Canva is Becoming the Catch All for Productivity

Remember Print Shop? The app everyone used to make signs, greeting cards and more? Now imagine Print Shop on steroids. That’s Canva.

If you don’t know what Canva is this article is for you. If you do know what Canva is you probably know everything that is about to come below.

Let’s start with the basics. As I mentioned, Canva can be compared to Print Shop. You can use it to make any type of poster, card, banner, etc. You can add text with numerous fonts to choose from and add elements and graphics just by searching. This is probably what most people use Canva for. In fact, Canva is used regularly by students and teachers in my school for this very purpose. (More on that later.) You can even take your design and order prints of it or put it on products like a t-shirt!

However, the comparison to Print Shop stops there. Canva is so much more.

You can use Canva like a Word Processor.

You can use Canva as a video editor. There are built in templates you can use to get started, or you can do your own thing.

You can use Canva to make a website and publish it through Canva.

Recently I was helping a teacher make QR codes for a project and we discovered Canva has a QR code generator! I just used it on the day I am writing this to make QR codes for projects of my students and it was the easiest and fastest I’ve ever made QR codes for this particular project.

There are so many more features of Canva. Too many to list here. and there are even more coming!

Canva just had their big Canva Create Uncharted event where they revealed even more tools. Two that jump to mind are a presentation creator like Keynote and PowerPoint and another tool to build apps without any coding knowledge needed. You describe the app and Canva codes it for you. Check out the full video here: Canva Create 2025

Now let’s talk collaboration. Canva is the ultimate collaboration tool. Every project you do can be shared with multiple people who can then go in and edit it and comment on it. There is even a whiteboard tool to collaborate on. Want to use a file in another app? Just download your file in all the regular formats.

Earlier I mentioned using this in my school. If you are a teacher or student Canva is completely free. This is different than the free account they offer for anyone. An education account will unlock more fonts, graphics, events, etc. for you to use. You don’t see objects marked with a premium icon indicating you need a paid account. Your school and/or district can even sign up and you can sign up under that. As a teacher you can have students broken into classes.

Even better yet- a Canva education account gives you the Affinity suite of apps for free! Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher are all free with the education account. You just log in with your Canva account when you open one of these apps.

Finally let’s talk pricing. Canva is free to use for everyone. A free account gives you access to plenty of tools, images, fonts, etc to get something done. If you want more they offer individual accounts for $120 (U.S.) per year and other business options after that.

Canva is available in app forms on multiple platforms and is also web based.

While this is not a review, I highly recommend checking Canva out. Sign up for a free account and see what it can do for you.