Heyyyyy friends! I know the Canva price hike is all the rage right now, right?! Well I'm here to explain it for you! I get it, being an author often leaves you on a tight budget. You need to be wise where you spend your money, so should you keep forking it over to Canva? I say....probably. But you might just need a new plan so you're not paying even more!
So to understand what's going on here, let's go back in time a bit. When Canva got really popular about 5/6 years ago they had TWO pricing tiers: Free and Canva Pro. (Ok, technically 3 tiers because they also offered Enterprise pricing...but we're going to ignore that.) And at that time they were giving your 4 extra seats (users) FOR FREE! So for the then pricing of $120/year (US) you could have FIVE separate people on your Canva team. Such a steal. That's only $24/year per person or $2/month. So like suuuuuuuper cheap.
Fast forward to about 2 years ago, they released "Canva Teams" so there was the Free plan, Canva Pro, Canva Teams, and Canva Enterprise. So what happened to all of us Pro users who already had 5-seater accounts? They upgraded us to a Teams account and let us KEEP those 5 seats at the same low annual price of $120/year. But Canva Teams cost $300/year.
I saw this first hand because I was going to create a new Pro account after starting this business, as I had a team set up with people I used to work with, so I was going to have one of them take over the billing there and create my own. But when I went to cancel the plan, Canva showed me a pop-up explaining I was in grandfathered pricing and I MAY want to rethink that decision. So of course I did and I kept my plan and kicked off my former teammates who were on my team. (Which didn't go smoothly I might add...there was supposed to be a grace period for them to transfer all their content over to their own accounts, but something happened and one of them lost a bunch of files. BOOOO.)
However, I feel like when this happened all the plans were more expensive, so I don't know if pricing went up for a bit and then came back down or maybe I just am mis-remembering. Because I decided it was NOT worth losing my existing account. So Canva just gave us grandfathered pricing, we didn't even have to ask for it! But we were on annual plans, so there was no expectation of keeping this lower pricing. There were no contracts or anything, so really they could have made us pay to upgrade to Teams when they released it, but they didn't.
But times are a-changing and they are no longer honoring those grandfatehred accounts. I heard rumors that people were selling grandfathered accounts online, and I wouldn't be surprised if that helped pricipitate this change. Boo them! Canva seems to be a pretty loyal to its users and long-time supporters.
But the CHANGE! So Canva has started sending out emails about a new higher price for Teams. A lot of people are mis-interpreting it as Canva just DOUBLED its prices because of all the features they just added that no one asked for, ya-da-ya-da-ya-da. But here's the thing, two years later and Canva Teams costs the same as when it released. $300/year for 3 users then an additional $100/year per additional person.
If you want to see an example of what they actually sent, I'll include the verbatim email I received from them at the bottom of this post.
IF YOU ARE A SOLO USER: simply change your plan to a Canva Pro account instead of Canva Teams. It's still $120/year, and the only thing you lose access to are some collaboration features you aren't using anyway.
IF YOU HAVE MULTIPLE USERS: yes, you will need to start paying more, or make some changes so that you only need to pay for your own access. But evaluate how many seats you need. If you are using all 5 seats right now, maybe you can come down to 3 users to save. If you only need two users—you could switch to Canva Pro: to then just pay for 2 people at $120 each so $240 total, but you won't be able to share folders/etc quite as easily as with a Team account. So if you can afford the extra $60/year, Teams will be better for you! Especially if you can then utilize the third seat! (Maybe you have some author friends that you can share a team with—especially if you all collaborate often. You can keep all your projects separate AND private (it's in the settings) but everyone will have access to all the Brand Kits.) So that would save your $20/year if you each pay for your own seat.
So if you have one of these Teams accounts and don't need it, make the switch! You won't miss much, but it is a hassle. I wish Canva would make this easier—especially for the people they automatically upgraded to Teams in the first place who have no use for it. These emails are really freaking people out who have no business getting them. But they gave you plenty of time to make the change! And HEY! If you do want to work your way up to a Teams account, they gave you a year at a discounted rate to soften the blow.
Do I think Canva handled the communication of the change very poorly? ABSOLUTELY! Do they ever say the reasoning is they are not honoring grandfathered pricing? No. Do they say this is a change to their Canva Teams pricing because of the value add? Yes. That is what I hate the most, because the pricing has been the same since they launched Teams.
Do I think the price is fair? Yes I do!! Think of the costs of storage and all the assets you have access to: that costs money. $100/year for one person to access all of that is super reasonable. Generally-speaking, the way licensing for fonts, music, and pictures works has to be done per user, so the fact that you get all of this for just $100/year is crazy.
Let's just take a look at some costs you may have if you didn't use Canva. Note: of course there are always free alternatives and these subscriptions give you way more than you get inside Canva, and you may need these subscriptions on top of Canva anyway, but just to illustrate a point. . .
Royalty-free images/videos:
Depositphotos: $29/mo (psst....don't subscribe to their plans, I have a better way for you to get images from them!)
