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Canva Websites in 2023: Pros and Cons

Holy Canva!

Canva has absolutely exploded recently – you’ve seen this, right?

It started out with cool graphics… but in the past few years it has absolutely erupted.

Oh my!

For many of the nonprofits we work with, Canva is the go-to for creating social media posts, communications graphics, presentations or anything else that requires a creative flair. It’s FREE for nonprofits, easy to learn, and extremely capable.

Last year when we wrote this blog on this topic, we said Canva’s website-building feature may be a flat-out game changer. Now in 2023, we can say it is 100% changing. the. game. 

Earlier versions of the website option limited you to one long page (think landing page), with no menu navigation and no options for SEO. Having built a few Canva sites myself, I can confidently say they have since overcome many of these prior limitations

That being said… there are still some “Cons” to report – and we’ll get to those.

But *spoiler alert* we find there to be way more “Pros” than cons. 

Let’s get into it…

Click here for the video!

Pros

  1. Both the free and Pro versions of Canva allow you to build websites. Pro version gives you more templates to choose from.
  2. When using Canva as the hosting provider, you can develop and publish a website at completely no cost. Yup – FREE WEBSITE.
  3. Multiple templates to choose from; filters; slides to build pages,  landing, call-to-action, contact forms.
  4. Great way to quickly make a mobile-ready website with premade templates if most of your audience is viewing on mobile phones. Just make sure to check the mobile version of your site so you can fix any responsiveness issues.. As I learned in THIS video. Though you cannot directly customize a mobile version, you can somewhat control how elements appears on mobile by grouping them together so they do not separate oddly in mobile view.
  5. Great option when you need a creative and professional-looking landing page
  6. Easily customizable with all the features you would expect in Canva – can change colors, fonts, text, sizing; add links to buttons
  7. Can easily embed your Canva images and videos on the templates
  8. Newer features now allow you to simulate a multi page websites with a menu bar and the ability to link to the additional pages. True “multi page” website is still in development. 
  9. Contact form is also possible using an integration with Typeform, Google Forms, or Microsoft Forms
  10.  To extend its functionality, there are many apps (think “plugins”) that can be added into a Canva website. E.g Google Maps, Pixabay, Emoji..all the the usual apps you would expect to be able to embed. 
  11.  AI for the win! The newest, hottest, trendiest features for Canva are around, no surprise – AI!  And its quite magical. 
    1. Canva now has:
      1. Magic Write (think ChatGPT)  give it a prompt and it generates text for your site that you can refine and edit for your needs. Similar to ChatGPT, but with the convenience of having it directly in Canva.
      2. Magic Design leverages AI to use your own photos or videos to create customized templates for your image.
      3. Text to Image (think midjourney) – this is an “App” as opposed to a native element of Canva that also works from your prompts to describe the type of image you want.

Cons

  1. The URL link created with the free Canva domain has “canva” as part of the name, commnityname.my.canva.site. This is generally bad form and not exactly professional, however you can mask this with a bit.ly link. 
  2. Canva Free users can publish five (5) websites, and Canva Pro users can publish unlimited websites. If you have existing domains that you want to use, Canva Pro users can connect up to five domains to Canva. 
  3. You can purchase a domain right through Canva but it is a little pricier than standard domain providers.  You could make the argument that this cost would balance out because you don’t need a hosting provider.  
  4. Buttons do not allow for any animation when you hover over them, so it’s not always obvious that it’s a clickable button.
  5. Customized mobile view is not possible
  6. Ecommerce sites, as we know them, are not natively possible in Canva. You can embed photos of products and “buy” buttons, but they will need to be directed to external site. 
  7. While the apps greatly extend the functionality, it does come at a performance price. Adding a number of these apps, we found slows down the load time of the website. It’s not soul crushing, its something to be aware of. This is a factor in Google search rankings. 
  8. It claims to be SEO friendly, but with the absence of the industry standard measurements (Header tags, etc) it is really difficult to evaluate. The most “SEO” we have seen is the ability to add a website description.
  9. Mobile version can be difficult – expand on

What do you think? 

Drop us an email and let us know if you’re using Canva for websites or plan to in the future.