Whether you’re a blogger, influencer, or digital content creator, it’s likely that you need to create well-designed graphics for marketing materials in social media. The design world has long touted Adobe Illustrator and their suite of products as THE tool for professional design. In 2013, Melanie Perkins created Canva, a free design tool that mimics all the features you’d find in Illustrator. But which tool is superior? In this post I’m going to weigh the pros and cons of each tool to help you make an educated decision.

My expertise: my degree is in graphic design and I’ve worked in the field professionally for numerous years, working with various digital design tools daily.

A general rule of thumb on design tools

Before I get into the tools, one thing I’d like to point out is that tools don’t make design, you do! In design school we spent very little time learning the software and the majority of our time on design foundations. Tools will change as software evolves over time but the principles of design will remain the same.

One of my pet peeves is that I’ve seen a lot of designers look down on Canva because it’s not “professional,” but I think that’s quite unfair. Any tool that makes design free, easy, and accessible to all is a win in my book. Choose the right tool that works for you and don’t worry about any stigmas you’ve heard. I will always love Illustrator but Canva has really won my heart in a lot of ways as I’ve learned how to use it.

Price of Canva vs. Adobe Illustrator

Let’s just get this one out of the way. One of the biggest perks about Canva is that it’s a free tool that also happens to have a very intuitive and clean interface. They also offer a paid version at $12.99/month which includes more robust features. Adobe Creative Cloud access will run you $20.99/month (if you’re a student or teacher you may be eligible for a discounted rate here). One of the annoying things about the Canva free plan is that you can’t change the sizes of an artboard and have limited options for exporting assets (no 2x files for example).

If price is your only factor, Canva is an easy win. The free version has the basic tools you’ll need to create designs for your brand and a bunch of helpful templates. The premium version of the tool is cheaper than Creative Cloud and gets you more fonts, graphics, export options, and more. To compare the features of Canva Free vs. Canva Premium go here.

What will you be designing?

This is by far one of the easiest ways to decide which program is right for you. One of the biggest differentiators of Illustrator vs. Canva is that Illustrator is a heavy-hitter, super-powerful vector design tool.

What is a vector?
Put simply, a vector is a digital shape that’s editable (in Illustrator they’re sometimes referred to as paths). They allow designers to create objects that are scalable and editable. Every little detail can be poked and prodded to get just right, which is ideal for creating custom shapes and illustrations.

What does this mean for me?

If you’re an illustrator, artist, or anyone who creates custom artwork or objects I can say with a guarantee that Adobe Illustrator will win out over Canva. But if you are this person you likely know that :)

My point here is that one of the reasons Canva is so intuitive is because the features are pared down so it’s much more user-friendly. Rather than creating graphics from scratch, you can peruse the “Elements” tab and drag and drop shapes, graphics, and icons into your design. There is much less creative control in Canva but for the majority of users who only need it for marketing purposes, this isn’t a deal-breaker.

However, for persnickety designers who want every little thing to be just how they imagine it in their mind, Canva can feel a bit too limiting.

So in summary think about it like this:

• Canva is drag and drop

• Illustrator is DIY

Comparing the user interface

Illustrator

When comparing the tools it’s clear at first glance that Illustrator has way more advanced features than Canva does. In addition, you can customize your workspace to suit your type of work (for example, a graphics artist might need different tools than someone designing a flyer). The bloated list of features means that Illustrator definitely requires a learning curve of understanding how to best use the tool. I’ve been using it since 2016 and I still haven’t used all the features yet. But once you learn how to use Illustrator, there’s no cap to the level of creativity you can achieve. The sky is the limit with textures, shapes, and even the potential to create 3D art.

Canva

While Illustrator has many different specialized tools in the left hand panel, you’ll notice that Canva has categorized their tools and options into general buckets. This means you have your basics (typography, color, elements) alongside Canva specific features like templates. This categorization and the addition of a search bar makes it quite easy to find what you’re looking for. You can even search colors like “Emerald” for example and it will pull up a list of palettes to quickly choose from, whereas in Illustrator you would manually do that.

