Visual designing and presenting are part of students’ and professionals’ lives. With many unique programs, it’s hard to pick one. Today, we have two popular visual designing and presenting apps: Prezi and Canva.
Follow along if you are here for Prezi vs. Canva because the article compares many features of both.
Quick Prezi vs. Canva
If you are looking for a free visual designing and presenting app, you should go with Canva. Prezi is great for presentations, but its free plan is limited in many ways.
What are both
Prezi is a cloud-based visual designing, video conferencing, and presentation program. Prezi is an umbrella term for its three main programs: Prezi Design, Prezi Video, and Prezi Present.
Given its unique and elaborative user experience, it has a user base of over 100 million.
Canva, on the other hand, is a graphic design application to create image and video designs. Like Prezi, Canva has over 100 million monthly users.
Canva lets its users create presentations, posters, videos, social media posts, infographics, invitations, flyers, resumes, and more.
Unlike Prezi, Canva is one app allowing you to design and present.
Tools
Designs
Both allow you to create new designs, but Prezi does not support private designs on its free plan. All the designs you make will be publicly available.
Canva designs are private unless you share them with someone.
Winner: Canva
Related: Kapwing vs. Canva
Image options
Prezi allows you to upload pictures from your computer. You can add images from cloud storage platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive.
It also supports Unsplash and shows some recommendations. You can search for images in the search bar, but only the first few are free. In its free plan, Prezi does not support editing images.
Canva also supports uploading images from your computer. You can import from Google Drive, Dropbox, Facebook, Instagram, and Photos.
The app has thousands of images, videos, backgrounds, and icons for your designs. It also supports services like Unsplash and Pixabay through its apps section.
Furthermore, you can crop images, adjust brightness and contrast, animate, flip, and rotate. You can also apply filters and smart mockups to your pictures.
Winner: Canva
Video options
Prezi’s free version only supports video embeds (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.). Uploading your videos is not an option.
In Canva, you can upload your videos or pick from Google Drive, Dropbox, or Google Photos. You can also record yourself or use the stock videos from the Canva library.
You can cut, crop, resize, rotate, flip, and animate videos for free.
Winner: Canva
Presentation features
Prezi’s Design and Presentation presenters are different. The presentation feature of Design is not as advanced as the Presentation presenter view.
You can present designs normally or in videos, in which the design turns into a Prezi video to let you video conference.
Canva, on the other hand, has a few presentation views:
- Standard: The Standard view shows each slide as you go.
- Autoplay: You can set the time and automatically let the system change slides.
- Presenter view: This view shows your notes and upcoming slides.
- Present and record: This option allows you to show slides and record yourself.
Winner: Canva
Templates
Templates are a part of the Prezi vs. Canva battle. In each Prezi program, you find templates. Prezi offers over 1,000 templates to explore and use.
The tool can also make custom templates according to your brand style.
In Canva, you can find over 600,000 templates, of which around 250,000 are free. Canva has an extensive library with unique and all-rounded templates that are categorized and easy to access.
Winner: Canva
Which one wins: Prezi vs. Google Slides
Collaboration
Both allow you to collaborate in real time. There is no limit on how many users can be invited. You can invite the users to edit, present or comment on the project.
In Canva Team, you can add up to 4 accounts and add a team member to a design with one click.
Winner: Tie
File exporting
Prezi Free does not support exporting files for free. You will need one of the premium plans to download files.
Canva has lots of export options. You can download JPG, PNG, PDF, SVG, and GIF files. Video presentations can be downloaded in MP4 format.
Furthermore, you can create simple websites from your designs for free.
Winner: Canva
Mobile apps
Another difference is that Prezi only lets you see and present designs on mobile. To edit any, you must have a desktop PC.
The mobile app of Canva has most of the features. You can create, edit, present, download, and delete designs.
Winner: Canva
Another battle: Canva vs. PowerPoint
Plans and prices
Both, mentioned on numerous occasions, have a free plan. Prezi’s free plan is to test the app.
The Standard plan of Prezi costs $5 monthly and offers the following options:
- Unlimited files
- Premium images, icons, and backgrounds
- Advanced image editing tools
- Privacy control
The plan also brings Prezi Video and Presentation features.
The second plan is, Plus, costing $15 per month. It brings the following features:
- Standard plan+
- Smart branding
- Presentation voice record
- Offline access on the desktop app
- Remote presenting
The Premium plan costs $59 monthly and delivers presentation analytics and phone support.
Canva has Free, Pro, and Team plans. The free plan has all the basic options. You get:
- Stock content (images, icons, videos, audio, backgrounds)
- Image and video editing
- Exporting options
- Element and design animations
- Text titles
- Adding charts
- Text effects
The Pro plan brings over ten additional features, including:
- 1 TB cloud storage
- Design re-size change option
- Image background remover
- Post-scheduling to social media platforms
- Premium templates
- Design edit history
- Download designs with transparent background
- More export formats
- Custom fonts upload option
- Access to premium fonts
- Magic Write and Magic Edit AI tools
The plan costs $12.99 monthly ($119.99 yearly). The Team plan has no significant options except more users.
The Team plan costs $14.99 ($149.9 yearly) for the first five users. You can add more users to the plan.
Both Prezi and Canva offer education plans.
Recommendation and summary
Prezi has great presentation options, but I think Canva is best for designs and videos. Canva free has many features, so if you want to save money and get things done, go with Canva.
Prezi’s premium plans have amazing charts, maps, icons, and other things that will give your designs a unique touch.
If you are picky like me, you should try both before committing. Anyway, here we split unless you subscribe to the newsletter.
I hope the Prezi vs. Canva article helped. Please let me know if you missed something in the article and share it with friends.
Prezi vs. Canva: Links
Madhsudhan Khemchandani has a bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering (Honours). He has been writing articles on apps and software for over five years. He has also made over 200 videos on his YouTube channel. Read more about him on the about page.