Did you know that there is a free, easy way to create beautiful banners and infographics for your website and social media followers?
Most people think that they have to pay freelance designers a high price to get unique, engaging infographics, and visual media, but that is not the case.
With tools like Canva or Creatopy, you can easily create social media graphics, blog images, and infographics with minimal design skills.
Not only that, but you can create edited videos and animations to post on your website and social media channels.
Creating unique visual graphics for your social media profiles and blog is important if you want to increase engagement, get people to stay on your site longer, and get a lower bounce rate.
If you are using free public domain images that everyone else is using, you won’t stand out.
In particular, using videos and animations on your website and in your social posts will help you get more engagement.
Studies show that videos are consumers’ favorite type of social media content and that 80 percent of consumers have bought software or an app after having seen a video put out by a brand.
In this article, we will compare Canva vs Creatopy and show you which one is a better choice if you want to create unique graphics.
We will be comparing their features, ease of use, prices, and more, so if you were wondering which site not to waste your time with, continue reading.
What Is Canva? What Is Creatopy?
Both Canva and Creatopy are tools that you can use to design beautiful graphics. You can either upload your own image or infographic template or use one of the ones provided by Canva or Creatopy.
Then, you can edit those images by adding new images or icons on top of them, changing the colors, adding text in different fonts, and much more.
For example, you can use one of the infographic templates from Creatopy or Canva and just replace the text with your own text to make it look like you created your own, unique infographic from scratch.
The benefits of using Creatopy or Canva include:
- Increasing engagement on your blog
- Getting more likes, comments, and shares on your social media posts
- Standing out from the crowd instead of using public domain images that everyone else uses
- Create infographics with ease to use on your site, which can decrease your bounce rate and even help you get more backlinks
- Use free or premium graphics, templates, and images that you can edit and customize
- Create stunning visuals within minutes and share them to social media or download them to your computer
- Create videos and animations
Now that you know what these tools are and how they can help you, let’s get into the Creatopy vs Canva comparison.
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Presentations, posters, logos, brochures, infographics, social media stories & more, Canva lets you design any and everything. What's more, it's free, easy and quick.
Interface
Let’s start off with the interface. How easy is it to use and navigate?
Canva
Canva has a very clean and easy-to-use interface. It is easy to navigate and easy to figure out how to create what you want to create.
For example, if you want to create a video, you can click on “Video” in the slideshow menu at the top, which will bring up four additional options: Video, Animated Social Media, Facebook Video, and YouTube Intro.
Templates and free images, as well as features such as embedded apps, can all be accessed from the top menu. The top menu also allows you to view educational resources and tutorials on how to create designs with Canva.
In the left-side menu, you can find all of your previous designs and add team members. You can also scroll down the homepage to see the top templates in different categories (such as Instagram posts).
Creatopy
I feel that Creatopy is a little less easy to use and has a more cluttered interface. On the homepage, you won’t see a list of templates you can start working on right away but will instead have to go to Features in the drop-down menu and select a tool, such as the Design Generator.
You can also click on Templates to find display ads, social media, or print templates, or you can click on My Workspace to see projects you have been working on.
All in all, Creatopy is a little harder to figure out and has a bit more of a learning curve compared to Canva. The difference is not huge, but it is there nonetheless.
Interesting Read: Best Pixabay Alternatives
Social Media
Both Canva and Creatopy have options for creating social media posts.
Canva
Canva provides free templates and graphics that you can use for your Instagram stories and posts, Facebook posts and page covers, Twitter posts, and Pinterest graphics.
You can also create Instagram sales posts, YouTube thumbnails, art for your YouTube channel, Instagram ads, and much more.
Creatopy
Creatopy also has tons of options for social media posts, with templates for Facebook Posts, Facebook Ads, Facebook Video Posts, Facebook Video Ads, Twitter Covers, Twitter Posts, YouTube Channel Covers, YouTube Video Thumbnails, Profile Pictures, LinkedIn Covers, and many more.
Who wins here: Overall, it is safe to say that Canva and Creatopy are fairly equal in that they both have a ton of templates for social media and web purposes. For example, both let you create a SoundCloud cover, and both have web banner templates available in different sizes.
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Other Media
If you are looking to create other types of media, including printed out business cards or flyers, both Canva and Creatopy have good options.
Canva
For example, Canva lets you create and design business cards, invoices, and logos. You can create infographics, brochures, flyers, and posters.
If you are working in the educational sector, you can design and create lesson plans, worksheets, certificates to highlight a student’s success, class schedules, and more.
If you want to create something for personal reasons, you can create an invitation card, a resume, and even a t-shirt.
Creatopy
Creatopy also has decent options for creating other kinds of media besides social media posts and web banners. For example, you can create an album cover or a photo collage to show off to your friends.
You can design flyers, brochures, business cards, posters, certificates, logos, resumes, presentations, and more.
Who wins here: It is hard to say who wins here, but it seems as if Canva has a few more options, though both platforms let you create basically any type of design for any purpose if you play around enough and are creative enough.
Presentations, posters, logos, brochures, infographics, social media stories & more, Canva lets you design any and everything. What's more, it's free, easy and quick.
