Microsoft Designer Review: Is It a Real Canva Alternative?

When it comes to online design and editing tools, Canva has long been the king. It’s a great go-to tool for creating all kinds of content, from brand logos to wedding invites and social media posts.

Other tools have tried and failed to dethrone Canva, but if one company can pull it off, it might be Microsoft.

Enter Microsoft Designer. This is Microsoft’s answer to Canva, and the two tools share a lot in common, from their clean and neat user interfaces to their impressive, flexible abilities to make a wide range of content, like posters, banners, invites, and ads.

Like Canva, Microsoft Designer is also leaning into artificial intelligence (AI) technology quite heavily, offering AI-assisted creation and editing, as well as the ability to create designs the old-fashioned way.

But can Designer truly compete with or even outclass Canva? I wanted to find out, so I put this tool to the test.

Read on through my Microsoft Designer review for my full thoughts, including a look at pricing, key features, and what I feel Designer gets right and wrong.

What Does Microsoft Designer Offer?

Before I go in-depth into any of the specific features and functions of Microsoft Designer, here’s a brief overview of what it actually is.

In a nutshell, Microsoft Designer is a free-to-use, AI-powered graphic design app that runs in your browser.

It can help you create images, logos, social media posts, and much more, either by using text-to-image AI generation or via a more traditional drag-and-drop editing space.

It also supports image editing (both AI-powered and conventional editing features are available), so you can upload something you’ve already made and enhance it in a range of ways, with Microsoft Designer’s help.

It can remove backgrounds, upscale images, or create fun frames for your photos, for example.

In a lot of ways, Microsoft Designer is similar to Canva, but it has the unique advantage of being part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. That means some of its features are integrated into popular Microsoft apps, like Photos, Word, and PowerPoint, with more set to be added in the future.

As a result, this intriguing editor and generator is gaining ground in the market, with an increasing number of users turning to Designer ahead of Canva and other editors, like Adobe Express.

Key Features of Microsoft Designer

There’s a lot that users can do with Microsoft Designer, broken up into three main functions: AI creation, AI editing, and manual design. Here’s a closer look at all three.

AI Creation

Microsoft, in general, is heavily invested in AI and is integrating its own AI agent, Microsoft Copilot, into more and more of its apps and services.

A large part of Designer’s features incorporate Copilot in some way, including its extensive AI creation options, which let you use Copilot to create content in minutes.

Here’s a look at how it all works.

On the “Create with AI” tab, you’ll see the different types of content you can make. There are a lot of options here, from brand logos through to desktop wallpapers, event invitations, greeting cards, stickers, social media posts, and more.

Once you select any of the content types, you’ll be taken to another page with yet more templates to pick from.

Here’s an example, using “Invitations”:

You can scroll through to find a template that best matches your needs and tastes.

Then, you can customize your creation in just a few easy steps.

You can click the “Description” button, for example, to enter text describing the subject matter of your invite, and click on “Imagery” to enter an AI text prompt of how the final visual should look with regard to patterns, colors, and general aesthetics.

You can also select the “Style” option to choose from a wide range of different visual styles.

Options include Watercolor, Scrapbook, Bold Comic Book, Doodle Art, Photorealistic, Line Art, Nostalgic Pixel, Origami, Geometric 3D, and dozens more.

Once you’ve finished customizing your prompts and picking your styles and colors, all that’s left to do is click the “Create” button to let Copilot generate your visual.

Copilot will then create four different options, based on your input.

In general, I found that the options were often very similar, or even identical in some cases, though the results will vary depending on your prompts and style selections.

You can then pick and edit individual results or simply save your favorite to use or publish.

Overall, it’s a simple and exceptionally speedy way to make sleek, attractive visuals in various formats, perfect for those moments when you need something like an invite, social post, or banner but don’t want to spend hours making it yourself.

AI Editing

Microsoft Designer’s AI powers aren’t just for generating fresh visuals from scratch – you can also use the Copilot AI to edit your existing content.

You can upload your own photographs or visuals into the tool to edit them, or edit content you made in Designer itself. All you need to do to get started is select the “Edit with AI” tab on the Microsoft Designer homepage.

There are several interesting options to play around with here.

The “Frame your photos” feature, for example, lets you use Copilot’s generative AI capabilities to create a fun frame for any picture in your collection.

To get started, I simply had to upload an image I wanted to work with.

From this screen, I click the “Elements” tab to specify what kinds of items I want to see in my frame, as well as pick a style. Then, it’s simply a case of clicking on “Create” and waiting a brief moment while the frame is generated.

But there’s much more to Microsoft Designer’s AI editing than that.

If you move into the main “Image Editor” screen, it looks like this:

Here, you can find a wide range of editing tools in the left menu.

You’ll find all the usual functions, like cropping, resizing, and the ability to add text to your picture, for example.

Similar to Canva, Designer also offers the ability to instantly add various visuals, like stickers and shapes, onto your image. You can then drag them around to position them as desired.

There’s even an option to generate your own custom stickers, using AI, and then add those to your projects.

