Instagram marketing isn’t as simple as it used to be. Gone are the days when you could just upload a retro image, use a few hashtags, and be done with it. Today, with Instagram stories in the mix, which alone offer a wide selection of features, things have become rather overwhelming.

But if you’re aware of the basics and the best practices, you can start creating eye-catching stories in no time.

Whether you’re an independent influencer or just someone who manages a business profile, keep reading. In this article, we’ll discuss:

• The ideal Instagram dimensions for stories
• How to design image stories using templates
• Using the Instagram app to create and/or publish stories
• Best practices for designing stories

Let’s get started.

What are the Recommended Instagram Story Dimensions?

The ideal Instagram story dimensions are 1080 x 1920 pixels. That’s 1080 pixels for width and 1920 pixels for height.

Or you can say that the aspect ratio when it comes to Instagram story size is 9:16.

Additionally, depending on the format of the content you’re uploading as the story, there are certain conditions that must be met.

Let’s take a quick look:

• For Images – besides getting the correct picture size, your file size must not exceed 30MB. Also, Instagram only supports JPG and PNG.
• For Videos – the permitted Instagram video size limit for stories is 4GB. The video file format must be either in MP4 or MOV. Finally, make sure that the video length does not exceed 15 seconds.

That’s all fine, but why is Instagram so strict when it comes to video/image size?

Social apps prefer these dimensions for stories because portrait photos (and videos) are perfect for smartphones.

Furthermore, if you don’t use the right dimensions, Instagram will crop parts of your story, which is the last thing you want.

Quick Note: The recommended dimensions for an Instagram profile picture are 110 x 110 pixels. Profile pictures are an important part of your overall profile as it is the first thing users see when they come across your handle.

Why Instagram Stories Rock

Because of busy Instagram feeds and fussy algorithms, reach has become a serious problem.

Despite there being more than 500 million daily active users, getting engagement on regular Instagram photos/videos is tough – even from the people who follow you.

However, with IG stories, which are conveniently placed at the top of the feed, you can reach a larger chunk of your followers.

This can help you:

• Market a new product or a service
• Get people to visit certain links
• Engage with your followers by asking them questions
• Just share whatever else you want

And the most important part? People love stories!

While there could be a ton of underlying reasons for that, the main reason is the convenience of just tapping to go from one story to another, which is a lot better than scrolling through a never-ending feed.

All things considered, if you’re not using Instagram stories, you’re potentially missing out on higher organic reach and engagement.

How to Design an Instagram Story from Scratch [Using Templates]

Now that you know the perfect Instagram story dimensions, is there an easy way to create one from scratch?

Instagram offers a lot of built-in features, such as stickers, filters, etc., that can help create engaging stories.

However, if you want your stories to stand out, you need to aim for high quality in terms of the design.

With Pixelied – one of the leading sites like Canva and a leaner alternative to Photoshop – you don’t need to be an experienced designer to create professional-looking Instagram posts.

Thanks to our wide-selection of fully-customizable templates for Instagram images (for stories, regular posts, and ads), you can easily craft high-level content in a matter of minutes.

Just follow these steps:

Step 1: Open Pixelied’s Editor [No Signup]

To starting creating eye-catching Instagram stories, simply go to our free Pixelied editor.

On the left sidebar, you’ll be able to choose from hundreds of stunning Instagram story templates with its recommended size dimensions.

In case you missed it, you’ll get access to all of the essential features that you need to create stunning IG stories for absolutely free.

Step 2: Choose a Template That You Like

If you’re looking for a specific template or niche, use the search box to filter templates based on tags or keywords.

Simply click on any template you like to start editing.

Step 3: Customize It However You Want

Pixelied offers a comprehensive online editing tool, packed with some of the best in-demand features (a few of which are exclusive).

Here’s a quick snapshot with a sample template locked and loaded:

There’s a lot you can do with Pixelied’s editor. Here’s a quick overview of the key features that it has to offer:

• Library of Stock Images – in addition to the templates, you can also access a vast library of millions of stock images. These images are sourced directly from Unsplash, which won’t require you to switch between tabs.
• Fonts and Text Manipulation – access over 900 Google fonts on the editor in real-time. Furthermore, you can tweak your typography however you want, with features like letter-spacing and line-height.
• Premium Icons and Elements – make your images more compelling by adding a premium icon or an engaging shape/element.
• File Uploading – you can also upload and use your own images, and save your final files on the secured cloud server of Pixelied.

In addition to the above, you can also add borders, shadows, change the position of layers, download unlimited images, and get access to 2 folders.

How to Publish/Create a Story on the Instagram App

Once you’re done designing an image for your Instagram story, all that’s left to do is to publish your masterpiece.

To do this, open your Instagram account on a mobile device (the image you want to upload should also be saved in that device).

• On the feed, tap on “Your Story” in the top-left corner of the screen.
• Select the pre-made image from your camera roll.
• Add stickers, filters, links, or anything else to augment your story
• Hit publish.

Quick Note: Stories disappear after 24 hours, but you can also save your favorite ones and place them on top of your Instagram profile.

Best Practices and Tips for Creating Super-Engaging Instagram Stories

Of course, getting the Instagram story dimensions right is only one part of the puzzle.

The real challenge lies in actually creating Instagram stories from scratch.

Even with the perfect dimensions, a mediocre-looking story won’t do you much good.

Here are some best practices to help you nail your vertical photos/videos for Instagram:

1.      Use Limited Text

As with everything else on social media in general, when it comes to Instagram stories, less is more.

Unlike Instagram and Facebook ads, adding too much text to your stories won’t affect the reach.

But it will negatively impact the visual appeal and potentially the engagement you receive.

Even if you’re not publishing a story ad, it’s best that you stick to the 20% text rule (text should cover 20% of the total pixels of the image).

This is because Instagram is primarily supposed to be a visuals-only platform, and that’s what users expect to get out of it.

2.      Leverage Calls-to-Action

If you’re not sharing anything personal, don’t forget to utilize the call-to-action feature offered by Instagram stories.

These can work wonders in terms of getting clicks/unique visitors on your website (via a traditional CTA button) or get them to check out your offerings (with the “swipe up” option).

With a CTA, you can get more bang for your buck and actually achieve a tangible goal with the help of your stories.

3.      Don’t be Afraid to Whip Out the Cam

So far, we’ve talked about using custom designs for your Instagram stories.

However, you don’t always have to use them for your stories.

Even if you’re a brand, you can always take relevant images and shoot videos of literally anything you want that provides a ‘behind the scenes’ look or just your human side.

However, to stick to Instagram stories dimensions, always shoot images/videos right from the app (as opposed to using the native camera app and uploading the content from your camera roll).

4.      Experiment with the Layout Feature

Instagram recently launched a new layouts feature that lets you share multiple photos and videos in a single story (like a collage).

To use this feature, select “Layout” from the standard list of features (like Boomerang, Superzoom, etc.).

Then select any layout that you like, upload the content to each “section,” and you’re good to go.

5.      Create Something Engaging On-the-Go

Another great thing about Instagram stories is that you don’t necessarily have to design anything from scratch, take a photo, or shoot a video.

You can simply use the “Create” feature to whip up something amazing on-the-go by selecting a background and writing text.

Furthermore, you can make things more interesting by adding a poll, doing shout outs, asking your followers questions, and even share GIFs (sourced from GIPHY).

Wrapping it Up

Let’s face it: It’s not easy being an Instagrammer.

Perfect Instagram story dimensions aside, there’s a lot that goes into crafting compelling content.

But pre-made templates, a user-friendly editor, and sufficient know-how of what to do should make things easier.

The post What are the Ideal Instagram Story Dimensions? [+Best Practices] appeared first on Pixelied Blog.

There are a lot of factors that go into earning views. Apart from the obvious factors, like the quality of the content and promotional tactics, a key factor is presentation.

And a critical element of presentation is having captivating and custom thumbnails.

To help you get them right, in this article, we’ll discuss:

• The recommended YouTube thumbnail size or dimensions
• Why you should create custom thumbnails in the first place (and how to create one with readymade templates)
• Expert graphic design tips to help you design eye-catching thumbnails
• A step-by-step process to adding a thumbnail image to your YouTube videos

Let’s dive in.

So, What’s the Perfect YouTube Thumbnail Size?

The ideal YouTube thumbnail size is 1280 x 720 pixels, with a minimum width of 640px, according to Google’s official recommendations. YouTube won’t accept files that don’t meet these requirements.

In addition to the above, the video’s thumbnail should also:

• Have an aspect ratio of 16:9 (as it’s common in YouTube players)
• Not exceed more than 2MB in file size (you can use image size compression tools for this purpose)
• Be in the JPG, PNG, or GIF image format (no other file type will be accepted)

While it’s certainly important to focus on the creative aspects of these previews, if you don’t get the YouTube thumbnail size right, it won’t matter much.

It is important to note that the thumbnail dimensions are different from that of the YouTube video size which is 1920 x 1080 px.

Why Even Bother Creating YouTube Thumbnails?

We’re sure you already know this, but YouTube automatically sets a thumbnail, which is actually a screenshot/still image of a section in your video.

If that’s the case—why go through all that trouble of designing a custom video thumbnail (while making sure that you stick to a certain image size)?

Well, this goes back to what we highlighted earlier—the need to cut through the noise and stand out from millions of videos.

To be specific, having a custom thumbnail can help:

• Increase Views – the first thing that potential viewers see is the thumbnail. By making it captivating, your chances of higher click-through rates and views can increase. Since viewers are now generally more selective of what they click on, you probably won’t go anywhere with a generic preview image.
• Make Your Video Shareable – an alluring thumbnail can also make your video more shareable on social media and other platforms, driving even more people to click on it.

How to Create a Custom YouTube Thumbnail in Less Than 10 Minutes

Now that we’ve gone over the ideal YouTube thumbnail dimensions and why you need to create one, how do you create one?

Check out this video to learn how to create YouTube thumbnails that will get you more views and make you stand out from all the rest!

You could design a custom thumbnail image from scratch on Adobe Photoshop.

But what if you don’t know how to use Photoshop or simply don’t have the time?

Well, you can always use Pixelied—an easy to use and cost-effective alternative to Photoshop, Canva, Snappa, and other popular graphic design tools.

With our graphic design tool, it’s possible to create a thumbnail in less than 10 minutes.

Just follow these steps:

Step 1: Open Pixelied’s Fast & Easy Editor

To start designing click-worthy YouTube thumbnails, simply go to our free thumbnail editor.

On the left panel, you can go through hundreds of converting YouTube thumbnail templates that are ready to use and customize.

Step 2: Select a YouTube Thumbnail Template

Hers’s where the fun part begins.

One of the key offerings of Pixelied is its vast library of ready-to-use and fully-customizable templates for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitch, SoundCloud, and of course, YouTube.

This means you no longer have to worry about getting the YouTube thumbnail size right.

In addition to thumbnails, you can find a template and ideas for YouTube channel art and end screen (in the ideal size).

Step 3: Customize it to Your Liking

Once you select a template that you fancy from the list, it’ll load onto the editor where you can customize it however you like.

