Kittl vs Canva: An In-Depth Comparison in 2024

Kittl vs Canva: Quick Summary

Kittl (starting at $15 monthly) excels in print-on-demand (POD) services but has much fewer features and templates than Canva. Canva offers more design flexibility, robust AI tools, and extensive template libraries at $12.99 monthly, making it a better value as a design tool.

Here’s a quick summary table before we go into the details.

Let’s look at this in more detail.

Kittl has generated a lot of buzz since entering the market in 2020. Many designers, small business owners, and individuals who work on graphic design platforms are already curious to know if it will be the next Canva or even better.

I’ve gone in-depth in this Kittl vs Canva comparison, analyzing both tools based on the key requirements of a graphic design platform.

Take your time to read through and find out which of the tools suits your design needs better.

What is Kittl?

Kittl is a web-based graphic design platform that provides powerful design tools, professional templates, creative fonts, photos, icons, and more to help individuals and businesses create designs in seconds.

You can create anything from logos to vector graphics, clipart, and even make eye-catching merch designs. You can use a template from its library and customize it or design it from scratch.

Its biggest feature is its Print on Demand (POD) services, and it also offers a few AI-powered tools.

Kittl was founded in 2020 and has gone on to compete with popular design powerhouses like Canva, Adobe, Piktochart, etc.

What is Canva?

Canva is a popular web-based graphic design platform that offers a comprehensive set of templates, tools, and stock content for creating various types of designs.

You can use this drag-and-drop tool to create images, logos, posters, presentations, social media graphics, videos, and even websites.

You can also use Canva as a desktop or mobile app, but all with only an internet connection.

Founded in 2012, Canva has grown into one of the most popular design tools globally, with over 170 million users. Canva is suitable for both individuals and businesses of all sizes.

Read a detailed overview of Canva in my Canva guide.

Similarities between Kittl and Canva

Kittl and Canva are similar in many ways:

• Web-based platform: Both tools are accessible via any web browser.
• User interface: Both tools offer drag-and-drop user and beginner-friendly interfaces.
• Asset library: Kittl and Canva offer a vast library of templates, stock photos, fonts, and other design elements.
• Collaboration: Both tools offer collaboration features to enable you and your team to work together effectively.
• Publishing and sharing: Kittl and Canva offer tools for sharing your designs with your team members and others.
• Pricing: Both tools offer free-forever plans. Their premium plans are in the same range of $10 to $24 per month.
• Free trial: Both tools offer free trials. Kittl offers a 7-day trial, and Canva offers a 30-day one.

Now that you know how similar they are, the next is how they differ.

I’ll share the critical differences between Kittl and Canva below and recommend which you should use based on your unique design needs.

Kittl vs Canva: Detailed Comparison

Their most significant difference lies in their design features, user-friendliness, and suitability to different business needs.

1. Dashboard and interface

Kittl and Canva have similar dashboards, with their elements almost taking the same positions on a desktop page. They also have the regular elements on their dashboards, including:

Canva dashboard

Kittl dashboard

Kinva has fewer elements than Canva on its dashboard because it offers fewer features. Canva is a more evolved tool and thus has a more robust and sophisticated dashboard.

However, while you might need to observe more keenly to see the elements you want, it offers you a rich dashboard with all the tools you need to create a sophisticated design. They are all very easy to access.

2. Templates

Canva has over 610,000 templates in various categories, including social media, posters, logos, presentations, etc., while Kittl has only about 1,000 templates.

Even in the free version, Canva has over 250K templates, which beats Kittl’s 1000 in its Pro version.

You can access templates on Canva based on your design needs. They’re excellently categorized into over 60 objectives, including business, marketing, social media, cards and invitations, videos, and lots more.

Kittl also offers unique and high-quality templates, but as of now, the collection is not as big as Canva’s.

Whether it’s the free version or the paid, Kittl’s library is no match for Canva’s extensive template. So whether you choose Kittl or Canva depends on which type of templates you need more and whether Kittl offers that.

In Canva, it’s almost impossible not to find a template that suits your design needs.

