Canva, an Australian design company, has acquired U.K.-based creative tools company Affinity for an estimated $380 million. Canva aims to expand its user base to include professional designers. The acquisition aligns Canva with Affinity's culture and offers advanced capabilities to compete with Adobe, adding 3 million users and 90 employees to Canva's portfolio.

Canva's team found security risks in popular font-handling tools. For example, they found an XML vulnerability in FontTools, where the application’s SVG font subsetting feature could be exploited to allow hackers to read arbitrary files. To prevent such issues, Canva treats fonts as untrusted inputs, sandboxes font processing, uses sanitization, and collaborates with open-source maintainers by providing security patches.

Canva's acquisition of the Affinity creative software suite fills crucial gaps in its design suite with Affinity's Designer, Photo, and Publisher applications and marks a strategic move to challenge Adobe's dominance in the digital design industry.

A breakdown of how Canva kept a user from canceling their premium account. Canva turned a price increase into a marketing tactic by reminding the user that even though prices have increased to $29.99/month, they only have to continue paying $12.95/month. The brand also created loss aversion by reminding the user of the number of times they’ve used premium features. Lastly, Canva added a “Continue cancellation” CTA in a bright red button. Clever UX choice there, as people tend to not click on big red buttons.

This site contains over 45 case studies on growth strategies used by the fastest-growing digital companies in the world. These span from SEO and branding to social media and PPC. It covers brands like Canva, WebMD, LinkTree, and more.

This thread covers 12 features on Canva that will help streamline your creative workflows. Magic Switch instantly converts decks to various document types. Magic Expand rectifies awkward framing, rescues zoomed-in images, and transforms a vertical shot into a horizontal one within seconds. Magic Animation lets you draw the path for your animation and adjust the speed along the way.

Canva, a popular online editing application, has launched an Enterprise tier for large corporations that features scalable cloud storage, advanced brand controls, and enterprise-level security. It also introduced a redesigned user interface, new Work Kits for different organizational departments, upgraded AI tools in Magic Studio, and new features like variable font support and a stroke width tool.

A product showcase is an opportunity to share recent improvements, enhancements, and capabilities in your product – all bundled together into a cohesive narrative. This tactic is increasingly popular among software companies, as it enhances marketing efficiency, improves customer perception, and facilitates internal alignment. This post includes examples from Shopify, Canva, Hubspot, Workhuman, and VTEX.

Canva's CEO Melanie Perkins discussed in an interview how the design software company continually innovates to make design accessible and user-friendly, including leveraging AI tools without the tension faced by Adobe. Canva's expansion into enterprise solutions presents a significant redesign to better cater to big businesses while maintaining its mission to democratize creativity. The conversation also touched on Canva's cultural values and the ethical considerations around AI, illustrating the company's dedication to balancing innovation and responsibility.

Earlier this year, Canva ran an experiment on its “Teams” plan pricing that evaluated two attributes: price per person and minimum commitment. The brand tested 4 variants, ranging from $60-$159.90 per seat and up to 5 minimum seats. The winning plan was $100 per seat with a 3-seat minimum. The results suggest that showing the cost per seat, rather than a total for all seats, is a better strategy. Additionally, round numbers (e.g. $100) can actually perform better than lesser non-round numbers (e.g. $99.90).

Canva's product analytics pipeline collects 25 billion events per day with high uptime, using Protobuf to define event schemas and Datumgen to generate code and enforce compatibility rules. The event collection process starts with analytics clients on various platforms, then events are validated and enriched in ingest-workers before being sent to a Kinesis Data Stream (KDS). KDS serves as the primary streaming platform, with SQS as a fallback for overflow protection and failover mode.

Canva has acquired Leonardo.ai, an Australian startup that specializes in generative AI content and research, to enhance its suite of visual AI tools. Financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. The acquisition will integrate Leonardo.ai's technology rapidly into Canva's Magic Studio products while maintaining Leonardo.ai as a separate entity. This move positions Canva to better compete against Adobe, particularly its Firefly generative AI models.

A decade after its launch and with over 190 million users, Canva continues revolutionizing design by focusing on workplace collaboration. The refreshed brand system enhances its global identity while allowing for local adaptability. Key updates include a simplified visual style, a more humanized user interface, and increased accessibility.

Canva's collaboration team implemented real-time mouse pointers to make its whiteboard product better. Initially, they utilized a backend-centric architecture using WebSockets and Redis, which scaled to support hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users, but had limitations in update rate. Recognizing these limitations, the team migrated to a WebRTC-based architecture, which allowed direct peer-to-peer communication between clients, reducing latency and improving scalability.

