Canva Review 2024: Is It as Good as Everyone Says?

Great Social Media Planner for Beginners, but Pros Should Look Elsewhere

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With Canva’s tools and templates, you can create content for all major social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Pinterest. But how good is Canva’s social media scheduler, and does it really stand a chance against the fierce competition?

I’ve been using Canva for quite a while now, and I can confidently say that scheduling social media posts is not its strong suit. Core features like simultaneous cross-platform publishing, advanced analytics, message automation, and customer relationship management (CRM) are missing altogether. Does that mean Canva isn’t worth your time? Well, not exactly.

If you run a social media marketing agency, I can’t see how Canva could offer you any real value. But if you use social media recreationally or semi-professionally for your small business, Canva’s vast ecosystem of design tools can help with your content strategy. And having a content planner (even if it’s not the most advanced on the market) doesn’t hurt either.

If you’re worried about the price, I found that Canva charges less than many competitors. Keep reading to find out why I appreciate Canva and whether it does enough to satisfy your social media content creation and planning needs.

Not the Most Advanced Social Media Scheduler, but a Solid Creation Tool

When it comes to social media scheduling, Canva isn’t as advanced as some dedicated scheduling platforms, such as Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social. For example, you can’t mass schedule content to be posted on multiple channels simultaneously. Canva doesn’t do CRM and can’t send automatic responses to your followers, either.

But before you run for the hills, hear me out. Canva is still one of the best platforms for designing and scheduling social media posts as a content creator. There’s just so much you can do with its tools, and its list of features feels never-ending.

Scheduling for All Major Social Media Platforms

Canva can’t post on multiple channels at once, but it supports all major social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, and Tumblr. There’s no limit to how many posts you can schedule per social account – besides the limits the platforms set themselves.

Notably, YouTube and TikTok don’t make this list, so you should look elsewhere if you want to schedule video content on these channels. SocialPilot and Later are both great for scheduling video content.

Hundreds of Templates and Millions of Assets

What Canva lacks in terms of scheduling capabilities, it makes up for in design and creativity. From square Instagram posts to landscape Facebook posts, TikTok shorts, and YouTube intros, Canva can help you create content for all situations. There are even templates for whiteboards, presentations, infographics, banners, video ads, and the list goes on.

Once you reach Canva’s editor, a new world of opportunities opens up. Since you’ll already be paying for Pro (the scheduler isn’t available on the free plan), you’ll have access to all of the platform’s tools.

You can even create custom branded templates that automatically add essential information about your business to your posts (e.g., name, logo, fonts, colors). I’m not a graphic designer, but I managed to create content I’d publish on my profile without a second thought.

Magic Switch™

Available on Canva’s Pro plan, Magic Switch™ allows you to transform your design into whatever format you want. For example, if you want to turn a graphic or logo into a banner, a social media post, or even a blog post, Magic Switch™ can do it for you. And it’s not just about switching the format. It can also resize your design so you can post it on many different channels and translate it into different languages for you.

Just add some text, select an image and a logo, play around with the fonts and colors, and Canva will help you create any kind of content based on your selection. I found Magic Switch™ a huge timesaver, as it makes it easy to stay on brand across multiple channels with minimal effort.

Text to Image

This feature allows you to generate images through text prompts with the help of AI. Although it’s not as advanced as other AI art generators (e.g., Midjourney and DALL-E 2), it comes up with interesting designs that may or may not be useable.

Like all AI-generated content, the quality of your design will largely depend on your prompting skills

Excellent Mobile App

Most of Canva’s features are available on the mobile app, which is pretty impressive. I found for tasks like sharing Instagram Stories without downloading the content on your device first, it makes more sense to use your phone.

The scheduling tool works like a charm on the app, and you can edit dates and add new posts with a few taps. A lite version of Canva’s editor is also there, but I found it difficult to use for creating designs. That said, your experience may vary.

Canva Features at a Glance

My Experience Using Canva – It Doesn’t Get Any Easier Than This

I’ve been using Canva long before they added the scheduling tool. Although there’s no bulk publishing or CRM, the tools Canva does have work so well together. How can you not love a platform that helps you develop ideas, design posts, and schedule them all in the same place?

If you’re a content creator looking for an intuitive tool to help you create and schedule posts, Canva won’t disappoint.

Simple Scheduling

As a Canva Pro user, you can access the Content Planner feature at any point via the Apps tab from the main menu. It took me less than 10 minutes to connect all my social media accounts, and within an hour, I had already created a few designs and scheduled them for publication.

I love how simple Canva makes it to add posts to the calendar. You can click the plus button on any date and manually create a new post – Canva will conveniently display all your recent designs and templates on the left side of the screen. Alternatively, you can schedule posts directly from the editor without navigating to the content planner.