This is what it looks like:

Here’s what you can do with Pixelied’s editor:

• Use Royalty-Free Stock Images – you can replace the images in your templates with other royalty-free images sourced from Unsplash. Simply select “Images” from the toolbar and browse/use the images right there on the tool (no need to switch tabs).
• Add Custom Text – you can edit and manipulate the text however you want. Select from over 900 Google fonts to get the look you’re after.
• Use Exciting Design Elements and Icons – want to add a creative touch to your thumbnail? Use a design element or an icon (they’re free).
• Upload Files – you can also upload and use your own files (SVG and vectors included). These can be your portraits, logos, or literally anything else.

Additionally, Pixelied lets you add borders and shadows to individual elements. You can also decide the placement of layers (in the front, behind, etc.).

When you’re done, click on the download button at the top-right corner.

To learn more, you can check out our in-depth post on using Pixelied to enhance your social media design.

7 Essential Tips for Creating Attention-Grabbing YouTube Thumbnails

All things considered, creating a YouTube thumbnail is a piece of cake.

However, creating a GREAT YouTube thumbnail can be a bit tricky.

Don’t worry though—by sticking to these 7 thumbnail best practices, you’ll be alright:

1.      Make Your Thumbnail Relevant

Let’s start off with the basics.

Your YouTube thumbnail should be 100% relevant to the actual content of your video.

You can make it intriguing and mysterious, as long as they’re somehow related to the actual substance of your video.

But whatever you do—avoid clickbait. In the context of thumbnails, it means:

• Writing grand claims
• Using inappropriate content
• Adding unrealistic images

Here’s exhibit A:

I’m no aviation experts, but that can’t be right.

You might be wondering—“But that video has 1.6M views! Isn’t that good?”

YouTube doesn’t only look at the total number of views. It also considers a metric known as audience retention, which basically tells you how much of the video your viewers actually watched.

If most of your viewers didn’t even make it to half of the video, what’s the point?

And even if you do retain a significant percentage of your audience, you don’t want to use clickbait-y thumbnails and video titles, as it will affect your brand in the long-run.

Your thumbnail should be of high quality, captivating, and relevant.

2.      Select Your Image Carefully

This is somewhat related to the previous point.

You can’t just add any old image to your YouTube thumbnail design.

Here are your options:

• Select a relevant royalty-free stock image
• Get some pictures of yourself and add some text/icons/images to make it look better
• Use custom illustrations

Here’s an example:

Vsauce (Michael Stevens) sometimes uses his interesting and often mysterious portraits for his thumbnails.

In the end, the image should help your thumbnail stand out and blend properly with the other design elements.

Just make sure that it fits within the YouTube thumbnail size and doesn’t look bizarre.

3.      Choose Contrasting Colors to Stand Out

What do the best YouTube thumbnails have in common?

Well, a lot of things. But one major quality is contrast.

By using the right colors for the background, typography, images, and other design elements and making sure that they complement one another with the right level of contrast, you can turn any thumbnail into a magnet for impressions and clicks.

Here’s a small demonstration:

As you can see, if the color of the different elements (in this case, the background and the text) don’t stand out, the viewers might not be able to distinguish between them.

Here’s a good example:

The vibrant colors of the image and the typography are all spot-on.

Now here’s a bad example (i.e. what not to do):

You might be able to comfortably read that on a large screen, but on smaller devices, like smartphones, some people would need to squint.

4.      Summarize Your Video Title

This isn’t necessary, but it certainly can go a long way in making your video’s thumbnail more interesting.

If you can, summarize your video’s title (or at least the key selling points) and add it as copy to your thumbnail.

Your goal is to have the least amount of words on the image as possible, like so:

If you have a long title, don’t make the mistake of using it word-for-word as the copy of the thumbnail.

5.      Leverage Whitespace

You don’t have to fill the entire 1280px X 720px space with design elements.

In fact, I advise against it.

To give your images a clean, professional look, make sure that you have a good amount of whitespace.

Here’s a nice example:

Keep in mind that “whitespace” in this context doesn’t necessarily have to be white. It’s just a loose term that’s used to describe breathing room.

6.      Aim for Consistency

This is another tip that’s optional.

However, it can help make your YouTube channel look more professional and coherent: Aiming for consistency when designing your YouTube thumbnails.

This could include:

• Typography
• Color scheme
• Sticking to a particular art style or images

Doing so can help you establish a brand for yourself and make your videos more recognizable over time.

7.      Make Sure to Follow Community Guidelines

Last but not least, besides the YouTube thumbnail size and the best practices, make sure that you follow the community guidelines set by Google.

According to these guidelines, your thumbnails must not include:

• Hate speech
• Nudity or provocative substance
• Dangerous or harmful content
• Violence

If you don’t abide by the rules, YouTube will reject your thumbnail.

If this happens repeatedly, you might even lose your custom thumbnail privileges (yup, it’s a thing) or even have your YouTube account terminated.

How to Add Thumbnails to Your YouTube Video

Now that you’ve created your custom YouTube thumbnail image, it’s time to show it to the world.

To upload custom thumbnails, follow these steps (for desktop):

• Head over to YouTube Studio (if you’re already logged in, this link should take you to the YouTube Studio dashboard of your channel).
• In YouTube Studio, select “Videos” from the menu you see on the left.

• Scroll down to the video you want to add a thumbnail to, hover your cursor over it, and click on the editing icon.

• Under “Thumbnail,” click on “Upload thumbnail” to select the image file from your device (make sure it does not exceed the maximum file size limit).

• Once it finishes uploading, and everything seems alright, click on “Save” in the top right corner.

And that’s it.

Wrapping it Up

Getting the ideal YouTube thumbnail size is just one piece of the puzzle.

The hard part lies in rolling your sleeves up and actually designing the image.

But with the right tool and all those tips we went through at your disposal, creating YouTube thumbnails should be a breeze.

The post What’s the Ideal YouTube Thumbnail Size? [+Tips & Templates] appeared first on Pixelied Blog.

A simple Google search will reveal that there are quite a few Canva alternatives in the market today.

However, there’s a new player in town that’s giving all the existing social media graphics tools a run for their money – Pixelied.

In this article, we’ll perform in-depth reviews of both Pixelied and Canva templates, and see which one is the better platform when it comes to designing content for social media marketing.

Let’s jump right in.

A Brief Introduction of Canva & What it Can Do

Out of all online designing tools, Canva is one of the most popular ones.

That’s because this powerful platform allows you to create everything – from business cards, to infographics, and of course, social media design in between.

You can also use it to create visual content for the purpose of email marketing.

And that only scratches the surface.

In addition to the free templates (more on that later), Canva offers the following features:

• Stock Photos – you can select from a vast library of stock images on the Canva editor and use them conveniently in your designs.
• Elements – you can also add eye-catching elements to enhance the look and feel of your visual content through Canva’s drag and drop capabilities.
• Typography – choose from a large list of serif, sans-serif, and cursive fonts.
• Folders – organize your masterpieces in folders for ease of access.

Furthermore, Canva offers videos, a moodboard creator, and the ability to integrate with a number of platforms.

All things considered, it is a solid platform.

However, it’s not exactly the most cost-effective solution.

Enter: Pixelied – A Promising Alternative to Canva for Small Businesses

Pixelied is a new graphic design tool that packs the same level of features as some of the popular options, but in a more cost-friendly package.

In fact, this platform was created specifically for small business owners and individuals.

Whether you’re a social media marketer, blogger, rookie designer, or just someone who needs to whip something up for their personal project – Pixelied is for you.

Like Canva, Pixelied also offers social media templates, and a myriad of other freebie features and capabilities, including:

• Advanced Editor – customize your social media templates to your liking. The editor allows you to resize, remove backgrounds, add typography, borders, shadows, incorporate elements and icons, and much more.
• SVG/Vector Editing – Pixelied also lets you upload SVG/vector files and change their colors. Not a lot of online design platforms are offering this feature.
• Royalty-Free Stock Images – source millions of royalty-free stock images (from Unsplash) right there on the editor. No need to switch tabs.
• Typography Options – choose from over 900 Google fonts (no need to download). There are text manipulation options as well, including the option to change line height and space.
• Mockups – Pixelied allows you to create professional and realistic mockups of your apps, websites and presentations in a few simple clicks.
• Illustrations – Pixelied provides high-quality, 1000+ hand-drawn illustrations. They’re the perfect fit for your landing pages, softwares and applications.

In addition to the above, Pixelied also lets you remove backgrounds from images using state-of-the-art AI program and even organize your work in folders.

With the basic introductions of Canva and Pixelied out of the way, let’s take a detailed view on the templates that they have to offer (specifically for social media design).

An In-Depth Review of Canva Templates

Compared to Pixelied, Canva templates offer more variety if you consider all categories (personal, business, education, marketing designs, etc.).

However, in terms of social media, it’s the other way around.

In any case, Canva’s template designs are quite decent, and most importantly, free.

You can easily find templates for the following social network platforms:

a)      Instagram

Instagram is one of the original platforms that were exclusively built for visual content.

With the Canva Instagram templates, you can create professional-looking content for the ‘gram, including:

• Instagram Story – with Canva, you don’t necessarily have to create your Instagram stories from scratch.
• Instagram Post – get highly engaging templates for Instagram posts.

b)      Facebook

Out of all social networks, Facebook has the most diverse dimension requirements for different types of content (regular posts, covers, ads, etc.).

You can get ready-made Canva designs for:

• Facebook Post – publish scroll-stopping posts from your Facebook page or profile to captivate your audience.
• Facebook Cover – professional-looking covers that you can tweak to your liking.

Canva doesn’t have a separate category for Facebook ads.

c)      Twitter

You can’t use the same image you posted on your Facebook page to your Twitter account (and vice versa).

You’ll risk some of the content being cut off on the timelines of your followers, as the requirements for Twitter header dimensions for both platforms differ.

Using Photoshop to repurpose your posts for Twitter can be time-consuming, however, with Canva, you can do that in a few simple clicks (or use templates for new posts instead of designing them from scratch).

d)      Pinterest

Last but not least, Canva also offers ready-to-use and customizable templates for Pinterest pins.

You can create and publish pin-worthy content in a matter of a few minutes.

How to Use Canva Templates to Create Eye-Catching Graphics?

To start using Canva templates, you must first create a Canva account (by signing up).

Once you’ve signed up/logged in through Facebook or Google, simply click on or hover your cursor over “Templates” in the website’s menu bar.

From there, select what you want to create (Instagram story, Facebook post, etc.) under “social media.” This will take you to a new page where you can browse through the entire selection of the available Canva templates for that specific content type.

Click on any template you fancy, and it will take you to the editor, where you can customize it however you like.

Here’s what it looks like:

The example above shows the template for an Instagram story.

You can then change the background images, add elements, text, music, and even place animations (this option is only available for certain template types).

Canva Pricing

As of now, Canva offers the following three plans:

• Free – includes templates, all the basic features listed above (except for the ability to resize templates), option to export files in different formats (including PDF, PNG, and JPEG), team sharing, 1 GB’s worth of storage, and 2 folders.
• Pro – this includes everything the free plan offers, as well as, brand kit (option to upload logos, brand colors, and fonts), more templates, option to download videos, 100 GB’s worth of storage space, and much more. It costs $12.95 per user per month (or $9.95/user/month when billed annually).
• Enterprise – perfect for larger teams and agencies, this plan includes everything the pro plan offers, along with other exciting features, and more storage space, to name a few. This plan should set you back by $30 per user per month (billed annually). However, price may vary according to requirements.

