Venngage vs. Canva: Which Infographic Maker is Better?

Mar 26, 2021 No Comment 767 Views

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Infographics are a powerful tool to communicate information visually. But if you don’t have the design experience required to create an infographic from scratch, an infographic design solution like Venngage can make it easy.

In your search for a simple design solution, you have probably come across a handful of drag-and-drop infographic makers—including sites like Canva and Venngage. Both offer a library of templates that you can customize to fit your needs. But which is the right one for the types of designs you need to make?

In this guide, we’ll offer you a comparison of Venngage and Canva’s features, templates, and resources to help you determine which platform will best fit your needs.

Who is Canva built for?

Canva is a simple design platform built for people who needs to create quick graphics like social media images, posters, and event invites in a pinch. For example, many small businesses or solopreneurs use Canva to create simple social marketing materials.

Canva is also popular for personal use i.e. people who need to make a quick card or children’s birthday invitation.

While Canva does offer infographic templates, their selection is limited. They seem to focus on simple graphics that are light on text and data—social media graphics, promotional posters, and fun presentations.

Who is Venngage built for?

Venngage is an easy-to-use design solution built for people who need to communicate complex and dry information engagingly.

People use Venngage most often for infographics, flowcharts, roadmaps, timelines, visual reports, posters, checklists and more.

For example, project managers use Venngage to create project roadmap infographics, marketers use Venngage to create promotional materials for technical industries, and business consultants use Venngage to create thought leadership infographics.

If you’re looking to create any type of data-driven visual, Venngage offers a wide variety of templates, with a focus on business use cases. Venngage also offers templates in a variety of design styles, all of which are fully customizable. We’ll cover that in more detail further down.

Getting started: Canva vs. Venngage

Canva and Venngage both boast of being simple design platforms. Here’s a walkthrough of using both.

Getting started with Canva

Canva offers options to sign up using your Google, Apple, or Facebook account. They ask you what type of organization you’re creating designs for.

They also ask you to share your team name and a brand logo. They automatically extract a few colors from your logo, which you can apply to your designs.

You then also have the option to invite a few team members to join Canva as well. Inviting team members is free.

Once you’ve completed those steps, you are taken to Canva’s editor, where you are prompted to watch an onboarding video. The video is accompanied by on-screen prompts that show you how to pick a template and use some of its basic features.

Getting started with Venngage

Venngage’s onboarding process is a bit longer than Canva’s but the pay-off is a more tailored experience.

When you create an account, Venngage prompts you to identify your purpose for creating infographics first. This helps Venngage to curate templates based on your needs.

Then, you can sign up using your email, Gmail, or Facebook account.

Once you’ve picked your sign-up method, you’re prompted to pick what type of organization you’re representing. This gives Venngage a bit more information to help them curate templates related to your unique situation—whether you’re self-employed, a student, work for an enterprise etc.

Then, Venngage customizes your experience even further by asking you what your role is at your organization.

Then, you are prompted to pick three types of templates that you would like to create.

After that, you are prompted to pick three design styles that you like.

From there, Venngage takes you to their templates library. At the top of the Templates page is a selection of curated templates based on your answers. You can either explore the templates on your own or follows the prompt for a simple walkthrough of how to use the editor.

If you follow the prompt and click “Create”, you are taken into the editor where you can follow a walkthrough of some of the basic features.

Once you’ve completed the walkthrough, you can either jump into customizing the template or visit the Help page, which offers a library of video tutorials.

Picking an infographic template: Canva vs Venngage

Picking an infographic template with Canva

Canva gives you the option of picking a template directly from the editor. If you hover your mouse over a template, a button indicates whether or not the template is “Free”.

You can also browse templates on Canva’s public templates page and search for keywords in the search bar.

It’s worth noting that most of Canva’s templates aren’t geared towards business.

If you’re looking for an infographic to visualize a business strategy or results, survey data or an internal process, for example, it will probably be hard to find the right template.

