Design platform Canva announces massive price increase and triggers online backlash

Design platform Canva has just expanded its suite of generative AI features and has been doing so for years. Given the number of such features on the platform, it should seem justified that the prices of subscriptions to the platform are increasing. However, what has made some people frown is actually the amount of the price increase. Now, some of the new prices are increasing by over 300% in some cases, which has shocked some users.

Canva Teams is a multi-user business subscription plan. Subscribers to this plan were notified of the upcoming price changes via email. And understandably, this sparked a backlash online. There were complaints from users like Jenna Harding on threads asking the company to justify the price increase.

Canva doesn't seem to have publicly announced its new pricing structure for Teams yet. However, there are reports that the cost of Teams in Australia will increase from A$39 per month for the whole team to A$40.50 per month… for each user! For a team of five users, that's an annual price increase of A$480 to A$2,430. And that's a shocking price increase, I might add.

There are similar price increases in the US as well. X user Will Sanders shared part of the Canva email he received. The quote details how his $120 per year subscription will eventually increase to $500 per year. He would get a discount though – 40% off the first year. But that still equates to $300 per year, more than double the original price he was paying so far.

Canva appears to be attributing the price increases to its new AI-powered features. The company told The Verge that its product line has grown significantly over the past two years, adding new offerings like Visual Suite and Magic Studio to its feature set. However, it seems that many users will not be happy about having to pay so much more for AI tools.

And there is another aspect: In fact, this platform was once known as a low-cost variant of Adobe and other competitors.

Personally, I don't have a problem with price increases that reflect the introduction of a variety of new features, but this price increase seems a bit too large for me and definitely raises my eyebrows.

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