While Canva is an almost complete platform, it isn’t exactly cheap.

What About the Pixelied Templates?

As we mentioned earlier, Pixelied offers more options when it comes to social media template designs.

And the best part? At a glance, they look far better and the editor allows for more flexibility when customizing (but we’ll let you be the judge of that).

As of now, Pixelied offers graphic templates for the following social platforms:

a)      Facebook

It’s not easy designing visual content for a Facebook page.

There are posts, stories, and covers to consider, which can make managing content a disaster.

Luckily, Pixelied offers templates for all of the above.

• Facebook Post – you can find templates for FB posts and every type of industry in Pixelied’s vast library.
• Story – get greater engagement and leave a lasting impact with a Facebook story template by Pixelied.
• Cover – Facebook covers can be a little tricky, especially considering that the dimensions for profiles, events, and groups vary. Pixelied offers templates for all three.

Compared to Canva, Pixelied offers more options for Facebook.

b)      Instagram

Like Canva, Pixelied also offers captivating templates for Instagram.

To be specific, you can find templates for:

• Instagram Post – give your followers a visual treat with our wide selection of templates for Instagram posts.
• Story – Create compelling stories along with the recommended story dimensions by choosing from a library of thousands of Insta story templates.
• Ad – these have the same dimensions as regular Instagram posts. However, Pixelied has designed them to be effective creative ads and organized them separately for your convenience.

Remember – all of these templates are editable and can be customized however you want them to be.

c)      LinkedIn

Over the years, LinkedIn has grown to be an immense platform for professional networking and B2B marketing.

Employees and employers alike can benefit from the possibilities that this social network has to offer, such as connecting with industry peers, getting new leads, and reaching their end-users.

A single LinkedIn post can be a deal breaker. However, they need to meet a certain standard as your brand’s image is on the line.

Keeping that in mind, Pixelied also offers ready-to-use, professional-looking templates for LinkedIn posts and LinkedIn banner designs.

d)      YouTube

Being successful on YouTube requires so much more than just uploading good content (even if that’s the main substance).

You need to broadcast the best version of yourself. This also includes how your channel looks like, as well as, the little details in your videos.

The good news is, Pixelied offers a variety of templates for YouTube as well, including:

• YouTube Channel Art – you don’t need to hire a professional graphic designer or illustrator to create visuals for your channel art. Thanks to Pixelied, you can simply use a YouTube banner template.
• End Screen – sign off the right way and make an impression with an end-screen template.
• YouTube Thumbnails – get more people to click on your videos and watch that view-count go up by creating clickable video thumbnails.

Keep in mind that Canva also offers templates for YouTube thumbnails only, but there isn’t much variety.

e)      Twitch

With a user-base of nearly 3.8 million, Twitch is rapidly becoming a major online platform.

This live-streaming website for gamers is somewhat similar to YouTube but targets a much narrower demographic.

If you want to create graphics for your Twitch account using Pixelied, you can find templates for:

• Twitch Panels – have something important to mention about your stream? Do it through visually-pleasing panel designs.
• Offline Banners – leave a great impression even when you’re offline by using an awesome template for your offline banner.

In addition to the above, you can also find templates for your Twitch profile banner.

f)       Soundcloud

Last but not least, you can also find templates for Soundcloud headers.

Not a lot of graphic design websites offer templates for this particular platform.

But the brains at Pixelied understand just how important it is to leave a lasting impression – especially if you’re a budding artist.

As of now, there aren’t exactly many options to choose from. But it’s a start.

How to Leverage Pixelied to Create Stunning Social Media Posts?

Rocking a highly intuitive UI, Pixelied is one of the easiest-to-use graphic design tools.

With its drag and drop features, you can create top-level masterpieces in no time.

To get started, simply head over to the templates section.

In this page, you’ll be able to access all the formats, and can easily navigate to the social media formats.

In this page, you can view the complete list of templates for the type of content of your choice (see the menu to the left).

Select the template you like and this will take you to the editor.

Here’s a quick overview:

With all of those features at your disposal, go crazy.

Read our in-depth DIY tutorial on how you can use Pixelied for your social media design to learn more.

Pixelied Pricing

Despite having some of the best features on the market, Pixelied is a more affordable option.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the pricing plans:

• Free – use hundreds of amazing templates, access millions of stock images, leverage the awesome editor, use premium icons and other elements, and create up to 2 folders, all for free.
• Pro – for a small price of $7.95 per month, you get everything included in the free plan, along with unlimited downloads, unlimited folders, and priority customer support.

While the free plan is sufficient for personal projects and even professional ones for lean entrepreneurs, there’s so much you can accomplish with the pro plan (and it’s not even that expensive).

Final Thoughts

All things considered, when it comes to social media design, both Canva templates and Pixelied templates can do the magic.

However, in terms of the overall value and variety (templates for more platforms and content types), it’s clear that Pixelied has a slight edge.

Again, we’ll leave it up to you to decide.

The post Canva Templates vs. Pixelied Templates: Which Are Better for Social Media? appeared first on Pixelied Blog.

Why is design such an important element? It’s simple – most of the information we consume is in the form of visuals.

Because of that, your social media design needs to resonate with your target audience, effectively deliver the message, and meet a certain standard of quality.

The good news is, if you’re a social media manager, you don’t need to rely on a professional graphic designer (or acquire advanced graphic design skills, for that matter) to whip out visually-pleasing masterpieces for your social media platforms.

That’s where Pixelied – an up-and-coming graphic design tool – comes into the mix.

In this article, we’ll go dive into exactly how you can leverage this platform to create awesome social media graphics.

Let’s get started.

How You Can Use Pixelied for Your Social Media Design

Before diving into the specifics, let’s talk a bit about Pixelied.

We created this online platform as a highly user-friendly alternative to the more popular (and not to mention, extremely complicated) programs such as Adobe Photoshop and InDesign.

Whether you’re a marketer, graphic designer/artist, or blogger, you can use this platform to craft virtually any type of visual content, including posters, infographics, headers, and of course, social media posts, to name a few.

We’re not going to lie – we’re certainly not the first group of people to create an online graphic design tool.

But there’s no denying the fact that we have some of the most advanced features and the most fluid UI – all being offered with the most affordable price tag (making us a great alternative to sites like Canva, Snappa, and Stencil– especially for startups, entrepreneurs, and freelancers).

With that out of the way, let’s dive into what Pixelied can do for your social media design.

1. Enjoy a Library of Over 1500+ Ready-Made Social Media Templates

Crafting visual content from scratch isn’t easy.

You need a certain level of graphic designing skills to create something out of a blank canvas.

And if you throw in the varying compatible image dimensions for different social media channels into the mix, it can quickly turn into a nightmare.

If you don’t stick to these dimensions, parts of your images might get cropped out on the timelines of your followers. And that’s the last thing you want.

However, with Pixelied, you don’t need to worry about resizing your images (or creating them from scratch).

We have a massive library of pre-made, ready-to-use design templates (1500+ in 20 different formats) that you can tweak up, download, and publish on your social media pages.

And the best part? You can resize any template you fancy in any format of your liking with just a single click.

To get started, simply sign up for free, and you’ll be redirected to the home page where you’ll be able to view all the formats. You can easily navigate using our search feature by clicking on the search bar and selecting your desired format as shown below.

To get access to the complete list of templates, click on “See more” towards the top-right corner of the social media graphics section, as highlighted below.

This will take you to the templates page where you can browse through a wide selection of ready-to-go templates for different industries and platforms.

We’ve organized them according to social networks (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and SoundCloud), special usages (blogs and headers) and online streaming (Twitch) to make things easier.

Click on the option of your choice to expand a list of available formats for social media design.

Here’s what’s up for grabs for the social networking platforms you see above:

Facebook

Facebook has one of the largest active user bases. Every day, hundreds of thousands of B2C and B2B businesses tap into Facebook’s potential to reach their target markets.

However, when it comes to designing visual content, there are certain dimensions that you have to stick to.

Pixelied offers pre-made templates for the following formats:

• Facebook Posts – these are standard 940x788px templates for regular Facebook posts. It doesn’t matter what niche you belong to – we have a template for almost every industry (eCommerce, SaaS, restaurants, etc.). Plus, you can always customize them to your liking (more on that later).
• Covers (For Events, Groups, and Profiles) – we also offer Facebook ad creatives (1200x628px), stories (1080x1920p), and group covers (1640x856px).
• Story – stories offer an engaging and instant way to reach out to your audience. However, this piece of content can be tricky to design. You can use our FB story templates (1080x1920px) to get started.

All things considered, not a lot of platforms are offering these many options.

Instagram

Instagram is and always will be a visuals-exclusive social networking website, which means that your design needs to matter even more.

You can find ready-made templates for:

• Instagram Posts – make your content stand out with the 1080x1080px, professional-looking Insta post templates.
• Instagram Stories – most of these story templates are the same as the Facebook stories (and have the same dimensions). However, there are some different options that more suited for the aesthetics of Instagram.
• Ads – Facebook has specific requirements for text and dimensions when it comes to approving ads on its own platform and Instagram. Simply select an ad template you like, change the copy, make other adjustments (if you want), and et voila – you’d have designed an ad.

We’re just getting started. In addition to Facebook and Instagram, Pixelied also has templates for:

LinkedIn

Originally meant to be just a professional networking platform, professionals are now using LinkedIn to generate leads, close more sales and market their businesses.

When it comes to B2B marketing, there’s no other social networking platform that comes close to LinkedIn. From connecting with industry peers to showcasing your achievements, there’s a lot you can do.

And LinkedIn is the last place where you want to be seen posting mediocre-looking visual content (After all, your brand’s at stake here).

Fortunately, Pixelied has scroll-stopping templates for LinkedIn posts (1200x1200px) and professional banners guaranteed to bring in some serious engagement and blast your content across the feed of thousands of users.

YouTube

Apart from the actual videos that you upload, the way your YouTube channel looks (and other subtle details) matter as well.

To help you present the best version of yourself on YouTube, we offer templates for:

• YouTube Channel Art – you want to make sure that your channel stands out in every way possible. A channel art template might be able to help with that. These templates come with all the prerequisites such as banner dimensions, file format and size limit.
• YouTube Thumbnails – the way your thumbnail looks with the appropriate dimensions can decide the very success of your videos. Make them count by using a pre-made thumbnail template on Pixelied.
• Video End Screens – sign off your videos the right way by adding a touch of captivating visuals using outro templates.

Twitch

Over the years, Twitch went from being a small community to one of the largest live-streaming platforms for gaming on the internet.

As of now, the platform has a userbase of close to 15 million.

Twitch is the primary source of income for thousands of gamers (on average, a gamer can earn anywhere between $3,000 to $5,000 by playing 40 hours a week).

However, to get to that point, one of the many things you need to do is to make your channel presentable (just like YouTube).

