Canva, the Free* Online Design Software

Looking for a way to create professional looking layouts for Facebook posts, marketing flyers, letterheads, event invitations and more? Canva may be what you're looking for.

Canva.com is a free*, online design software platform. It's simple to learn, easy to use and customizable. So why the asterisk? As always, there's a catch.

Canva offers many templates and stock imagery for free. However, they also offer a huge selection of stock images on a pay-per-use basis. The good news? Most (if not all) of the stock images that aren't free are only $1.00. And if you want, you can simply upload and use your own files with no additional fee.

I decided to give the design sofware a try and in 10 minutes created a Facebook cover photo using a free template and one of my own images. It looked good, was easy to create and I was able to download the final layout for free.

Looking through the site, there's also a subscription option, but I'm at a loss as to what the benefits of a subscription model are. I'll update this post if I find out. [Sean]

* Some features require a subscription or a small pay-per-use fee.