3. Stock images

If your design involves working with stock images, Kittl and Canva have millions of royalty-free, copyright-free images you can use. That means you have tons of images on both platforms that you can use for personal and commercial purposes.

With Canva, you can access over 100 million stock images, videos, and graphic elements, with over 1 million available for free.

Even more, Canva integrates with stock image platforms like Pixabay and Pexels to search these databases for images right within your Canva design interface. You don’t have to open the websites, download images, and upload them to Canva.

Honestly, this is a huge plus for me, as I constantly need to find royalty-free images from these websites for my clients and myself.

Kittl gives you access to over 3 million high-resolution images in the Pro version from more than 290,000 photographers worldwide.

For me, Canva takes the lead by a good margin, considering it offers over 100 million images compared to Kittl’s 3 million (both in the Pro version).

Both Canva and Kittl offer over 1 million stock images in the free version.

4. Graphic elements

Kittl has over 10,000 graphic elements you can use to enhance the aesthetics of your designs. This includes:

Canva gives you access to the following graphic elements:

Some of the graphics elements on Kittl are more refined and trendy than the ones on Canva.

Kittl even has robust ornamental elements, which can be helpful when adding aesthetics to your designs.

Canva provides a bigger collection of elements than Kittl. You can access tables, charts, and even videos, that are unavailable on Kittl.

No matter what kind of icon or graphic I need for my designs, I can be pretty sure Canva has it. You just need to use the right keywords to find the perfect elements.

Go on, try it! Go to Canva -> Elements, and type the most random graphic you can imagine. It’s there on Canva.

Ready? Try it out!

5. Text editing

The ability to transform texts into aesthetically pleasing visuals can’t be underestimated in designs. You can give your design an entirely different appeal by simply tweaking a text.

Kittl and Canva provide a wide range of text editing features.

With Canva, you can access over 40,000 typefaces, including top aesthetic fonts like RoxboroughCF, Safira March, Sego, the Seasons, and more. You can also upload your own.

Canva’s fonts are usually free for commercial use.

Besides, you can add effects to your texts to suit your design needs.

Canva has also recently added animation effects to enable you to transform your design texts in many possible ways. There are basic, writing, typewriter, and even exaggeration animations. These are wonderful when you’re creating presentations.

You’ll also find Kittl’s text editing and transformation features interesting. The hundreds of typefaces on Kittl are arranged into serifs, sans serifs, script, and other font categories.

You can also add stunning effects and transform your texts as you desire. Kittl has eight core text transformation effects:

Kittle doesn’t offer the text animation features you have on Canva. However, it provides enough text editing tools to help you transform your text into the desired visual element.

Most of these effects can also be created in Canva; it just takes a bit more effort. For example, check out my posts on how to curve text in Canva and how to wrap text in Canva.

If you want to create wavy tevy text, you can also use Canva’s new Typecraft app.

To conclude, Kittle might have taken the lead in text editing if I had done this review a year or two ago.

However, Canva has recently upgraded its text editing features, and it can do almost. There are more effects and animations now, and the number of premium fonts available is unmatched in the market.

Therefore, while Kittl offers awesome text editing features, Canva lets you accomplish much more.

6. Image editing

Despite not being dedicated image tools, Kittl and Canva offer basic media editing features useful when creating designs for your business or clients.

In Kittl, you can resize images, play with contrast, hue, and sharpness, and add noise and drop shadow. You can also remove image backgrounds using Kittl’s AI Background Remover tool.

Canva also allows you to do the above on your images, including Background removal. It has a paste formatting feature that lets you copy styles from two images to form a third image.

For example, you can copy different backgrounds from two images and use them to create a background for a third image. This feature is not available on Kittl.

This is helpful for me regularly. I use this formatting tool not just for images, but for graphics and text as well.

7. Sharing and social media publishing

If you’re making personal or business designs, you might sometimes want to publish directly from the design platform to your social media accounts.

Kittl and Canva allow you to post your designs on social media platforms.