Luckily, Pixelied has templates for Twitch as well, including:

• Twitch Panels – panels are spaces where you can share the description and other important details about your stream.
• Offline Banners – make an impression and rack up followers as you sleep with a stunning offline banner.
• Profile Banners – add some class to your Twitch profile by customizing a ready-to-use template.

Soundcloud

Finally, Pixelied even offers design templates for Soundcloud – a social network that most of the other online design platforms seem to neglect.

If you’re an artist, you can use one of our Soundcloud header templates with the recommended dimensions to make your profile groovier.

2.      Create Like a Pro

Now that we’ve gone through all of the ready-to-use templates, let’s take a quick look at what you can do with them.

You’re most likely not going to use any template without tweaking it up a bit to include your copy and stay true to your brand identity.

That’s where you’ll need Pixelied’s advanced (yet extremely easy-to-use) editor that allows you to create high-level social media design like a professional.

To get started, go to our open editor.

This is where all the magic happens. Let’s take you through the entire process:

• Select the template you like. Remember you can always switch to another template right there on the editor, and even change the image size/dimensions for another format (meaning if you like a certain Facebook post template, you can get it in the dimensions suitable for LinkedIn with some manual adjustments like cropping).

• Add, change, and/or remove copy, icons, and other elements to improve your design and get it closer to what you want it to look like.
• Once done, click on the blue “Download” button at the top-right corner of the screen.

That was a quick overview of the entire process.

Let’s take a look at the individual steps and features:

Leverage Eye-Catching Stock Images [Royalty-Free]

Didn’t find the perfect template? No problem.

You can customize your visuals however you want. And a good place to start is by looking at websites where you can download stock images.

However, sourcing stock photos from different websites can be time-consuming.

At Pixelied, you can find millions of high-res, royalty-free stock images – right there on the editor, allowing you to focus more on the actual social media graphic design process.

You can conveniently add any image you like to the canvas (and even resize it with a simple drag-and-drop feature).

Get the Font You Need [900+ Google Fonts]

Even veteran designers often struggle with finding appropriate typography for different pieces of content.

With branded content, it’s easier, since you only have to stick to a single typeface specified in the brand guidelines.

However, in other cases, you might not always have the perfect font on hand, driving you to spend hours looking for the right one on the internet.

Whatever the case, Pixelied sources over 900 Google fonts right there.

Furthermore, you can format your text however, you want (it also gives the option to change the line-height and spacing).

Use Custom Design Elements & Premium Icons

Finally, if you want, you can enhance your social media images with different shapes and visually-pleasing icons.

In terms of final touches, these icons and shapes could turn out to be extremely important elements, so make them count.

To add different shapes, click on the “Elements” in the menu and select a shape that you fancy.

You can place it wherever you want, change its color, and adjust its size and orientation.

The same instructions apply for icons (select from the list to get the complete collection of icons).

Other Features

In addition to the above, Pixelied also allows you to:

• Manage layers (bringing an element forward, behind something, etc.)
• Remove backgrounds from your own images with a single click using AI
• Upload SVG/vector files and change their color
• Add borders and shadows to make your content look better

And in case you’re wondering – yes, we also have the option to add effects/filters to your images.

What Makes Pixelied the Best Social Media Design Tool?

Here are a few awesome reasons to opt for Pixelied for designing your social media content:

1.      The Most Bang for Your Bucks

First and foremost, there’s a lot you can do on Pixelied for absolutely free.

As of now, the tool offers two pricing plans:

a)      Free

For a small price of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, you will get:

• Access to over 100 templates with unlimited downloads.
• Ability to upload files and two folders to manage your projects.
• Premium icons

Additionally, you’ll get access to millions of stock photos from Unsplash right there on the tool.

b)      Pro

To get all of the features listed above, as well as, unlimited folders, template downloads, priority user-support, and the ability to upload your own fonts, you can opt for our Pro plan.

Right now, it costs $9.95 per month (currently, one of the lowest price tags in the market).

2.      Ability to Organize Your Work

Are you managing multiple social media campaigns at once?

No problem – with Pixelied, you can stay organized by creating designated folders for your projects that you can keep saved on our website.

Pixelied auto-saves your designs as you work on them, ensuring they’re never lost to connectivity interruptions.

3.      Highly Intuitive User-Interface

As you saw in the steps discussed earlier, Pixelied has one of the friendliest UIs in existence – as far as online social media design tools go.

Whether you’re an experienced designer or someone who’s never designed anything in their life, this tool is for you.

And if, for any reason, you get stuck somewhere, you can always reach out to our customer support (or priority support if you opt for the pro plan) and access our library of how-to videos/tutorials.

Conclusion

From providing ready-to-use masterpieces to allowing you to customize them to perfection, it goes without saying that Pixelied is the ultimate social media design tool.

However, we’ll let you be the judge of that.

If you like what our platform has to offer, sign up today and try it for free.

The post How to Boost Your Social Media Design with Pixelied appeared first on Pixelied Blog.

If you’ve been using PicMonkey, and feel that you could be doing so much more, keep reading.

In this article, we’ll list down and review 13 top websites like PicMonkey (a few of which are better).

Let’s get started.

Why Pixelied is the Perfect Alternative to PicMonkey

When it comes to websites like PicMonkey, there are a few good options to pick from. However, few come close to Pixelied – an up-and-coming online graphic design tool that’s well on its way to becoming the best option in the market.

But what makes this platform so great? For starters, it features a highly intuitive user-interface and amazing tools (more on this later), allowing anyone with an internet connection and a functioning device to create masterpieces for social media.

And the best part? It’s one of the most affordable platforms out there.

Top 13 Websites Like PicMonkey [The Only List You’ll Need]

Whether you’re a professional designer or a rookie, there’s a PicMonkey alternative for you.

Let’s review 13 awesome websites like PicMonkey:

1.      Pixelied

Made for both businesses and individuals, Pixelied is the most cost-effective image editor and graphic design tool in the market.

Simplified and beginner-friendly, Pixelied lets you conveniently craft and edit any visual content, including social media posts, banners, blog post visuals, and more – without overcoming a steep learning curve.

Here are all of the amazing features that this platform has to offer:

• Library of Royalty-Free Stock Images – having trouble stock images? Pixelied offers millions of eye-catching, royalty-free stock images for absolutely free.
• Advanced Editor – Forget Adobe Photoshop. With Pixelied, you can do professional editing on the same level (minus the overwhelming interface). It lets you perform photo enhancements, apply special effects, filters, text manipulation, line height, border shadows, letter spacing, and more.
• Access to Over 900 Awesome Fonts – no one likes searching for the perfect font. Thankfully, with Pixelied, you get access to 900+ Google Fonts in one place.
• Ready-to-Use Templates – creating visuals from scratch takes time. Now you can pick from loads of pre-designed and ready-to-use templates for different social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more), email, and blogs.
• Premium, Professional-Looking Icons – pick from an extensive list of professional looking icons to add more value to your visual content.
• Exclusive SVG/Vector Uploads – Pixelied is one of the few online photo editors that let you upload vector files and change their colors.

In addition to the above, Pixelied also allows you to resize templates, remove backgrounds, and add image effects (such as blur, hue, etc.).

Pixelied Pricing

Pixelied gives you more bang for your bucks than any other online design tool with two budget-friendly packages:

• Free – you get templates, stock photos, premium icons, file uploading and folders for as long as you want without paying a dime.
• Pro – get unlimited privileges – templates, stock photos, folders, files uploads, custom fonts, and priority support – only for $9.95 per month.

Visit Pixelied

2.       Pixlr

Another online photo editor that’s a good alternative to PicMonkey is Pixlr. It comes in two versions, namely Pixlr X (for beginners) and the more advanced Pixlr E (Pixlr Express).

If you want to create basic graphics without using a complicated program like Photoshop Express, you might want to give a tool like Pixlr a shot.

Here are some of the popular features:

• Stock Images – choose from dozens of stock images for absolutely free.
• Upload Images – use an image of your choice by uploading it to your Pixlr workspace.
• Photo Enhancement – this includes basic image editing options, such as brighten, lighten, balance colors, etc.
• Size Adjustment – crop and/or resize images to the dimensions of your liking with a few clicks.

Additionally, you can add elements (text, shapes, and borders) and blur images.

Pixlr Pricing

Pixlr offers the following plans:

• Free – get limited, ad-supported access to basic photo editing tools and overlays.
• Premium – at $3.99 per month, gain full access to all editing and design features.
• Professional – pay $14.99 monthly for Premium features plus stock content and user support.

Visit Pixlr

3.       Fotor

If you want a fairly basic online image editor that will get the job done (without requiring top-level skills), another option is Fotor.

Here’s what’s up for grabs:

• Photo Editor – this covers your usual photo editing needs such as cropping, resizing, enhancing, and adding effects.
• Collage Maker – put together a photo collage like you would in other popular visual content creation tools.
• Design Tool – a simplified graphic design tool that lets you create basic visual content.
• Portrait Beauty – a face beautifying feature used for retouching, blurring imperfections, and red eye removal in selfies or portrait photos.

Fotor Pricing

Here’s the breakdown of Fotor’s pricing plans:

• Basic – you pay nothing for simple photo editing, collage making and saving your work.
• Pro – with this plan, you get everything in Basic plus no ads, advanced design features, and more photo effects for $8.99 monthly (or $39.99 annually).

Visit Fotor

4.       BeFunky

BeFunky is one of those websites like PicMonkey that have been created for all design needs.

It’s most suitable for designing social media posts (Facebook cover photos, Instagram posts,  banners, and other graphics).

Let’s take a look at some of the most popular features:

• Touch Up – retouch selfies and portraits that need minor adjustments.
• Blur Image – soften sharpness and diffuse imperfections with the help of this tool.
• Photo Enhancer – sort out common photography issues with the sharpening, color brightening, and de-noising features.
• Stock Images – choose from a range of free stock images and use them however you like.
• Resizing – reduce the size or change the dimensions of images.

Additionally, the tool lets you can crop, resize, and generate collages.

BeFunky Pricing

You can start using BeFunky by choosing any one of the following plans:

• Basic – at zero cost, you can use 125 digital effects for some basic photo editing.
• BeFunky Plus – use all features with full access to built-in resources for $6 monthly or $ 59.88 yearly.

Visit BeFunky

5.       Ribbet

Ribbet is a close, user-friendly PicMonkey alternative.

Suited for individual/personal use, Ribbet allows you to edit photos as well as create certain types of designs for both digital and print.

Here’s what’s under the hood:

• Photo Editor – make basic photo adjustments that other similar platforms do.
• Collage Maker – put together a collage of images.
• Card Design – use themed templates or your own images to create greeting cards and other visual content.
• Upload Images – use images of your own choice by uploading them to your workspace.

The tool is compatible with both Mac and PC.

Ribbet Pricing

As of now, Ribbet offers the following two pricing plans:

• Free – get limited, ad-enabled access to image editing tools, templates, uploads and projects in this free version.
• Premium – in this pro plan, you get unlimited access to a basic photo editor and other main features. Buy for $6.99 per month monthly or $39.96 per year.

