Canva: Design, Photo & Video Reviews

I’m a long time this app user and absolutely loved Canva. I use it all the time for all my blog graphics. However, this app recently updated the software for iPad and now I hate it.
What was once an easy to use app, is now cumbersome, has less functionality, less ease of use, less user friendly, less everything except the amount of time it takes to create a new graphic. It has got to be about 200% slower.
It works very similarly to the iPhone app - which I hate. If I can’t use the old interface, I’m gonna be forced to switch apps. Please don’t make me switch. Don’t make the iPad app function as poorly as the iPhone app. I need speed, ease of use and lots of functionality that works well on my iPad. Not my iPhone, but my iPad.
I also can’t edit any of my saved files in this app as I receive a compatibility error message. PLEASE FIX THIS!! PLEASE AT LEAST GIVE US THE OPTION OF USING THE OLDER VERSION. I HATE THE UPDATED IPAD VERSION. SERIOUSLY. HATE IT! I CAN’T EVEN USE IT, BECAUSE IT JUST SITS THERE FOREVER SPINNING, TRYING TO LOAD AND CAN’T. PLEASE, PLEASE GIVE US BACK THE OLD VERSION. PLEASE.
How about if you do away with the iPhone version and just use the old iPad app? That’s a great idea! Or make the iPhone a limited functionality (which, it essentially is). Please give me back the this app I loved! I am extremely busy, carry my iPad with me everywhere I go and use this app all the time. Please do something about this!

Let’s start with the good. It’s 2018 and nobody makes a (sort of) desktop publishing app for iOS except this app. So kudos for taking this project on. That said, Canva is so painstakingly frustrating, I’m kind of amazed I still use it. It crashes all the time, weird changes are made when I go to save (wasting precious time), and lots of other very quirky things. Example. When working with text, in order to exit edit text mode, one has to click done. That alone takes forever, but after hitting done no matter what page I’m on in a document, Canva leaps forward to the last page. Another example. Try renaming a file. It crashes every single time. Try renaming it again. This time it works. Every single time. The list goes on and on, and things load oh so slowly. So long story short. Canva isn’t ready for the field. It’s hardly even beta worthy. But we all still use it. Why? Because there’s nothing else out there for iOS. The moral of the story is that we need other developers to begin working on publishing apps so that we not only have a choice, but so that this app has some competition. The developers respond quickly, roll out updates, and make promises, but bottom line is Canva still remains broken. Honestly, it’s such a chore to use. There is nothing enjoyable about Canva and all I hear out there is that when we go to work on a project.... we just pray we can make it through. Upward and onward.

Upgrading to the Pro version was definitely a great decision on my part, and for the most part I’m enjoying Canva . I do find myself having to import elements from outside sources very frequently however. I’d really like to see this app up their game in the quality and quantity, and the variety of elements offered.

My biggest issue with this app is a major one! Canva constantly crashes on me while I’m working on a project. Everything else on my update iPad works perfectly fine, it’s only the this app App that has these issue. My only solution is to do a complete shutdown of my tablet and reboot it. I even lost the progress on my work in one project, as it failed to save my work, before it crashed. Obviously I had no idea, or I would’ve saved it myself!!! Considering I’m paying money for Canva, I do expect a higher standard. This issue happens frequently. I somehow would have a very hard time believing that I’m the only one with this same issue, which would mean that they haven’t taken the time to fix it? If this continues, I will have no choice but to find another App that offers me the roughly services at around the same price, but that works properly!

Fortunately I was still in the free trial mode before deciding whether I wanted to pay for the pro-mode of Canva . The only reason I was considering paying for it was for the “background removal tool” when editing photos. Every time I attempted to use this tool, immediately after using it Canva would crash and everything in that document would be gone - even though I saved periodically and it appeared to save successfully. I tried playing around with the tool to see if it was user error, but no matter what template I used or what image I used it on, Canva immediately crashed and deleted everything in that template. It was extremely frustrating to repeat the process multiple times and to be left with a blank template at the end. Scrolling through anything on Canva is cumbersome as well (it makes it feel like my touchscreen isn’t registering me touching the screen, even though it works everywhere else). Lastly, converting to other template sizes is not seamless and shouldn’t be used as a selling feature for the pro version. Also, I am using an updated 2021 iPad Pro, so it should not be equipment failure. I’m glad I used the free trial, because it gave me the clarity to avoid paying the pricey monthly charge for this buggy app.

