Is Canva Pro Worth The Upgrade?

I was introduced to Canva while I was still in college and I have never stopped using it ever since. It's all you ever need, really, if you are a content creator. For years I had Canva Pro on my wish list until last month when I finally decided to give in and upgrade to Canva Pro and OH MY GOSH.

To be honest, it should be the first upgrade that I made because now I consider it to be a crucial, absolutely necessary tool for me to run my small business and basically as a blogger. So, you should be able to pick it up by now — it's totally worth the upgrade and I am going to share with you my 5 favourite features of Canva Pro!

100 gigabytes of cloud storage

You can't tell me that this is not one of the best features of Canva Pro. Clearly, it's the best versus the 5 gigabytes that you get on the free version. I use Canva for all of my social media assets and with all of the animations, graphics, motion graphics and those files are going to be bigger than just photos. 

If you are the person who tends to build off of things and you just like to copy and duplicate your past works to make every single piece of content have the same aesthetic if you will, trust me that document is going to be several pages long and naturally bigger in size. You will need that cloud storage. 

The fact that I don't even have to worry about storage space after going to Canva Pro is awesome.

Background remover 

This was initially the selling point for me. As someone who is often making blog graphics, cover photos, filler posts and stuff, removing backgrounds easily and quickly is important to me. It's as simple as clicking a button and it removes the background with pretty shocking accuracy. 

Of course, there are tools like remove.bg where you can remove the background of photos easily for free but why go to another website if I could just stay in Canva and do it here. If there's anything I could do to simplify the workflow, I am all in. 

Magic resize

This one is definitely a feature that I didn't realize was super helpful until I had it. Basically, you can take whatever photo or graphic that you have already created and automatically resize it to your preferred dimensions for any other social platform you use. It's literally a one-click resize!

Instead of going in and manually pasting back every element one by one, this makes it automatic. I still need to adjust some of the elements to scale them to the new dimensions but the fact that I don't have to start from scratch is such a time-saver.

Brand kit

Consistent branding is crucial for any brand out there, and the brand kit feature on Canva Pro really helps you make sure that everything you create is on-brand. 

I have saved all of my brand colours, my uploaded fonts that are not available in Canva, my business's logo and all that jazz. Considering I don't have to find the HEX code for the right shade of blue or search for my fonts every single time is just super-duper helpful. It's all there front and center for you.

Premium assets — templates, graphics, etc

I thought I could get away without having to use premium assets but there were so many times where I was like "Ugh, this graphic just looks so much better but I can't get it because it's not free". I can't be the only one, right?

I mean, it's not that the free ones aren't good. Sometimes the pro ones are just so much better and you have the option to buy the premium assets individually if you really want it but that's not my journey. Might as well save that couple of bucks and upgrade to Canva Pro. It's honestly going to be cheaper at this point to just get the Canva Pro monthly/annual subscription. 

Let's talk about the templates in Canva for a second. The templates are where Canva really shines. If you're new to graphic design, templates are your best friend. There are still lots of great templates on the free plan but with Canva Pro you have access to a library of an additional 500,000+ awesome templates. 

In many cases, I start out with a template to get my creative juices flowing. Usually, I often change a lot of elements from the template to make it my own, but I don't do it so much now. Honestly, it's really handy to have it as a helpful jumping-off point. 

With so many high-quality templates and graphics available on Canva Pro, it really makes it much easier to find fresh inspiration for your next creation. 

Bonus feature: Content planner 

Let me just say I haven't yet incorporated this into my workflow but I am excited about this feature. I mean, being able to schedule social media posts right from Canva is definitely a time-saver. And you can connect up to 8 social media accounts and that's generous. 

I am more on the native posting side where I am actually opening the app myself and just posting natively because usually when I post something I like to hang out there for a bit and respond to comments and stuff so I don't think I am ever going to actually schedule but I love the idea of being able to plan content and not having to navigate to another scheduling platform. It's all here. 

I can safely say that I am a huge Canva Pro advocate now but don't take my word for it. If you use any kind of design to make money, you should upgrade. You are on the right track. I can't tell you how much profit I gained because of what I can do with Canva. The ROI is there. And I only pay RM30 a month. How awesome is that? I am thinking about getting the annual subscription but we'll see. 

Have you used Canva before? What's your favorite feature?