Is AI worth paying four times more for a Canva subscription?
Design software service Canva is raising membership prices for users globally, by a few US User Reporting in X that the cost of five-person team subscriptions has increased from $120 per year to $500 per year. Canva reportedly told users in an email that it would cut the top price by 40% for next year, bringing it down to $300 – still an increase of $180.
The company is worth it 26 billion dollarsTHERE 185 million global monthly usersand may be preparing to go public.
Canva is justifying the price hike by touting its new AI features.
“Our product portfolio has grown significantly in the past two years with the launch of new offerings like Visual Suite and Magic Studio,” said a Canva spokesperson. in a statement.
Visual suite includes features such as AI writing, slideshows from a prompt, and AI rendering of documents on web pages; Magic Studio uses AI to turn written concepts into social posts, videos and slideshows.
Related: From college saver to billionaire: 5 entrepreneurial lessons from Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins
Even if the new features had an AI, subscribers took to social media to express themselves disappointment over price increase. A user on X pointed out that small businesses may feel the impact of changing prices more.
Canvas renewed a long-standing partnership last month to give its clients access to Getty and also acquired images and videos The start of AI Leonardo.ai in July to strengthen its AI offerings. Leonardo is full 120 people team joined Canva's 4000 people labor as part of the purchase.
“With every single AI feature we've introduced to Canva, we really think it's helping reduce the time between A and B to turn an idea into an actual product,” Canva CEO Melanie Perkins. said in July.
Canva CEO Melanie Perkins. Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Incorporating AI into a business does not come cheap and also has a significant environmental cost.
AI models currently it costs over 100 million dollars to develop, with the price expected to increase only over the next two years. AI researchers and evaluation that it takes 30 times more energy for the AI to generate text instead of getting it directly from the source.