Sharing options on Kittl

Both apps allow you to publish your designs on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Kittl goes further by allowing you to share your designs with people on WhatsApp or directly via email. I love this feature!

For instance, I recently created a birthday invitation for my son’s birthday, and I could share the invite directly with the WhatsApp group I created for this birthday. On Canva, you will have to download the JPEG to share.

You can also share your designs with the Kittl community to enable them to use and modify them. However, this is only necessary when you’re simply creating designs or creating to attract clients from the Kittl community.

I would not recommend publishing it in the communities if it’s a brand-specific design or for your business. Keep it private for your brand to maintain its authenticity.

Canva doesn’t let you post to WhatsApp. However, it enables you to do more, as it allows you to post on plenty of additional social media channels compared to Kittl:

This is not available on Kittl.

To summarize:

Both tools allow you to post on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. However, I prefer Canva because it allows you to post on Facebook groups and LinkedIn pages, which are big groups where your audience may be hanging out.

It also lets you post on Instagram, which is a must-have for many content creators.

Kittl’s feature to share directly on WhatsApp (desktop) is perhaps more applicable for more personal designs which you want to share with a select group. For business designs and marketing material, it’s fine to be able to download the image as a JPEG, PDF, or PNG.

8. AI design tools

Kittl and Canva are both riding the artificial intelligence (AI) trend to provide their users with faster, better design tools.

With Kittl AI, you can generate stunning images, vector graphics, logos, image backgrounds, and quotes for your POD products.

You can remove backgrounds from any image, convert images to vector formats, find stunning AI art, and generate clipart with text prompts.

Check out the Kittl AI tools:

• AI Background Generator: Create unique backgrounds for your designs with AI.
• AI Image Vectorizer: Turn images into vector graphics automatically.
• AI Quote Generator: Generate creative quotes for your projects.
• AI Art Feed: Discover and use AI-generated art.
• SVG Converter: Convert files to scalable vector graphics (SVG).
• AI Vector Generator: Create vector graphics using AI.

Canva also provides an extensive suite of AI tools to enable you to perform magic in your designs.

Through its Magic Studio, Canva provides tools for generating images and videos with text prompts, editing images precisely, applying animations and transitions to your designs, and generating text that aligns with your brand voice.

The Magic Studio also contains tools like the:

• Magic Morph: Transform shapes and objects smoothly for cool effects.
• Magic Grab: Select, move, and adjust elements precisely.
• Magic Expand: Enlarge areas while keeping the look intact.
• Magic Eraser: Remove unwanted parts from images easily.
• Magic Animate: Add motion to elements for lively animations.
• Magic Switch: Quickly swap between different design elements.
• Background Remover: Use AI to remove backgrounds and isolate subjects.

These tools allow you to perform various design functions very easily and quickly, which is what you need when you create a lot of designs.

My favorites are Magic Eraser, Resize & Magic Switch, Background Remover, and Magic Expand. I use them pretty regularly.

Canva provides tools that perform the same functions as the Kittl AI toolset. But it also provides tools that help you do so much more.

Canva also provides an AI tool to turn texts into images or videos.

You only need to describe what you want, and Canva Magic Media will produce the image or video. This is not available on Kittl.

Given that Kittl is only a 4-yr old tool, it has an excellent suite of AI tools. Canva did not have such tools in its initial years.

However, now, Canva provides many more tools than Kittl, and also very sophisticated ones, that you can use to create designs much faster and even customize in a detailed way.

9. File export formats

Kittl and Canva let you export or download files in multiple formats, making it easy to share your designs with your clients in their preferred formats or use them in a platform’s accepted formats.

With Kittl, you can export your designs in the following formats:

The first two are best for digital designs, while the latter are great for print designs. Also, the last two are only available to premium Kittl users.

On the other hand, Canva allows you to export your designs in the following formats:

Canva is the obvious winner here.

It allows you to export your files in many more formats than Kittl, including MP4, a video-exporting format you can’t access on Kittl.