TLDR: Background Removal Tool causes app crashes, unsaved work. Cannot easily scroll through images/graphics/etc. due to bugginess.

Don’t pay for Canva.

Canva allows you to not only create your own designs from scratch, but gives you countless of templates to help give that top quality look. I used Canva for different type of papers for my upcoming gender reveal. Everywhere I looked didn’t quite have what I wanted so I decided to design my own. I am more than pleased with the results, the paper is top quality and their t-shirts are beautifully made. Their pricing is incredibly cheap compared to other sites I’ve looked into, they saved me so much money. The delivery time as quick and everything was beautiful packaged. The fact that they even plant a tree for every order they receive is just a cherry on top! I will continue to use this company for any future designs. I absolutely adore this app, thank you to the developers to bring a cheap and easy option to the table. I am extremely impressed, seeing the work your company produced brought tears to my eyes. My gender reveal is going to look exactly how I want it to thanks to you. 10/10 I’ve recommended it to all of my friends! ❤️

EDIT: Previously, I had written a negative review saying that a recent update had essentially removed every feature of Canva that I used for my designs, background color editing among this number. I am happy to say that, for the most part, those features have been restored. I am able to access and edit all my designs on my iPad, and the completion of the update has made usage fairly easy.
However, there are still some large issues that need to be fixed which prevent me from giving Canva five stars. For starters, I cannot access any templates on my iPad. If I click on the Templates button, nothing appears. I have tried this multiple times; every other tab under the + button works exactly as intended, but it has been a month or so now and I can’t access any templates. This is a pretty big issue for me; the vast majority of my designs use a specific template.
The second issue I have is that I still cannot edit background colors on my iPad. This is also a large aspect of my designs, and right now that means I have to switch to my laptop to be able to actually get the design I want.
I’d quickly change this review to five stars if these factors were fixed, but for now this remains a frustration for me.

EDIT: Well, something was fixed. Still having weird rebounds when trying to crop, but the “Pro” logo is back on things that aren’t free (which there also seem to be more of again), so I no longer have to hover over everything to check. Congrats, you guys get a star back.

This used to be an amazing app and for the longest time I had rated it at 5 stars. Now, however, it’s become such a headache to use. It used to show which images were free to use as soon as a gallery loaded. Now I have to hover my finger over EVERY SINGLE ONE, only to find that 99% are now “Pro” and cost money to use. There’s no way to filter your search for only free images either. I’ve resorted to searching Google for free-use stock photos most of the time. I’m not using Canva to make presentations or anything to make money off of, I just like making my social media posts prettier. Also, when I’m cropping a photo, Canva will suddenly bounce backwards out of that function and I’ll have to click AGAIN on the crop button and start over. Seriously disappointed and if I find another photo editing app that I like better, you can be sure I’ll be deleting this one in a heartbeat.

I’ve used Canva for a few years now. Both on desktop and mobile. I loved the selection of templates available and the fun add ons too. Canva could be great but I run into too many problems. #1 It’s a hit-or-miss in terms of the user-friendliness. Sometimes, it’s very easy to use and adjust certain things. Other times, things will clash and will be difficult to select. I wish there were some consistency. #2 The helpful articles aren’t very helpful. I was directed to a ‘helpful’ article in order to solve my problem. In this article, it asked me to click under a tab and look for a section. The section did not exist. I’m not sure if it was a mistake. But, to me, (because I was requesting a refund) I couldn’t help but think it was on purpose. Why is it so difficult to get a refund! #3 Logging in seems almost impossible. If I go into too much detail, I’ll lose you if I haven’t lost you already. this app never seems to remember my emails. I have two. I only use one for apps like these. I request a password change and suddenly it remembers my email? What is the deal? The logging-in process discouraged me from even using Canva . Canva could be great, but the little things discourage me from even trying to login.

