You’re creating content and up your game with the best graphic design software.
Fantastic! Â
It’s hard to compete with big businesses with large budgets plus teams of marketers and designers. But…you can.
With graphic design software, YOU CAN COMPETE! You can build your brand and create stunning proposals, presentations, social media images, and other visual content.Â
To help your research, we’ve compiled a list of the best graphic design software on the market. Our list includes software that’s easy to use with a wide range of templates, features, and customization.
For those of you that like to skip to the end instead of reading the entire article, we’ve got you covered:
- Canva (Top Pick) has hundreds of stylish and customizable templates for images and videos. Canva regularly adds new features and templates. You can read our full Canva Pro review by clicking here.
- Visme (Runner Up, but crazy close) is unreal for data visualization and is excellent for creating charts, graphs, and maps that look amazing. Visme comes in strong with new features and templates too.
- Pixelied has a fantastic selection of templates, stock images, and image editing tools for creating stunning visuals.
- Adobe Spark is a pro tool that’s great for on-the-go editing and creating materials like banners, videos, and presentation graphics – even on mobile platforms.
- Design Wizard is a solid graphic design software that allows you to perform basic editing functions. It has a pay-as-you-download model that offers high-resolution files.
- Easil offers thousands of templates, images, and graphics that users can customize to create visually appealing content.
- Snappa allows users to create a wide range of graphics. It offers templates and tools for images in ads, blogs, and social media.
- Crello is primarily an image editing tool with 25,000+ templates.
- Stencil is an image editing tool and graphic design software specializing in content for businesses, marketers, and bloggers.
- PicMonkey is a design software that allows users to easily create logos, social media content, edit photos, and other graphic requirements.
Table of Contents
Why Should You Invest in Graphic Design Software?
Investing in good software is crucial for producing high-quality content regardless of your graphic design needs. The software will save you time.Â
Graphic design is essential to building and maintaining your brand’s image and conveying the right message to your target audience. The tools we featured in this article are feature-rich.
Plus, these tools can be used by anyone, no matter your graphic design expertise.
Since you’re a smart and budget-conscious marketer, you’re probably looking for free graphic design software options. Most of the tools we feature have free plans.
If you want more features and templates (like us), some of these graphic design tools have paid plans.
Things to Keep in Mind Before Choosing a Graphic Design Software
Features
Consider your needs when choosing graphic design software. You must think through the content you’re going to create with the software, your distribution channels, and what level of customization you need.
If you work in the creative industry and are interested in developing well-designed content like social media posts and presentations, consider Canva.
Canva is a highly customizable tool with tons of well-designed templates.
If you work in a data-heavy industry that requires data visualization, then you might want to consider Visme.
Visme has a lot of data visualization tool templates for charts, graphs, and tables.
Here at The Weekly Consult, we use both tools.Â
Cost
Most graphic design tools have free and paid plans that are perfect for marketers from all industries. That being said, if you’re looking to purchase a paid plan with more features, consider selecting the annual options versus monthly.
Annual plans usually have discounts and offer more value for money.
Also, it’s always good to consider a free trial before purchasing. This way, you’ll be able to test the features and get a feel of the app’s templates, features, and functionality.
For example, our number 1 & 2 tools both offer free plans or trials.
- Canva – Canva Pro offers a free 30-day trial.
- Visme – 80% of Visme’s features are free.
Collaboration
In the digital age, when you’re likely working remotely, collaborative features are an added benefit for a graphic design app.
If you create content with others or collaborate with your client, you can work together in real-time or get instant feedback.Â
Most graphic design software providers offer the ability to collaborate. Users can chat, leave comments, and edit in real-time, depending on the software.Â
For example, in Canva, you can create and share folders with your client and team.Â
Top Graphic Design Software
Canva (Top Recommendation)
One of Canva’s best features is its well-designed templates with different styles.Â
Canva’s team of professional designers regularly creates sleek, stylish, and on-trend designs that end-users will love to use. It’s easy to use, even for non-technical people with no prior experience in layout and design. Canva has intuitive controls, drag & drop, great sharing features, and high-quality templates.