Visit Ribbet

6.       Canva

Canva is perhaps one of the most well-known and versatile websites like PicMonkey.

This popular option is suitable for creating and editing visuals for both personal or business use. All in all, it’s a very decent alternative to Photoshop.

What makes it so special? Here are some features that can be given the credit:

• Basic Photo Editor – this allows you to make simple adjustments to your photos in a user-friendly interface.
• Stock Content Libraries – choose from a limited selection of royalty-free photos and videos.
• Ready-To-Use Templates – themed templates are pre-designed for instant use. However, not all of them are free.
• Resize – change image dimensions with this pro-only feature (that comes free in other alternatives to PicMonkey).
• Add Elements – add text, borders, stickers, and other elements to your graphics.

Additionally, you can upload images, make folders, and share with others from the web version or mobile app.

Canva Pricing

Canva has three pricing plans:

• Free – get a limited selection of templates, photos, graphics, and design types for free.
• Pro – get everything the Free plan has plus resizing, more templates, and more stock content for $9.95 per month (billed annually).
• Enterprise – get all Pro features plus collaboration, access controls, and user support. The plan costs $30 per month.

Visit Canva

Visit Canva Alternatives

7.       Picsart

Picsart allows you to design and edit social media content in the most simplified environment.

Individuals, social media marketers, and bloggers might want to try this one out.

Here’s a list of features that make it stand out:

• Design Tool – create a bunch of basic images and videos for social media.
• Video Editor – a paid feature that lets you edit video content (you don’t have to be a professional video editor to do so).
• Fonts – choose from a library of (rather limited) fonts.
• Beautifying Tool – this feature will fix minor imperfections in photos.

All things considered, Picsart is a more lightweight photo editing app.

Picsart Pricing

There are two pricing plans:

• Free – you get to do some basic edits and design for free.
• Gold – with this pro plan, get everything in Free plus some basic design and editing features, priced at $47.99 (billed yearly).

Visit Picsart

8.       Fotojet

Next on our list of websites like PicMonkey is Fotojet – a simplified design and photo editing tool.

It’s a functional, easy-to-use option for individuals and small businesses.

Here are some of the features that make it worth giving a shot:

• Simple Photo Editor – enhance and adjust photos with basic photo editing features.
• Graphic Design Tool – use pre-made templates to create graphics with elements such as text, photos, and backgrounds.
• Collage Maker – make photo grids or creative collages on various layouts.

Apart from the above, you can also resize and download your work.

Fotojet Pricing

Here’s a complete breakdown of Fotojet’s pricing plans:

• Free – this plan offers you free basic photo editing, templates, fonts, effects, and a few more features.
• Plus – get more fonts, storage space, and user support. This plan will set you back by only $6.99 per month (or US$ 39.99 annually).

Visit Fotojet

9.       Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is Adobe’s online graphic design tool (a more user-friendly alternative to Photoshop).

Unlike PicMonkey, Adobe Spark lets you create website graphics in addition to visuals for social media.

Here are some of the key features:

• Themes – pre-designed themes that are ready to use (like in most design tools).
• Free Fonts – choose from a selection of fonts that are free to use.
• Stock Images – source and use royalty-free images in one place.
• Social Sharing – share visuals with the community and view what other people have to share.

Furthermore, Adobe Spark lets you add logos and collaborate.

Adobe Spark Pricing

Opt for either of the two pricing plans:

• Starter Plan – a free plan that lets you use some pre-made icons and images.
• Individual Plan – includes custom editing features, project personalization capabilities, complete access to resources, and more.
• Team Plan – get all features in the Individual plan plus admin privileges and access to 24/7 customer support, all for $9.79 per month.

Visit Adobe Spark

10.   Placeit

Placeit is an open-source marketplace of pre-designed templates for digital and print graphics.

You can try Placeit if you’re on a time crunch to create visual content. However, when it comes to customization, it’s not such a great option.

Here’s what it’s known for:

• Mockups Templates – create visual prototypes of your product using model images.
• Design Templates – use ready-made templates, which is a common feature among design tools
• Logo Generator – quickly create an industry-specific logo for your brand.
• Videos – choose from a library of pre-created video clips instead of making them from scratch

Placeit Pricing

You can access all templates with a $14.95 per month or $89.69 per year subscription.

Visit Placeit

11.   RelayThat

Unlike PicMonkey, RelayThat is a business-focused graphic design tool.

Check it out if you’re a one-person army or work with teams.

Some of the top features of RelayThat include:

• A Free Image Library – pick from readily available stock images.
• Collaboration – teams can work on multiple projects and watch their visual masterpieces come to life in real time.
• Pre-set Color Palettes – color combinations are ready to use.
• Resize – conveniently tweak image dimensions to your liking.

Furthermore, there are paid brand management features.

RelayThat Pricing

Two corporate pricing plans are available, the details of which are as follows:

• Entrepreneur – solo entrepreneurs get unlimited designs, brand workspaces, and font uploads for $25 per month.
• Agency and Enterprise – this plan includes Entrepreneur features plus collaboration, white-labels, and branding privileges. Pricing information is available upon request.

Visit RelayThat

12.   piZap

Next on the list is piZap, another one of the websites like PicMonkey that are ideal for personal use.

Consider this option if you want to make simple photo edits, collages, and designs.

Here’s what it has to offer:

• Photo Editor – make minor enhancements and fixes to your photos.
• Graphic Design – create various types of visuals for both digital and print.
• Elements – add text, images, shapes, and stickers to enhance your design.
• Retouching – touch up photos and images and bring them closer to perfection.

Furthermore, the platform has an active user support.

piZap Pricing

Two packages are on offer here:

• Free – get limited, ad-enabled access to photo editing and design features free of cost.
• piZap Pro – unlock everything, ad-free, with user support for $5.99 per month or $35.88 per year.

Visit piZap

13.   Piktochart

Piktochart is a commercial design solution – perfect for creating professional-looking infographics (though you can make other visuals as well).

This tool is most suitable for content marketers, bloggers, and email marketers.

Here are some of the salient features:

• Designs for Business – create designs in different formats such as social media graphics, presentations, flyers, and so on.
• Templates – pre-designed templates are available for instant use.
• Infographic Maker – create infographics for blog posts and other content formats.

Additionally, teams can share and collaborate on projects.

Piktochart Pricing

Piktochart offers three need-based pricing plans:

• Free – work on 5 visuals, get 40MB bandwidth for uploads, export images in standard quality (but with the Piktochart watermark), and use pre-defined themes for free.
• PRO – for $24.17 per month (or $290 per year), you can get rid of the watermark, upload fonts, export images in HD, create as many graphics as you want, and get 1GB image uploads.
• PRO Team – in addition to all of the features in the Pro plan, you get unlimited image uploads, project-sharing, template customizations, and much more (for 82.50 per month or $990 per year).

Visit Piktochart

Conclusion

Essentially, the photo editor you choose depends on your needs and most importantly, your budget.

PicMonkey is a great option, but then again, it’s certainly not the best graphic design tool out there.

Out of all the websites like PicMonkey, Pixelied offers a complete package by combining a seamless user interface with professional-level features.

And since budget is a vital deciding factor here, Pixelied is certainly your best bet.

The post 13 Best Websites Like PicMonkey to Try in 2021 appeared first on Pixelied Blog.

Thankfully, there are a good few alternatives to Snappa.com – some of which are just as good, whereas others are even better.

If you want to try new online graphic design software other than Snappa, keep reading. In this article, we’ll list 10 of the best sites that are just like Snappa.

Let’s get started.

Pixelied: The Best Alternative to Snappa

Pixelied is a new graphic design solution that has been created for both beginners and experienced designers. Rocking a fluid UI and a massive library of awesome templates, anyone can use this tool for their design products.

With its easy drag-and-drop features, you can start designing your social media, blog images, YouTube thumbnails, and more, without the need for any prerequisite skills.

With this tool, all you need is a pinch of creativity to create amazing visual content.

Furthermore, Pixelied provides an extensive range of exclusive features (more on that later) and is also one of the most pocket-friendly tools out there.

10 Promising Alternatives to Snappa

As we highlighted earlier, for most marketers and designers, Snappa can help get the job done.

But in terms of features, flexibility, and costs, it might not be the best option.

If you can relate, consider giving one of the following tools a shot:

1.      Pixelied

Pixelied is a rising online photo editing and graphic design tool that’s giving many well-known names (such as Canva, Pixlr, and Pablo by Buffer) a run for their money.

With its wide variety of design options, it takes you to a world of possibilities when it comes to creating professional-looking assets.

For starters, Pixelied provides a sea of options for you to design/repurpose posts for different social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

And that barely scratches the surface – digital marketers, bloggers, and graphic designers alike can enjoy the following set of Pixelied features:

• Ready-to-Go Templates – with tons of ready-made templates in Pixelied’s repository, you can design anything within a few minutes. Whether you want to design Facebook covers, Instagram posts, Tweets, or more, there’s a template for that.
• Huge Library of Royalty-Free Stock Images – stock images help you enhance your images by adding more expression and voice to your content. Pixelied offers millions of royalty-free stock photos that you can use to beautify your designs.
• Advanced Editor – photo manipulation and editing are obviously a necessity. Pixelied features a built-in advanced editor with capabilities of Photoshop and InDesign (minus the complexity). Furthermore, it offers text manipulation features such as line height, letter spacing, etc., and the option to add borders and shadows. You’d be surprised to know that many competitors don’t offer these features.
• Professional Looking Icons – Pixelied has a library of eye-catching and professional-looking icons that you can use to make your designs more meaningful.
• Hundreds of Fonts (900+) – a font can make or break your entire content. Pixelied provides 900+ Google fonts from different font families and styles to go with your assets.

In addition to the above, Pixelied also allows you to conveniently resize templates by changing image dimensions, removing backgrounds, and adding image effects (such as blur, hue, etc.).

Furthermore, it lets you upload SVG/vector files and change their colors – another feature that the top competitors don’t offer.

All in all, it is a competent tool that is very easy to learn and offers virtually every type of feature that you could ask for in an online design tool.

Pixelied Pricing

Pixelied is an all-in-one tool for designers that is comparatively cheaper with no compromise in the features it provides. You can either opt for the free plan to give it a go or select the pro plan.

Here are the details:

• Free – create stunning designs for free using Pixelied’s free plan. This plan includes access to 100+ templates, unlimited downloads, access to 3 million+ stock photos, two folders to manage your assets, ability to upload files, and access to premium icons.

• Pro – in addition to the features mentioned above, you get access to all templates with unlimited downloads, unlimited folders, priority support, and much more, all for $9.95/m.

Visit Pixelied

2.      Canva

Canva is a rather well-known graphic design platform that’s also a promising Snappa alternative.

It offers extensive libraries of templates, vectors, icons, and more. It’s a simplified platform that provides an impressive suite of features to help you with your design needs.

Furthermore, with Canva, you can conveniently collaborate and share your designs with your team members.

Let’s have a peek into the most popular features of the platform:

• Enriched Image Editor – Canva lets you edit background images and crop your pictures with precision.
• Stellar Photo Effects – to enhance or give a final touch to your photos, leverage Canva’s wide range of filters. Additionally, you can add texture to your photos, play with your photo’s transparency, add frame effects, and blur your photos.
• Design and Photo Grids – Canva offers different layouts for you to create photo collages and make your images fun and exciting.