I used to really like Canva, and I would use it all the time like 9 months ago, and I’ve been using it since, just not as much because it’s changed a lot and it’s getting so hard and annoying to work with now. First of all, the college lay out I would use the most is no longer on Canva , which makes me really mad since it was my favorite one. Secondly, whenever I save something, it saves completely different than what I originally had. It takes me opening and saving it again 3 more times to get close to how I wanted it to save in the first place. Lastly, editing is getting SO annoying and hard now. Before, editing a picture within a collage was really easy, just double tapping and zooming in or out. Last month, whenever I double tapped the picture, there was a lot of pictures and lines overlapping each other which made it really confusing and annoying to edit, but now, I can’t even do that. Whenever I double tap a picture now, it takes up the space of the entire collage and it doesn’t even let me edit it. It doesn’t let me zoom in, out, or even let me move it around, it just goes back to how it was. This is really stressing me out, and I use to really love Canva. Please let me know if there’s a way to fix this, because it’s very hard to use Canva for all these reasons.

I honestly do not know where to begin except that I am so severely disappointed in the product outcome. My boyfriend had decided to surprise me and make custom t-shirts for the new business we are starting. As this was going to be a Valentine’s gift, he put in his order during the first week of February. This is where the issues begin: to start, it never arrived before Valentine’s Day, as it said it would have. After a couple of days of waiting after Valentine’s Day, we looked to see the order status and it was STILL in printing, for two shirts! My boyfriend contacted the company and they told him that it was a long process or some other excuse and only offered him a 20% off next order coupon… AFTER IT WAS ALREADY 7 days late! Come to find out, the shirts finally arrived… and the biggest disappointment was to come: the shirts, aren’t even printed. I wish I could add a photo of what was delivered. What should have come in was two shirts with white lettering of our businesses’s name. Instead, there is brown outlining on these shirts of where I THINK they were supposed to put the design. I am so frustrated with their lack of professionalism and lack of concern for their products. I can say I will need quite a bit of convincing before I ever consider using their services again.

Using this app has been very good for me personally. I’ve been able to take my content to the next level with just using the tools and resources. I’m someone who never took my creativity seriously and one day I made my own brand design through this app and it helped my online business x1000. So I think it’s pretty great the only thing I’d love to see change is the ability to “favorite” a design. This would be helpful when you’re searching for ideas instead of having us click the design and it automatically adds the design to our “my designs” tab. That gets annoying. Sometimes I just want to see the design I don’t want to add it. And sometimes I’m just scrolling and I’ll accidentally click a design and it still automatically adds it to my designs tab. Then when you press the “back” button to go back to look at similar designs it takes you straight back to the home page and you lose the place where you were looking. I hope that makes sense. I love Canva but that’s the one thing that I don’t 😭. Please consider that minor change in the future!

So I wish I could rate this higher, because it was pretty easy to design the business card I wanted, it was easier when I went to the website. I was able to make it in 20 minutes on the website vs an hour messing around in Canva .
However when I tried to purchase the card it would not accept my card, it kept getting errors. The next morning I saw it tried to charge and then refund my card 3 times so not sure what happened there. Still it refunded all of them so no loss of money, just frustrating. I then took a break before trying again to purchase the card I wanted, but in that time I got an alert from Credit Karma that I had had a security breach and my password was found on the darkweb. The site that had the breach? this app. Now I’ve had to deal with changing any website that I’ve ever used a variation of the password I used there, and it’s not every app and website, but it’s enough to be a lasting headache.

TLDR liked the card I made, but I couldn’t purchase it and they weren’t secure enough not to leak my password. 1 star.

