63. Let’s Pay Less: Do I Need Canva Pro?

[00:00:00] Stephanie: It seems that Canva has become a must have for a large majority of online business owners. In fact, paying for Canva Pro has become pretty commonplace in most budgets, but is it necessary? Let's chat about it. Welcome back to the podcast. It's the last Saturday of the month, which means it's time for another installment of the Let's Pay Less series.

[00:00:37] If you're new to the podcast, this is when we take a closer look at popular budget line items in the online marketing space, you know the things that everyone seems to be spending money on. And we take a closer look at the benefits and drawbacks of these expenses so that you can decide if they're worth it or if your marketing dollars are better spent elsewhere.

[00:00:58] Now, if I were a betting gal, I would put money on the fact that many people will see the title of this episode and decide not to listen. Do I need to pay for Canva Pro? Well, yes, of course I do. And then there might be other people that think, well, I have no intention of ever paying for Canva Pro, and they skip this episode too.

[00:01:18] So that's why I thought I would just take a slightly different approach with this episode because I know you either use and are familiar with Canva or you know that you can easily just go online and look at the breakdown of the free versus paid features for Canva. So rather than just list all of the different features, I thought for this episode, I would share the things that I use the most in Canva Pro and then also talk about the things that I don't use and that I don't feel are necessary, at least in my business, because I thought you might be interested in hearing why

[00:01:55] I will always open my wallet and pay the annual fee for Canva. At least that's what I thought when I was planning this episode. You'll hear why things changed a little bit as I went through and just really thought about Canva Pro. But in true let's pay less fashion we'll also chat about why Canva Pro might not be the best choice for you right now.

[00:02:21] So there are a lot of things that I love about Canva. But I did wanna just keep this list pretty short and I'm going to share my most favorite features of Canva Pro that I use all the time. And so first, I cannot live without the brand kit that is only available in Canva Pro. I have a feeling that was strategic on their part. Because I have multiple clients and then I also have multiple websites of my own.

[00:02:50] And so it's an absolute necessity for me to have quick access to the fonts, the colors, the watermarks, and all of the other brand elements that I need for each of those websites. Now, I know that there are workarounds for this, and I will talk about that later, but with the number of brands that I work on in a given week, I have to be able to keep those brand kits handy

[00:03:17] and I really do love the way that Canva does this for their users. The second feature of Canva Pro that I use all of the time is the background remover. It's so helpful to be able to quickly remove the background from images in order to stack different elements in a design. I know that there are a lot of different free tools online that you can use to remove backgrounds from your images.

[00:03:44] It's just that I really like to save steps whenever I can, and because I use the background remover so much, I think I probably get my money's worth just in the time that I save not having to toggle between Canva and another online tool, but that's just my particular situation. And then the third feature of Canva Pro that I use a lot is downloading my designs with a transparent background.

[00:04:15] Again, I could probably download them and then take them over to a background remover tool online. But again, I work in bulk and I want to save time whenever I can. But honestly, that's pretty much it. I was surprised when I was getting ready for this episode and I realized how many features are available in Free Canva that I thought were pro features. But like I mentioned, the time I save with the few pro features that I do use is a hundred percent worth it to me in this season of my business.

[00:04:49] So now I wanna switch gears and just tell you a few things that I don't necessarily love about Canva Pro, or features that I don't really use. And so the first is the magic resize tool. This is one that is really mentioned a lot as a feature of Canva Pro. Like, wow, you can do the magic resize tool.

[00:05:07] What a great feature. And if you're not familiar with it, basically let's say you created an Instagram post and then you can resize it to another ratio, like for a Facebook post. And you don't have to start from scratch.

[00:05:24] It will automatically copy the design and then create it in that new size as a fresh design. And it sounds amazing and I thought I would use it all the time. But really the few times I tried it, it was a little bit womp womp in my book. I just felt like I still had to tweak so many things in order to make it work in the new size that it probably would've just been faster for me to start with a fresh design and just kind of copy the different features and recreate it. But to each their own.

