Canva vs PicMonkey: Which Design Tool Is Right for You?

In today‘s digital age, eye-catching visuals and polished graphics are essential for capturing attention online. Whether you‘re creating social media posts, presentations, marketing materials or other designs, using the right tools can make all the difference. Two of the most popular online graphic design platforms are Canva and PicMonkey. Both aim to make designing professional graphics quick and easy, even for those with no prior design experience.

As a graphic design expert who has tested nearly every design tool under the sun, I‘m often asked to compare Canva vs PicMonkey and make a recommendation. The truth is, both are excellent options with unique strengths. The best choice depends on your specific needs and priorities.

In this post, I‘ll dive deep into the key features, pricing, pros and cons of Canva and PicMonkey. By the end, you‘ll have a clear idea of which tool is the best fit for your design projects. Let‘s get started!

Ease of Use

One of the biggest selling points of online graphic design tools is their simplicity and user-friendliness. Both Canva and PicMonkey deliver well on this front.

Canva has an extremely intuitive interface that makes it a breeze to navigate, even for complete beginners. Everything is clearly labeled and organized. Simply choose the type of design you want to create, select a template or start from scratch, and customize to your heart‘s content using the drag-and-drop editor. You can easily add, edit and arrange various elements like text, shapes, photos, graphics, videos and more.

PicMonkey also features a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and follows a similar design process to Canva. The main dashboard organizes tools and features into clearly labeled tabs for adding graphics/text, editing photos, adjusting your canvas, and browsing templates. While the learning curve is slightly steeper compared to Canva, most users get the hang of PicMonkey very quickly.

Both tools run smoothly in any web browser without needing to download software. Mobile apps are also available if you want to design on the go from your phone or tablet.

Overall, Canva and PicMonkey are both extremely easy to use, but Canva has a slight edge for its clean, intuitive interface that‘s accessible to all skill levels. This makes it my top pick for beginners looking to dip their toes into graphic design.

Features and Functionality

Canva and PicMonkey have many features in common. Both provide all the basic functionality you‘d expect in a graphic design app, including:

• Upload your own photos or choose from stock image libraries
• Crop, resize, rotate and flip images
• Adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and other visual elements
• Add filters and effects
• Insert and customize text with different fonts, colors and sizes
• Create shapes and graphical elements
• Position and arrange objects
• Change background colors and textures

However, there are some key differences to note. Canva offers several powerful features not found in PicMonkey, such as:

Background remover: Remove the background from any image with a single click

Animations: Add animated graphics and Instagram Story effects to make your designs stand out

Content planner: Schedule your designs to automatically post on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and more.

Design assistant: Get personalized templates and design ideas based on your website, Amazon page, or other source.

On the other hand, PicMonkey outshines Canva when it comes to photo editing and retouching. With PicMonkey, you can:

Retouch photos: Remove blemishes, wrinkles, and smooth skin

Whiten teeth: Brighten smiles in a couple clicks

Airbrush: Even out skin tones for a model-esque look

Dodge & burn: Selectively lighten or darken specific areas

Adjust shadows/highlights: Fine tune lighting for the perfect look

Sharpen & clarify: Bring out crisp details and textures

These advanced photo editing capabilities make PicMonkey an excellent choice for photographers, entrepreneurs and marketers who want to perfect their images before incorporating them into designs.

Premade Templates and Assets

Starting designs from scratch can be intimidating and time consuming. That‘s why both Canva and PicMonkey offer extensive libraries of premade, professionally designed templates.

Simply browse the template galleries by category, select one you like, and customize it with your own content and branding. This makes it fast and easy to create stunning graphics for social media, marketing, events and more – no design experience needed.

While PicMonkey has a solid template selection, Canva is the clear winner in terms of quantity and variety. Canva‘s template library covers every use case you can imagine, from presentations and invitations to menus and book covers. They have over 50,000 templates in dozens of categories, with new designs added daily.

In addition to templates, Canva also boasts a huge library of free photos, graphics, videos and other assets you can drag and drop into your designs. PicMonkey‘s stock asset selection is much more limited in comparison.

Collaboration Features

Canva outperforms PicMonkey in the collaboration department. With Canva, you can easily invite others to view, edit or comment on your designs. This is extremely helpful for gathering feedback and working on projects as a team. Plus, Canva‘s real-time collaboration features allow multiple people to edit designs simultaneously. Any changes sync instantly across all devices.

PicMonkey does offer some collaboration tools, but they are far more limited. You‘re not able to collaborate on designs in real-time or even have others leave comments. The collaboration features are also restricted to the most expensive Team plan, whereas Canva enables collaboration on free and lower-tier plans.

Pricing

Both Canva and PicMonkey offer several pricing options to fit different budgets and needs:

Canva pricing:

• Free: No cost, access to 250,000+ free templates and 1+ million free photos and graphics
• Pro: $119.99/year ($9.99/month), access to 610,000+ templates, 100+ million premium stock photos and graphics, 100GB storage, and additional features like background remover and social media scheduling.
• Teams: $149.50/year ($12.49/month) for up to 5 people, includes all Pro features plus additional collaboration tools

PicMonkey pricing:

• Basic: $71.88/year ($7.99/month), access to basic editing tools and templates
• Pro: $119.88/year ($12.99/month), access to all features and templates
• Team: $228/year ($23/month) for up to 3 users, access to collaboration tools

Comparing the pricing, Canva clearly delivers the most bang for your buck. Their free plan is robust enough to cover many use cases and includes a very generous number of templates and assets. Canva Pro is also slightly cheaper than PicMonkey‘s Pro plan ($119.99/year vs $119.88/year) despite offering more features and resources.

PicMonkey doesn‘t have a free plan at all – only a 7-day free trial. This means you‘ll need to pull out your credit card to seriously test the tool, whereas you could feasibly use Canva for free indefinitely.

Unique Features

To further differentiate between Canva and PicMonkey, here‘s a quick rundown of some unique features each tool offers:

Canva

• Extensive app integrations (Dropbox, Google Drive, Instagram, YouTube and dozens more)
• "Magic Resize" to instantly adapt designs for different platforms and sizes
• Folder organization to easily manage your designs
• QR code generator
• Website and resume builders

PicMonkey

• Advanced photo editing tools like airbrushing and skin smoothing
• Desktop application
• SEO metadata fields to optimize designs for search engines
• Create your own custom fonts
• Curved text paths

Best Use Cases

Now that we‘ve covered all the key features and differences, you may be wondering in what situations you should use Canva vs PicMonkey. Here are my recommendations:

Canva is best for:

• Social media graphics
• Marketing materials like flyers and brochures
• Presentations and slideshow decks
• Print materials like posters and business cards
• Creating designs across a wide variety of categories

PicMonkey is best for:

• Perfecting photos before using them in designs
• Retouching portraits and headshots
• Creating polished visuals for websites and marketing

Final Verdict

At the end of the day, you can‘t go wrong with either Canva or PicMonkey. Both are powerful, easy-to-use design tools that can help you create professional graphics without spending hours or acquiring complex software skills.

However, Canva is my top pick for most users. It has a cleaner, more intuitive interface that‘s accessible to all skill levels. It offers a broader set of features, a larger template and asset library, and more generous free plan. PicMonkey is really only a better choice if advanced photo editing and retouching is your number one priority.

I recommend trying out both tools to see which you prefer. Take advantage of Canva‘s free plan and PicMonkey‘s 7-day trial to test drive the features. In just a few minutes playing around with each editor, you‘ll quickly get a feel for which one is the best fit.

Whichever tool you choose, you‘ll be empowered to create beautiful graphics that take your brand and online presence to the next level. Happy designing!