1). many teachers like math. this app needs a selection of math graphics that are modern, diverse, and not stereotypical. Stop showing pictures of Asian 10 year old standing n front of a chalkboard filled with advanced math. It perpetuates the stigma that Asians are smarter in math and that it’s standard for 10 yrs old to be doing calculas algorithms.
2) need more pictures of colored kids and families. In education there are classroom that are all brown, all black, some with very few whites and some very diverse. Also teachers are not all white. Learning happens in classrooms but also outside, in museums, at the grocery store, at home
3). Math is more than just formulas and boring worksheets. It’s playing with manipulative and using computers and calculators. It’s sketching graphs, looking at patterns, collaborating , noticing and wondering.

Ok. This will get you started. Looking forward to seeing changes. I had made a tweet several months ago and the response was we are adding new images everyday. Been waiting.

For the last few months both Canva and desktop versions have been glitching so much so that I create the design and just screenshot it knowing that it will no longer save and download. I have been with this app since the start and never had a storage cap...until recently which means that I can no longer add new photos unless I delete old ones that I use for my business...or upgrade my account which a splash page constantly flashes to suggest. this app used to be an innovator in the marketplace and now it is not even useable. Why would I pay for service upgrades when the free version acts up too much?! I have watched Canva and the company grow so much and wanted to see it thrive even more! But I can not even use it and I am not paying them to fail with their service. Read the recent and low star reviews as these are REAL users giving their experiences. Hopefully they remove the storage limits to where they were before (unlimited) and fix all glitches (I have updated my phone and Canva and the glitches are now what this app offers), so that true supporters of this app and new users alike can enjoy it...otherwise people will use one of the 20+ alternatives that are written about monthly on various blogs.

I’ve been using Canva for over a year now. I really love it. It works well, it’s easy to use once you get the hang of it and you can really design some super cute things. I do get a bug where it will download blurry though so I wish that would get fixed. It’s definitely been happening for over 6 months and that’s a huge inconvenience. I also wish there was some sort of tab that you could open where it would load all of you words or illustrations that you used on your design and then you could edit them from there because once you overlay or underlay something, it’s a huge hassle to fix it if you want to change something. I end up having to move a lot of things to find what I put under something to move it to a better location and I think another little edit button where it took you to everything you used and gave you the option to highlight them or something by clicking on them would be amazing! Just food for thought. I would recommend Canva!

I LOVE the this app website. I use it all the time. However Canva is horrible. I can only use it vertical, which wastes screen space. Zooming in is not as easy as it sounds. Canva should flip to horizontal mode when a user moves their phone. Canva does not save pictures in designs. I closed a design to come back and finish and the picture was gone. Twice! Also, I duplicated a design to change the picture and Canva would not let me move, remove, replace, or trash the picture in that design. This particular design I did on the website then went into Canva to duplicate and change. Text editing is tedious and sensitive. I tried for several minutes to make a short, 2 line sentence to one. Canva kept undoing my work.
Overall Canva is so sensitive that when trying to edit or move one piece (text/picture) it messes with the other pieces in the background instead.
It’s a big time waster. I hope this app takes this into account and makes Canva better.

I am a big this app fan, I have used it for years through college and into my professional career. I just got an iPad Air and the this app app is less than impressive. There is no integration of the folders function, and several of the editing tools available on desktop are missing. The social media calendar is also missing, which I use daily. There’s no function to search for your past designs, and because you can’t access your folders there’s no organization to your designs. This makes it very clunky to have to manually scroll through all your past designs (again, without a search bar option), and I’ve dealt with Canva crashing numerous times. Additionally it takes forever to initially load (landing page appears but app freezes for a solid minute), and lags badly when using template search functions. I love the service this app provides so I hope these changes can be made to improve the function.

I used to LOVEEEEEEE this app. I did all of my real estate marketing graphics with it and I was really impressed with the product and the ease of use.
After the update to iPhone and iPad Canva has been crashing and flickering between pages. I feel the new version allows for less customization and doesn’t use all of the screen space on my iPad Pro which feels like I’m straining to see all the details of my designs. Other annoying things like having to use the search feature to find items like “lines” make this new version almost not worth using.