10. Branding

Branding is one of the essential uses of graphic design platforms. From creating brand logos to establishing a consistent brand image across multiple platforms, graphic design platforms like Kittl and Canva play a crucial role.

The branding features on Kittl are basic. You have a tool for creating logos, images, labels, and more.

But on Canva, you’re a dedicated brand kit-building tool. You can create up to 100 brand kits on Canva Pro and 300 in Canva Teams.

With Canva brand kits, you can assemble your brand assets, controls, and workflows in one place. This enables you to establish and enforce brand consistency across multiple channels for as many brand kits as you have access to.

I create designs for multiple websites and brands so I am constantly switching between the brand kits to easily access the colors, logos, and fonts I want per design.

So if you are a designer, the brand kits are a lifesaver.

If you are only doing designs for your business, it also helps to have your key elements stores in one place. Canva’s free version would also be enough for that.

But this one feature itself puts Canva ahead of Kittl when it comes to branding.

11. Integrations with other apps

Kittl and Canva integrate seamlessly with third-party applications, making it easy to create powerful designs and share them with your audience or clients.

Kittl still has a long way to go with integrations, as it has far fewer integration options than Canva.

Currently, Kittl integrates with apps enabling you to share or publish your designs, like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, WhatsApp, and email.

Canva, on the other hand, has a myriad of third-party applications. It provides third-party integrations depending on your stage in the design process, from file importation to editing and sharing or publishing your designs.

With Canva, you can access various apps to aid your design process, including:

As you can see, Canva takes the lead here.

It offers integrations for different stages in the design process and gives you many options in each category. Many third-party apps do the same thing on Canva; you have to choose the one that suits your needs better.

12. Collaboration

Kittl and Canva allow you to invite team members, clients, or anyone else to access, view, and edit your designs with a link.

However, Canva offers a more dedicated collaboration tool. Through its Canva for Teams plan, you can collaborate with your team in real-time to create better designs.

It also allows you to manage the input level each team member can make on your designs. You can set different permission levels on your designs to determine which team members can view, comment, or edit.

This is not the case with Kittl, as everyone with access to your design links can edit it.

I have tested both and can tell you it’s not just Kittl. Very few design platforms match Canva’s collaboration features.

If you are a solo designer and don’t need to collaborate, either Canva or Kittl would be fine.

Eventually it depends on whether you need to collaborate with others or you are a solo player. If you are a small business with multiple team members who need access to designs, but who shouldn’t be able to change your brand guidelines, Canva is a no-brainer.

13. Print on demand

If you’re into printing souvenirs or gifting your loyal customers, Kittl and Canva offer POD features.

Kittl provides print features that help you print words or images on T-shirts, mugs, posters, hoodies, and other items and deliver them directly to your customers or doorstep.

This simplifies the logistics process significantly, especially if you need to print many merchandise or designs to sell, gift, or use personally.

Here are the biggest differences between Canva and Kittl in terms of print-on-demand.

Licensing

Kittl offers straightforward licensing, allowing personal, commercial, and commission project designs. , including unlimited POD products. It specifically supports POD uses without quantity limits.

But in Canva, licensing is more restrictive, requiring heavy editing of elements, which can lead to product removals due to copyright issues.

Templates

Kittl offers ornate and high-quality templates specifically for print-on-demand products like t-shirts, and they are very easy to customize.

Canva’s T-shirt templates are more generic and lack the ornate designs found in Kittl.

Text features for print

Kittl provides pre-made fonts and text designs that are better and more suitable, especially for POD designs.

Canva offers a wide range of fonts but is a bit limited in terms of POD-specific text designs.

POD is the biggest feature where Kittl has an edge over Canva.

Canva aims to be versatile for various design needs, which may dilute its effectiveness for specialized POD tasks.

14. Ease of use

Kittl and Canva are both user-friendly platforms, as even a beginner can navigate their way without much direction.

However, because Kittl has fewer elements, templates, and design options, It is easier to use than Canva. The many tools and apps on Canva can be overwhelming, especially when you don’t know which ones you need to do your job quickly.