Canva's aggressive rollout of generative AI features will significantly hike its subscription costs next year. Canva Teams users globally will see a price increase of over 300%, with US rates jumping from $120 to $500 per year for up to five users, discounted to $300 for the first year. Canva justified this by citing its new AI tools' enhanced "product experience" and value. Some users have criticized the steep price hike and are considering switching to alternatives like Adobe.

Canva is increasing prices for its Teams subscriptions by over 300% due to new generative AI features. Users report prices rising from $120 to $500 annually, though a discount brings it down to $300 for the first year. These changes reflect the value added by AI tools like Magic Media and Magic Expand.

Rising prices for Canva Teams accounts, from $120 to $500 annually, have sparked customer frustration. The company cites new AI features and an expanded product experience as reasons for the price increase and has offered a 40% discount for 12 months. Despite this, Canva still faces backlash, as many question its claims of affordability.

Canva has recently introduced significant enhancements to its developer platform, aimed at improving the experience for app developers and users alike. These updates include the integration of premium apps into Canva's Pro subscription, a new translation feature for app content, improved app discoverability, and expanded API functionalities. Since launching its developer program in June 2023, Canva has seen over 300 apps created by developers, which have collectively been used more than 1 billion times. Notable examples include the Meta Design Check app, which assists users in applying best creative practices from Meta. One of the key changes is the introduction of premium apps that will be accessible to users with Pro or higher subscriptions. Previously, developers could charge for their services without Canva taking a cut, but now Canva is offering a monetization model for select developers, supported by a $50 million developer innovation fund that rewards apps based on their usage. To enhance user experience, Canva has revamped how apps are discovered on the platform. Instead of being confined to a separate apps tab, apps will now appear in various sections, including the Text tab, Elements tab, and Photo Editor, as well as within Canva Docs. This change aims to make it easier for users to find and utilize these tools. Additionally, Canva is launching a translation tool that allows users to translate app content into their preferred languages, further broadening accessibility. The new API capabilities include a content query API that enables users to interact with design content and a design editing API that can create design elements based on user prompts. There is also a new authentication API for secure access through Canva accounts and a tables API for creating tables within designs. Anwar Haneef, Canva's GM and Head of Ecosystem, emphasized the careful consideration that went into building the developer platform, particularly regarding data sharing and flexibility for developers. Canva also introduced a Connect API, allowing companies to integrate Canva's functionality into their own environments, exemplified by the recent launch of Canva for Salesforce, which helps sales teams create presentations from customer data. Overall, these updates reflect Canva's commitment to fostering a robust ecosystem for developers while enhancing the user experience through improved app integration and functionality.

The landscape of search engine optimization (SEO) is undergoing significant transformation, primarily driven by the rise of user-generated content (UGC). As companies strive to enhance their growth strategies, SEO remains a critical component, but its dynamics are shifting. Many businesses are experiencing a decline in their SEO performance, often attributed to the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. AI has introduced new challenges, such as AI-generated snippets that occupy a substantial portion of search results, pushing traditional organic listings further down the page. Additionally, tools like ChatGPT have begun to utilize existing SEO content without proper attribution, complicating the competitive landscape for businesses relying on traditional content strategies. Despite these challenges, the notion that SEO is dying is misleading; rather, it is evolving, and the key to thriving in this new environment lies in authenticity. To stand out in a world increasingly dominated by AI-generated content, companies must pivot towards creating genuine, user-driven content. UGC is poised to become the cornerstone of future content strategies because it is unique, authentic, and defensible—qualities that cannot be easily replicated by competitors. Successful examples of UGC implementation can be seen in companies like Miro, Notion, Amplitude, Figma, and Canva, each of which has effectively harnessed user contributions to enhance their content offerings and improve SEO performance. However, integrating UGC into a business model is not without its challenges. Not all products lend themselves to user-generated content, and companies must ensure that the process of creating such content is seamless and does not detract from the user experience. Additionally, businesses need to cultivate demand for UGC, incentivize users to contribute, and recognize that building a robust UGC program is a long-term investment that requires time and effort. To effectively leverage UGC for SEO, companies should focus on activating their existing customer base. By embedding UGC into product journeys, businesses can validate the quality of the content and generate initial traffic, which signals to search engines the relevance of the content. This approach not only enhances SEO but also fosters a sense of community and loyalty among users, as they are more likely to share their contributions, further amplifying the brand's reach. In conclusion, the future of SEO will be anchored in user-generated content, moving away from solely company-generated material. As AI continues to excel in generating common responses, authentic and niche content created by users will rise above the noise, creating a sustainable growth engine for businesses. Embracing this shift not only benefits SEO but also strengthens user engagement and loyalty, ultimately leading to a more resilient brand presence in the digital landscape.