**UPDATE** still using this app, but still not happy with the ever-changing interface. Y’all are really desperate to get money these days. Now, I can’t even pick a font without having to navigate between free fonts and premium fonts (the free fonts used to be listed at the top, the premium fonts at the bottom. Now, they’re all mixed in). I guess this is what happens when your fav apps start charging users money. I just don’t have a reason to pay a monthly subscription for this yet....and I see there was some sort of security breach for paying users SMH

I believe that the functionality of the design has gone down with the new interface update. Viewing my projects was way easier in the previous design. I find it harder to add in my own logos from external applications. The reason I loved Canva was because I could be creative while on the go with my iPad or iPhone but now I will have to return to using the Website version to make the process easier on me which is not favorable. Please don't prioritize drastic design changes that sacrifice simple but helpful shortcuts like: the grid feature that directed placement of your designs in a geometric symmetry with the overall design, having user-friendly editing for mobile devices that allows you to view all tabs of editing possibilities, and having easy capability of zooming in and out of your design. And every time I open a design up the program changes placement and color of everything on the page and I have to exit and re-enter the design MULTIPLE times before it even becomes similar to what I had saved last. Overall, incredible application but I cannot stand the newest update because of all the difficulties it has brought to my creative process.

Happy mind I've got a couple Instagram accounts, and no
two have the same features as the other. It's
incredibly confusing and annoying to switch
between two accounts on the same app that
don't even have the same features. One might
have a different, newer version of DM's while
another has been stuck with an old version and
has never been updated.
For the past two months my main account has
been action blocked almost every other week.
Instagram has made me change my password 8
times within then as well. I rely on posting often
to keep my audience and gain new followers (as
well as to catch the eyes of potential customers,
as I am an artist that makes money off of
commissions) and I obviously can't do this when
Instagram blocks me from posting. I don't share
my account with anyone, I've never purchased
followers, and I've never used any third party
apps with Instagram. So it's beyond me why they
keep doing this.
Happy mind
Not to mention, the support is awful. If you have
an issue or if you need help with something, you
might as well forget it. The support team is
incredibly unhelpful and has always been this
way. I've seen accounts post highly illegal
content that Instagram deems as safe for all
ages! Even after reporting. Any legitimate
problems I've tried to report have been met with
silence.
Happy mind The idea of Instagram is great. But Canva itself
is becoming worse and worse as time goes on.

I have been using this app for a while now and it has never disappointed me. Never! Sure there’s paid elements to site but the free options are just as high quality and I can always find what I need in the free options. I use this app for making programs for my children’s theater productions, posters for my sister’s band events, invitations for all my occasions, and literally every other need I have for graphic design. I sent the last program I made to a professional printer to have them stapled and put together to save time on our end, and they said the file was absolutely perfectly made and laid out. They even said they were going to start using this app too and recommending it to their other customers. I can’t express enough how much I love this app! Now I do prefer the website just because it’s on a bigger screen buuuuuut, you have almost all the options in Canva as you do online. And you can save designs right to you phone. Anyway, this app is an excellent service!

This is a great design app! Especially for those of us that love to design but don’t have all our skills honed in on Adobe ID or photoshop. Great tool and love using it for work and my side hustle! 2 suggestions one: wish you could put “your designs” in folders so I could keep my work and side projects separately. Two: when you find a graphic you like I wish it would give you the key words associated with the graphics (like tags)so you could search for more like it or just keep track of designs. A itty bitty complaint but no deal breaker—- I like the 2.0 version but it is a little irritating that I can start a design on my laptop and finish on my iPad because I used a different version. Not that big of a deal I just have to remember to start the project on 1.0. So many options and so user friendly! I have told many of my friends about this great app. I see it only getting better! 🤗

I’m a long-time this app user and have the yearly business account, which I use often. I was thrilled when they first came out with a mobile app and have also used this frequently and had it work fine. However, in the past month or so they have introduced new updates to Canva which have made it completely useless. It crashes every 30 seconds when you are trying to edit (not an exaggeration!), so you can’t use it to make any new projects. I often use it on the go to make small edits to Instagram templates for my company’s social media accounts, but even something as simple as editing a color causes it to crash. I usually buckle through and after many crashes and swear words I can get the minor edits done, but then when I actually go to save my project it will export without any of the new edits and I end up with an old version of the file. I’ve taken to screenshotting my final project in order to use it. Super frustrating, and I hope the developers fix these issues soon. Even my husband knows how much I hate Canva issues because I complain about it every time I try to use it!

