Placeit vs Canva: Online Design Tool Comparison

Struggling to decide between Canva and Placeit as your design software of choice?

Canva and Placeit are two very popular online design tools, and both have a huge number of useful graphics, templates, and features to help their users create incredible designs with ease.

But which one is better? And who can get the most from each of them?

We set out to find the answer to those questions, and this article will take you through our findings.

Jump to a specific section:

Overview
Round 1: Templates
Round 2: Usability & Customization
Round 3: Design Elements
Round 4: Integrations & Add-ons
Round 5: What do you get for free?
Round 6: Placeit subscription vs Canva Pro
Our verdict
Who are they best for?

Overview

Before fully diving into the article, we thought we’d give a brief introduction to both tools for those of you who aren’t too familiar with them.

Canva and Placeit are both online design tools with the goal of allowing their users to create incredible designs without needing any design skills or knowledge.

Both tools boast a huge library of pre-designed templates that you can modify to make your own in a few clicks.

The templates cover various categories including social media content, logos, flyers, banners, videos, and so much more.

The biggest difference between the two tools is that Canva is a much more user-friendly option for users who want to create designs from a blank canvas or who want more customization options.

Placeit on the other hand is mainly focused on making the creation process as quick and as easy as possible for users.

Both are fantastic tools in their own right.

Round 1: Template Options

Both of these tools have an abundance of pre-designed templates you can customize to make your own.

However, at the time of writing, Canva’s template library dwarfs Placeit’s with over 600,000 compared with a little over 90,000.

Template Categories

Both tools also offer a huge range of templates for different categories including (but not limited to):

YouTube templates (Canva: 10,000+ / Placeit: 2,500+)
Twitch / Streaming templates (Canva: 400+ / Placeit: 2,500+)
Instagram templates (Canva: 300,000+ / Placeit: 12,000+)
Logos (Canva: 29,000+ / Placeit: 16,000+)
Animated logos (Canva: 70+ / Placeit: 1,200+)
Book covers (Canva: 1,000+ / Placeit: 250+)
Album covers (Canva: 1,000+ / Placeit: 1,100+)
T-shirt designs (Canva: 3,000+ / Placeit: 13,000+)
Business card designs: (Canva: 5,500+ / Placeit: 600+)

Canva and Placeit offer plenty of templates in many of the same categories. However, as you can see above there’s a stark contrast in the number of templates in some categories.

Both tools also have template categories that the other doesn’t cover:

Templates unique to Canva

Here are a few examples of template options unique to Canva:

Personal templates (e.g. Cards, Resumes, Postcards, Planners, etc.)
Website templates
Infographics
Presentations
Stickers
Education templates (Plans, Worksheets, Certificates, etc.)
Even more!

Templates unique to Placeit

The only template category that is unique to Placeit, albeit a big one, is their mockup templates. Placeit is well known for having the biggest mockup template library out of all the mockup generators.

They currently have close to 40,000 templates! Something that Canva doesn’t really offer (at the moment).

Template Design Quality

Both Canva and Placeit offer an incredible array of superbly-designed templates, most of which have clearly been designed by professional designers.

When it comes to the design quality it’s very hard to separate both the tools. So, when it comes to the craftsmanship of the templates we’ll give them a tie.

Round 1 Winner

In terms of the quality of their pre-designed templates, there really isn’t much between the two tools.

However, Canva has a much bigger library of templates and also plenty of template categories that Placeit simply doesn’t cover at the moment.

There are a couple of categories where Placeit is just as good or even better than Canva e.g. t-shirt designs, Twitch templates, and obviously mockups, but Canva takes this round.

Round 1 winner: Canva (just).

Round 2: Usability

When it came to looking at which tool was easier to use, we tested the platform in several areas:

Finding a template
Resizing
Repositioning
Changing colors
Adding & deleting elements
Overall usability

Canva Usability

Finding a template on Canva is super simple.