While this might be because Kittl is still new and gradually evolving, it doesn’t negate the fact that it provides an easier-to-navigate interface than Canva.

15. Support

Despite their user-friendly interfaces, you can get hooked trying to execute a design idea or perform a task on both platforms.

Kittl provides support via live chats, email, and website forms. Once you make a contact request via the complaint forms or email, you’ll receive a response within 24 hours.

Customer support on Canva is only limited to emails.

Kittl is more user-friendly in this way as it provides more options for getting help when stuck and ensures you get expert help within a reasonable timeframe.

16. Learning and tutorials

Kittl and Canva provide robust learning materials for navigating their platforms and creating powerful designs.

On both platforms, you can access blogs, tutorials, a help center, and expert support, which puts them on par.

The only difference is that as Canva has been around longer, you will have many more tutorials, tips, and troubleshooting content on the internet. Plenty of independent content creators, including yours truly, have published tips we find helpful.

That will also happen on Kittl eventually. At this moment, however, while both brands publish many tutorials, Canva has much more user-generated content.

Kittl vs Canva: Pricing

Kittl and Canva are freemium tools offering free and premium access to their platform.

Kittl pricing

Kittl has four pricing plans:

• Kittl Free: This is a free forever Kittl plan. It gives you 20 AI credits (which you can use to access a premium AI tool once), 500MB of upload space, and the ability to work on up to 20 projects. You can access over 100 templates, 1,000 graphic elements and 1 million stock photos.
• Kittl Pro: Kittl Pro costs $15 monthly but has the option of annual billing at $10 monthly. It gives you access to 30 AI credits per day, 1GB of upload space, and up to 100 projects. You can access over 1,000 templates, 10,000 graphic elements, and 3 million stock photos.
• Kittl Expert: Kittl Expert costs $30 monthly but has the option of annual billing at $24 monthly. It gives you access to 100 AI credits per day, 100GB of upload space, and unlimited projects. You can access over 1,000 templates, 10,000 graphic elements, and 3 million stock photos.
• Kittl Business: The Kittl Business plan is a custom plan. You must contact the Kittl team for a personalized plan, which includes adding up to 5 users to one account.

Canva pricing

Canva has three pricing plans:

• Canva Free: This is a free, forever Canva plan. It gives you access to over 1 million templates, 3 million stock photos and graphics, 1000 design types, and 5GB of cloud storage.
• Canva Pro: Canva Pro costs $12.99 per month and includes unlimited templates, over 100 million stock photos, videos, graphics, 100 brand kits, and 1TB of cloud storage.
• Canva for Teams: Canva for Teams costs $14.99 monthly, including access to everything in Canva Pro for up to 5 persons.

Kittl Pro ($15 monthly) is more expensive than Canva Pro ($12.99) on a monthly plan.

Considering that it doesn’t offer as many features as Canva, it doesn’t make sense to me to consider it a design tool. Kittl Expert, at $30 monthly, also doesn’t offer as many features as Canva.

It is probably worth it if you want to use Kittl only as a design + print tool. I haven’t tried the POD options, so I can’t tell you.

Kittl vs Canva: Pros and Cons

Like other tools, Kittl and Canva have their advantages and drawbacks. Here are some of them:

Kittl Pros

• Extensive text editing features
• Unique design elements and templates
• Comprehensive print-on-demand (POD) services
• Beginner-friendly interface
• Robust customer support
• Affordable pricing plans

Kittl Cons

• Limited graphic elements
• Insignificant design templates compared to Canva
• Limited/non-existent video editing features
• Limited branding and collaboration features

Canva Pros

• Extensive design templates and elements
• Exceptional collaboration features
• Extensive third-party app integration
• Higher file export options than Kittl
• Greatly improved text editing features

Canva Cons

• Overwhelming asset libraries
• Slightly more expensive than Kittl
• Print on demand features more limited than Kittl

Additional features of Canva

Beyond having more extensive templates, graphic and design elements, stock images and videos, Canva has these additional features that make it miles ahead of Kittl:

1. Desktop and mobile app

Canva offers desktop and mobile app versions of its software, making it accessible to almost everyone.