[00:05:56] If that is a feature that you use all the time, then it could be worth it. But for me. Not really worth it. So another thing that people seem to enjoy about the pro version is that they have a higher usage limit for the AI tools. And I actually thought initially that AI tools were reserved just for Canva

[00:06:15] pro. Turns out it's for everyone. But I think on the free Canva, you have a lower usage threshold. If you've been around for a while, you know that I'm not a fan of using ai, so those higher usage limits just really don't mean much to me on Canva Pro. The final thing that I don't really love about Canva Pro is that the terms of use can be confusing, and there are a lot of questions about whether you can sell things that include pro elements, how much of the design can be that element.

[00:06:50] You know, is it a main feature or just a little bit of an accent? What's the line there? Can you use pro elements in your business logo? I'm grateful though that they seem to realize that it's been a little bit fuzzy for users and they have taken some strides to make the terms of use just a little bit easier to understand.

[00:07:13] And some of those things are in the way the platform actually works. So just as an example, nowadays, if you try to put just like one pro image or element on a design and then just download it as is, it won't download. It'll give you a notification that a pro element cannot be downloaded as a standalone

[00:07:36] graphic, , I'm assuming, because they don't want you to take those graphics and use them elsewhere. But anyway, that's just one example of how I think they're trying to make their terms of use a little bit more clear and I am grateful for that, but it's still, I don't know, I always feel like I'm doing things wrong when I use things from Canva.

[00:07:55] So now let's chat about when the free version of Canva might be plenty for your business. So first, if you're not making a ton of graphics or pins at this point in your business, you'll likely find that combining Canva with other free online tools can easily meet your needs. In my case, I'm just creating so many designs per month that those extra few steps really do add up,

[00:08:20] so I prefer to have like the background remover tool right there in Canva. Second, if you're not trying to juggle a bunch of different brand kits you can probably survive without storing your branding information within Canva. What I like to do, even with Canva Pro, is I like to create one page at the beginning of like my pin designs with just the branding elements because the watermarks are right there at the size I want them, and I can just copy them

[00:08:52] and paste them into, you know, other designs. I also create shapes that are filled in with the brand colors because then when you go to the color drop down in Canva, it will have those colors already loaded because they're in the design. And so then they'll just show up when you're ready to change the colors of different elements in your designs, you'll have your brand colors there, even though they aren't necessarily in a quote unquote brand kit.

[00:09:23] And then finally, if you're just getting started with Canva, you've never used it before, you're learning the ropes, I would suggest skipping Pro. Once you've learned kind of the ins and outs of Canva and you discover what features you're truly missing out on, you can always upgrade. But who knows? You might discover that you don't need those features all that much anyway.

[00:09:45] As I alluded to at the beginning of this episode, this process has been very eyeopening for me because I think it's been probably at least seven years since I used the free version of Canva. I've been paying for Pro for a long time, and when I look back on what Canva, the free version of Canva was, it is a lot different than it is now.

[00:10:10] So in preparation for this episode, I signed up for Canva with a different email and then I declined the free preview of Pro just so that I could get a feel for what you can do with just the regular Canva account these days. And I was really pleasantly surprised. It's a lot. And another thing that I noticed is that

[00:10:30] back when I signed up for the Free Canva, it felt like everything was locked and you had that little crown on everything. Every element that you wanted to use had a crown on it. And when I was using it prior to this episode, the free version, when I went to search for an element, there were no crowns.

[00:10:50] Like the only things that were available were the free elements. And you can correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's a really positive change for Canva users that just wanna use the regular version. All I know is that after doing this little experiment for myself, if my client work situation ever changes, or I need to strip down my business expenses to the absolute essentials, I'm not so sure that Canva Pro would make the cut.

[00:11:18] And so I hope that this episode has also been helpful for you as you think about where your marketing dollars are going each month. Be sure to follow the Pay Less for Traffic podcast, so you'll be the first to know when next month's installment of Let's Pay Less Goes Live.