Digital Horizons

Brand News: Canva’s 300% Price Hike & Its New Game-Changing Features

• James Walker & Brian Hastings

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What's the real cost of Canva’s 300% price hike? This week on Brand News, we break down the headline-grabbing increase and why it might not be as shocking as it seems. We'll show you how Canva, at just $10 a month per user, remains a budget-friendly choice compared to the expensive Adobe Creative Suite. Discover how Canva is catering to non-designers with essential tools that sidestep the complexities of advanced software, making it a unique offering in the design tool market.

We also dive into Canva’s newest features: Visual Suite and Magic Studio. Visual Suite is Canva's ambitious leap into the document creation realm, positioning itself against Microsoft and Google Suites. Meanwhile, Magic Studio uses AI to automate and streamline design processes, promising huge time savings for users. From comparing costs to evaluating new functionalities, we offer our insights on why Canva’s enhanced offerings still present a compelling value proposition, despite the price hike. Tune in for our thoughts on the communication strategy Canva used to inform users about the price change and why it might have ruffled some feathers.

The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:

James Walker - Managing Director Walker Hill Digital
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to Brand News, and this week we are talking about Canva's 300% price increase on its subscription piece.

Speaker 2:

I mean, it's not still that much, though, when you think about it in this team? Of things Big news here. It's a good headline, but yeah, it's still $10 a month per user, but that's US, so it's probably like $16 in Australia, I imagine.

Speaker 1:

This article is from the Verge. The design software company is massively jacking up its subscription prices for some users. So we were just talking about this and I'm like what does that mean? 300%, but their subscription was like $10. It's not like it's something that is like. I mean you increase the price from $10 to anything. It's going to be a pretty massive increase. And comparatively, like our office here, we use Canva, but we also use Adobe Creative Suite and Creative Suite is already seven times the price of that or more. Like we're spending $70, $80 a month per user compared to the $10 per user.

Speaker 2:

So I think Canva really doesn't compare to the Adobe suite, but I think what it's doing well is pulling away the need for all of the low-level basic assets that need to be created by non-designers, pulling them away from that expensive Photoshop environment and all of the other Adobe suite of products that the typical user doesn't need. So while Canva can't do as much as Photoshop and the Adobe suite, a lot of the users at this Canva level don't need any of that. So while it doesn't compare it's not really supposed to it's giving the users what they need. At this level, I think the pricing is still really reasonable. Yeah, they have added some features to justify this.

Speaker 2:

So should we get into some of those.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so a statement from it looks like somebody from there. Our suite of products has grown significantly over the last couple of years with the launch of new offerings like Visual Suite and Magic Studio. I had a quick look over what these are and Visual Suite looks like it's almost like trying to be a competitor to Microsoft and Google Suite, where you can create documents, so adding that into the subscription. I mean there's value in that. I don't know what you pay for a Microsoft one, google obviously. That keeps going up Every time I seem to get an invoice from Google. It seems to have increased from Google Suite.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it used to be the super cheap version. It was.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean I had G Suite when it was free back when we originally got on there, and they left us on that for ages, but then they ended up putting us onto a paid plan. And Magic Studio looks kind of cool as well, and it seems like it's a little bit like if anyone's used Banner Snack or I think they're called Creotopy now where you can create your design assets and then you can just export them and the AI will then create them for your different outputs. So it might be like, oh, I want a reel, I want a Facebook cover, a blog image, whatever, and it will just do it all for you. So the time saving in that is massive.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think actually using AI to do these layout rollouts is going to get a much better solution than Banner Snack or those tools of the past where it would still require a bit of work to re-layout or reorganise those various layouts. But what we mean by that is you can do a design, say a campaign lead image, and then you can roll it out into the various sizes you're going to need, from an email to a ad banner, to a homepage banner, to a blog article image. It can really reduce the amount of time you're spending fiddling around with getting those image assets you're producing sorted.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure for people that this price increase is obviously going to be a challenge for them, but I feel that, based on the value that this platform seems to add to people and also it's relative cost to other platforms that are out there, I don't know if it's too crazy I think that part of the problem was as well is the way that it's been announced, though I don't really understand how else they would. So they are saying here that they communicated it via email, but I mean, how else are you going to communicate from a software company to your customer base about a price increase.

Speaker 1:

You're not going to call everybody and just check with them about it. So I feel that, whilst that was put in, there is a bit of a pain point for people that they got an email about a price increase. It's probably better than a pop-up on the website when you log in.

Speaker 2:

I'm pretty forgiving with a price increase when there's been a huge investment in the quality of the product. The other, probably less sexy, addition is the ability for a business to manage multiple users with an admin console. If you're using Canva across a team, you can add users into the one environment. You can give them different permissions and access to shared content within the Canva environment. I'm not sure whether that was there before in some way shape or form, but they're saying this is the reason, or one of the reasons, for the addition to price. From what I've seen, at about $10 a month US, you need to have a minimum of three users to be on that more corporate tier. So it is coming up in price a bit, but it is approachable for non-graphic designers and it is quick and easy to produce usable images and graphics for use in your marketing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think the time saved could almost outweigh the increase in cost. If you are paying your team or you're paying a designer or whatever to output graphics for you, then maybe the subscription would be worthwhile, just to save them time to be able to actually do their job.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it might've been six. 12 months ago, canva announced introducing AI, so it had an image generation. I've tried it. It's not that good. I prefer Midjourney or even Dali, and it might even be powered by one of those. But it seems to have some sort of limitations on how good a quality the images it produces are. But it can be good enough for just the addition of a basic image if you need it. But I think they did it in the right order. They introduced these features, they introduced the AI components and then they said now this product is good enough to warrant an additional fee for those super users or commercial users that need it. Yep, so that's brand news for this week. We'll be back with a full episode in the coming days. Thanks for watching, cheers, thank you.