Advertising
What about creating unique advertisements? How do the two platforms match up in that regard?
Canva
Canva has a wide range of web ad templates and designs you can use to advertise on your blog, social media, or elsewhere.
These web banners come in various shapes and sizes; for example, there are banners in a wide skyscraper shape and banners in a medium rectangle shape.
There are also templates for social media ads, including Facebook ads and Instagram sales posts. All in all, if you are looking to create an online advertising banner, Canva is a great tool to use.
Creatopy
Like Canva, Creatopy has web banner templates available for a variety of sizes. Whether you want to create a banner in a Portrait, Billboard, Square, Leaderboard, Skyscraper, or another format, you have tons of options available.
However, Creatopy also has something else that Canva does not seem to have, and that is advertisement templates that look more like actual advertisements than Canvas banners. You can see what I mean in this screenshot:
To customize one of those ads, all you need to do is click on it and you will be taken to the editor. The really cool part is that before you are taken to the editing screen, you will first be shown that ad template in various shapes and sizes so you can choose the one that best fits your website or serves your purposes:
Once you have chosen which shape and size are best for you, you will be taken to the editing screen. There, you can add your own text instead of the default text, add new blocks of texts in all kinds of fonts, change the font of the default text, add new images and icons, add new call-to-action buttons, and much more.
You can even add animations to the ad to make it stand out and be more visible to web browsers.
There are over 4,000 templates in total that you can choose from, and all are HTML5 ads that you can use on Google Ads, Adroll, Facebook, and most display networks. You can sort through the ads based on category; examples of existing categories that will help you quickly find an ad that you can use include:
- Automotive
- Black Friday
- Business
- Christmas
- Ecommerce
- Education
- Fashion
- Halloween
- Jewelry
- Real Estate
- Sport
- Travel
- Valentine’s Day
- And many more!
Whether you want to announce a garage sale or conference, advertise a new drink or coffee, or showcase a house, you will find a banner ad that is a perfect fit.
This is something that I did not notice in the Canva dashboard, but you can find it in your Creatopy homepage by clicking on “Templates” in the top menu.
Who wins here: In terms of advertising, you can definitely create beautiful banner ads with both Canva or Creatopy. Nevertheless, Creatopy has a bit of an edge here due to the 4,000+ ready-to-use advertising templates that you can use for any advertising purpose and customize based on your needs.
Presentations, posters, logos, brochures, infographics, social media stories & more, Canva lets you design any and everything. What's more, it's free, easy and quick.
The Editor
Let’s take a look at the visual editor on both platforms and see which one is easier to use and gives you more customization options.
Canva
Canva’s editor is fairly intuitive and easy to use. We will be using the “Instagram Post” template on each platform to properly compare the two platforms.
On Canva, after clicking on “Instagram Post,” you will be taken to the blank editor, where you can choose from the various Instagram Post media files and templates available. Just click on one to add it to your editing area and start customizing it.
Let’s go through some of the options available after you do that:
- Change Color: You can change the background color to any color out there.
- Animate: You can add animations, including various free animations, to your post. For example, you can add fade effects to make the text and design of the post fade in.
- Upload: You can upload an image, logo, icon, or text file and add it to your post.
- Photos: There are also tons of free photos from all different types of categories that you can add to your post. For example, categories include School, Food, Computer, and Money.
- Elements: You can customize your image even further by adding elements such as background frames, stickers, lines, charts, gradients, and more.
- Text: Here is where you can add a new heading, subheading, and main text to your image. You can either add plain text and customize the font, size, and color yourself or add premade font templates and simply replace the default text from those templates with your own text.
- Music: You can add built-in songs to your post.
- Videos: You can add free short video clips to your post.
- Background: If you like everything about the template except for the background, you can choose a new background.
There’s something else that you might find really interesting: Apps and integrations that you can add to your post.
Let us go through some of them right now:
- Pixabay: Pull free public domain images from Pixabay and add them to your post.
- Emoji: Add cute, popular emojis to your image.
- QR Code: If you want people to be able to scan your photo and instantly be taken to a web page, you can add a QR code.
- Youtube: Pull videos from YouTube to add to your post.
- Google Maps: Add a Google Map widget to your post.
- Giphy: Add GIFs to your post from GIPHY.
- Facebook/Instagram
- Dropbox/Google Drive: Pull files and images from your Google Drive or Dropbox storage accounts.
- Bitmoji: Add cute Bitmoji avatars to your post.
- Flickr: Pull images from Flickr.
Creatopy
Let’s go through the Creatopy editor to see how it compares to Canva’s.
After you choose the design type you want (such as an Instagram Post) you will be taken to the editing screen, where you can start from scratch or choose one of the existing images or animations to customize. Here are the customization options available:
- Background: Change the color of the background or choose a new image or texture pattern.
- Text: Add a heading, subheading, and main text to customize, or choose from one of the font templates and switch the default text with your own.
- Elements: There are a number of element types you can add.
