Is Canva pricing out small businesses with its Teams subscription hike?

Long-time Canva Teams customers are rallying against a significant price increase to the product that has left small businesses questioning whether they can still afford the platform.

The price hike will see some of Canva’s subscriptions jump by as much as 300% — with Teams now costing $135 a user per year, with a minimum of three users required on the account.

Users have taken to social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Reddit to air their problems with the change, threatening to cancel their subscriptions.

It’s worth noting that this increase isn’t exactly new. Those who joined Canva Teams after mid-April 2024 are already on the updated rates.

However, previous customers were still enjoying the lower introductory rate from when the tier launched in 2020.

Canva has attributed the increase to its investment into its AI-powered design tools that have become a major focus for the business over the past 12 months.

The news of the increase also follows a major platform redesign which has pivoted to focus more on business and enterprise customers.

“Canva Teams has come a long way since launching in 2020, with major enhancements in team collaboration, brand management, the launch of our Visual Suite and our investments in Magic Studio,” a Canva spokesperson said to SmartCompany.

“Our original pricing reflected the early stage of this product and has remained unchanged for the last four years. We’re now updating the price for customers on this older plan to reflect our expanded product experience, while those who joined since April are already on the updated rates.”

SmartCompany understands that Teams customers were originally offered a rate that provided five seats for the price of one.

Emails sent to current users have revealed Canva is offering 12 months of discounted pricing before the new pricing takes full effect. This discount will still be an increase compared to the previous pricing.

Despite the increase, Canva maintains that at US$10 per seat, Canva Teams remains one of the most affordable design products on the market.

Taking Adobe as an example, its Creative Cloud All Apps For Teams subscription is $128.99 a month per license. This provides the user with access to all of Adobe’s most popular apps such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro.

The SaaS giant also offers licenses for individual products, but then you’re looking at $54.99 per month per license for the creative tools.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the Canva Teams price increase won’t be prohibitively expensive for some small businesses moving forward.

However, they may need to look outside of the usual competitors for an alternative.

Is there a way to avoid the Canva Teams price increase?

Sort of!

“The cost of Canva Pro remains unchanged and continues to be available for anyone not working in a team,” the Canva spokesperson said.

This means you could drop down to a Pro account to save some dollars. This could be useful for smaller teams, but may not be practical for medium-sized businesses.

Why the Canva price increase isn’t surprising

Over the past year, Canva has significantly expanded its AI capabilities with its Magic Studio platform, designed to enhance workflow and collaboration for organisations.

This was followed a few months ago by Canva’s first first major redesign in over a decade which has been geared towards business and enterprise customers.

The unicorn has also made several costly acquisitions, including the AI startup Leonardo.Ai and UK-based design software company Serif, which have strengthened its position in the AI and design markets.

Taking all of these factors — as well as its upcoming plans to IPO — into consideration, it is not entirely surprising that prices have increased. But it seems users weren’t expecting it to be so steep so fast.

Is dependency driving the price increase?

There’s an argument to be made that Canva’s new pricing strategy might be capitalising on the very dependency it has cultivated among its users.

Over the years, Canva has made design work accessible to everyone, regardless of professional training. This democratisation of design has enabled businesses to save money by handling design tasks in-house rather than outsourcing to professionals or hiring a designer.

However, this reliance on Canva could now be working against SMEs as they find themselves needing multiple accounts to support their teams. This places Canva in a powerful position to raise prices.

This situation raises a broader question: Are we seeing the beginning of a trend where companies, having created a dependency on their services, will continue to push prices higher, knowing that their users have few alternatives?

It’s a tactic not unfamiliar to industries like ride-sharing and web hosting, and one that could become more prevalent in the SaaS space as well.

It also raises the question of whether some may turn to other ways of gaining access to Canva.

There are reports on social media of people exploiting Canva’s free education accounts—intended for students and educators—and reselling them on platforms like Etsy and eBay.

This is a separate issue in itself but does demonstrate the lengths people will go to avoid paying the full price, especially when the costs become prohibitive.

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