions. It has desktop clients (for both Mac and Windows) plus also supports iOS and Android.
Also, keep in mind that all Canva Pro features from the web client are not available in the iOS and Android apps.
Other Important to Consider in Canva vs Snappa Analysis
1. Resize
Both Snappa and Canva have a one-click resize feature. It is free in Snappa but not in Canva.
2. One-click background removal
Removing an image’s background in one-click is a great feature. It comes as a feature with both Snappa Pro/Team and Canva Pro/Enterprise.
3. Download Formats
Snappa lets you download the design in the following multiple formats:
- Web optimised JPG
- High-res PNG (with/without transparent background)
- Retina-JPG 2x size
- Retina-PNG 2x size (with/without transparent background)
Canva lets you download in the following formats
- JPG
- PNG (with/without transparent background)
- PDF (Standard/Print)
- MP4 (Beta)
- GIF (Beta)
With Pro/Enterprise subscription you can select the size and quality of the download using sliders.
4. Photo Editing
Snappa does not have a photo editing tool with the design tool.
Canva graphics creator has an all-purpose simplistic photo editor. The editor is completely free. It has a range of filters that enhance the image in just a single click. It also does not leave a watermark after an image is edited. The tool is completely browser-based and requires no additional downloads or plugins.
5. Custom Fonts
It is a paid feature in both Snappa (Pro/Team) and Canva(Pro/Enterprise). It lets users upload fonts in formats of .ttf, .otf and .wolf and edit graphics with them. Additionally, it also supports foreign character sets via custom upload.
6. Blogs
Both Snappa and Canva have beautiful blogs. The Canva blog is bigger and has more articles. It also has a more fancy UI. Both let you keep track of all the latest updates in the design world. There are a variety of articles from the latest design trends to updates of popular social media platforms.
7. Remote Access
Snappa cannot be accessed or used from other 3rd party websites.
Canva Button is a relatively new feature that lets 3rd party websites use Canva’s design tool remotely. The designs made with Canva button from 3rd party websites will however not be accessible on the user’s design folder. Only limited functionality will be available from these remote sites.
8. Documentation
Snappa’s documentation is simple. They are over a dozen video tutorials walking absolute beginners through the design tool UI. This is followed by a series of FAQs and basic features documentation.
Canva has a much more informative knowledge base. It has of sections explaining all kinds of features step by step. There is also API documentation for HTML and JavaScript to use Canva Button.
Canva and Snappa Pricing Comparison: Almost same structure
It’s a Tie.
Canva vs Snappa Pricing Comparison Table
Snappa Pricing Plan
Snappa offers 3 types of subscriptions – Free, Pro, Team. They cost $0, $10, and $20 respectively. Snappa’s team collaboration feature is limited to Snappa Team subscribers and each team is limited to a maximum of 5 members.
Snappa also restricts the number of free downloads per month for free-users to 3. It, however, does not restrict the resources such as stock photos available for any user.
Pro: Resources evenly available across subscriptions
Con: Paid collaboration feature and limited downloads
Canva Pricing Plan
Canva also offers 3 types of subscriptions – Free, Pro, Enterprise. They cost $0, $9.95, and $30 respectively. On the other hand, Canva free plan allows unlimited downloads. You can keep using Canva for free, forever! Canva also allows free team collaboration.
The huge collection of resources is however not free for everyone to use. Only Canva Pro/Enterprise users have access to the complete collection. Canva has other plans like Education and Non-profit purposes that give pro features for free if you meet their eligibility criteria.
Pro: Unlimited free downloads and free team collaboration.
Con: Limitation in access to resources for free-tier users.
Top Alternatives to both Canva and Snappa
If you are looking to explore your options beyond Snappa and Canva, you should check out these apps in town
1. PicMonkey
1. PicMonkey is an online image editing tool, that provides features simplified from Adobe
Photoshop and Illustrator.
2. It’s got a great pricing plan. The pro plan costs $6/month (billed annually) and $8/month (paid monthly)
3. But it does not have an unlimited free-tier plan.
2. FotoJet
1. FotoJet aims to bring together image editing, designing and making collages.
2.It does not require a registration for the free features. And the pro plan has a 7-day trial period.
3. It is very cheap. $3.33/month (billed annually) and $7/month (billed monthly).
4. Separate collage making feature.
3. Stencil
1. Stencil comes with a huge database of 2,300,000+ stock photos, icons and graphics.
2. Compatible with Google Fonts and has a collection of 100,000+ quotes.
3. Auto creates bit.ly links for graphics.
4. Stencil also comes as a browser extension and a WordPress plugin.
