One of the most frequent questions I get asked about The Brand Spanking You Club membership is “How is this different from Canva Pro?”

And it’s an excellent question.

I’m a BIG fan of Canva Pro, and definitely recommend having it in order to get the most out of Canva. But I also- obviously- believe using 3rd party templates and photos just explode the design and time-saving possibilities of Canva.

So let’s break it down.

First, the reasons why I love having a Canva Pro account:

THE BRAND KIT

One of my fav Canva Pro features.

I love having this at my fingertips when I’m designing assets, and actually keep the brand kit open when I’m working on things outside of Canva too. Like my website, or sales & landing pages. It makes copying and pasting hex codes from one platform to another hella convenient.

It’s also beyond handy to have my color palette and logos right there in Canva anytime I’m making a new design. If I had to enter in brand colors manually every time I wanted to change a font color or element, it would probably only take about 2.5 seconds before I wanted to poke my eyeballs out.

AND I love that you can have multiple color palettes.

For me, this means I have a separate palette in my brand kit for all the different template collections I have in the shop and membership

For you, this could mean separate color palettes for different offerings you have (if they’re branded slightly differently), or different channels of your business. For example: Maybe you have a tighter/smaller palette for most of your assets, but for Instagram you expand that to 7-8 colors to have a little more fun.

KEEP ALL YOUR BRAND ASSETS TOGETHER AND ORGANIZED WITH UNLIMITED FOLDERS

It’s like your hard drive organization, except right inside of Canva.

Folders are a lifesaver in Canva. First, you can upload all of your brand photos and keep them organized into separate categories for easy access. (Headshots, workspace, process, etc.)

You can do the same thing with stock photos you purchase too. Upload, and then keep similar photos together by category to make it fast and easy to pull marketing materials together.

Use a lot of photos available in Canva? Organize them into folders too. This drastically reduces time spent designing assets and hunting for just the right image.

Do the same thing with graphic elements too.

If you find an element you love, click the 3 little dots and then “show me more like this” link to see similar elements. Go through and save everything you like into its own folder.

BOOM! You just created a library brand curated elements, with no need to endless scroll every single time you design something new. (Cue the angel chorus!)

But it doesn’t stop there. I suggest keeping your designs organized into folders for content creation, website graphics, and specific offers. Again- having things organized this way drastically reduces the amount of time you’ll be searching around in Canva, and 9 times out of 10, when I go to the folder for “Instagram posts” for instance, I can use a post I’ve already created and just tweak it a little bit.

DOWNLOAD GRAPHICS WITH A TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND

This is normally something you would have to hire a designer to do for you. And it’s something that comes in handy when you need a graphic that sits on top of another color on your website for example. With the free version of Canva, you can only download graphics with a solid background.

EASILY RESIZE AND ADAPT DESIGNS

I think this feature needs a little work, but it’s still super helpful!

Say you create a blog post banner, but then realize you want to use the same graphic for a Facebook group header. Well, you can just click “copy & resize” and Canva will auto-magically create a design for you with the same graphics but with new dimensions.

I almost always have to do some tweaking to the new design, but this function easily shaves 75% off the time.

ACCESS PRO-LEVEL TOOLS

Background remover, say what?? Seriously, having removed thousands of backgrounds from images throughout my design career the old-fashioned way, I can tell you, this tool is some serious witchcraft.

It’s so freaky good, that I rarely go into photoshop to remove backgrounds anymore.

Another pro-level feature is having access to more animations, music, and transitions to create videos.

Yes, there are animations available at the free level, but Canva pro opens up so many more possibilities. Not to mention, having access to permissions-managed music.

I recently created a graphic video- all inside of Canva- in about 1.5 hours. (You can see it here.) This same video would have taken me at least 2 days (probably longer) if I was using traditional video editing and animation software. Mostly because I’m not super comfortable using the pro software.

I would have gotten it done, but for sure would have wanted to punch a puppy at some point. And remember, my experience & comfort level with pro software like this is probably about 2000% higher than the average bear.

ACCESS TO WAY MORE (AND HIGHER-QUALITY) GRAPHIC ELEMENTS

Using the pro-level graphic elements will help your designs stand out even more. I really don’t have much more to say about that. There are just so many more of them.

