Design platform Canva reported huge price hike sparks online backlash

Design platform Canva just expanded its suite of generative AI features and has been doing so in recent years. In fact, given how many such features are present on the platform, it should seem justified that prices for subscriptions to the platform would rise. However, what has had some people frown is actually the amount of the price increase. Now, some of the new rates are rising by over 300% in some instances, which is what shocked some users.

Canva seems to not have publicly shared its new Teams pricing structure just yet. However, there are reports that the cost of Teams in Australia will jump from $39 AUD per month for the whole team to $40.50 AUD per month… for each user! For a team of five users, this translates to an annual price increase from $480 AUD to $2,430 AUD. And this is one shocking price increase, I might add.

Canva seems to attribute the price increases to the new AI-powered features. The company reportedly told The Verge that its suite of products has grown significantly in the last two years, and new offerings like Visual Suite and Magic Studio were added to its feature set. However, it seems many users won’t be happy about having to pay that much more for AI tools.

There’s also another aspect of this. In fact, this platform was once known as an affordable variant of Adobe and other competitors.

I personally have no problem with price increases to reflect the addition of a wide variety of new features. However, this price increase seems a bit too big, and it definitely makes me raise my eyebrows.