In addition, you can select your image at any time to access a selection of AI features, like upscaling, changing the background, removing objects, blurring the background, moving items around, etc.

In general, as with any editor, the results you get from these features will vary depending on the quality of your original image, but I found them all to be quite useful in their own ways.

Each effect and filter loads quickly, so you don’t have to worry about waiting around while the AI processes your pictures, and there’s a good mixture of options to work with.

Manual Design

While much of Microsoft Designer is AI-focused, it still offers conventional design tools for those who prefer to create their projects manually.

You can access this by selecting “Design from scratch” in the main Designer menu.

There, you’ll see a wide selection of custom-sized templates, giving you a head start for creating things like flyers, Instagram stories, and even Microsoft Word headers to add to your Word documents.

Once you’ve chosen a style template, you’ll be taken to the same editor page seen in the “AI Editing” section, with access to the same features, like adding text and other elements, changing the background color, or loading in pre-generated templates in various styles.

In general, it’s easy to work with, following the classic “drag-and-drop” format that many users are familiar with and feel comfortable using.

You can easily add new layers and pages, undo any changes you aren’t happy with, and fine-tune your designs either manually or with AI assistance until you’re fully satisfied.

Pricing

One of the best parts about Microsoft Designer is that it’s free to use. You can sign up today with your existing Microsoft account and start testing out the exciting image generation and fun editing tools this platform provides, without spending a dime.

This is crucial, as Canva and other similar tools also offer very generous free user plans, with access to many of their core features and functions for no charge.

Since Microsoft appears intent on competing with Canva and other graphic design web apps, it was important to offer a similar strong free plan.

However, there are limits to this plan. All the AI-powered functions of Microsoft Designer run on credits. Free users get 15 credits per month, and it’ll cost you one or more credits every time you need to use Copilot.

Once you run out, you’ll have to wait for the monthly refresh.

Alternatively, you can upgrade to a premium Microsoft 365 plan to acquire 60 credits per month and other benefits. Designer is part of the Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, and Premium plans, costing anywhere from $9.99 to $19.99 per month (annual pricing is also available).

These plans also provide access to numerous other Microsoft apps, like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Copilot, and may offer other benefits, like cloud storage, too.

Overall, they’re relatively good value for money for those who use Microsoft apps regularly, and you get a lot more for your money with a Microsoft 365 subscription than a Canva Pro membership.

Who Is Microsoft Designer For?

Thanks to its myriad of features, beginner-friendly interface, and accessibility, Microsoft Designer appeals to a broad range of users, including:

• Social media creators: A lot of the templates in Microsoft Designer are oriented towards social media content. It’s great for quickly creating eye-catching images, infographics, banners, and so on to share with your followers.
• Marketers: Designer is also excellent for creating advertising content, like banner ads, as well as brand logos and promotional materials. Marketing agents and specialists should find a lot to like about this platform.
• Brands: Brands of varying sizes can also get value from this tool. You can use it to make attention-grabbing logos and visual themes for your social profiles or company website, for example, as well as visual content that can help you build an audience on social media.
• AI enthusiasts: If you’re fascinated by AI and eager to see what it can do in terms of generating visual content, Microsoft Designer is absolutely worth checking out. It unlocks the potential of Microsoft’s Copilot AI to help you create and edit in bold, exciting ways.
• Microsoft users: If you’re heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem already, it makes a lot of sense to use Designer. It’s already integrated with some of the biggest Microsoft apps and is most likely going to become an integral part of them in the years to come.
• Beginners: I’ve mentioned this several times, but Designer has a very beginner-friendly interface, so it is simply ideal for those who may feel that more conventional editor tools, like Photoshop, are a little too technical for them.

Ultimately, there are a lot of people who can get a great deal of value out of this tool, and if you’ve been looking for something like Canva, but a little more AI-oriented, Designer might be right for you.

At the same time, it’s probably not the right pick for users who prefer to work with their pictures in a more detailed way, or those who are more used to tools like Photoshop that allow the most specific and precise photo edits.

Also, since it’s so AI-heavy, it’s not a great fit for those who aren’t necessarily enamored with AI or don’t want to rely on it too much when making or editing visuals.

Microsoft Designer vs. Canva: The Final Verdict

Returning to my titular question: “Is Microsoft Designer a true Canva alternative?” The short answer is yes, Microsoft had Canva in mind when designing this tool, as it offers a lot of similar features and a familiar theme without feeling like a complete copy.

While Designer can do much of what Canva does, it certainly focuses more on AI editing and generation. As a result, some users may find it even more advanced and easier to work with than Canva, perfect for generating attractive, dynamic visuals in a matter of minutes, with minimal manual effort required.

There’s still a place for Canva, however. It’s more robust, has a wider range of features and functions, and offers more precise editing options.

Canva’s asset library is bigger, its collaborative features are arguably stronger, and it’s just more versatile, on the whole, as well.

Thus, neither option is necessarily “better” than the other, but both have their ideal use cases.

Stick with Canva if you’re more interested in manual design and in-depth editing. But consider switching to Designer for faster, AI-powered creation.