Business and Revenue Model of Canva

In a world where every company, small or big, wants to stand out on their social media pages, they would need templates or appealing designs to make an impression. Whether you want to create a resume for your dream job or create a logo for your brand, we all know where to go. Canva is the one-stop solution to fix all your social media-related problems.

In this article, we will read through the business model of one of the most widely used apps for designing, Canva.

An Intro to Canva
Areas of Operation
Key Products and Services
Target Audience of Canva
Business Model of Canva
Unique Selling Point of Canva
How Does Canva Make Money?
Conclusion

An Intro to Canva

Canva was founded in 2013 by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams, with its headquarters in Sydney, Australia.

Canva is a graphic design tool to help create social media presentations and graphics. The app or tool was designed with the intent to help non-designers or people who do not have the technical experience to create designs as UI/UX people do. With its simple and easy-to-use approach, Canva can be used by everyone, including students, teachers, or social media influencers. The app includes ready-made templates for users to use. Users can download Canva on iOS, Android, Windows, and MAC.

Melanie Perkins Success Story: How Melanie Perkins Built Canva

Melanie Perkins is an Australian technology entrepreneur and billionaire. She is the CEO and co-founder of Canva. Let’s look at how she founded and built Canva from scratch.

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Areas of Operation

Canva is available worldwide. It is a SaaS platform aimed at helping non-designers create digital and non-digital designs easily. As long as a person has a computer and smartphone, Canva can be easily accessed through a browser or directly by downloading the app. The company claims to be available in 190 countries and 100 languages.

Key Products and Services

Within a span of 10 years, Canva has surely evolved as one of the leading design applications in today's date. It offers a wide range of services both free and paid-based that includes exclusive services relating to every industry, such as media, newsroom, real estate, tech, fitness, education, startups, healthcare, sports, retail, franchises, and consumer packaged goods.

Here's a quick look at the below products and services offered by Canva:

• Canva Pro: Under this segment of Canva Pro, individuals or companies need to subscribe for a certain amount to get access to unlimited features, animations, premium videos, content planner, and more, which are not available under its free platform.

• Canva for Enterprise: This product by Canva is designed to help businesses or companies to create their own version of design templates. This includes features like content creation, brand management, team collaboration, branded team templates, workshops, and many more.
• Canva for Education: Canva also offers a design platform for educational purposes. It allows teachers or students to create and personalize lesson plans, infographics, posters, videos, and more. Teachers can also create webinars, tutorials, etc.
• Canva for Nonprofits: The company also offers exclusive templates for nonprofit activities under its segment Canva for Nonprofits. It has everything that a nonprofit organization can use to create powerful high-impact social media posts or graphics, presentations, websites, flyers, and signage.
• Marketing: The app offers solutions for marketing agencies like logos, posters, flyers, brochures, social media, QR code generators, and more.

• Print: Canva also lets its users print their creations. They can print their designs for business cards, t-shirts, mugs, invitations, hoodies, calendars, labels, and cards.

• Videos and Photos: Offers services for normal video editing, photo editing, photo collages, and YouTube video editor.

• Visual Documents: Canva offers solutions for visual documentation like presentations, docs, worksuite, PDF editor, whiteboards, and graphs and charts.

Target Audience of Canva

Canva was created for designing purposes that can be used by anyone. The company's focus is on people who do not belong to a professional graphic background. Its target audience is basically anyone, from casual users to professional teams, from amateurs to experts in design both educational institutions and non-profit organizations.

Business Model of Canva

Canva runs on a distinctive SaaS business model. The company uses both free and subscription, or in other words, freemium version revenue models to market, and convert leads. Canva allows its users to either freely use its specific features or via subscription plans that offer additional elements.

Canva's platform is developed in a manner that offers all design solutions to its users in one place. There are numerous features of the platform, which include different templates for presentations, social media posts, resumes, brochures, invitations, certificates, newsletters, etc. Further, the app enables users to easily print and publish their designs on a variety of social media platforms.

Unique Selling Point of Canva

We already know Canva is for those who do not have any prior training in graphic design. It adds value by making it very simple for users to design and create. As a user, Canva grants access to a variety of special features that make designing straightforward and enjoyable.

Some unique features of Canva are:

• Thanks to the drag-and-drop user interface specialty of Canva, users can easily design and create anything without any hassle.
• By offering pre-made and ready-to-use templates, posters, and other graphics, a user's time is also saved on Canva.
• The platform provides numerous features for each industry-specific need.

Along with offering user-friendly features, Canva stands out as a top and reliable design software for many companies. It is trusted by popular companies like Salesforce, Hubspot, Sony Music, Reddit, and Skyscanner.

How Does Canva Make Money?

Canva makes money by offering all the above-mentioned products and services. Moreover, it has three main sources through which it generates revenue:

• The Free plan: In its free pricing plan, users can use features like 250,000+ free templates, more than 1 million free photos, and 5GB of cloud storage. This type of plan is meant for those who want to use it for their personal needs.
• Canva Pro: Under this, Canva offers some extra features along with basic features. This plan is meant for users who want professional use with features like brand kits, dedicated folders, custom branding, logo design, and collaboration tools.
• Canva for Teams/Enterprise: Canva for Enterprise is designed for people who want to collaborate with their teams at a company. It has features like brand controls, dedicated folders for specific projects, the team reports and insights, and cloud storage of 1TB.

Besides the above-mentioned sources, Canva also has other sources through which it generates its income:

• Canva Print: It has a printing service for its users who wish to print their designs. The company has teamed up with various printers that can help deliver the material printed. Canva bases its service fees on the product category, order volume, and delivery location. It offers free shipping, express delivery, and free in-store pickup from FedEx Offices or Staples (USA & Canada only). The company ships to more than 30 countries and charges according to the order.
• Canva Design School: Just like a school, Canva also has a design school that offers thousands of courses on design, social media marketing, and branding. These courses are available both online and offline. The online courses are free, while the offline, in-person classes start from $5.
• Canva Marketplace: Another way through which Canva makes money is through the marketplace. It allows users to purchase designs for one-time use on Canva. The price of these designs is available for $1. By purchasing these designs, designers can use the platform to list their innovations. For one purchase, Canva charges a 35% commission in exchange for giving these designers the platform.

Conclusion

By establishing a unique way of doing business, where it offers a very simplistic platform for people who can create the design in whichever way they desire, Canva has outshined since its inception. The company is at this stage of tremendous success right now, even if a small proportion of its users choose to purchase the paid plans, it can still easily cover its expenses.

Today, the company enjoys over 100 million users and has over 2000 employees. By acquiring companies like Zeetings, Pixabay, Pexels, Kaleido.ai, and Smartmockups, Canva is bracing itself to be a dominant player in the graphic and software industry. In addition, Canva aims to compete with Google and Microsoft in the office software market with its websites and whiteboard products.

FAQs

What is the target audience of Canva?

Canva's target audience is basically anyone, from casual users to professional teams, from amateurs to experts in design both educational institutions and non-profit organizations.

How does Canva make money?

Canva has three main sources through which it generates revenue:

• Canva Free
• Canva Pro
• Canva for Teams

What are the key products and services offered by Canva?

Here's a list of products and services offered by Canva:

• Canva Pro
• Canva for Enterprise
• Canva for Education
• Canva for Non-profits
• Marketing
• Print
• Videos and Photos
• Visual Documents