Adobe Stock: $30/mo
Freepik: $12/mo
Artlist: $30/mo
Envato Elements: $16.50/mo
Royalty-free music:
Audiio: $99/year
Artlist: $16.58/month
Design software:
Adobe CC: $60/mo or $660/yr (though you can generally get this 50% off for your first year, and with other sales)
Affinity: $165 - one time fee for whole suite (can get apps cheaper per product, espeically if you just need an iPad app)
And if you wanted to hire out the designing altogether:
Rates are all over the place: you can find people charging pennies and others charging premium rates. However, if you just need a few graphics here and there, it would probably run you a few hundred dollars a year. If you need content on a regular basis, expect to pay at least several hundred per month. If you need new content almost on the daily, you're looking at several thousand dollars per month. Personally: I charge about $75/hour for graphic design services, but for ease I sell services by the project, not hours, so that's not a hard rule.
So how is that $100-120/person for an entire year sounding right about now? It's true: if you have multiple team members it is harder to justify the cost, so you may need to restructure to determine WHO gets access to Canva. But don't share logins—that goes against the terms of service. Remember, it's a business write-off, and if you can't afford the service then you should probably re-evaluate your business model. If you can afford to hire someone to do work for you, but not for the tools for them to do the job, maybe take a beat and save up another month.
But here's the thing for you authors: if you have a PA, it is reasonable to only hire people who pay for their own accounts if you can't afford to have a second user on your account.) A personal assistant who is hiring out their services to multiple clients really should be paying for their own account already anyway. It's a business for them, and Canva is a good tool to have in their tool belt. However, if you can afford to pay for a second seat, adding them to your own team would give you a more streamlined workflow as you can set up shared brand kits and more easily share assets. The other advantage to paying for them to be on a team with you? You can be sure they are leagally using assets. Afterall, it's your butt on the line for the content you use in your marketing, even if you paid someone else to create it for you. If you pay for them to be on a team though, I would give some ground rules and have them sign an agreement to only use it for your projects, not to share logins, etc. though.
Verdict? I still love Canva. Yes the price change is tricky, but I think the value is there and the company is well-deserving of the fee they charge. Personally, I will be removing some friends and family off my team and getting rid of the dummy account I was using for tutorials, which is a bummer. But I don't need the Teams functionality and I can't justify the cost for it right now. But I still love Canva, and pay for it even though I have Adobe Express included in my full Adobe suite. (There are some super cool features on Express that I will probably use it more soon, but I just haven't had the time to spend over there yet. . .)
That said, if you want to look at some alternatives to Canva:
Adobe Express: $10/mo or $100/year (individual—they have Teams pricing and functionality now that is 12.99/mo or $155.88ish/yr) {Right now you can get the teams version 50% off too!}
Kittl: $10/mo or $24/mo depending on the storage you need/number proejcts you need to produce
PicMonkey: $120/year solo $228/2-person team
BookBrush: $99/149/256 per year depending on the plan
I personally recommend going with paid plans for Canva or Adobe Express, but both have some good free plans that work for commercial use too! A lot of authors use BookBrush, but I find it far less intuitive than Canva and less versatlie. It was created with some pretty specific uses in mind, so Canva is a better tool in the author tool belt in my opinion. If you're on a limited budget, your money will go a lot further on Canva. HOWEVER, they have some decent boxset generators. That said, you can just hire me to make you some mockups! ;)
Well this got far lenghtier than I planned and I covered more than just the price change. ha! But I hope you find it helpful. ;) Now it's time to go write some more blog posts...and get my pricing page updated! Now here's that email Canva sent out about the pricing update:
Upcoming changes to your Canva Teams subscription price
Hi Katie,
Since we launched Canva in 2013, our mission has been to empower the world to design.
As visual communication has grown more important, we’ve been investing in more amazing features to add value and help you achieve your goals.
As we keep improving Canva, we’ve changed the price of our Canva Teams plan to $100.00 / year per person (minimum three people).
This change helps us continue building awesome products like our Visual Suite, Magic Studio, Brand Tools, and other highly requested features.
We wanted to let you know in advance how this change will affect your Canva Teams subscription and what your options are.
Importantly, to thank you for your continued support and loyalty over the years, your team Sapphire Midnight Design will receive a 40% discount for the first year of this new price.
What does this mean for me?
From February 18, 2025, your subscription price will increase from $119.40 / year to the discounted $300.00 / year for the first 12 months.
The 40% discount will also apply to team members you add within that period.
After this, your subscription will increase to $500.00 / year, based on your current number of seats.
If you cancel your subscription, change from a Teams to a Pro plan or switch to monthly billing after February 14, 2025, you’ll lose access to the discount.
You don’t need to do anything. We’ll remind you 30 days before the new price kicks in, and again before the discounted price ends in February 18, 2026.
What can I do to get the most value from Canva?
Remove any inactive team members. Check if you have team members who may not need access to Canva to save on your total cost. Canva Teams admins and owners can remove people with the option to also transfer their designs.
To make changes, check and update your billing and plan information.
You can learn more about these changes. And please get in touch if you have any questions or if there’s anything we can help with.
Thank you for being a valued member of our Canva community, and for helping us shape the future of visual communication.
The Canva Team
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