A recent recent price hike by Canva has sparked frustration among indie writers and creatives. This is a story I first came across on TechCrunch, and it piqued my interest. I have subsequently seen a few indie writers talking about it, some decidedly frustrated, so I figured it is definitely something worth bringing to your attention.
ALLi News Editor, Dan Holloway
Canva is the hugely popular and widely used design tool, very popular (until now at least) with authors for helping with cover design, postcards, business cards, and all kinds of presentational images and image-text combinations.
Price Increase Causes Concerns
The company has just announced a price increase, and it is the scale of that increase that has caused consternation. The Creative Bloq website headline puts the figure, the justification, and the thoughts of its writers (and many others) rather succinctly in its story titled, “Hey, Canva, AI isn’t a valid reason to increase your prices by 300%.” To be fair, the increase isn’t strictly 300%, but it’s potentially that amount.
Teams Subscription Bears the Brunt
The Canva Teams subscription is bearing the brunt of the increase. The cost has been $120 per year. That allows up to five different people to use the platform’s tools—perfect for teams working on a blog or website, a small press, or a collective of indie authors wanting to save money on the individual Pro offering.
The cost will now be $10 per month per user, meaning a five-person team would pay nearly $500. This also means that groups pooling together will no longer save money by working together.
Canva has justified the move, as the Creative Bloq headline suggests, by saying it will enable them to invest in the development of AI tools. Users, meanwhile, have pointed out that what makes Canva such an attractive option for its current price is precisely that it doesn’t have bells and whistles—just clean, clear navigation of the basic functionality people need and a lot of great templates. The Verge points out that Canva is preparing to list publicly, so boosting profitability won’t harm their IPO, though it may annoy their customer base.
