A Comprehensive Guide to Craft a Graphic Design SaaS Platform Like Canva

Each day, millions of people use photo editing apps to enhance their images for social media. With the growing use of social media apps, the demand for designing apps, such as Canva, Luminar AI, Adobe InDesign, etc., is also rising.

Canva, being an easy-to-use and freely available designing platform, has already become a fan-favorite graphic designing application. It was developed to substitute the complexity of designing tools like Photoshop by making a design tool that was simple to use, intuitive, and accessible with a few clicks.

With a monthly user base of more than 125 million globally, Canva is making it one of the most popular graphic design platforms. Moreover, it is a convenient tool for creating images, video editing, and photo editing with easy drag & drop features and numerous templates.

Why Is Canva So Popular?

Canva is a graphic design tool that people can use to edit images and create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content. It provides businesses, organizations, and individuals with a design platform to visualize their design ideas.

The primary reason for the increasing popularity of Canva is the ease of design, where users can create visuals without much hassle or prior training. Consequently, many people choose Canva over complex design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, or Figma.

The effortless drag-and-drop user interface of Canva makes designing so easy that even beginners can easily create graphics effortlessly. Various pre-designed and ready-to-use templates, fonts, colors, frames, and filters are available on Canva, making designing quick and enjoyable.

What are the Monetization Strategies of Canva?

Operating on a freemium SaaS-based model, Canva provides the basic plan for free. It contains enough features to design any infographics or edit a video effortlessly. However, to get additional features, Canva offers paid subscription plans.

There are three pricing models for Canva: Free, Pro, and Enterprise, that you can use in your mobile app development idea.

1. Premium Version

With the Pro plan, Canva provides access to premium tools and content. It also offers an Enterprise pricing plan, where an entire team of any size can manage and scale their content in one place. Also, this plan contains additional benefits suitable for a brand.

2. Canva Marketplace

Designers can list their design on the Canva marketplace and earn royalties when their graphic is purchased. In exchange, Canva will charge a commission for each design sold.

3. Canva Courses

Canva provides courses, including all design parameters, social media marketing, and branding. These courses give tutorials to the users as well as promote the platform. Users can take online courses for free but have to pay for offline classes.

4. Print Service

Canva provides printing services to its consumers, where users can print their designs on various objects, including t-shirts, invitations, flyers, banners, etc. Canva also ships the print design to more than 30 countries, and the price varies accordingly.

Must-Have Features For a Design App Like Canva

Canva empowers its users to create designs without prior training or experience effortlessly. It provides them with several user-friendly features that a SaaS development company can implement to grab users’ attention.

Account Creation and Authentication

Every user must create an account using their credentials, which is essential to keep track of account activity and authentication. You can sign up on Canva via email or social media accounts.

Picture Editing

1. Template customization as per your needs.
2. Background remover.
3. Preset grid or collage template to build a montage.
4. Search from stock images to insert backgrounds, animations, icons, buttons, clip art, symbols, etc.
5. Supporting different file formats, including JPG, PNG, PDF, etc.
6. Collaborate with your teammates to work together on your projects.

Video Editing

1. Add a title, description, or caption to your video to make your video more interactive.
2. Add background music to your videos.
3. Convert video to MP4 for easy editing using the video-to-MP4 converter tool.
4. Canva GIF-to-video converter to convert your GIF to videos.
5. Create a photo montage to tell a visual story.
6. Merge different videos to design a complete visual story.
7. Add transitions to your videos to give them a seaming look and feel.

To learn how to develop a video editing tool, read our video editing app development guide.

Content Planner

Schedule the posts on Pinterest, Facebook, etc., through a content planner, which will save time and streamline your work.

Customization

Users can customize the tool interface and make changes per their preferences.

Unique Filters

Adding unique textures through filters can give a tedious image a unique look.

PDF Editor

Canva enables its users to edit PDFs free of cost. Also, allow them to download the file in formats like PPT, SVG, or Print-ready PDF files.

Team Structure and Permissions on Canva

As per the pricing plans, the features, team structure, and permission change in Canva. The Admin, Team Owners, Template Designers, and Members have access to a particular set of features that will help app users to manage their designs with ease.

