Blogging and graphic design are inevitably intertwined. It could be a new blog logo or creating social media marketing graphics; sometimes, you need to put on your artistic hat when managing your blog.
But, of course, not everyone is a graphic design genius. Luckily, with Canva, an online graphic design tool, you can design compelling graphics for your blog, edit photos and videos, and even plan your content calendar.
Canva Pro unlocks a suite of features that most bloggers will find useful. From a larger image library, more templates, and even time-saving features like the ability to resize your images with one click. For only $9.99 per month, Canva Pro is a tool worth having.
What Is Canva?
Canva is an online graphic design platform that began in 2012. Since then, bloggers have been using it to create everything from pins for Pinterest to downloadable PDFs. It's one of the most popular design tools for bloggers.
Signing up for Canva is free, and you can connect with Google, Facebook, or enter your email to sign up.
And, while Canva uses a freemium model and encourages users to sign up for Canva Pro, the paid version, it’s still a robust tool beginner and experienced bloggers alike can benefit from.
Canva Features
Canva is most popular for creating things like Pinterest graphics and logos. But, there are numerous features content creators can use to save time and create more compelling visuals.
1. Design Tool and Templates
Canva’s greatest strength is its template library. With thousands of free pre-built designs, Canva lets you create graphics with its drag-and-drop editor to take your blog and social media marketing game to the next level.
Some popular Canva template categories include:
- Business cards
- Flyers
- Infographics
- Logos
- Social media posts for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter
- YouTube thumbnails and channel art
You can search for templates to use as a starting point or create graphics from scratch with the drag-and-drop editor. But either way, learning how to use Canva is incredibly intuitive.
Canva’s editor lets you easily change text, opacity levels, and shift elements of a template around. You can also add new elements like:
- Charts
- Gifs
- Lines and shapes
- Photos
- Text boxes
- Videos
My favorite part about Canva is that it has an extensive photo library. So, once you decide on the framework for your content template, you can simply change the background image and your text to create an entirely new piece of content in seconds.
This is by far where Canva saves the most time. If you want to create batches of social media content in one sitting, this is the tool for you.
Related: Tailwind Review: – Features, Pricing, Pros and Cons
2. Photo and Video Editor
If you’re a blogger who takes your own photos or creates video content, Canva has two more editing tools that can help.
For starters, Canva’s photo editing tool lets you quickly touch up photos, add filters, crop sections, and add different text blocks. This is basically a photo-focused version of the drag-and-drop editor, but it’s useful if you want to enhance photos before posting somewhere like Instagram.
And, Canva also has video creators covered. The new video editing tool is in beta and lets you quickly make videos using a template library, just like the regular editor.
If you want to make YouTube outro screens, channel trailers, or short promo videos for your blog, this is another time-saving Canva tool.
Granted, many templates are only available for Canva Pro users, which I’ll cover later, but there’s still plenty of free templates to try.
3. Canva Teams
Another Canva feature that’s perfect for bloggers who work with virtual assistants or a blogging partner is Canva Teams.
Creating a team is free, and you invite members to join via email. Afterward, team members can share access to designs and folders with one another. You can also collaborate and comment in real-time, all for free!
This is perfect for tasks like:
- Collaborating on designs like a new logo or piece of channel art
- Keeping track of what designs everyone is working on
- Sharing Pinterest templates you like with your virtual assistant
4. Content Calendar (For Canva Pro)
If you currently use a social media scheduler to handle your marketing efforts, there might be an argument to switch to Canva.
With Canva’s content calendar, you can plan and schedule your social media marketing calendar and automatically post to platforms like:
- Tumblr
You can add content to your schedule right from the drag-and-drop editor when you’re done designing. Alternatively, manage your upcoming posts from the content calendar tab.
Unfortunately, Canva doesn’t have in-depth tools like hashtag research or posting time recommendations as you get with tools like Buffer or SocialBee.
But if you just want a fast way to create and schedule content across your social media channels, Canva gets the job done.
Related: 7 Best Free Social Media Schedulers
5. Canva Print
One Canva feature people often gloss over is Canva Print, the company’s printing service. But if you ever want to bring your designs to life, Canva lets you print your designs out on a range of products, including:
- Business cards
- Canvas prints
- Invitations
- Mugs
- Photo books
- Posters
- T-shirts
If you’re going to a blogging conference and need business cards or promotional material, this is definitely a useful feature to know about.