In addition to the above features, Canva lets you add speech bubbles, straighten your photos, and much more (standard features that you can also find in popular Canva alternatives).

Canva Pricing

Canva offers the following two pricing plans:

• Free – the free version is suitable for individuals and small businesses. It offers 100+ design types, free photos, graphics, fonts, and templates.
• Pro ($9.95/m) – Canva’s pro version is loved by professionals that require a little more customization and hands-on designing. The additional features include premium stock images, graphics, custom templates, and the ability to export animated GIFs.

Visit Canva

3.      PicMonkey

PicMoney is great for acing effects on videos for your YouTube channel, twitter headers, LinkedIn posts, and cover photos.

With its branding tool kit, you can design eye-grabbing business cards, logos, and watermarks..

But what exactly does it have to offer? Let’s have a quick look:.

• Photo Touchups and Editing Tool – its photo editor lets you enhance your photos with adjusting, cropping, resizing, and background-removal capabilities.
• Modern Graphic Design Features – use this feature and edit every layer of your image like a pro.
• Template and Font Library – use thousands of design templates, creative graphics, stock photos from Unsplash and iStock to strengthen your images.

Additionally, PicMonkey provides templates specific to social platforms for you to create the right visuals for the right stage.

PicMonkey Pricing

You can start using PicMonkey by opting for one of the following paid plans:

• Basic – get 1 GB cloud storage, ability to download images, primo effects, and endless templates for $7.99 per month.
• Pro – PicMonkey pro offers unlimited storage, brand kit, email support, and custom font uploading options, for $12.99 per month (perfect for agencies and enterprises).

Visit PicMonkey

Visit Picmonkey Alternatives

4.      Pixlr

Pixlr is an intuitive photo editing software powered with AI to provide you with a seamless designing experience.

It has two photo editors – Pixlr E and Pixlr X (one for the advanced designer and one for beginners, respectively).

Some of the exclusive features that Pixlr provides include:

• One-Click Smart Tools – the AI bots take care of photo editing for you, making the whole process quicker, easier, and just overall smoother. And the best part? All it takes is just a single click.
• Simplified Editing – if you’re swamped by endless designing tasks, use toggle and drag-and-drop options in Pixlr to edit your photos.
• Limitless Resources – perfect your images with Pixlr’s well-stocked libraries, including limitless overlays, borders, and decorative text to add to your photos.

All in all, Pixlr is a decent and highly versatile solution.

Pixlr Pricing

Pixlr offers the following plans:

• Free – this plan provides necessary editing tools, a limited set of overlays & stickers, and shows ads.
• Pro – if you want to get rid of ads and enjoy extensive editing tools, buy their pro version (costs $14.99 per month). It gives you access to thousands of decorative fonts and icons, video tutorials, premium support, and AI CutOut.

Visit Pixlr

Visit Pixlr Alternatives

5.      Desygner

Next on the list of Snappa alternatives is Desygner – a tool that lets you create high-level visual assets without the help of a professional designer.

Here’s a quick sneak-peek into what it has to offer:

• Lockable designs – protect your assets by locking them and only authorizing your team members to access them.
• PDF Editor – if you have PDF design copies exported from Photoshop, Illustrator, etc., you can easily edit them on Desygner without juggling between file formats.
• Branded templates – this feature lets you generate templates from PDF or create them from scratch. Share these templates with anyone to edit and control what can and can’t be altered.

In addition to the features above, it lets you customize logos and icons and helps you organize your assets.

Desygner Pricing

Desygner offers the following two plans:

• Premium ($9.99/m) – enjoy a variety of templates, logos, free images, and an integrated social media scheduler in this plan for $9.99 per month.
• Pro ($21.95/m) – for $21.95 per month, this plan lets you manage digital access and publish template collections.

Visit Desygner

6.      Crello

Crello is a 2-in-1 solution that offers both graphic designing and video editing capabilities.

You can leverage this platform to create animations and graphics for social and web.

It features an extensive set of tools to help you create masterpieces in a few minutes, some of which include:

• Flip & Rotate Your Images – everybody loves symmetrical photos. Use the flip feature to make a quick print edit. Rotate your pictures to fit it in your images.
• Create Custom Badges and Labels – you can create badges to personalize your blogs. Furthermore, you can paint labels for your products by designing brand logos, price tags, and more.
• Animation Effects – add animations to the objects on your video canvas and design animated logos.

Crello Pricing

You can start using Crello without paying a dime. Here are the details:

• Free – get access to an unlimited resource library.
• Pro ($7.99/m) – customize any template of your choice and play around with limitless options of stock resources, all for $7.99 per month.

Visit Crello

Visit Crello Alternatives

7.      Piktochart

Piktochart a collaborative design platform that’s best known for helping create captivating infographics.

Let’s take a deeper look into what it has to offer:

• Templates for Professional Content – Picktochart has design themes for Marketers, HR, healthcare, and finance departments. Boost your content by giving it a relevant and professional touch. It also has tailor-made designs for non-profit organizations and Education sectors.
• Visualize data – map your numbers and data into beautiful graphs, bar diagrams, charts, and more.

To get started, you can choose a format of content that you want to create and get template suggestions from Picktochart.

Piktochart Pricing

Here’s a complete breakdown of the pricing plans of Piktochart:

• Free – enjoy all the resources in this plan, but they’re only downloadable with a branded watermark and pre-defined color schemes.
• Pro ($24.17/m) – swim in the extensive resources to cherry-pick the ones you like and download your art for free with no watermark.

Visit Piktochart

8.      Easil

Easil is another Snappa substitute that can add value to your marketing and personal projects by helping you design unique visuals.

Let’s look at the most popular tools that this simple graphic design website has to offer:

• Add Drop Shadows to Your Text – make your typography stand out by adding shadows, glow, and blur effects.
• Mask Your Text – add effects to your text by masking it with images that provide metallic, glitter, and texture effects.

It also has a single-click color palette generator that can create an aesthetically pleasing palette just from an image.

Easil Pricing

As far as pricing goes, Easil is one of the more affordable options. Here are the details:

• Basic – this package includes everything a DIY kit offers.
• Plus – it offers advanced editing options, team management, and free download options for just $7.50 per month.

Visit Easil

9.      BeFunky

Add a little funk to your visuals (all on a friendly UI) with BeFunky. With its extensive collection of tools, you can craft highly engaging visual content for your brand and personal projects.

Let’s take a look at two of its most useful features:

• Process Photos in Bulk – this feature lets you edit multiple photos at a time with its batch processing utility. 
• Retouch Portraits – enhance your portraits and selfies to make them just perfect.

There are other, more exciting features as well, making the platform a strong candidate when it comes to choosing a site like Snappa.

BeFunky Pricing

BeFunky is a completely free tool (there’s not a single paid plan).

Visit BeFunky

10.  Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is another great Snappa alternative that enables both non-designers and advanced Picassos whip up top-level visuals.

It’s best suited for creating minimalistic yet powerful designs, however, you can use it to create whatever you want.

Let’s see which features make the design journey an easy one for graphic designers.

• Easy-to-Share option – Adobe Spark provides its users with hassle-free sharing options, using which they can share their stories anytime, anywhere.
• #SparkMade – get those creative juices by exploring Adobe Spark’s gallery, where they’ve compiled millions of masterpieces.
• Three Applications, Three Purposes – they have three exclusive apps for creating graphic posts, web stories, and short video clips.

Adobe Spark Pricing

These are the pricing plans offered by Adobe Spark:

• Starter – the free plan lets you download thousands of icons and images.
• Individual – this plan is most suitable for individuals and solo entrepreneurs. For $9.99 per month (first 2 months are free), you can collaborate on projects, create branded content with logos and watermarks, use templates, and much more.
• Team – meant for agencies and design teams, this plan costs $19.99. It includes all of the features of the Individual plan, along with the ability to provide privileges and 24/7 access to customer support.

Visit Adobe Spark

Visit Adobe Spark Alternatives

Wrapping it Up

Advanced graphic design tools, such as Photoshop and Illustrations, come with high learning curves.

However, tools like Pixelied and Snappa are easy to learn and offer everything you require to build great designs. All that in a user-friendly budget that individuals and companies of all sizes can easily afford.

Although, online photo editors provide essential features for free, but based on your need, never hesitate to buy a tool that empowers your visuals.

Remodel your content by creating design stories to pitch your ideas to your customers, elegantly.

The post 10 Best Snappa Alternatives to Try in 2021 appeared first on Pixelied Blog.

Whether you’re a professional graphic designer or just someone who needs to whip up high-quality visuals on short notice for social media, keep reading. In this article, we’ll take you through the best Canva alternatives to try in 2020.

Let’s get started.

Why Pixelied is the Most Promising Alternative to Canva

If you’re a marketer or a graphic designer on a budget, creating top-level visual assets can be challenging. For starters, you need a great creative design tool that doesn’t break the bank.

That’s where Pixelied – a site just as good as Canva, if not better – comes into the picture. It offers an array of exciting graphic design tools in a highly intuitive user-interface.

With Pixelied, you can design masterpieces for social media, blog posts, email, and much more – all with a minimum learning curve.

And the best part? You don’t need to download anything. Simply sign up (it’s free), log in, and start designing social media posts, headers, covers and other creative assets.

11 Best Sites Like Canva [The Only Ones You Need to Know]

There are a few good websites/online tools that are just like Canva.

However, if you had to pick 11 great Canva alternatives, you could safely bet your money on the following:

1.     Pixelied

Pixelied is an easy-to-use online graphic editor that’s already giving other well-known sites, such as Canva, Crello, Designbold, Visme, and Adobe Spark a run for their money.

Packed with some of the best features, such as ready-to-use templates, a highly flexible graphic editor, and free fonts, to name a few, this is easily one of the most versatile tools right now.

Let’s take a detailed look into what’s under the hood:

• Ready-Made Templates – whether you want social media graphics, headers, covers or any other type of asset, with Pixelied, you can create awesome visual content on the go. The tool offers a vast library of ready-made templates (nearly 1,500, to be exact – for Facebook covers, Instagram ads, YouTube channel art, and much more) to choose from.
• Advanced Editor – Pixelied is packed with some of the most popular and unique image editing features that aren’t offered by most competitors. This includes text manipulation (letter spacing, line height, etc.), image effects, filters, borders, shadows, and more.
• Premium Icons – with a huge library of premium icons at your disposal, you can make your visuals stand out.
• Vast Library of Fonts (900+) – another great thing about Pixelied is that you don’t need to spend hours searching for the perfect font. With over 900 Google Fonts to choose from, you can find the perfect typeface right then and there.
• Millions of Royalty-Free Stock Images – shifting between third party platforms to find stock images can be a real hassle. And not to mention, they can be quite expensive. Pixelied solves those problems by providing you with millions of high resolution, royalty-free stock images.
• SVG/Vector Editing – this Pixelied-only feature lets you upload SVG/vector files and change their colors.

In addition to the above, Pixelied also allows you to conveniently resize templates, remove backgrounds, and add image effects.

