Some days back I got a canva pro offer by entering a coupon. I got this pro for 3 months and I was ecstatic, I think a lot of people value canva, but don't think it's valuable enough for anyone to pay for a yearly or monthly subscription, I'm one of those people.
Although I like it. I've been using it for years now, and I enjoy it, but it doesn't really major a lot as a main tool for content creation. After getting that 3 months free trial coupon, I was elated, used the AI agents for a few days and it was amazing and I designed cool stuffs but after like 5 days the pro trial was removed and I wondered why.
This could have been a great experience and a reminder for users to actually renew their subs, the experience could get many people using canva again, but I guess the didn't happen. I'm not denying that the use experience has been great, I just wonder why they'd go back on their words of letting people use a free coupon for 3 months by enjoying the pro version of the app.
It just reminds you of the fact that nothing is free anymore, every tool, app, interface or system is monetized, but a lot of app fail to understand that you need to still offer free, or a sort of free trial to people to enable them to use and decide if your app is worth paying for.
The likes of chatGPT and Claude are currently doing this. Even capcut one of the best modern video editing tool that is also a huge "value-for-money" experience is also doing it, and funny enough, capcut pro is even cheaper than canva.
This is why I think canva has a very terrible marketing team. Their app (canva) is not a bulk or major editing tool app, and should have been cheaper too.
Despite the fact that capcut is a main editing tool, it offers better value for money and because of that, most people has no choice but to subscribe to that for the bulk of their video editing.
Perhaps canva is trying to charge more to make up for the lower number of people using them to other freer available option, but then, this itself is a very terrible idea.
Claude for example is arguably the best AI models, it murders chatGPT and Gemini at almost everything and they still let's you have 5 to 6 free prompts daily.
Infact the main flagship AI too is not divided into PRO and PRO+, you pay 25$ or thereabout (can't remember) and you can continue using the experience. Infact it's the only AI tool I can confidently pay for...
why?
I have seen the experience, it's breathtaking and worth every money. Infact it would get so better that it puts the like of chatGPT out of business, but this is another discussion for another day.
The point is that people have to be comfortable with parting with their money and they have to be happy that they're actually doing it, they need to be eager, they have to dream of the experience and not the price they're paying.
They need to wish they have the money to pay, and they need to place the experience above any price they need to pay, and this is exactly what the likes of Claude and caput have done: make the experience even far more memorable than the price.
A lot of apps are like canva; placing the subscription fee over the the experience they're supposed to give their customers. This is a bad business models, especially since people would prefer to have an choose a cheaper alternative.
If you're not the best in the business, then you have to business charging fees that makes people think of instant alternatives.