Administrator

• Managing team members and the team settings.
• Setting and editing the Brand Kit and maintaining the brand consistency.
• Publishing design templates for the team to edit.
• Scheduling posts to social media via Content Planner.

Team Owner and Members

• The team owner can create the team.
• The team owner has permission to delete the team.
• Members can access and edit the design template, which is shareable with everyone on the team.

Template Designer

• Setting and editing the Brand Kit.
• Creating designs as per the Brand Kit.
• Publishing design templates for the team to edit.
• Scheduling posts to social media via Content Planner.

Technology Stack to Build an App Like Canva

There are several factors to consider while developing Canva, and one such parameter is the tech stack. Therefore, you must hand over your project to an experienced SaaS product development company that can handle all these aspects effectively.

Incorporating the latest technologies into a web or mobile application will make it stand apart and provide a competitive edge on the market. Some of the latest technologies to integrate into your Canva app are given below:

Mobile SDK	iOS and Android
Real-Time Analytics	Big Data, Google Analytics, Hadoop, etc.
Website Front-End	Angular.JS, React.JS, etc.
Back-End Development	Node.js, Python, Java, PHP, etc.
Location Tracking	Google Maps and Apple Maps
Notifications	Push.IO, Twilio, Amazon SNS, Map, AdPushup, etc.
Cloud Storage	Google Cloud Storage, Amazon Cloud Storage, etc.
Messaging	Twilio, Firebase, etc.
QR Codes Scanning	ZBar bar code reader
Databases	MySQL, Cassandra, HBase, MongoDB, etc
Payment Gateways	Net Banking, Stripe, PayPal, etc

How Much Does it Cost to Build Canva?

Several factors impact the overall mobile app development cost of Canva. There are some parameters that affect the financial estimation, like integrating the unique features and thoroughly testing the application to ensure its smooth working.

The parameters mentioned below will help to define the average cost of developing a SaaS app like Canva:

• Mobile Platform

Being a SaaS platform, while the desktop application is the core of Canva, it is necessary to have mobile apps to stand out in the competition. It will also help your business to reach out more user base. The cost of developing an app like Canva depends on the number of platforms you choose to deploy it.

You can pick a Native app platform, either Android or iOS, to build your app or use hybrid app development with technologies like Flutter or React Native.

• Development Team Size

If you have the requirement of standard features, you might need a small team of developers, which will cost you less. You must hire mobile app developers with years of expertise to integrate complex features and third-party application integration. However, forming a large team will cost more. It is essential to define the complexity of the application so that you can spend on the development team accordingly.

• UI/UX Design

Another essential aspect you need to consider while estimating the development cost of Canva is the application’s design. The more you spend on the UI/UX design, you can ensure the application’s user-friendly and attractive layout.

• Technology Stack

An application must run smoothly on different devices and consist of the latest technologies. Integrate advanced technologies like Chatbots, AI, ML, etc., to enhance the app’s functionality. However, it will affect the pricing accordingly.

• Third-party API Integration

The number of third-party applications you choose to integrate into your SaaS application will also influence the final cost estimation.

• App Testing

Rigorous testing is required to ensure the smooth functioning of the application. Therefore, ensure to hire an experienced QA team to test your app and make it error-free.

Based on the factors mentioned above, you can make the final estimation of the development cost. After thoroughly analyzing all these parameters, developing Canva will cost $12,000 to $30,000 (or more with the complex features).

SparxIT: A Trusted Partner for Developing a SaaS App Like Canva

Canva is an excellent design tool many professionals and learners prefer. With the increasing demand for SaaS-based platforms, SparxIT will be your trusted mobile app development company to build an app like Canva that stands out.

The skilled SaaS product developers of SparxIT provide next-gen software solutions. From the discovery phase to maintenance & support, we manage every aspect of SaaS product development.

With the growing photography and social media content trend, a massive user base is shifting towards graphic designing and editing apps. Hence, now is the time to hire developers to build your app like Canva and step into the market.