Pixelied Pricing

As of now, Pixelied comes with two pricing plans:

• Free – search 100+ templates, download unlimited templates, choose from over 3 million stock photos, use premium icons, upload files and create 2 folders, all for free.
• Pro – for just $9.95 per month, you gain access to all of the templates and 3 million stock photos, can create unlimited folders, upload files and custom fonts, get priority user support, and much more.

Visit Pixelied

2.     BeFunky

Next on our list is BeFunky, another super handy design tool that offers sufficient features to help an average designer/market get by.

Like most other design tools, it lets you create professional-looking marketing assets and personal masterpieces in a matter of a few minutes.

Here are some of the most popular features:

• Collage maker – create photo collages with a few simple clicks on a very user-friendly interface.
• Touch Up – do away with minor imperfections in your selfies and portrait photos in a few steps.
• Photo Enhancer – this feature allows for common photography fixes, such as sharpening objects, brightening colors, and reducing image noise.
• Resizing – a standard image resizing tool that lets you re-purpose your visuals on-the-go.

Additionally, BeFunky offers standard features such as photo frames, watermarks, background removal, etc. It also has mobile apps for Android and iPhone.

BeFunky Pricing

The website offers two plans:

• Basic – with this version, you get to use 125 digital effects for free.
• BeFunky Plus – Pay $6 per month or $59.88 annually to use all of the tool’s features.

Visit BeFunky

3.     Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a slightly differentiated alternative to Canva that’s definitely worth a shot.

With Adobe Spark, you can quickly and easily create social media images, web pages, and even short videos.

Here are some of the features that this tool is known for:

• Free Fonts – as with any design tool, you can choose from a variety of free fonts as opposed to downloading them from third-party websites.
• Image Library – a number of royalty-free images are available for your designing needs.
• Themes – Adobe Spark offers a great selection of ready-made themes that you can use to instantly create stunning visuals.
• Sharing – once you’ve created your visuals, you can share them with others on social media or email directly from your Adobe Spark account.

All in all, Adobe Spark is a decent tool. However, there’s definitely a learning curve that can be challenging for some users to overcome (at least when compared to other sites like Canva) which is why some users look for its alternatives. But it’s not as complicated as Photoshop.

Adobe Spark Pricing

Adobe Spark offers the following two pricing plans:

• Starter Plan – With this free plan, you get to pick from a range of ready-to-use images and icons.
• Paid Plan – unlock all features for $9.79 a month or $117.49 annually.

Visit Adobe Spark

4.     Stencil

If you’re looking for an online design tool specifically for social media or blogging, Stencil might be worth exploring.

Here’s a quick overview of the most popular features it has to offer:

• Templates – select from a variety of ready-to-use templates for different assets and websites.
• Stock Photos – quickly find and use royalty-free, high-resolution images in one place.
• Image Uploads – use any image you like in your visuals by simply uploading them to your Stencil account.
• Collections – create folders or ‘collections’ to keep your work organized.

Additionally, with Stencil, you can resize images, create folders to keep your work organized, and more.

Stencil Pricing

Here are the different plans offered by Stencil:

• Free – At zero cost, you can save 10 images per month, access limited photos and icons, upload 50 images, and create 10 collections, among other things.
• Pro – save 50 images a month, access 1,100+ templates, add logos, and more for $9 a month.
• Unlimited – get all Pro features plus unlimited photos, folders, and favorites for (a pretty steep) $12 per month.

Visit Stencil

5.     PicMonkey

PicMonkey is another popular, easy-to-use design tool – perfect for creating professional-looking designs for your website and social media accounts.

Some of its neat features include:

• Photo Editor – crop, resize, balance color, and adjust exposure to enhance your images. You can also add frames and shadows.
• Touch Ups – fix minor imperfections in photos with a few clicks.
• Graphic Design – create artwork like a pro by adding gradients and filters, manipulating layers, adding text, and more.
• Collage Maker – with this feature, you can create photo collages in various designs and sizes.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

PicMonkey Pricing

The tool offers the following pricing plans:

• Basic – pay $7.99 monthly (or $79 annually) to access 1 GB storage, download images in JPG and PNG formats, use templates, and more.
• Pro – for $12.99 a month, you get unlimited storage, downloads in JPG, PNG or PDF formats, graphic design tools, priority support, and much more.
• Team – for $33.99 a month, get all Pro features plus a discount for 3 or more users and permissions management.

Incase you’ve tried the platform and it isn’t what you were looking for, then you can have a look at some of the better PicMonkey alternatives.

Visit PicMonkey

6.     Snappa

Next on our list of sites like Canva is Snappa – a (relatively) lightweight program that lets you create graphics for social media, blogs, and ads.

Here are some features that make this tool a decent choice:

• Pre-made Templates – there are plenty of ready-to-use templates available on Snappa. Pick your favorite one and start designing.
• Infographic Maker – this is like a built-in Piktochart. It lets you create neat visual data representations for blog posts (great for SEO) and other content assets. Venngage is another great service for creating infographics in a few easy steps.
• Stock Photos – source royalty-free, high-resolution photos from one place.
• Basic Graphic Design – add text, shapes, and effects to your images and remove backgrounds with ease.

Snappa also lets you schedule social media posts to publish later. The tool hasn’t been updated or revamped for quite some time. There are many other better online design tool alternatives that give you the freedom to customize and have control over your creative process.

Snappa Pricing

Here’s a breakdown of Snappa’s pricing:

• Free – use 6,000+ templates, 3 million images, and get 3 downloads per month.
• Pro – pay $15 monthly or $120 annually. 1 user can access 6000+ templates, 3 million images, background removal, unlimited downloads, font uploads, and social sharing.
• Team – with this 5-user package, you’ll pay $30 monthly for all Pro features plus team collaboration privileges.

Visit Snappa

7.     FotoJet

FotoJet has to be one of the most simplified alternatives to Canva.

Rocking a user-friendly interface, it’s great for someone with little or no experience with graphic designing.

Here are the main features:

• Graphic Design – create visuals for any digital purpose with pre-made templates. You can also add text, photos, clip art, and backgrounds.
• Photo Collage – choose from a long list of collage styles to create memorable masterpieces.
• Photo Editor – last but not least, the tool offers basic photo editing features such as cropping, resizing, rotating, drag-and-drop capabilities, photo enhancement, etc.

Considering everything, FotoJet is a great option for those who don’t want to be overwhelmed with an array of features.

FotoJet Pricing

As of now, FotoJet offers two pricing plans:

• Free – get basic photo editing tools, templates, fonts, photo effects, and a few other features, all for free.
• Plus – this plan unlocks other exciting features such as 30+ premium fonts, storage space, priority support, and more for $6.99 a month (or $3.33 per month, billed annually).

Visit FotoJet

8.     Fotor

Fotor is a simplified design tool that’s ideal for personal use and small businesses.

At first glance, Fotor seems similar to FotoJet. However, it’s packed with a lot more features. Here are some that you might find useful:

• Photo Editing – easily enhance, resize, crop, apply effects, and add text to photos.
• Portrait Beauty – retouch selfies and portraits of others quickly and easily.
• Photo Collage – create different styles of photo collages in a matter of a few minutes.

Additionally, you can explore different templates such as banners, social media posts, business cards, and more.

Some of its cons are not having enough customization options, limitations on photo editing,  limited options for quick and easy design creation. That’s why people look for Fotor alternatives soon after they start to use it.

Fotor Pricing

Fotor comes in two editions – Fotor Online and Fotor for Windows, both having the same plans:

• Basic Plan – in this free version, you can do some basic photo editing, make collages, and sync your work with Fotor cloud.
• Pro Plan – get everything in Basic plus no ads, advanced design features, more photo effects, and extra cloud storage for $8.99 a month.

Visit Fotor

9.     Pablo by Buffer

A sister concern product of Buffer, Pablo is another promising option when it comes to sites like Canva.

It’s a great platform for social media managers/marketers, bloggers, and business owners alike who need to make social media creatives with a few clicks.

Pablo by Buffer offers:

• Templates – pick out any pre-made template you like for free and craft an eye-catching design.
• Royalty-free Images – get access to thousands of free images and use them however you like.
• Images Uploads – Got a picture you want to use in your artwork? Simply upload it.
• Social Sharing – Share your graphics with others on various social media platforms including LinkedIn and Twitter.

Furthermore, you can add logos and schedule posts (by integrating with the Buffer app).

Pablo Pricing

Pablo is 100% free.

Visit Pablo

10.  Easil

Easil is another one of the highly simplified sites like Canva that even non-designers can get the hang of in no time.

The main features include:

• Templates – eye-catching templates for different uses (social media, web design, and blogs).
• Text Effects – add drop shadows to text or mask it with various textures and finishes.
• Dynamic Visuals – add GIFs to your artwork to make them all the more eye-catching.

Furthermore, you can invite collaborators to view and edit your work.

Easil Pricing

Select one of three pricing plans:

• Basic – you get templates, stock images, folders, text effects, and more – for free.
• Plus – get all Basic plus premium features including team collaboration, for $7.50 a month.
• Edge – get all Easil Plus features, along with priority support and industry-specific templates at $59 per month.

Visit Easil

11.  RelayThat

The last tool on our list of sites like Canva is RelayThat.

This tool was made keeping the needs of solo entrepreneurs and small teams in mind.

RelayThat was developed with a brand-building focus. It’s worth checking out if you’re a business owner, business team, or a freelancer.

Some of the key features of RelayThat include:

• Free Image Library – choose from an array of free high definition images for your designs.
• Collaboration – work with teams on multiple projects simultaneously.
• Pre-set Color Palettes – cut down on your designing time with the help of convenient pre-set palettes.

Also, you can easily resize images, and keep a consistent look and feel across graphics.

RelayThat Pricing

Here’s the breakdown of the pricing plans:

• Entrepreneur – an individual business owner gets unlimited designs, 5 brand workspaces, and custom font uploads for $25 per month.
• Agency and Enterprise – businesses of all kinds get a custom brand portal, branded sign-in pages (for websites), large team collaboration, and white-label options. The price for this plan isn’t fixed – you can rest a quote based on your requirements.

Visit RelayThat

Wrapping it Up

While there are many sites like Canva, choosing the right one can be challenging.

Costs and learning curves aside, there are individual features to consider and just the overall value that they can add to your designing process.

If the above list of sites are not what you’re looking for, then you can always explore more alternative design tools to Canva.

That being said, Pixelied gives you everything you need to create professional graphics on a user-friendly interface for a pocket-friendly price.

And the best part? You don’t need to have high-level design skills.

The post 11 Sites Like Canva to Try In 2022 [Updated] appeared first on Pixelied Blog.

We’re lucky to be living in times where there are many online image editors to choose from. Content creators no longer have to rely on the expertise of professional graphic designers to whip up amazing visuals.

If you’re in the same boat and don’t like what Canva has to offer – keep reading. In this article, we’ll list down and review the 11 best Canva alternatives.

Let’s dive in.

Pixelied: One of the Best Canva Alternatives

Pixelied is an emerging photo editing and graphic design tool. Whether you’re a digital marketer, blogger, or a designer, you can use it to craft stand-out visual content since this versatile tool has been designed to meet different needs.