Whether you use a MacBook, Windows, iPhone, or Android device, Canva has software that is compatible with your system. This feature has yet to be available on Kittl.

In fact, most graphic design tools don’t offer this feature, as they’re mostly limited to web or desktop versions.

2. 30-day Free trial

Canva offers a 30-day free trial that allows you to access its premium features at no cost. This trial is available on both Canva Pro and Canva for Teams.

I love that Canva gives you full access to these premium plans, which, in my opinion, establishes their confidence in their services.

You must enter your credit card details to activate the free trial. However, you won’t be debited until the free trial period ends.

Therefore, if you don’t want to sign up for the plan, it’s important to cancel the subscription at least a few hours before the end of the free trial.

3. Presentations

Canva offers a huge variety of presentation templates that you can easily customize.

You can even explore these presentations in a PowerPoint format, and you can you can upload PPT presentations to Canva to add Canva elements to them.

You can choose from different types of presentations.

You can conduct presentations through Canva.

You can also convert your Canva presentations to Google Slides.

These are very helpful features if you are not a designer but have a small business and want to create and share high-quality presentations.

4. Canva Docs

Canva Docs is a powerful feature that enables you to create visual-based documents and format them with images, videos, graphs, and charts. It allows you to add a professional touch to your personal and business documents.

You can create visually appealing business proposals, memos, meeting minutes, questionnaires, etc.

5. Charts and Graphs

This feature is interesting if you’re a data analyst or love visualizing data using graphs and charts.

Canva provides more than 20 professional graph types to make your reports and presentations more credible and readable. You also have access to many templates to fast-track your workflow.

With Canva’s graph maker tool, you can make beautiful data visualizations in just five steps.

Here are more things you can do in Canva:

Who should use Kittl?

If you’re a freelancer or small business owner specializing in POD projects, Kittl provides a more robust tool.

It enables you to create your designs, print them directly from the platform, and even use their shipping services to facilitate delivery.

You should also use Kittl if you need a more straightforward, slightly more affordable alternative to Canva.

This is true if you find Canva overwhelming, as there are thousands and millions of options in templates, photos, videos, and design elements.

If you need to design simple designs occasionally for personal reasons, you can also use Kittl. However, even then, Canva Free might be a better bet as it offers more templates and stock images than Kittl.

Who should use Canva?

If you need a user-friendly but robust graphic design platform, Canva is your ideal choice, especially if you run a business.

It gives you access to extensive libraries of templates, graphic elements, stock photos, stock videos, and many more.

I recommend it more also if you work with a team. Canva offers team collaboration features currently unmatched in the graphic design industry.

So, I recommend Canva any day if you are a business.

Kittl vs Canva: Final Verdict

As a pure design tool, Kittl is relatively new and still has a long way to go. However, it’s commendable that it already matches or comes close to Canva in many of its features, showing how competitive it will be in the near future.

One thing I find amusing is that the dashboard and interface of Kittl seem to be a replica of Canva, except for the color 😉 Even the popup asking you to create an account is the same.

You have other online tools, too, like Adobe Express, which are competitors to Canva but have very different interfaces. Kittl didn’t seem to bother with that, hehhe.

Anyway, I can’t deny that Canva currently beats Kittl in the essential areas in which one needs to create exceptional designs at a lower price point.

Currently, the biggest reason to choose Kittl over Canva is its printing features, and it seems very focused on POD as its unique value proposition.

Ultimately, it depends on your needs.

If you are maybe a printing house or need lots of merchandise printed, you can create some quick designs on Kittl and get them printed and delivered.

But if you are more focused on creating customized, branded designs quickly, easily, and smartly, Canva is a much better choice, especially as it’s priced even less than Kittl, with far more extensive features.

So, which one would you choose? Have you used Kittl or Canva before? What are your experiences? I am quite excited to hear from you!

Check out other Kittl comparisons:

Originally published at https://weignitegrowth.com on May 17, 2024.