With Canva having over 100 million users, Adobe could not stop introducing a similar program.
Adobe Express is a free web-based visual designing app, but how does it compare with Canva? Let’s figure that out in the Adobe Express vs. Canva comparison.
The difference
Canva and Adobe Express are visual designing apps for creating flyers, posts, infographics, and presentations.
Canva has more options, including editing videos and docs, more graphics, animations, and templates.
Adobe Express brings simplicity with a few free premium options such as background remover, customizable shapes, Adobe Stock integration, etc.
Things I liked about Canva
More graphics
While comparing the two, Canva has more free graphics. For example, searching for “lock” will only show one free and one premium asset on Adobe. However, Canva shows hundreds of elements. The same goes for other terms.
Shortcuts
On Canva, if you hold down the alt key, you can move an element from all sizes without changing its position.
Holding down the shift key lets you resize a design proportionally. The feature is missing from its opponent.
However, holding the alt key and dragging an element duplicates it in both.
All in one search
Canva’s all-in search lets you search through graphics, photos, videos, and audio.
Purchase individual photos
You must upgrade to the premium plan on Adobe Express Cloud if you like a premium photo. However, with Canva, you can pay a one-time fee (around $1) for an individual photo.
Canva Docs
Canva has a document writing and editing feature that lets you write design-focused documents and convert them into presentations.
It also has an AI writing tool called Magic Write to generate text.
Apps
Canva supports hundreds of apps to extend its limits. Those include cloud drives to add photos from the cloud, photo editing apps, emojis, maps, and more.
Other features
There are many other features that Canava is excellent at. Those include:
- Turning your design into websites
- More graphics
- Creating videos
- More text effects
- Over 400K templates
- AI Image generator
- Color palettes and styles
- Print your design
- Font combinations
- Better search (search through text in designs)
Things I liked about Adobe Express
This part of Adobe Express vs. Canva covers the features great of Adobe Express.
Quick options
You can quickly pick a tool from the list and finish the job without entering the design interface. With Canva, if you want to do any editing tasks, you must enter the design tool.
Schedule posts
Adobe Express lets you schedule posts to social media twice per month. The option is premium in both programs, but you get two free with Adobe.
Related: Canva vs. Photoshop
Background remover
Adobe Express has a free background remover, whereas Canva has this option in its premium plan. The background remover also cuts out the transparent part of the image.
Customizable shapes
Adobe Express has shapes allow you to change the fill and stroke colors. You can also adjust the border thickness and blending of many shapes.
For example, adding a rectangle box gives you the following:
- Fill color
- Stroke color
- Stroke thickness
- Blend
- Resize
Canva has shapes, but most are not customizable. For example, you only get the rectangle shape with the fill option. The rectangle shape with stroke may be available in the graphics panel, but some are premium.
However, Canva lets you add text on top of the built-in shapes. You can write something on a rectangle or circle without adding the text element.
Better layering system
I liked the layering system of Adobe Express as it visually shows you all the layers. You can click on the layer to edit it. In Canva, the same is available with the “CTRL” key, but Adobe does it better.
Other great things
Other things Adobe Express is better than Canva are:
- Download images with transparent background
- Text styles
- Copy other designs to your designs
Related: Canva vs. Adobe InDesign
Pricing and plans
Adobe Express has one premium plan costing $9.99 per month or $99.9 per year. The plan gives you the following:
- Premium templates
- Over 160 million royalty-free Adobe Stock photos
- Your branding logos
- 100 GB file storage
- Resize images
- Schedule to social media
Canva’s premium plan has more to offer. The plan costs $12.99 or $119.9 per year. Here is the list of available options:
- Premium fonts
- Over 100 million photos, videos, and audio
- Premium graphics
- 1 TB cloud storage
- Resize image
- Background remover
- Schedule to social media
- Over 610K templates
- Design edit history
- Download designs with transparent background
- More export formats
- Upload custom fonts
Canva is also available for teams costing $14.99 or $149.9 per year for the first five users.
Which is for you
Canva has more free-to-use options and is an experienced cloud-based designing program. I suggest going with Canva for now. Adobe Express Cloud is new and has a long way to go.
Adobe Express vs. Canva: Links
Conclusion
The Adobe Express vs. Canva battle covered most of their features. Please let me know if I missed something, and I will add that to this article.
Also, don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter to stay updated with this website.