With Pixelied, you can create social media graphics (for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and SoundCloud, for example), email headers, custom illustrations for your website, and more.

Thanks to its intuitive UI and easy drag-and-drop features, there’s not much of a learning curve, and even non-designers can start creating stunning visuals in no time.

All in all, Pixelied provides the same level of functionality (if not better) as Canva and some of the other well-known online design tools, like Pablo, Crello, and Easil – for a lower price.

11 Promising Canva Alternatives

As mentioned above, there are quite a few tools to choose from when it comes to picking sites like Canva.

But if we’re talking about the best Canva alternatives, the following deserve a shout out:

1.      Pixelied

Pixelied is a relatively new entrant that’s giving the other well-established players a run for their money.

It’s one of the most user-friendly options out there that let you design high-level masterpieces in a matter of minutes (you don’t need pro-level design skills).

Here is a detailed analysis of all the features that this tool has to offer:

• Image Effects – completely enhance your pictures with some of the most visually-pleasing filters.
• Advanced Editor – you no longer need complex tools like InDesign or GIMP to edit your visuals. With Pixelied’s advanced but easy-to-use editor, you can do text manipulation (line-height, letter spacing, etc.), add borders, shadow, and much more – features that aren’t offered by most of the other competitors.
• Awesome Icons – explore Pixelied’s library of premium icons to increase the aesthetic value of your designs.
• Ready-Made Templates – designing something from scratch isn’t easy. To solve that problem, Pixelied provides you with millions of tailor-made template options for your designs.
• Huge Library of Free Stock Images – get unlimited access to a massive library of millions of royalty-free stock photos.

In addition to the above, Pixelied allows convenient resizing of your ready-made templates and changing/removing the background from images with a click or two.

If that’s not enough – it also lets you upload SVG/vector files and change their colors. To top it off, they also have a library of 900+ Google fonts and the ability to organize your assets in folders.

Pixelied Pricing

As of now, Pixelied offers the following plans:

• Free Plan – the free version provides basic features including 100+ templates, 3 million+ stock photos, two folders, and access to premium icons.
• Pro Plan – for $9.95, you get access to all templates, unlimited downloads, priority support, custom font uploads, and much more.

Visit Pixelied

2.      Snappa

Snappa is one of the most powerful Canva alternatives that’s perfect for designing (and scheduling) social media posts.

One of its main features is its smart suggestion system, through which, it suggests templates based on your preferences.

Let’s have a more detailed look at all the features:

• Social Media Scheduling and Sharing – though not a “design” feature, per se, Snappa offers integration with Buffer (a social media scheduler), which lets you share your designs on your social channels.
• Easy Image Editing – add texts, graphics, and effects in a snap while enjoying the vast library of limited resources. Furthermore, you can remove the background from your photos and resize your graphics with a few clicks.
• Free High-Res Stock Photos – Enjoy the free stock photo library and use as many images in your content as you like.

All in all, it’s one of the decent lightweight alternatives to Canva. However, a tool like Snappa might not have all the features that you’re looking for.

Snappa Pricing

Here is a complete breakdown of Snappa’s pricing plans:

• Free – get custom templates and HD graphics. However, it limits you to only three downloads per month.
• Pro – in addition to the free plan’s features, you can get social media sharing, unlimited downloads, custom font uploads, and background removal for $10 per month.

Visit Snappa

3.      Piktochart

Picktochart is among the top graphic design and photo editing tools that’s best-known for creating stunning, professional-looking infographics without all the extensive legwork of Photoshop and Illustrator.

Here are the main features that this tool offers:

• Data visualization – with Picktochart, you can map impactful data in the form of graphs and charts and make it more attractive.
• Team Collaboration – get in touch with your team members and create masterpieces together in real-time.
• Image Customization – if you want to edit images in the ready-made templates, Picktochart has a feature for that.

Additionally, Picktochart provides templates for you to create professional-looking presentations, infographics, social media images, and printable assets.

Piktochart Pricing

Let’s compare the free plan and the paid plan offered by Picktochart.

• Free – This plan lets you create limited visuals, upload standard quality images, and download pictures with its watermark.
• Pro ($24.17/m) – It enables you to design unlimited visuals, 1 GB image uploads, PDF exports, and custom font upload.

Visit Piktochart

4.      Visme

Next on our list of Canva alternatives is Visme – another complete graphic design tool that offers a highly intuitive user-interface. In fact, it’s known as the “tool made by designers for non-designers.”

The tool offers a wide array of features, some of which include:

• Awesome Templates –  Visme offers templates for different content types including, website graphics, videos, gifs, flowcharts, and more.
• Standard Editor – this lets you customize your visuals or create assets from scratch, with basic tools such as text manipulation, color pallets, and more.
• Data Visualization – give life to your data and craft visually-appealing graphs using ready-made charts and widgets. And the best part? It’s compatible with Excel.

Additionally, Visme offers unlimited access to free icons and stock images.

Visme Pricing

Visme offers comprehensive plans for individuals, businesses, and educators/students. For now, let’s look at the basic and standard plan:

• Basic – this is a free plan that gives access to limited templates, charts, and widgets. It also allows you to download your projects in PDFformat.
• Standard – for $14 a month, get access to premium resources and an option to create color palettes.

Visit Visme

5.      Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a user-friendly alternative to Photoshop. Like most online design apps, it’s (relatively) easy to use and allows you to create virtually every type of graphic.

It also has Android and iPhone mobile apps to help you create great visual content on-the-go.

Here are some of the main features offered by Adobe Spark:

• Spark Post – design high-quality graphics for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms.
• Page – this feature lets you compose responsive and magazine-styled web pages.
• Video – if you wish to create short but compelling videos for your campaigns, use this feature.

Furthermore, Adobe Spark offers instant sharing options and a gallery of designs to get those creative juices flowing.

Adobe Spark Pricing

These are the pricing plans offered by Adobe Spark:

• Free – the free version offers unlimited access to icons and royalty-free stock images.
• Pro  – this plan gives access to premium resources, custom templates, Adobe fonts, and team collaboration for $9.99 per month.

Visit Adobe Spark

Explore Adobe Spark Alternatives

6.      PicMonkey

PicMonkey is a user-friendly photo editing and design software that not only helps create visuals from scratch, but also offers amazing features to enhance your existing images.

These are the main categories of features that PicMonkey is known for:

• Photo Effects and Editing –  edit your photos by applying filters, textures, stickers, and other accessories.
• Branding Tools PicMonkey empowers your brand by helping you create business cards, logos, and watermarks.

In addition to the above, it provides an endless library of templates for you to beautify your posts and create engaging content for  your social channels.

PicMonkey Pricing

PicMonkey offers the following plans:

• Basic –  it’s free and allows you to download your images in PNG and JPG. Furthermore, it provides 1 GB of cloud storage.
• Pro – this plan gives unlimited storage, access to the resource library, and team collaboration for $12.99 a month.

Visit PicMonkey

7.      FotoJet

Fotojet is another one of the promising Canva alternatives that’s popular in the designer community. It is a photo editor, graphic designer, and an online collage maker.

Let’s look at the features that make FotoJet the awesome tool that it is:

• Graphic Designer – use Fotojet to create jaw-dropping posters, flyers, banners, and much more.
• Collage Maker – leverage the exciting range of layouts and themes FotoJet offers, and create eye-catching collages in a matter of a few minutes.
• Photo Editor – use this feature to resize, crop, rotate, and touch up your photos.

If you have little or no design skills, FotoJet is one of the better options to start your design process with.

FotoJet Pricing

Let’s look at the pricing:

• Free – The free version offers basic editing and limited templates and stocks. However, it includes ads.
• Pro –  This version provides an advanced editing tool, access to premium assets, and shows no ads for $6.99 per month.

Visit FotoJet

8.      BeFunky

BeFunky is another standard all-in-one online graphic design tool that lets you create an array of custom graphics.

It offers:

• Photo Editing – crop and resize your photos, add artsy filters, remove background, and re-touch your portraits and images with BeFunky’s photo editor.
• Collage Maker – combine your photos to create stunning collages with a single click. Explore the complete list of themes to make the perfect masterpiece.
• Free Resources – explore the customizable design templates, stock images, vector graphics, and icons to embellish your photos with.

And that barely scratches the surface.

BeFunky Pricing

BeFunky offers all this at a $6.99 monthly rate.

Visit BeFunky

9.      Fotor

Fotor is a lightweight graphic design option that’s ideal for individuals and small teams.

That being said, it does have more features to offer than FotoJet. At a glance, these features include:

• Photo Editing – Fotor offers beauty filters, vintage effects, portrait retouching, resizing, and more.
• Photo Collage – express more feelings with a single photo using Fotor’s collage maker.

Fotor Pricing

Fotor offers the following two pricing plans:

• Free – the free version provides basic editing and basic photo effects.
• Pro –  this version provides exclusive photo effects, design templates, and storage (for $8.99 a month).

Visit Fotor

View Fotor Alternatives

10.  RelayThat

Relaythat is a popular design tool that’s loved by content marketers and small business owners.

It offers the following features:

• Headline Generator – not a design feature, but it lets you quickly generate suitable headlines for your video thumbnails and social media posts.
• Themes and Layouts – use visually-pleasing, ready-made themes, layouts, and color combinations to create top-level content.
• Account Management – manage your brand by organizing your image folders for each project.

RelayThat Pricing

Let’s look at the prices for different packages.

• Entrepreneurs – perfect for individuals, this plan offers unlimited designs, ability to manage five workspaces (brands), bring on 1 team member, and option to upload custom fonts. It costs $25 a month.
• For Agency and Teams – this is a custom plan, offered to large teams (agencies and enterprises). Get in touch with the RelayThat team to get a custom price quote.

Visit RelayThat

11.  DesignBold

The last Canva alternative on our list is DesignBold, which makes creating sophisticated and brilliant designs effortless.

Let’s have a look at what DesignBold has to offer.

• Automated Backups – design your content smoothly without worrying about internet disruption. DesignBold takes backup at regular intervals to save your designs.
• Team Collaboration – work with your team by inviting them via a magic link. Create top-level visual assets in real-time.
• Customization and Personalization – use the photo editing tool to edit your photos and make them infinitely better.

Additionally, DesignBold allows multiformat file download, high-res download option, and pinning favorite resources.

DesignBold Pricing

Let’s have a look at the pricing plans offered by DesignBold:

• Free – the free plan offers access to thousands of free layouts and basic resources.
• Pro – this plan provides access to unlimited storage, premium icons & layouts, and complete customization options. It costs $9.99 a month.

Visit DesignBold

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re on mobile, Mac, or PC – these photo editors can make the professional designing process a lot easier.

All options considered, it’s safe to say that finding Canva alternatives isn’t really a challenge. The real challenge is finding a tool that meets your specific requirements and doesn’t require much effort to master.

That being said, out of all the tools, Pixelied is the only option that not only offers exclusive features but is also currently the most user-friendly tool in the market.

Give it a shot – it’s free.

The post 11 Canva Alternatives to Try In 2022 appeared first on Pixelied Blog.