There are dozens of tools out there to allow you creating infographics online. Piktochart is one of the worth-trying ones. The tool has a fancy interface that is easy to use. And it has just changed its logo which is looks more fresh.

While similar tools, say Canva, offer much capabilities, Piktochart seems not too tempted to do the same. It chooses to focus on fewer capabilities. It’s better in some cases since too many options don’t always mean better. Instead, it sometimes can cause a headache to choose the best suited one. By the time this article is writing, Piktochart offers only five capabilities: to create infographics, presentations, reports, flyers and posters.

Same as the vast majority of online tools existing on the internet jungle, Piktochart also adopts the freemium business model to generate money. You are allowed to use the tool for free as long as you want, but there are much other features you are going to get if you upgrade your free account to premium, which costs $12 (the cheapest package).

If you are new to Piktochart and wondering how great the tool is, read on.

Capabilities

Piktochart is not the sort of tool that offers too much capabilities. In Piktochart, you can only create 5 types of designs: infographic, presentation, poster, flyer and report. Those who never liked to be overwhelmed by too many options, Piktochart is a nice tool. With that fewer options, you can focus on the layout design you want to create, instead of spending too long deciding what type design you want to create.

User interface

The vast majority of online design tools tend to offer the similar user interfaces. They divide the working window in three parts: main menu on the left-most, selector right next to it and the working canvas next to the selector. The working canvas takes more screen portion since it is the main component of design tool. Piktochart has a simple yet useful enough button especially if you have to work with a small-sized screen. The button is used to hide to selector to give extra space for the canvas.

Overall, the user interface of Piktochart is good enough and easy to learn even for new users who have never used tools like these before. To replace the default contents of the template you choose, you can simply double click on them. For instance, if you want to replace a text, you can double click on the text you want to replace then you can start type your own text. A formatting toolbar will appear every time you click a certain text.

Template options

Giving too much options to users seems is not the Piktochart style. In addition to giving limited design types, Piktochart also offers limited enough templates. For instance, if you want to create a flyer using the tool, you will only be faced with 7 free templates. The premium templates offered by Piktochart are also limited enough. Not reaching the number of 100. But, Piktochart gives you a chance to create a design from a blank template in case you want create a unique design.

Depending on what type of person you belong to. If you prefer a tool with hundreds of free templates then Piktochart might not too impressive to you. There are other tools out there that offer more free templates than Piktochart does. But again, more options don’t always mean better. Too many options sometimes can lead to a headache in choosing and most importantly, can waste time.

Design elements

When creating a design, you sometimes want to add certain elements. Say you want to create a flyer of your community event. For such case, the elements you may want to add are the logo of your community or a background image of the community members or events you have held before. Just like other similar tools, Piktochart also allows you to add elements such as lines, shapes, photos, photos, icons and so on. The handy search bar makes it easy for you to find the elements you need.

In addition to the elements offered by Piktochart, you can also upload your own elements. For instance, if you want to add your logo or certain photo as a background, you can upload them first and they will be added to the library where you can use them anytime you need. Piktochart gives you a free 40MB of storage capacity, which is large enough to store tens of images.

A unique element you can add to your design is map, which is useful enough especially if you want to create an infographic or report involving geographic.

Piktochart is a superb tool to create a report. You can use a wide range of diagram models from vertical bar, triangle bar, pie diagram, progress bar and so on. You can even import the spreadsheet files from Google Sheets and turn it into a nice diagram before adding it to your design report.

Free version vs premium version

While you can use Piktochart for free, there are a bunch of benefits you will get if you upgrade your free account. Piktochart itself offers three premium packages as follows:

In some areas, the gap between free and premium account of Piktochart is far enough. For instance, free accounts are not allowed to remove the Piktochart watermark when downloading the finished design, which is very annoying. As a comparison, similar tools like Canva and Crello don’t apply this rule.

Another big gap is in the file management. Piktochart basically comes with a nice file manager to allow you manage the designs you have created in order to make them be more organized. However, the feature isn’t help so much unless you upgrade your free account. Premium accounts are allowed to create folders to manage your designs so your designs will be tidier organized, while free accounts are not allowed to create even a single folder. Free accounts are only allowed to export the finished design in a standard quality with the width of 800px.

What about online collaboration?

Unless you have registered to the PRO TEAM package, you will only be able to work alone. PRO TEAM allows you to add up to 5 collaborators.

Conclusion

Piktochart is useful enough if you are looking for a tool to create design online. More specifically, Piktochart is great if you want to create infograpics, presentations and reports. When it come to report, Piktochart is probably one of the best online tools out there. It allows you to import spreadsheet file from Google Sheets and turn it into a beautiful diagram before adding it to your design. The downside of Piktochart is that there is far enough gap between free version and premium version, especially in the watermark part.