You can search for something in the search bar from the homepage or go to a relevant category from the navigation menu and choose a template from there:

Alternatively, you can click on one of the design presets from the homepage (e.g. logo), and this will take you to the editor where all the template options will be available on the left side of the screen:

Resizing and repositioning elements on Canva is also a total breeze.

Like most things on Canva, the editor is very intuitive and accessible, even if you’re a complete newbie you should be able to get your head around the interface in no time at all.

To reposition elements you can either click on one and drag it to where you want it on the canvas, you can also simply use the preset positions that Canva gives you e.g. ‘center’ or ‘middle’, etc.:

When you’re repositioning a part of your design the Canva also helps you out by showing you how the selected element lines up with the other design elements.

Helpful for making it easy to make sure your designs are setup correctly:

To resize an element or text box you can simply click on it, and drag the toggle on the corners to increase or decrease its size. It’s all very easy:

Customizing the colors is just as easy. After you click on an element, if there are color options available, you will see the color box on the left side above the editor. Clicking on that will bring up the color customization options on the left side:

To add new elements to the canvas, all you need to do is select the type of element you want from the left side menu, you can also put a term into the search bar if you have something specific in mind.

When you select a new element to add to the design it’s automatically added to the canvas for you to begin customizing it to fit your design:

Finding the element that you want to add is made even more simple with Canva’s search filters that help you narrow down your elements search:

Another feature worth noting on Canva is the ‘Undo’ button, which you can find at the top left of the editor.

If you make any mistakes you can easily go back a step or two. It’s good to know you can easily rectify any mishaps with your designs:

In general, working with the elements on Canva is incredibly easy. The options for each element you select are clear to see at the top of the editor, plus having the ability to group elements together, change their layering, etc. all makes for a smooth experience:

It’s worth noting that the overall layout of the Canva editor is also incredibly user-friendly. As mentioned, you have all the customization options above the editor, plus all the additional options, tabs. and tools are clear to see on the left side of the screen:

When it comes to video creation on Canva, it’s slightly more complicated than creating static designs but it’s still incredibly easy to create great-looking content.

You can easily adjust the video length, audio length, and positioning, add (and animate) graphics and text over the video, and so much more:

Placeit Usability

Finding templates on Placeit is just as simple as Canva.

You can use navigate through the categories in the main navigation bar:

You can also input a term into the search bar if you have a specific template in mind. Placeit has a fairly large range of templates so you can usually find some that match what you’re looking for no matter what the topic.

For example, you can see in the image below that they have over 480 templates for ‘mothers day mockup’:

Placeit also offers users plenty of filters so they can easily narrow down their search to find their ideal template(s):

When it comes to customizing and creating designs on Placeit. The setup is very different from Canva’s but still very user-friendly.

Depending on the type of template you choose on Placeit, the customization options that are available will be slightly different, but in general, the setup is the same with the text customization options on the left side and the bulk of the graphic customization options on the right side:

With most templates, you can select individual elements (e.g. the main graphic or text) and move them around the canvas, or use the toggles to resize, rotate them, etc.:

You can also easily align elements how you want them on the canvas by utilizing the guidelines showing you how your selected element lines up on the canvas and with other design elements:

When it comes to changing the colors of the various design elements, this is also a simple task. You simply go to the color dropdown option for the element that you want to change, and select your preferred color:

With Placeit you can’t really add an unlimited amount of design elements (text and graphics) but you can usually swap out the main graphic and add an additional one or two elements.

Most templates have a button that allows you to add an additional graphic, and you can swap out the main graphic from the right side of the editor.

It’s very simple to navigate but somewhat limited in terms of customization options compared with Canva:

Like Canva, on Placeit you can easily undo and redo the alterations you’ve made to your design. This is a new addition to the tool, as previously you had to click the back button on your browser to undo any changes.

It’s a good additional, and make the design process that much more easy:

Overall, the template editor on Placeit is very easy to use. Everything is very simplistic and clear, but this minimalistic setup means that customization and creativity are fairly limited.