I use this all the time on my laptop and I love how simple it is on there and everything is just convenient and easy, but since I can't use my laptop for some reason I'm not getting that same experience on my phone. It's a little more difficult, it may have some of the same properties but it's harder for me to find them and control, I can't change the sizes of my pictures and I can't copy and paste if I want a certain thing on a different page but then it's stuck on the one I have it on, and also I wanted to mention that I delete the old image because I don't like the size or something else I can't add my own afterwards so I would have to replace the other one but then I can't make the exact changes I want. I also noticed that some of my old savings have fonts but I saved through phone some of them are gone and I can't get them back again :( other than that I'm really happy there is a app version! I also really like that you can have your work every where and other devices! Thats really smart!

Canva is amazing. I started a new job , while the owner of the company was in the middle of getting things organized and up and running completely. So she asked me to make her some name tags, why in heavens did she pick me I have no idea, I didn’t even know where to start... well I just so happened to type in “make your own name tag” on google and “this app” was an option under apps. Well I downloaded it and it was completely easy .. the name tags I made game out AMAZING. I could make the font , the size I mean whatever I dreamed of was right there for me to edit. I edited my name tags made them completely to my liking of vision , emailed them and then had them printed off and eliminated at a near by fed ex kinkos. MY BOSS WAS IN LOVE and they look completely professional! I now have a way to make future employees name tags and also received a pay raise !! I love the genius whose behind Canva and THANK YOU this app!! You rock

I find this app okay. Canva itself is great however, i’ve noticed that I can always login in on my computer but it gives me issues logging in from my phone. It won’t ever send me the reset password link if I do it from my phone. It’ll just tell me to make sure that I have the most updated version of Canva and to try again even though I already do. Trying to find customer service contact info is nowhere near easy on Canva and when I tried to use safari to access the website from my phone it ONLY redirected me to use Canva which was already unsuccessful. As you can imagine this was a frustrating rabbit hole. I had to find an old email from this app which has a customer service link. But when I sent a request in twice, they told me I would hear something back soon and I have heard nothing. That was last week. It should not be this difficult to get in contact with the company. Other than that, I love Canva and all the options it offers once I’m able to use it. I just want to be able to use it with ease.

May 2019: Thanks for the response, but I don’t use Canva much, so I probably won’t bother contacting you. You didn’t even say whether I’m supposed to have access to custom folders or not. I’m referring to folders you create on your PC and sync to your iPhone. Should I be able to access those? Some apps don’t allow it. Thx.

Jan 2019: I wish I could try out more designs and features, but I just have no patience for the extremely rare app that doesn’t give the user access to their custom photo albums (folders you transfer to your iPhone through iTunes). Am I really the only person who uses these albums? Because I’m always shocked when an app somehow doesn’t consider access to them important. Sometimes this can be the result of a glitch in Canva . I have the same issue with Messenger, and used to have this problem with Facebook, but it was finally corrected. So if the problem is on my end, let me know, and I’ll add more stars to my rating. You can email me at “heatherlandry” through Gmail if you want to.

They’re always trying to improve Canva and they’re very much on top of things. I use Canva nearly every day to make edits and designs and it has been extremely helpful for me. With every app, it takes some time to getting used to, but it’s a great app! 👍🏻

Ps, there has been an issue lately where Canva closes an edit if you leave Canva for even like 1 minute. It makes you re-open the edit over and over again. This is the only issue I have ever really had. Also when I saved my edits, the fonts would sometimes move around. You can get past this by simply screenshotting the pic, and then cropping it in your phone:) hope that helps someone out there! I have confidence that the this app team will continue to make improvements and fix these minor issues.