After the recent overview/tutorial of Snappa, an Effective Church Communications member asked me how it compared to Canva and PicMonkey. That was such a good question and as I thought about it, I realized it wasn't something I could answer in a quick email and that the answer would be useful to many of you.
I like all three programs and use them all, but they are different in what they do best. Below I did a video review of all three. It is short and subjective and far from an exhaustive overview of any of them, but I trust it will help you see the differences. Below the video is a summary of the cost of each and a few additional comments.
Remember Effective Church Communications does not take any advertising or participate in any affiliate programs. You can CLICK HERE if you want to read more of our concerns about affiliate programs. On Pic Monkey (the only one I bothered to look up) they give affiliates 30% of what you pay. I would much rather they had a lower rate than participating in a system that can distort reviews of the product. But regardless of what others do, we will not be part of the affiliate kudzu that infects the web. You can read our reviews knowing they have no secondary agenda.
Overviews of the programs, pricing, and comments:
www.PicMonkey.com
$5.99 a month, billed monthly, $7.99 if month by month—good, basic, most everything available, download in jpg or png formats
$9.99 a month, billed annually, no monthly price, adds downloads in PDF format (but you could do that after downloading jpg or png)
Nothing Free or for nonprofits
Summary view: the best of the three for modifications and for facial photo editing. For facial photo editing can soften, whiten teeth, erase wrinkles, even skin tone—all sorts of fun things.
The modifications include numerous filters that change the colors and looks of any image, extensive, quality selection. Can add text and flat art images, frames, etc. Large typeface collection especially for holidays.
A great program to modify an image in and then export and use in all kinds of other ways in both print and online media.
Picky comment: the cute monkeys that were funny years ago have worn a bit thin since then. Caution to all communicators be careful about tying your identity to something like this.
www.Snappa.com
Free OK to try, but can only download 5 images a month
$10 a month 1 person; $20 a month 5 people (my comment—overpriced for individual; great deal for a team)
Summary view: By far THE BEST for simple online, social media graphics that you can make in minutes. Great resource of free photos, super easy to search and add to your graphic image. Super simple way to do an overlay with text on top. No way to modify them like PicMonkey.
Resize works better than Canva’s—quicker, faster, seems to space elements much better.
Templates not terribly exciting, but quick and useful.
Picky comment: Save button, small and easy to miss. You edit and name on one side of the screen and then save on the other, really easy to miss the save button. No auto save, so you can create a great image, even download it, and if you close the program before saving—it’s gone. I use the program all the time and I’ve lost a lot—need to be careful.
www.Canva.com
Free, limited access to the program.
9.95 a month, Canva for Work, for templates, free photos, many additional resources
Canva for Work is $9.95 per month when paid annually or $12.95 paid monthly.
***They do have a FREE Canva for Work for non-profits: https://support.canva.com/account-basics/nonprofit-program/apply-for-nonprofit/
Summary view: Can’t do any image editing, (though it does have a few filters for photographs) primarily an online publication creation, layout program. One of the first of its kind and it is more complicated to use than others, things seem to go much slower, more complicated process in Canva. Having said that, you can also do many things in Canva you can’t in other programs in layout.
It is probably the BEST for complex PRINT layouts (don’t even try these with Snappa). Some fantastic templates for things like magazine covers and their business card templates are topnotch. They’ve added an immediate PRINT order option with pricing comparable to other online printers ($16.00 for 100 business cards; $14.39 for VistaPrint) and Canva has free shipping for 3-7 day.
They are in the midst of a major upgrade (currently in Beta stage) and we’ll see how it ends up.
Really hate the extra charge for various images and templates, even though you’re paying a monthly fee.
Bottom line of a totally subjective review
I use and like all the programs—no way any one program is overall “better” than any other, it simply depends on what you want to do with it.
PicMonkey stands alone in its ability to do wonderful, complex image manipulation easily.
Snappa the easiest and my go-to program for quick online and social media graphics.
Canva great print templates and I plan on ordering some of the business cards. I’ll let you know how that goes.
One more thing
The Effective Church Communications Ministry pays full price for all the programs we use. We also do not take any "review" copies of software.
Please consider a donation to the Ministry if the materials and resources we provide are useful to you. You can CLICK HERE to give and any amount would be appreciated.
Yvon, I was delighted to receive the video with your comparison of the 3 sites for Image editing! Thank you so much. This introduced me to 2 new sites and how blessed we are to have such wonderful technology to help us with all that we do with social media and member photos for the church. I am going to pass your website on to others who are working on these things for our church and hope it will be helpful to them as well!
Just a side note: PicMonkey has a lot of templates for all social media. Downside is that it sometimes is hard to find the one you want.
I am so glad it was helpful! Really fun to use the different programs!
Yvon