Canva partners with over 400 printing partners and offers free delivery. It isn’t the cheapest option on the market; 50 Canva business cards cost $13.50 versus 100 cards from VistaPrint for $17. But since you already have designs on Canva, this is a fast way to create promotional material for your business.
6. Mobile App
Canva has a free app for Android and iOS that’s basically a mobile clone of the desktop version.
Personally, I prefer making Pinterest pins and various social media graphics on my computer. But if you produce a lot of content on platforms like Instagram or TikTok, it’s nice to manage content creation and posting right from your phone.
What is Canva Pro? – Free Versus Premium
Canva Pro is the paid version of Canva. There’s also an enterprise plan, but for most bloggers, your choice boils down to staying free or paying for Canva Pro.
You can use most Canva features for free, and this is honestly why bloggers love Canva so much. However, paying for Canva makes every feature slightly better, and some features, like content scheduling, aren’t free.
With Canva Pro, you unlock:
- 100+ million stock photos, videos, audio clips, and graphics
- 610,000+ free templates versus 250,000 with free Canva
- The ability to add a brand kit to your account so you can stay consistent with colors, fonts, and styles
- Remove image backgrounds with the Background Remover tool
- Save designs as templates for your team
- 100GB of cloud storage versus 5Gb with free Canva
- Content scheduling to up to eight social media platforms
And my favorite feature of all — the ability to resize your image with a click. This means you can make a featured image for your site, then switch it to a pin, then switch it to an Instagram image. You don't have to start all over for each image. The text and image just magically resize.
Yes, there will still be some fiddling to do to make it look perfect, but it's such a time saver when you want to make the same image for different platforms.
I think Canva Pro is worth it just for the free images and the image resize feature.
How Much Is Canva Pro?
Canva Pro costs $9.99 per month on a yearly plan or $12.99 per month if you pay monthly. This is the cost for one to five Canva Pro users, but Canva scales in cost the more users you need on your team:
- 10 Users: $419.99 annually ($3.49 per person per month)
- 15 Users: $719.99 annually ($3.99 per person per month)
- 50 Users: $2,819.99 annually ($4.69 per person per month)
You can also enter a custom amount of up to 999 users, but for most bloggers, you’re probably sticking with the $9.99 per month Canva Pro version.
If you’re on the fence, there’s also a free Canva Pro trial for 30 days. Just note that the free trial requires entering your payment information.
Is Canva Pro Worth It?
For the majority of bloggers, I think Canva Pro is worth the upgrade.
Canva Pro was one of the first paid tools I added to my site when I first started blogging. I wanted that magic resize feature as I was tired of starting over with every single social media image.
What I wasn't expecting was how much I also appreciated the larger image library. It's a huge time saver to just have all the images you could need right there in Canva — rather than downloading them from another site and then uploading them into Canva.
At $9.99 a month (if paid annually), even if you are only making a set of social media images once a week I think it's worth it. That's only about $2.30 per week. For me, those extra time-saving features are totally worth two bucks.
But if you just need to create the occasional logo or piece of social media content, free Canva suffices. You still have thousands of templates, free stock photos and videos, and the ability to save templates.
If you are new to Canva, definitely try the free version for a while and if you are using it regularly I recommend upgrading to Canva Pro.
Canva Pros and Cons
Millions of bloggers and content creators use Canva, and when you consider how much functionality there is, this isn’t surprising.
But, there are still some pros and cons of this graphic design tool worth noting:
The Pros:
- Extensive template and graphics library
- Resize images with one click
- Incredibly intuitive editor
- Extensive font library
- Ability to save and share templates
- Multiple download formats, including png, jpg, pdf, and MP4
- Canva adds new templates regularly
The Cons:
- Designs get over-used, so your content might not look so original
- Templates can be hard to make work with your specific information
- Only 5GB of storage for free Canva users
- Content scheduling lacks in-depth social media research tools
Ultimately, Canva probably deserves a spot in your blogging toolkit, even if it’s just for refreshing your logo and some social media content creation.
Summary
If you create visual content for your blog, Canva can help you create beautiful images. It doesn’t matter if it’s the occasional Instagram post or Pinterest pin, the sheer amount of templates and intuitive drag-and-drop editor is why bloggers love Canva.
Paying for Canva Pro is up to you, but I hope my Canva review highlights the pros and cons and when the right time to go premium is.
And just remember: it’s easy to get carried away with creating endless graphics for your blog. But this is just one piece of the blogging puzzle, and you still need to focus on SEO and creating consistent content if you want long-term blogging success.