COLLABORATE WITH TEAM MEMBERS

This is an incredible feature to have as your team grows. Especially because you can assign different roles to different people.

I realize this isn’t going to be super enticing to a solopreneur or someone just using a VA right now, but it is worth mentioning.

CREATE AND SCHEDULE SOCIAL POSTS RIGHT FROM CANVA

This is an amazing feature, and probably saves a ton of time, while eliminating the need for other scheduling apps, but honestly I haven’t used it. If I experiment with it in the future I’ll come back and update you.

As you read through this list, did you notice anything?

I didn’t mention the templates or photos once as a benefit of Canva Pro.

Yes, with a pro membership you’ll have access to more templates and photos, and that’s great. But that’s the last reason why I would sign up for Canva Pro. And here’s why:

YOU WANT YOUR BRANDING AND DESIGNS TO STAND OUT MORE

Have you ever had that “EUREKA!” moment when you finally find a really cool template after spending WAY too long scrolling through all the options in Canva?

And then you see approximately 1 billion other people also using that template on their insta feed because they felt the same way?

Yeah… kinda takes the steam out of that super cool graphic you just created.

You want to be unique. You want to stand out. And it’s hard to do that when you look exactly like all your competitors.

YOU WANT MARKETING ASSETS THAT EASILY COORDINATE WITH EACH OTHER

Another downfall with Canva’s templates is that there are no collections. It’s all just a random jumble of designs.

You find an Insta post template you like here, a workbook template you like there, and then maybe a slide deck template that floats your boat too. The only problem? They’re all COMPLETELY different. And sure, you can add your own fonts and colors, but it ends up looking like your brand is having an identity crisis when you see everything together.

I can’t tell you how many people say they end up with a graveyard of abandoned design projects in their Canva accounts. And this is probably the #1 reason why. The templates weren’t originally designed to work together as a cohesive brand. So unless you have a background in design, you’re gonna struggle to get them to look alike.

This is a big reason why people hire professional designers to create cohesive graphics and templates for them.

A membership with access to coordinated design collections completely erases this headache. It’s the happy medium- the secret sauce if you will- between DIY-ing everything and hiring a designer.

THE STOCK IMAGES ARE KINDA “MEH”

Don’t get me wrong, there are some great images in Canva, and I do use them. But for the most part, I spend WAY too much time trying to find high-quality gems.

And let me tell you… finding high-quality, diverse images of people with different backgrounds, ethnicities, body types, ages, and abilities… forget about it.

I hope to add a library of diverse lifestyle images to The BSY membership someday, but for now, my go-to resource for images like this is Styled Stock Society.

However, if you’re in a health & wellness niche- I’m your gal for stock images.

THE SELECTION IS NOT SPECIFIC TO ONLINE ENTREPRENEURS

The templates are made for everyone (teachers, girl scout leaders, church leaders, brick and mortar & e-commerce stores, etc.)

This means there's A LOT of searching and sorting in order to get to the templates that work best for online businesses, coaches, and service providers. OR you need to spend a lot of time adapting a template you like to your own needs. Only to end up back at problems 1 & 2 above.

None of this is to discourage you from using the templates and images inside of a free or Canva pro account. If they work for you, you’re savvy with design, and enjoy adapting the templates to fit your own needs, GO FOR IT!

I’m never, ever about adding unnecessary expenses or fluff to your business if you don’t need it.

But… I also know there are A LOT of online entrepreneurs (myself included) who would happily pay a small fee to have these headaches eliminated.

And that’s exactly why I created my Canva template shop: To bridge the gap between DIY-ing and hiring a professional designer.

Because I know a lot of coaches, service providers, and online entrepreneurs spend a lot of time in the stage where they’re not ready to hire a designer and photographer for all of their assets but they’re also DONE with the whole DIY design thing.

AND- if you’re not interested in any of those Canva Pro features I mentioned above? I’ve got good news for you.

I almost exclusively use free design elements (layered and used in unique ways) in my templates. That way, you can still get the most out of them EVEN IF you don’t have a Pro account. You’re welcome. 😉