Canva's Pricing Increase: User Experience and Feature Needs

Canva's significant price increase demands improvements to justify the cost, especially in video editing capabilities.

### Canva's Price Hike: A 91.67% Increase and User Concerns
* 📧 Last week, Canva announced a significant pricing change, increasing their subscription from **$120 to over $230 a month** for five users, marking a staggering **91.67% hike**.
* 📈 Some users have reported even steeper increases, with certain subscriptions seeing a **300% rise**, as noted by The Verge.
* 💰 Despite the price surge, Canva is introducing new features and offering a **40% discount for the upcoming year**, resulting in a net **60% price increase for existing users**.
* 🛠 As a long-time user, I believe that **minor tweaks could justify a potential price rise to $50 per user per month**, but currently, the service has limitations that hinder its usability.
* 📂 Major issues include the **inability to edit large files**, such as 4K videos, and a **lack of links for uploaded images**, which complicates collaboration among team members.
* 📝 Additionally, Canva's content outlines lack organization, requiring users to **create separate documents for different sections**, and there is a **limit on the number of slides that can be created**.
* 🖼 Users often face memory issues when adding graphics, forcing them to **export images for use in other editing software**, while competitors like Google Slides manage these tasks **more efficiently**.
* 🔍 Ultimately, if Canva can enhance its functionality to **accommodate longer tutorials and better graphic handling**, it could become worth the increased cost, but many users currently see **little value in the new AI tools** being offered.

Let's quickly talk about Canva, which is uh one of the tools that helps make a lot of people's social media content. We use it a lot. We in fact actually tried to move our entire production process over to Canva. I'll share how that went

in a little bit, in a bit, but this all starts last week when we got an email out of the blue from Canva letting us know that there were going to be some pricing changes. And we go, okay, well they're probably going to raise it, you know,

maybe 10, 15, 20, 30%. No, uh, 91.67%. We're going from $120 a month for five users in the Philippines to over $230 a month, so almost a 100% increase. And what's crazy is apparently that's

not that bad because according to The Verge, there's some people who've seen a 300% increase in their Canva subscription. Now what's nice here is there are some new features, and that's kind of why Canva is saying they need uh 300% more money apparently, but they did

at least uh let people know that they, we all get a 40% discount over the coming year. So uh we're going to only see a 60% price increase uh in the coming year, and then after that, we'll see the remaining, you know, 40% increase. So, so very nice of

them. Now, as someone who's been using Canva for I don't know, at least half a decade now, uh I really do like it, and I think if they just made a couple of minor tweaks, I would actually be okay with a 200% price increase because as I

mentioned earlier we actually tried to move our operations in terms of all of our content production for YouTube videos over to Canva and there was some good and but mostly bad we're still stuck using Canva Plus Google Drive you know plus DaVinci or Camtasia whatever

else um whatever other tools people on the team like to use to create the content so there are a quick little list here of things that I think Canva needs in order to go from charging what is it now uh $25 per user per month um to say 50 and

it actually be justified so number one uh let us edit large files you pretty much forget about uploading anything 4K the file limits are prohibitively small you can't edit a video that's more than an hour and when you upload images there's no links which you go like well

what's the big deal of that well if you have a big content outline and you want to tell other people on your team which images to use when or where when they're editing you need a you need a link you need to they need to be able to click

the link and go to it right um every other file sharing system gives you a link that you can share with people on Basecamp Asana Trello um or whatever project management or heck even in an email right now the other thing that that uh really was prohibitive for us

was the fact that when we started making content outlines inside of Canva as you can see this is for an upcoming Google Ads tutorial uh it's just one really long page there's no doc outline like there is in um Google Docs and so uh we

essentially had to make a Doc for each section otherwise you know 30 40 pages that's a lot to scroll through here and the other problem we started to notice too is Canva does have a limit to how many slides you can have so as an

example if we hop over here you can see we have a couple of slides here but even in examples where we only have a couple like for example this one uh we only have 12 slides I literally can't add any more slides because Canva runs out of

memory um and essentially it comes down to these little Graphics here uh because we individually you know build a mockup of like a a YouTube video uh or a Instagram post and then we want to use it in a funnel diagram well because there's so many elements inside of the

elements inside of the the layers of the funnel diagram you literally can't make anymore so we wind up having to export this as a PNG and then inside of whatever video editing software we're using we have to essentially layer on the images because we can't just export

it directly from Canva which on the one hand I know is a pretty niche problem but on the other hand Google Slides can handle our Graphics just fine so if Google Slides can do something that Canva can't I think Canva has a little way to

go but if you if Canva can get us to a point where we can actually record edit and you know export a hour long tutorial heck just on Google ads or some screen capture then I think it would be well worth you know upwards of $50 a month

per user if they decide to go that route, but for now they're charging us a bunch for a bunch of AI tools that arguably I just don't see any value in. [Music] [Music]

Canva’s Price Surge: A Rational Look at the 300% Increase and It's Implications

Jason Whaling

Canva's significant price increase and initial reaction

Introduction to Canva and its use in social media content creation.

Canva announced a substantial price increase (almost 100%, reaching 300% for some).

Specific example of price increase from $120 to $230 per month for five users.

Canva offered a 40% discount for the coming year, reducing the immediate impact.

Despite the discount, the price increase remains significant (60% in the first year).

Reasons for dissatisfaction with Canva despite its positive aspects

Speaker expresses continued liking for Canva, but suggests improvements for price justification.

Unsuccessful attempt to transition entire content production to Canva; still using other tools.

Lists key features Canva needs to justify a higher price point (e.g., $50/user/month).

Specific limitations and needed improvements in Canva

Inability to edit large files (4K, hour-long videos) and lack of image linking for collaboration.

Need for shareable links for images within content outlines, similar to other file-sharing systems.

Lack of document outline feature for long content outlines, making navigation difficult.

Limitations on the number of slides, hindering the creation of complex projects.

Memory limitations prevent adding more slides, especially with complex graphics.

Inability to directly export complex layered graphics, requiring workaround in video editing software.

Comparison with Google Slides, highlighting Canva's shortcomings.

Conclusion and justification for a higher price with improved functionality

Suggests that improved functionality (e.g., handling hour-long tutorials) would justify a higher price.

Current AI tools are deemed less valuable.