Australian creative software, Canva, has been on the market for over a decade. While it’s always competed with Adobe software, there is a much more direct comparison to Adobe Express for digital marketing design and content creation. Canva offers some amazing features, some of which are much better than what you’ll find with Adobe Express. Let's check them out.

8 Partnership with Affinity

Two great Adobe competitors paired together

While Canva is still a giant corporation, it has more independence than Adobe, which is attempting to take over the creative world. Adobe competitor Affinity was acquired by Canva in March 2024, creating a future full of possibilities for this creative software without involving Adobe.

While it hasn’t made a difference to either Canva nor Affinity products yet, the acquisition of Affinity by Canva brings much excitement to creative users.

7 Beginner-friendly

Canva has a less daunting interface

Canva began in 2013 as a tool to help regular non-designers create visual assets for marketing or smaller design needs. While this meant that initially Canva dealt with a stereotype that it’s “not for designers,” now, over eleven years later, it is considered well within the league of serious design tools.

However, it has remained a beginner-friendly program. It offers a simple to learn and use interface, and its great drag-and-drop editing features mean there’s no second guessing how to use this program.

All menus are labeled and placed logically, but even if you do get confused using Canva, there are great built-in tutorials under the Canva Learn tab if you need further help.

6 Canva Docs-to-Deck feature

Transform your business documents

You can use Canva for business documents or documents of any kind which are quite heavy in nature, as Canva lets you easily add designs to wordy files. One of Canva’s most helpful features is its Docs-to-Deck feature. It converts Canva Doc files into presentations within a few seconds and just one click.

This feature intelligently redesigns your documents into a slide deck, using your design style. While it isn’t perfect, it is a huge time-saver. Once converted, all you need to do is check out the deck and make some light rearrangements to ensure the layouts work for your use. Generally though, Docs-to-Deck works very well without extra help.

5 Canva Whiteboard feature

Team collaboration in meetings

Canva has a Whiteboard feature which is similar to Figma’s FigJam. Canva Whiteboard lets teams collaborate live and share notes and thoughts on a virtual whiteboard, as if they were in the office together.

Canva Whiteboard is more than just a plain white page to write or draw on. You can design it for relevance to your project, business, or team, or use one of the many Whiteboard templates available.

Similar to the Docs-to-Deck feature, you can also expand a presentation slide into a Whiteboard for the ultimate team collaboration. Then you can add Whiteboard features, such as post-it notes, different writing or drawing tools, Canva elements, and diagrams or charts.

4 Canva Contributors and Canva Creators programs

Canva is community driven

Much of Canva’s elements, templates, and stock imagery comes from its own Canva Contributor and Canva Creators programs. Both programs are paid based on royalties.

Contributors are Canva users who have signed up and been approved to sell their design assets to Canva. Contributors are paid each time a Canva user uses their elements or assets in a design. Available assets to sell to Canva include individual (or collections of) photos, videos, graphics, and stickers.

Canva Creators are also Canva users and there are three types: Template Creators, Element Creators, and Education Specialty Creators, with the latter two currently in Beta mode. Creators are responsible for creating more nuanced elements and templates compared to Contributors.

3 More variety of apps

Canva has more apps and offered them before Adobe Express

Canva’s own tool offerings are varied and always being improved, but Canva Apps increase the number of things you can do within Canva. Adobe Express also has external apps built into the platform, but Canva’s Apps library is bigger, has been around for longer, and seems to integrate external apps much faster than Adobe Express.

One example is Bulk Create which has been a Canva App since at least before 2023. Adobe Express didn’t integrate a bulk creation feature until the end of 2024.

2 Bigger variety of AI tools

Canva’s AI features are fantastic

Canva’s built-in AI tools are within the Magic Studio. There are some Canva AI tools available for Canva Free users, but not many. While most of the AI features are behind Canva Pro’s paywall, they are much better features compared to many of Adobe Express’s offerings.

The text-to-image generator isn’t quite as good as Adobe’s Firefly model; however, Canva’s Grab Text tool is one of my ultimate favorite Canva tools and AI tools in the creative market.

Other AI tools in Canva include:

• Background removal
• Dream Lab – text-to-image generator
• Magic Design – automate your design flow, including video generator
• Magic Write – AI text tools, including translation
• Magic Eraser – erase with AI to replace the background
• Magic Edit – replace elements in an image
• Magic Expand – expand the borders of your image and fill in the gaps

1 More template options

Better pre-designed content tools

When Canva began in 2013, one of the biggest marketing pulls was its template library. Over a decade later, and it’s still one of Canva’s best features.

Canva offers pre-designed templates, elements, fonts, as well as stock imagery, video, and audio options for anyone. It doesn’t matter your level of design skill or experience.

All templates can be totally customized and edited to your liking, including integrating Canva’s Brand Kit feature to apply your own branding directly to an existing template. While Adobe Express also offers templates and stock assets, Canva just has a much larger offering.

Canva offers you more than Adobe Express

Canva as a program has been around longer than Adobe Express (though Adobe Express was previously available in some form under other names, which were available long before Canva existed) and throughout the years it has grown in the number of tools and features it offers. Canva is a great tool for beginners and experienced designers alike, with its drag-and-drop interface and myriad of creative elements to use.

• Canva

  $120 at Canva

• Adobe Express

  See at Adobe