3 Reasons Why I Don’t Use Canva For Designing Social Media Posts

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Are you looking for an online tool to design social media posts? Well, maybe the chances are you are considering Canva.

OR

If you are a solopreneur or a social media manager, there are 90% chances that you are already using Canva.

But, I am not a big fan of Canva.

Yes, I am talking about Canva which is worth a market value of more than 1B dollars. It just costs 13 bucks per month and one can design unlimited posts.

I use Photoshop and Illustrator to design social media content. But preferring Canva to Adobe has some advantages too.

• Canva is free (with limited options).
• Stores all the designs.
• Easy to use and beginner-friendly.
• Can design using the mobile app too.
• Best suited for marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs. Thanks to its easy-to-use interface.

But it has some cons too which is why I don’t use Canva.

1. Design Problems

A clipping mask(done by frames in Canva) is a group of layers to which a mask is applied and it is a powerful way to control the visibility of a layer. So, if I want to fit a square image inside a circle, I’ll make a circle frame and insert an image in that frame to get the result. And that is possible with Canva.

But what if I want to fit in a custom shape? May be like this one below?

Canva can’t help and that’s when Photoshop comes into play. And this is just one of the design problems that we face with Canva. There are other things like layer masks, alignment issues, etc.

Canva has prebuilt design elements such as frames, icons, shapes, etc and they are very limited. So there are not enough design elements to play around with.

2. Too Cliche

Social media marketing is all about creativity. People will ignore the posts if you are posting the same kind of posts. And I think Canva is all about that.

Although Canva has a huge repository of pre-designed templates, they are very generic.

Do you know? Canva has over 30 million monthly active users across 190 countries, who have collectively made over 3 billion designs to date. Source: CNBC

With that many users and easy-to-use templates, there are more chances of others choosing the same or similar template that you have chosen, making it all the same.

Creating some super fun and creative social media posts is highly difficult(or impossible) with Canva.

Tip: If you are using Canva to design, I think it’s better to start with a blank canvas and start designing.

3. Some Minor Issues

No local storage: Since Canva is an online tool, whenever there is a problem with the site or if the site is down for maintenance, you won’t be able to access or edit those files. But of course, it doesn’t happen quite often. So, it’s not a big problem. But it’s still a problem. And you can’t edit offline. It’s an online tool. You know that right? (Just joking).

File Export options: You can export as PNG’s, JPG’s & PDF’s. That’s it. Canva doesn’t give much flexibility in terms of exporting files to use them on different software. There is some kind of flexibility between software like Photoshop, Illustrator, Coreldraw, etc. but not with Canva.

Cost: The free version of Canva is no good. That’s for sure. Yes, you can create some good stuff and use it on social media but it’s the pro version that has all the good templates that you or any social media manager and digital marketer is looking for. And it costs 9.95 USD per month. Adobe Photoshop costs 9.99$ per month if you take the Photography plan where you’ll also get Lightroom. Read more about Photoshop vs Canva here. But the point is you are getting the more powerful tool for the same price. So why Canva?

Conclusion

So, am I saying not to use Canva? No, definitely not. If it fits your requirements, USE IT! You can literally make posts in secs & mins using Canva. And you don’t need to have any prior design knowledge to start designing.

But if not, either learn how to design or hire someone who can design using the software.