Key Features
Canva’s image editing tools allow users to easily crop and rotate photos, as well as add visual effects to photos, make transparent images, remove backgrounds, add frames, and other cool effects
Users can easily convert PDFs into designs and edit them as assets
Presenters can conduct live presentations on canva.live where viewers can chat, send reactions, comments, and questions to the presenters
Cool text effects offer dynamic and interactive texts through animations, curved text, speech bubbles, and text on images
Canva also allows you to upload, create, or edit videos. You can turn a series of pictures or a presentation into a video with embedded audio
Teams can collaborate on Canva in real-time
Advantages
- Free and accessible to everyone
- Offers a Free 30-day trial for their Pro Plan
- Extensive library of fonts, backgrounds, stickers, and images
- Many templates for various purposes (social media posts, posters, cards, e-book covers, resumes, etc.)
- Remote teams can easily create and collaborate
Disadvantages
- No local file storage (you can’t access files without an internet or data connection)
- Widely-used designs may mean your content won’t be as unique unless you customize it
- Advanced features are locked behind a paywall for Canva Pro users
Visme (Runner Up)
Visme is fantastic for data visualization and is excellent for creating charts, graphs, and maps that look amazing. It’s so good, we had a hard time calling Visme a “Runner Up.”
In fact, we use both Visme and Canva for our graphic design needs.
Visme has customizable widgets and infographic builders with hundreds of templates. In addition, users can choose from over 40 customizable graphs and charts and interactive map builders.
Key Features
- Great-looking templates for data visualization
- Highly-customizable templates
- Tools for creating videos and GIFs
- Built-in photo editor for quick editing
- Collaboration features allow team members to leave notes, comments, and edits
- Analytics for businesses that need to track leads
- Sharing and download options in a variety of file formats and resolutions
Advantages
- User-friendly and cost-effective
- Vast library of images, icons, templates, and backgrounds
- Highly customizable templates allow users to incorporate their own content to create one-of-a-kind visuals
- Very good for creating data-heavy presentations
Disadvantages
- Download and print quality may vary
- Downloaded versions are watermarked
Pixelied
Pixelied has a great selection of templates, stock images, and various image editing tools for creating stunning visuals.
It’s an intuitive tool that allows users to create mockups of apps and websites. Plus, it has a wide selection of other digital content.
Key Features
- Ready-made templates for drag-and-drop editing
- Millions of royalty-free stock images
- Powerful background remover
- App and website mockup builder
- Thousands of illustrations, icons, and design elements to choose from
- Separate workspaces for different projects
- Vectors can be uploaded from Photoshop or Illustrator
Advantages
- The user interface is straightforward to use, much like Canva’s
- Pixelied’s toolbar allows you to perform a vast array of functions, such as:
- Adding shadows, borders, and layers
- Aligning and flipping images
- Duplicating elements
- Adjusting image transparency
- Locking layers
- Large selection of templates (over 1,500) for all sorts of purposes
- Features for mockups and photo editing are advanced and can be very useful even for professional designers
Disadvantages
- No current video support
- No current ability to create animations
Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is great for on-the-go editing and creating content like banners, videos, and presentation graphics – even on mobile platforms.
It offers professional themes and typography and great functionalities that people have come to expect from the Adobe brand.Â
Key Features
- Beautiful typographic elements
- Large library of free images and icons
- Professional-looking themes
- Allows teams to collaborate
- Excellent color palette suggestions and customizations
- Image editing tools enable users to perform various functions:
- Resizing images
- Removing background
- Converting image files (JPG to PNG and vice versa)
- Resizing, cropping, and trimming videos
Advantages
- A versatile tool that allows you to create videos, images, and pages
- Beautifully rendered videos
- Large library of royalty-free photographs and background music for editing
- Tools and output are professional-looking and high-quality
Disadvantages
- Editing options for text is quite limited
- Transitions are mainly for storytelling timelines
Design Wizard
Design Wizard is graphic design software that allows you to perform basic editing functions. It has a pay-as-you-download model that offers high-resolution files.
Design Wizard has an extensive library of stock images that users can choose from and tons of great templates.