- Upload an image
- Choose from over 2,000 stock photos
- Add a stock video
- Add a GIF from GIPHY
- Add shapes, lines, masks, or icons
- Add brand logos (such as a Facebook Messenger or Twitter logo)
- Add illustrations and stickers
- Upload an audio
- Add a YouTube video
- Embed a code
- Buttons: Add beautiful call-to-action buttons which you can customize
- Animator: Choose between different animations
- Resize: Resize the image
Who wins here: Creatopy is pretty good too, but Canva definitely wins in terms of the customization options you have and the types of things you can add (such as a Google Maps widget, for example).
Free Media
Before we move on to the video creator, let’s take a look at the free resources you can add to your images and graphics. This includes free customizable graphics, free stock images, free icons, free stickers, and so on.
There’s no doubt about it: Canva definitely wins here. For some things, Creatopy only has one to three free media options; and you will have to upgrade to use the other ones.
For example, I only saw one free animation effect on Creatopy, while Canva had five. The list goes on and on: Canva has more free media than Creatopy.
Who wins here: Canva wins here.
Presentations, posters, logos, brochures, infographics, social media stories & more, Canva lets you design any and everything. What's more, it's free, easy and quick.
Videos
Not only can you create images and infographics with Canva and Creatopy, but you can also create and edit videos that you can publish to your website, social media profiles, YouTube channel, and more.
Canva
Canva’s free video editor is really cool. You can add slides or short video clips from YouTube or the Canva stock library.
There are slide and video templates for all sorts of purposes and businesses, and you can edit the text and images in the slides just like you can in the image editor. You can also add animations to your videos so that they are even more engaging.
Just like the regular editor, the Canva video editor lets you add elements, text, images, music, frames, and other details to your videos. Once you have created your video and like how it looks, you can download it and publish it.
Creatopy
Creatopy also has a great video editor and creator. You can start from scratch or choose one of the premade videos to use as a template.
Once you have chosen a premade video, you can edit the text, add new text, and add images, icons, photos, and more. It’s just like editing an image, with all the same options available here.
What I really liked about Creatopy’s video editor is that you can lengthen certain parts of the video or shorten them depending on how long you want one slide or video section to be displayed.
In addition, when transitioning from one video section to another, you can choose from various lead-in animations, many of which are free, such as:
- Fade
- Soft blur
- Hard blur
- Word blur
- Scale down
- Slide right/left
- Elastic
- Bounce
- Blow
- Roll Up
- Flip up
- Zoom
- Reveal
- Rotate in/out
There are four different pages of lead-in animations available.
You can also drag and drop different sections/slides of the video to rearrange them in a new order.
Who wins here: Although Canva’s video maker is pretty cool, I do feel that Creatopy’s video editor is a bit more thorough and gives you more options.
Pricing
Here comes the big question: Which platform is cheaper?
Canva pricing
Canva has three pricing plans:
- Forever free: You can use Canva for FREE for as long as you wish. You can use over 8,000 free templates (we mentioned that Canva has a lot), 100+ design types (such as an Instagram Post and Certificate), and hundreds of thousands of free stock photos. There are also tons of premium photos and templates that cost only $1 each.
- Pro: This costs $12.95/month (or $9.95/month when paid yearly). It gives you access to more than 60 million premium stock photos, more than 60,000 free and premium templates, and more.
- Enterprise: This costs $30/month (billed yearly) and is designed for businesses that need unlimited storage, want team collaboration and workflow features, and more.
Always check the Canva pricing page for updated pricing.
Presentations, posters, logos, brochures, infographics, social media stories & more, Canva lets you design any and everything. What's more, it's free, easy and quick.
Creatopy pricing
These are Creatopyk’s plans:
- Create – $17/month per Editor. Annual payment.
- Automate – $35/month per Editor. Annual Payment
- Enterprise – For more than 5 Editors.
Creatopy vs Canva: Similarities And Differences
Canva | Creatopy | |
Many Design Types | âś“ | âś“ |
Stock Images | âś“ | âś“ |
Add Icons, Shapes, Frames, Etc. | âś“ | âś“ |
Integrate With Dropbox, Google Maps, Flickr, Etc | âś“ | âś— |
Create Videos | âś“ | âś“ |
Add Animations | âś“ | âś“ |
Display Ad Templates | âś— | âś“ |
Team Collaboration | âś“ | âś“ |
Forever Free Plan | âś“ | âś— |
Many Free Templates and Stock Images | âś“ | âś— |
Free Trial On Paid Plans | âś“ | âś— |
Canva vs Creatopy: Who Wins?
Overall, I’d say Canva comes out as a clear winner. Although Creatopy has some advantages related to creating display ads and videos, Canva is easier to use and gives you a much better value for money.
Canva’s Forever Free plan can’t be beaten, as you can create images, infographics, print media, animations, and videos all for free, with thousands of free templates, stock photos, icons, and more.
Creatopy doesn’t have that, and their paid plans are more expensive and give you much less for your money than Canva’s paid plans.
Tom loves to write on technology, e-commerce & internet marketing. I started my first e-commerce company in college, designing and selling t-shirts for my campus bar crawl using print-on-demand. Having successfully established multiple 6 & 7-figure e-commerce businesses (in women’s fashion and hiking gear), I think I can share a tip or 2 to help you succeed.