One thing missing is an AI to help with captions, descriptions, and hashtags. There’s also no way to automate the first post, which is where most creators prefer to place their hashtags. Later, for example, can do both of these things.

Learning Resources

Canva’s scheduling tool is intuitive, and you’ll get the hang of it quickly. If you have questions, Canva’s help center features hundreds of articles and step-by-step guides on many topics. If that doesn’t help, you can always reach Canva’s customer support by submitting a ticket – more on that later.

There’s even a whole section dedicated to learning how to use the platform, which Canva has conveniently named “Design School.” The Design School consists of more than 15 courses and 20+ multi-step video tutorials, including one on planning and posting content to socials.

Collaboration Tools

If you’ve ever collaborated on design projects, you know how messy things can get. You can invite people to collaborate with you on Canva, but you’ll have to pay extra for the Teams plan. All invited members will have access to a shared content planner, and you’ll be able to share, edit, and comment on posts and designs with a few clicks.

You can also assign tasks and roles and stay on top of your posting schedule without the need for additional management software. Teams is fairly priced for smaller groups (up to 5 people), but it does get proportionally more expensive as you add seats.

There Aren’t Enough Stats to Inform Your Posting Strategy

The lack of an advanced analytics suite is Canva’s Achilles’ heel. If you click on a published post on your Content Planner and select “Insights,” you’ll get some basic stats on your impressions, reach, likes, comments, and saves. And that’s pretty much it.

It’s worth mentioning that Canva’s scheduling tool hasn’t been around for too long, which leads me to hope that the team is working on a more advanced analytics suite. When it first launched, Canva’s Content Planner lacked many features that were later added to the platform. For example, Instagram posts weren’t initially supported, but that’s no longer an issue.

Currently, Canva lacks many analytics features that other established social media content management platforms offer. For one, there’s no way to track the performance of specific hashtags and mentions of your brand across different channels. There are no benchmarking tools either, so I can’t tell how my posts perform against the competition.

Worst of all, Canva doesn’t offer any actionable advice based on the stats it does provide. Some competitors will tell you what type of content drives the most engagement, when’s the best time to post, and which hashtags perform best.

I can’t recommend Canva for insight-reliant content creators. If you want to do more with your stats, I suggest you check out Sprout’s in-depth and easy-to-customize reports.

Excellent Email Support, but Where’s the Live Chat?

Canva’s help center is gigantic. There are thousands of articles on creating and editing designs, scheduling content, managing teams, and more. The learning center also has many easy-to-follow videos on many different topics.

If you experience a technical issue or need to contact an actual human, Canva doesn’t offer too many options. You can only send tickets, but at least the service is available 24/7. I sent my first question late on a Friday evening and received a reply via email in less than 30 minutes. My question was:

“Is there a limit to how many posts I can have scheduled on my Content Planner per social media platform?”

Long story short, Christian explained that Canva doesn’t impose scheduling limits – the actual limit depends on the “target” social media platform. Although long, this answer was well laid out and promptly delivered.

I contacted Canva’s team again during the weekend. I had trouble accessing one of my designs through the Projects menu, presumably due to a bug. I sent my ticket early in the morning, and a representative got back to me in less than an hour. The bug resolved itself a few hours later.

Overall, I’m impressed by Canva’s super fast response times, but I do wish they offered more support options. Live chat has become an expectation for major software as a service (SaaS) companies – even if it’s just an AI chatbot that answers basic questions and redirects users to the ticket page.

No Free Planning, but Pricing Is Fair

As you know, Canva is a platform for creating designs, first and foremost. There’s a free plan that allows users to experiment with various posts and graphics, but it doesn’t include premium features, one of which is content planning. If you’re looking to schedule posts for free, Later is a great free alternative to Canva.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one design platform that can also help you schedule social media content, you should check out Canva’s Pro plan, which starts at $12.99/month. That’s a great price, considering everything that comes with it, even if that means compromising on the analytics side.

Canva’s super easy scheduling tool supports 8 social media platforms and has basic reporting capabilities. You’ll also gain access to Canva’s massive library of stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics. Other premium features include 1TB of cloud storage for your designs, advanced editing tools, and AI capabilities.

The Teams plan is worth considering if you’re working with multiple people, but it gets expensive pretty fast as you add more seats. According to my calculations, you get the best value from the Teams plan if you keep your groups small (fewer than five team members).

And that’s pretty much it. In essence, Canva only has one premium plan, and it’s very competitively priced. There’s a 30-day free trial for both plans, and if you pay for a yearly plan, you’ll save up to 16%.