Key Features
- Allows users to resize images, as well as add text, photos, and shapes
- Files can be downloaded in PDF, PNG, and JPG formats
- Offers storage space
- Custom color palette
- Templates for creating Facebook video covers and posts
- Customizable videos and designs for digital marketing
- LinkedIn Ads templates
Advantages
- Large library of graphics, images, and videos, all licensed for commercial use
- Great functionalities for creating social media content
- Has a personal folder for saving favorite images
Disadvantages
- Templates outside of the free version need to be purchased
- Downloads are watermarked
- The site can be a bit slow when connections are sluggish
Easil
Easil offers thousands of templates, images, and graphics that users can customize to create visually appealing content.
There are templates for making posters, banners, infographics, and more. All templates are also guaranteed to be compatible with social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Key Feature
- Customizable templates
- Social-media compatible templates
- Text effects and text masking for dynamic designs
- GIF Maker
- Brand kit includes templates for creating branding content and saving settings
- Team sharing mode allows team members to collaborate
Advantages
- Photo editing features are helpful for basic editing
- Customer support is very responsive via chat, email, and over the phone
- Fonts and color palette generator features are free in all plans
Disadvantages
- Some stock images need to be purchased
- Print service is only available in specific locations
- The brand kit is only available for Plus Plan subscribers
Snappa
Snappa allows users to create a wide range of graphics. In addition, it offers templates and tools for images that can be used in ads, blogs, and social media.
Snappa is very easy to use with its drag-and-drop design interface and can get you professional-quality work in just a few minutes.
Key Features
- Offers a short tutorial to new users
- Professionally designed graphics are organized according to template categories (banners, headers, social media content, etc.)
- Images can be downloaded in a variety of file formats and resolutions
- Up to 5 team members can collaborate on the platform
Advantages
- Very easy to use
- A large variety of templates and graphics for making various content
Disadvantages
- There are no undo and autosave features; Work needs to be redone in case of errors
- No offline access
Crello
Crello is primarily an image editing tool that allows users to create designs for various content, such as:
- Website assets
- Social media content
- Videos
- Animations
Key Features
- Over 25,000 pre-made templates
- A vast library of objects and templates for animations
- Over 500,000 photos from their stock image library
- Photo and design tools to quickly edit and enhance images
- Teams of up to 3 members can collaborate on the app
- Social media templates for easy customization of various content
Advantages
- Designs can be used online or for print
- The basic plan is free, while the pro plan offers a 14-day trial
- Available in 14 languages for users of different nationalities
- Has video tutorials on YouTube
Disadvantages
- The free plan has limited functionalities
- Downloaded free versions are watermarked
- The interface is not as elegant as other platforms
Stencil
Stencil is an image editing tool and graphic design software specializing in content for businesses, marketers, and bloggers.
It offers a massive library of stock photos, graphics, icons, fonts, and templates for you to use.
Key Features
- Infographic design tool
- Beautification tool (goes beyond basic editing)
- Downloads for print can be done at 300dpi
- Facebook Ad Grid allows users to layout designs correctly each time
- Integration with Stencil
- Access to over 100,000 quotes to add to your content
Advantages
- Templates are optimized for social media, typical banners, and blog requirements
- Fresh uploads of stock photos regularly
- Unique features like quotes and a social media planner allow users to create exciting content formats, especially for social media
- Users can access over 250,000 Google fonts
Disadvantages
- The free plan is limited to 10 images monthly
- Images for social media need to be resized one by one
PicMonkey
PicMonkey is graphic design software that allows users to perform basic editing functions.
With PicMonkey, users can easily create logos, social media content, edit photos, and other graphic requirements.
Key Features
- It’s easy to edit photos with their one-click editing features
- The fine touch-up tool allows users to remove blemishes instantly
- Advanced editing tools such as mirroring and double exposure can also be accessed
- Effects, textures, frames, and filters can be added to photos and graphics to elevate your content
- Tons of templates for social media, infographics, cards, and many more
- PicMonkey mobile app for on-the-go editing
Advantages
- The desktop and mobile apps have similar features
- One-click editing is very friendly, even for beginners
- Large library of fonts and other elements
Disadvantages
- It used to be free, but now there’s a small monthly fee
- The app is only available online
- Uploading of photos is a bit slow
Final Thoughts
Graphic design is an essential part of marketing, advertising, and communications in general. With the right graphics, you can create content to convey the right message, build your brand, and get more business.
We hope this article helps you find the best graphic design software for your business.
Notice: Some links in this post contain affiliate links. I’ll receive a commission if you purchase the software of one of my affiliate partners.