Organizing files in Illustrator and Canva

Illustrator

The file organization of Illustrator is based on whether you want to save items locally or in the Cloud. This means that the organization of the folders and files comes down to you and how you best work. Any searching for files will be done outside of Illustrator. There is no limit to the number of folders you can create, which is great for organization. It’s worth noting that if you are working with others, Illustrator files can only be opened in Illustrator. There are some exceptions (for example, there are some UI tools like Sketch that allow you to copy and paste Illustrator files) but they can be a bit buggy. This means that for you to collaborate with someone, they too will need to pay for Illustrator.

Canva

Canva, on the other hand, only gives you the option to save files on their system, which makes sense since it’s a cloud-based tool. You can export assets but it’s unlike Illustrator in that you can’t email a design file to a client, for example. The client would need to have a Canva account and share the file through there similar to a Google doc.

Something worth noting is that the free version of Canva only lets you have limited folders, which I find a bit odd. This can make it hard to organize and keep track of things unless the files are named really well.

Do you work on a team or alone?

Canva
While Canva isn’t collaborative, the Premium version is a bit more collaboration-centric than Adobe Illustrator. You can easily add, share, and organize Canva files and share them amongst your team. Additionally, if you have members on your team who are less design savvy, Canva is much easier to pick up than Illustrator. You can also access your files from your device which makes it super easy to proof, save, and share.

Illustrator
Adobe has caught on that collaboration is one of the main differentiators in design programs and in recent years has added the cloud functionality that’s part of the membership I listed above. This allows you to share files, make comments on designs, and create design libraries. In my experience with using Adobe cloud-based products in a team environment, they were a bit buggy at times and a tad less intuitive than Canva. I’d equate the sharing ability of Canva to something like Google Docs, which most of us are super familiar with already.

What are your priorities in designing graphics for your brand?

Another big difference in using Canva vs. Illustrator is time. Ask yourself how much time you can devote to designing elements for your brand each week and how much you prioritize unique design in what you’re sharing.

Canva
If you’re looking to save time, Canva is built for you. Their library of templates makes it a snap to create a variety of materials: from Pinterest pins to cover photos. The other nice thing is that they have all the social media sizes built into the search bar when creating a new design which eliminates the need to look up the correct image size. They also have a library of trendy graphics that can be used to pep up your files.

The only downside to this is that if you have access to the templates, so does the rest of the world. This means that your brand is going to end up looking a lot like everyone else. I would recommend spending time customizing templates for your brand if you choose this route.

The other time-saving element Canva has over Illustrator here is that you can publish graphics right from the platform, so I can push a pin right to my Pinterest if I want to! Super slick, but maybe not as valuable to you if you use a pin scheduling tool already.

Illustrator

Illustrator, on the other hand, doesn’t have the ability to drag and drop like Canva does. It does have some sizes built in which is nice. While it’s not as speedy from the start as Canva, you can use it to design your own brand templates which can be used to save time in a similar way to Canva. The perk of this is that your brand assets will be uniquely you! You also have much more flexibility in crafting specialized design elements.

Ownership and Legal Ramifications

I’m no lawyer, but I wanted to quickly highlight the differences in creative ownership rules in the two programs. With Illustrator, you’re creating everything yourself and you own those creations creatively. With Canva’s large supply of graphics and templates, there are some creative ownership rules that come into play. I’m going to refer you to the most up-to-date policy here but the main thing to know is that you can’t sell Canva templates and other graphic objects (such as their premade logos, for example) as your own. Be sure to have a full understanding of this policy if you’re a business that creates revenue through selling designs.

In Summary

If you’re still on the fence about which program is right for you, you can always give them each a trial run. Both of them offer great features and are solid tools for creating digital designs. Personally, I look to Canva as a great tool for quickly creating and publishing graphics for social media and marketing purposes. For specialized projects that require custom art, I use Illustrator. If you’re not a technical person or are unfamiliar with design tools, your safest bet will definitely be Canva.

Remember, design is all about ideas and execution so don’t get too hung up on the software. It’s helpful to make an informed decision, especially if a tool costs money but in the end it’s whatever option allows you to ship your ideas and get them out into the world.