Online graphic design tools like Canva are the saviors for anyone who need to create design, but has no good skill in design. Speaking of Canva, the online tool has been a favorite tool by social media managers to create visual contents for their social media channels. Today, Canva is facing a serious competition with newer similar tool, Crello.

Crello is a relatively new online graphic tool, developed by Depositphotos, a microstock photo agency based in Florida, US. If you compare the interface of the two, you will nearly find no differences. So do with the features. They both have a very similar features. That is why I call them the twins.

However, it doesn’t mean there is no difference at all. Once you dig deeper, you will find some differences. The most stand out difference is that Canva uses a freemium business model. There are some restrictions if you stick to your free account. For instance, you are only allowed to create 2 folders to organize your designs.

On the other hand, Crello doesn’t adopt the same business model. You can use all of the offered features for free. You will only need to pay if you want to use paid images on Crello, which cost $0.99 per image. It seems that Crello is the tool used by Depositphotos to sell its photos.

Before concluding which is the better between them, let’s have an in-deep investigation.

User interface

As I mentioned, they both are very identical. Their user interfaces are very similar each other. They are twins. They both have a canvas on the right side of the working window and the design element on the left side. The download button of the two is also located at the same location, at the top-right corner.

You will see the differences when you are editing the text or adjusting the images. When you click on a certain text or image on the Crello canvas, you will get a pop-up containing options menu to edit the text or image. Through this options menu, you can change the font color, font style, font size, alignment and so on.

While on Canva, the tools menu is presented on the top bar. You will also see this options menu once you clicked a certain text or image. Through this options menu you can also make some changes over your text like changing the font style, font size, font color, alignment and so on.

The rest, there is no significant difference between Crello and Canva in terms of interface. They both have a very easy-to-use interface. It takes only minutes to learn how to use them. Even if you are totally new to design.

Winner: draw

Features and capabilities

Be it Crello and Canva come with features to ease your job in designing. They both offer thousands of ready-to-use templates you can choose from. Crello and Canva are actually designed to help you designing something for web needs. You now, in the social media age like today, people (social media managers in particular) need an instant tool to create visual contents for social media. Crello and Canva play very well game in this market.

One thing you can with Crello and can’t be done with Canva (at least at the time of writing) is creating an animated content. However, Canva is superior in the terms of document type you can create. You can get more on Canva. Even too much to mention here. See the screen capture below to see what you can do with Canva.

Meanwhile, Crello tends suited to create social media-related designs like visual contents for new posts, Facebook cover, Twitter header and YouTube Channel art although you can also use it to create other designs like blog header, posters, flyers, invitations and so on. To figure out what you can do with Crello, you can visit this link.

The best thing about Crello is that you can use all of the available features for free. As I said earlier above, you will only need to pay if you want to use the paid images. Meanwhile, Canva adopts a freemium business model. Not all of the features can be used for free. For instance, free account users have no capability to resize designs or upload custom fonts for brand. Free account users are only allowed to access 8,000 templates, compared to about 300,000 for premium users.

Winner: draw

Design elements

To beautify your design be it Crello or Canva allow you to add additional elements, other than the default ones offered by the templates you choose. To add new elements on Canva you can click the ELEMENTS menu at the left sidebar. There are 7 elements you can add to your design; photos, grids, frames, shapes, lines, illustrations, icons and charts.

On Crello, the element is called object. In addition to photos, you can also add other elements like shapes, icons, illustrations, lines, borders, stickers and frames. To add new elements in Crello you can click the OBJECTS menu, also at the left sidebar. Some elements, be it on Crello and Canva, require you to pay before using. Especially for photos, Canva provides more free photos than Crello. Canva makes use of free stock photo services like Unsplash to provide free photos. Crello also provides free photos, but the number is smaller. Crello and Canva allow you to upload your own photos as well.

Winner: draw

File manager

It would be great if you could integrate Crello and Canva with cloud storage services like Dropbox. Unfortunately, be it Crello or Canva don’t support cloud storage service. Fortunately, they have their own file managers to allow you manage your designs.

In Crello, you can create as many folders as you want to manage your designs. You can access this file manager by clicking the three-line icon at the top-left corner and select My Projects.

Same as Crello, Canva also has a file manager, but with a very tight restrictions for free account. Free account users are only allowed to create the maximum of two folders, compared to unlimited folders for premium users. To access the file manager of Canva, you can return to the front page of Canva.

Winner: Crello

Collaboration capability

The biggest problem about Crello is that it doesn’t support collaboration capability, or probably not yet. So, you have to get everything done by yourself. Canva, on the other hand, allows you add collaborators. Free account of Canva is allowed to invite up to 10 members, while premium account can add up to 30 members.

Winner: Canva

Conclusion

Crello and Canva are great tools to create design. Even those who have a very poor design skill can use it thanks to the ready-to-use templates. They both have a very similar interface, features and capabilities. If you need to work on designs with your team, then Canva is a better option since it allows you to add collaborators. Canva is also a better option if image become your concern. It provides more free images than Crello.

Conversely, Crello is a better option if feature becomes your concern since you can use all of the available features without spending a dime. Plus, it also has a better file manager than Canva. But overall, there is no significant difference between them. Once again, they both are great saviors for social media managers and freelancers to keep survive in the visual era.

Overall winner: draw