That being said, it seems like Placeit intended the platform to be this way to make it as quick and easy as possible for users to create their designs.

Placeit has also recently added a blank canvas feature to the product so users can create designs from scratch.

The setup and customization options are very similar to the vast majority of templates on the site:

The video creation experience on Placeit is somewhat similar to Canva.

You can certainly create quality-looking videos (particularly the YouTube intro maker and outros).

It’s very quick to modify the video text, visuals, and add additional slides but unfortunately, the experience isn’t quite as smooth or as customizable as Canva at the moment.

You can’t adjust the audio track position, plus you can only add a limited amount of text and graphics with each template:

Round 2 Winner

In round 2 there really isn’t much to separate both tools. Both tools are very easy to use, with intuitive and user-friendly setups.

If you’re a beginner just starting out with using online design tools you should have no problems getting your head around either product.

That being said, you can do so much more on Canva when it comes to customizations. Placeit is great if you want to churn out designs very quickly as most of their templates require very little customization.

But if you’re looking for a bit more flexibility, customization options, and also a design interface that’s easier on the eye then Canva is the tool for you.

Moreover, it’s easier to find additional design elements, graphics, fonts, and more on Canva making it the winner of this round.

Round 2 winner: Canva

Round 3: Design Elements

In round 3 we’re looking at the design elements and content that each tool provides. To analyze this area we looked at a few different element categories on each tool such as photos, fonts, graphics, backgrounds, and a few others.

Our main considerations were the number, variety, freshness, and quality of the elements.

Canva Design Elements

Here’s a brief review of the design elements on Canva.

Photos, Videos, & Audio

When it comes to photos, videos, and audio, Canva has a massive library, much of which is completely free to use.

If you have a Canva account you can also add the Pexels and Pixabay apps which gives you access to even more stock photos and videos.

You need to be signed in, then on the left side menu of the editor click ‘More’ and under ‘Apps and Integrations’ select both Pexels and Pixabay:

With the Pixabay and Pexels apps added you’ll have an almost endless supply of photos and videos to browse, so it’s almost impossible not to find some high-quality visuals that fit what looking for:

Canva allows you to easily create unique-looking designs either with photos from their library or by uploading your own and combining them with the ‘frame’ elements.

These are shapes that you place a photo into, and Canva has quite a few to choose from: with photos using their ‘Frames’. Frames are shapes that you can place a photo into:

Canva also offers users an array of image effects to help users create unique-looking designs. You can see an example in the image below where we added a glow effect around the photo of the man:

The customization options are a bit less with the videos on Canva, you essentially only cut them down to the clip that you need and the same with the audio files.

There are so many to choose from though, so you’ll find some that meet your needs. With the audio files, the vast majority of them are only available to users with a Canva Pro account:

Text & Fonts

Canva also offers a huge range of text and font options.

The free font library has plenty to choose from but to get full access to all the fonts available on Canva you’ll need a Pro account.

They even allow users to upload their own fonts (Canva Pro users only) so the fonts options are potentially endless with Canva:

They even have a solid range of international language fonts including Chinese, Japanese, and others:

If you’re in need of some inspiration when it comes to text and font combinations Canva has you covered there too with a range of font combination recommendations:

Like the image effects on Canva, there’s a similar range of effects you can apply to the text elements on Canva:

Graphics

Canva has all kinds of graphics such as the previously mentioned frames but also plenty more including illustrations, shapes, icons, stickers, tables, and so much more.

It’s easy to browse through these additional graphics and find elements to spruce up your designs. The best part is that many of these graphic elements are free to use.

There always seems to be new elements available and Canva keeps up with trends, events, seasons, etc. by adding new elements that cover those areas.

Backgrounds

Canva’s also offers plenty of options when it comes to backgrounds.

You can either browse what’s on offer or if you have something specific in mind you can likely find it with a quick search: