The Best Graphic Design Tools For
Different Types of Creators [2023]

Founded by an Australian couple, Canva is the brainchild of Melanie Perkins, the CEO, who set out on a mission to make design accessible for everyone. A decade later, the company is worth $40B and used by over 100M consumers across the globe. By and far, they are the most valuable company in the graphic design space, competing head to toe with incumbents like Adobe that have been around for much longer.

Canva's strengths come into play through the sheer ease of starting and becoming a pro at the platform, which is in line with their mission. Similarly, at such a low cost, they've managed to provide tremendous value to users. It's a good fit for everyone: students, creators, freelancers, teachers, small businesses, and even large enterprise companies. However, it may not be a fit for professional designers who may want something more robust.

• Canva offers a free tier, one of the most powerful editing tools on the market.
• If you're ready to upgrade, they offer a free 30-day trial for Canva Pro, their premium product version.
• Despite being so powerful, the founders have always been committed to ensuring the product remains inexpensive.
• Canva is great for beginners with a very small learning curve.

• Canva is no Adobe Photoshop. Temper your expectations on what level of customizations you will be able to achieve with Canva.
• Canva lacks some customization for more complicated task - most professional designers might look down on Canva as a graphic design tool for the masses.
• While Canva is building out AI tools, the product seems to be shifting towards a more full suite of products like Canva Docs than purely focusing on design

$15 per month for a Canva Pro License

Canva might have some limitations as your design requirements become more complex, but Canva has become synonymous with design. Canva has made design accessible to consumers across the globe through a very simple, intuitive product. The company is worth over $40B and has seen such massive success because they've made design easy for the masses at such an accessible price.

For these and many reasons, we recommend most creators to try out Canva, especially given their free tier and a free trial for Canva Pro.

PicsArt is a mobile app for editing photos and videos. It offers popular features like background removal, removing objects, and cropping video clips. Founded in 2011 and with over 150 million users, PicsArt is a serious player in the graphic design space. The company has users in over 180 countries that create over 1B designers per month. That's serious scale and rivals that of the market leader, Canva. Similar to Canva, PicsArt has raised a significant amount of capital, almost $200M, which will allow it to continue competing in a saturated space.

PicsArt is best known for some of its key functionality. Below are some of the most common use cases for why creators and general users might want to use a photo editing or graphic design tool.

1. Remove and change the background of a picture
2. Remove objects in a picture
3. Add audio to a video
4. Crop video clips
5. Collage maker

PicsArt's pricing is very competitive at just $13 per month for their Plus plan and $15 for their Pro Plan.

Like Microsoft Designer, PicsArt is also leaning into AI with their new Spaces Product.

PicsArt is not as well-known or prominent as Canva. This means that if you get stuck or need support, you might have a harder time finding the answer.

$13 per month for Plus

$15 per month for Pro

PicsArt offers everything an average creator might want or need day to day. Like Canva, the product is affordable but powerful. PicsArt might be Canva's most legitimate head-to-head competitor. Since PicsArt is even slightly cheaper, we think you can't go wrong with choosing PicsArt as your go-to graphic design tool. Especially for social media posts, PicsArt offers a large template library.

Glorify is an editing and design tool for brands, similar to Canva, but focused on e-commerce brands and on higher quality images. The focus on e-commerce makes it a more niche option than the average consumer or creator looking for a easy-to-use graphic design tool. While Glorify can be used for all of these needs likely, it's branding and marketing appeal to e-commerce store owners. Unlike competitors, the company hasn't raised a large amount of money and has a smaller team of less than 50 people compared to Canva and PicsArt which have hundreds and thousands of employees.

Glorify is best suited for early e-commerce entrepreneurs looking for specialized features.

• Glorify is a great fit for small businesses and individuals, especially e-commerce stores.
• Like other design tools, Glorify offers lots of templates to get up and running quickly.
• Shockingly, Glorify is actually cheaper than Canva even, which is one of the most low-cost but powerful options in the market.

• Glorify is way less known compared to more popular tools like Canva or PicsArt. As a result, you can expect less online help support.
• Unlike competitors, Glorify does not seem to be leaning into AI and creating new functionality for users based on new technology. This may change, but competitors might get ahead of Glorify in the AI sphere.

$10 per month for Pro

$20 per month for Business

Glorify doesn't meet our bar for a top 5 option in a saturated market with many competitors. Over 300K consumers and businesses use the platform, so it's not a no-name small-time player in the graphic design space, but its focus on e-commerce makes it more niche.

Microsoft might be late to the graphic design space, but not for long. The company has been investing in building our Microsoft Designer as of 2023. Leaning into their AI strengths as a big investor in OpenAI, Microsoft doesn't want to lose their AI lead in the design space. So they launched Microsoft Designer.

Microsoft Designer is a free, AI-powered graphic design app that allows users to create professional-looking designs. The product is evolving quickly to introduce new AI features and new basic functionality that most design apps would have in 2023.

• Microsoft is the leader in AI and even with their design product, they are leading with design. The product allows you to give it a simple prompt and get templates immediately.
• The product is free. It might not always be free, but for now, it's hard to beat free.
• There are lots and lots of templates and new ones are created using AI seamlessly.

• The functionality is relatively limited for a product for a product built from Microsoft. It's early for now.
• You need a Microsoft account to use the product. This can be annoying since many users might not have a Microsoft account already.
• As of now, there is no app available for users to edit on their phones. This may change in the future though.

Free

It's not our favorite tool, but it is one that we think could be promising. It's too early to discount Microsoft Designer for the long term, but it's very unlikely to become your go-to design tool in the short term.

If you're looking to make a quick social media asset, Microsoft Designer could be a good fit since the product allows you to put in a simple query and get templates. However, the AI is not good enough to create something custom for anything more complex.