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Kittl and Canva both offer easily accessible design solutions. With Canva focusing heavily on the social media market and Kittl catering to print-based design products. So, given their overlapping tools and similar markets, how do Canva and Kittl compare?
What Is Kittl, and How Does It Compare to Canva?
Kittl’s browser-based design tool claims to be the most intuitive design platform on the market. It shares similarities with Canva, including its beginnings in offering browser-based design solutions. Kittl’s growing powerhouse of design tools and features is great competition for Canva.
WhileCanvais incredibly well known across the design and social media hemispheres, Kittl is gaining speed in AI-intuitive design with a focus on print on demand (POD) markets. The two platforms share many similar features and could be used for the same types of designs. So, how do they really compare with one another?
Kittl vs. Canva: Pricing Options
As with many design platforms, Kittl offers a tiered subscription model. This starts from the free-forever plan, which offers 15 AI credits, space for 20 projects, and 500MB of upload storage. It’s limited to low-resolution file downloads and a requirement to attribute any Kittl assets when publishing your designs.
Kittl Pro is $10/month, billed annually. This includes 100 AI credits/month, plus more storage and project allowances. The commercial license is available with no attribution requirement.
Kittl Expert starts from $24/month, billed annually, and custom business plans are also available. Kittl offers discounts and referral plans for students and teachers, as well as a referral discount for Pro users.
Canva offers a free version with plenty of features, including a 50-credit limit for AI tools and apps, and—like Kittl— it offers limited export options. Canva Pro gives users premium templates, assets, editing tools and apps, and better file export formats, including transparent PNGs andSVG files. There are plenty ofreasons to upgrade to Canva Pro.
Canva Pro is $119.99 for an annual subscription with a 30-day free trial; Canva for Teams is $149.90/year for the first five people; Canva for Education subscriptions are offered to teachers and students cost-free.
Kittl vs. Canva: AI Features
you may use your AI credits for Kittl’s AI logo generator—which generates editable graphics from a text prompt—or the text-to-image generator to create a large range of art and image styles; however, these results aren’t editable. Kittl has a few other AI-based tools, such as a quote generator, background removal tool, and product background generator. It also supplies an AI-generated image library for free-to-use assets.
In 2023, Kittl announced its generative AI graphic design powerhouse, Kittl AI-X1, which powers the logo generator and is expected to include more generative AI tools from 2024 onwards.
Canva announced its AI Magic Studio, a collection of AI-powered features, in 2023. Canva Magic Studio is a Canva Pro benefit. However, Canva Free users are permitted 50 AI credits to use for some of the AI services.
Canva’s Magic Studio comprises:
Many of the integrated apps in Canva also offer external AI tools like AI voiceovers, generated video personas, and other tools.
Is Kittl Good for Print on Demand?
Print on demand (POD) is a great way for designers toearn passive income from their designs, and Kittl has jumped on board to make it even easier for designers to sell their work. Not only is there a library of designs and assets to use, but Kittl’s commercial license makes it inviting to design with ready-made assets as well as add original elements.
Kittl has made the POD journey even simpler with its built-in POD features. It offers a list of template sizes for many mainstream POD manufacturers, as well as mockup images for popular garments and products, saving you from having to learn aboutcreating mockups yourself.
You can save your design as a high-quality vector graphic to send to third-party printers, or you can use Kittl’s built-in print on demand offerings which are available globally. Using Kittl for print on demand cuts out the go-between entirely. All you have to do is advertise your product, and Kittl can take care of the rest.
Can You Design From Scratch Using Kittl?
You can design from scratch directly in the Kittl Editor; however, Kittl doesn’t provide tools for drawing or editing shapes.
The Text Editor feature works with Kittl’s vast typography library—including inclusive licenses for all font options—and the Text Effects editor. You can create beautiful typographic designs with Kittl’s tools, including adding textures, curvature and shape options, and editing the text line path after writing.
There are limits to creating shaped designs from scratch. The shape library provides basic shapes as well as pre-illustrated shapes and designs. There’s no path to edit the shapes with, so you must use them as they are. The shapes can be recolored and have basic outer effects applied though.
Using Kittl’s extensive asset library, you can create a multitude of original designs from scratch that include aspects from different assets. The Text Effects function is the best way to create originality using Kittl’s Editor.
In contrast, although Canva isn’t much of an intuitive design tool compared to the likes of Adobe or Figma, it does offer more customizable design features. Canva includes a drawing tool and the ability to add effects to images and shapes, but still no editable path option.
Are Kittl Templates Good for Designers?
Kittl’s template and asset libraries are ever-growing. Many templates are made by Kittl creators, and they’re all available with commercial licenses for your use. Largely, the templates are fully editable, and Kittl’s assets vary in how they can be edited.
Once you’ve created a design in Kittl, you also have the option to release your design to the Kittl community. This turns your design into a template to be used and edited by other Kittl designers.
Since Kittl’s focus is more on POD designs and less on social media designs, the templates and assets have fewer movable parts than Canva’s do. Canva’s templates largely focus on social media setups with replaceable parts. Canva also offers video, audio, and animated template assets, which are less common in Kittl.
Overall, Kittl has many similarities to Canva that might not hold a flame to Canva’s features. However, for designers wishing to break the print on demand markets or graphic designers who want to create apparel, Kittl is the better option. Its built-in POD features are helpful and inspiring, and the expectations of Kittl AI-X1 will be able to push your designs further with the help of generative AI design solutions.