Another thing: when browsing through the templates, there is a noticeably homogenous Canva “style.”

If you’re looking to create a trendy social media graphic, then this style may work for you. But if you’re looking to create an infographic that adheres to your company’s strict branding guidelines, it may be difficult to achieve that with Canva’s templates.

Another problem with this homogenous style: your infographic is going to look a lot like many other people’s infographics. You may find your competitors or similar brands are creating very similar infographics to you. Not great.

Picking an infographic template with Venngage

Like we’ve mentioned, Venngage offers an extensive library of templates. You can either pick from one of the curated Recommended templates or pick a specific type of template from the left-hand menu.

From there, you can drill-down on a specific type of infographic you want to create, whether that’s a simple list infographic, a more detailed statistical infographic, a timeline infographic etc.

You can use the top navigation bar to search by keywords, plan type (Free, Premium, Business), or page dimensions.

While you’re browsing, you can click on the hearts to “favorite” templates you like. Then, you can access them in your Favorites folder in the left-hand menu. This makes it easy to save templates for specific types of processes, topics, and styles.

Any templates that are only accessible with a paid plan are clearly marked as “Premium” or “Business”. That way, you can know upfront whether or not you will be able to use them.

Browsing through Venngage’s templates, you can find a variety of different template styles—from simple and functional, to sleek and professional, to fun and trendy. It’s easy to find a template to customize to fit your unique visual style guidelines.

Don’t see what you want? Use a blank canvas and start from scratch.

Editing an infographic: Canva vs Venngage

Editing an infographic in Canva

Canva uses a simple drag-and-drop interface that is fairly intuitive to use. That said, if you want to include a chart or graph in your infographic, your options are really limited. Data visualization is not Canva’s specialty.

They offer a sidebar where you can select design elements like photos and text and a top menu where you can customize design elements. You can edit the text, icons, photos, colors, fonts, and charts in your infographics.

When you click on different design elements in your infographic, Canva’s top bar adjusts based on the type of element you’ve selected. For example, selecting a text box will give you options in the top bar to edit the font style, size, spacing and effects.

While their side menu is easy enough to navigate, one thing that becomes apparent early on is that they don’t put a focus on data visualization. For example, their charts and graphs features are hidden under the “Elements” tab.

One of the biggest roadblocks you will encounter using Canva is their gated icons, photos, and illustrations.

While you may be able to use a template for free, you will need to pay $1 per element for many of the elements within them. That can really add up.

Adding and editing charts

To add a chart to your infographic in Canva, you can select a chart from the “Elements” tab. The chart will then appear in the center of your canvas. Canva’s chart editing features are quite limited; you can toggle the percentage fill on the chart.

Or if you pick a bar graph, you can adjust the values using a simple table. Chart colors and fonts can be customized using the top bar.

Adding and editing icons

Canva’s icons are found under their “Elements” tab. They offer a variety of icons that generally follow the same Canva aesthetic. As we said, not all are free, you need to pay $1 for some illustrations.

You can search for icons using the search bar.

Adding and editing photos

Canva gives you the option to upload your own photos or to pick from their stock photo library. Again, not all their stock photos are free. You may need to pay $1 per image.

Using Canva’s editor, it quickly becomes clear that their forte is photo editing. They offer a number of filters, effects, and photo editing tools to spice up your stock photos.

Aligning elements on the page

Canva’s editor has a basic Position tool that allows you to align elements on the page (left, right, middle, top, bottom, center). They also have guiding lines that help you to position align elements on the page when you move them around.

Editing an infographic in Venngage

Venngage also uses a simple drag-and-drop interface. But once you start using Venngage, its powerful data visualization and information design capability put it head and shoulders above Canva.

Similar to Canva, Venngage has a sidebar where you can select specific design elements like charts and icons and a top menu where you can customize design elements.

Another big plus: Venngage’s extensive icon and photo libraries are completely free to use.

Venngage has 23,000+ free icons and over 3 million free stock images that you can browse in the Venngage editor and add to your infographic immediately.