Crello Review: Powerful Design App or Canva Clone?

A picture is worth a thousand words. That’s the saying, anyway. True or not, one thing is for sure — quality writing alone is not enough in today’s content-driven world. You’ve got to capture and hold your reader’s attention moment after moment, or they’ll bounce from your page in a matter of seconds.

The problem with this reality? Most of us are writers and marketers, not graphic design majors. How the heck are we supposed to spice up our content without using complicated, expensive tools like Photoshop?

Well, the good folks over at Depositphotos created a simple, affordable solution for people just like us. Say hello to Crello, the simplest and most affordable graphic design software on the market! It transforms the cumbersome task of creating custom graphics into an easy drag-and-drop process that even your great-grandmother could tackle.

In this Crello review, we’ll go over the platform itself, discuss its primary features, and talk about the versions and pricing. By the end, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about whether Crello is the right graphics tool for you.

What Is Crello?

Crello is a multi-platform drag-and-drop visual design tool from the folks over at Depositphotos. The software helps new and seasoned designers edit photos, create custom graphics, animate videos, and even add audio to short animations. 

Crello comes in two flavors: a web app found at the Crello web domain and a mobile app found on the App and Google Play stores. While the web and mobile apps provide a similar experience, the mobile version is simplified for accessibility. And though you can use the same account on both platforms, you can only edit your designs on the platform you created them.

Fortunately, this limitation hasn’t seemed to slow the company’s growth. As of 2021, Crello boasts over 2 million members and an active user base who rely on it to create over 30,000 graphics every single day.

Crello Features

Next in this Crello review, let’s discuss the most important part of any piece of software — its features!

Believe it or not, Crello can be used to create everything from blog headers to animated ads to TikTok videos! Although these graphical assets serve very distinct purposes, they’re still just a sampling of what you can create within Crello.

How is this possible?

It all comes down to Crello’s expansive and ever-growing feature set. As of 2021, Crello’s platform offers everything from image manipulation to audio and animation design, making it an ideal solution for all types of content creators.

Check out the following table to see the categories in which Crello excels as well as all the best features within each category.

Image Editing	Design Objects	Animation	Audio
Remove background	Shapes	Resize video	Add music to images
Create brand kits	Stickers	Apply animated effects	Add audio to video
Add frames to photos	Icons	Create animated logos
Add speech bubbles to phoot	Badges	Trim video
Add text to photo	Labels
Flip images
Rotate images
Photo filters
Resize images
Transparency and layers
Blur
Crop images

How can you put all these features to work? To answer that question, let’s take a look at the Crello Editor itself.

Crello Review: The Crello Editor

The Crello Editor is the interface from which you create, edit, and customize your graphics. In terms of user experience, the Editor features a familiar and intuitive UI, with design elements on the left and your editable graphic on the right.

The Crello Editor is where the real magic happens.

What kind of design elements can you use to create your design? Here’s a top-level peek at the primary options:

• Photos
• Videos
• Music
• Animations
• Objects
• Text

You can also upload your own elements if you so choose. That said, the chances you’ll need to upload any files outside of brand assets are pretty slim. Why? Because Crello offers over 200 million design elements, including millions of photos, vectors, videos, and more — many of which are entirely free!

Working on your design is a simple process of adding elements from the left sidebar and then tweaking these elements from the main editing area on the right. Rotate, crop, and adjust virtually anything – Crello puts the power in your hands. For more flavor and flair, you can go even further, using built-in image manipulation tools to remove backgrounds, adjust colors, and more.

When you’re happy with your design, simply download it in whatever format best suits your use case. Crello even offers full-on MP4 downloads for short videos that’ll really take your content creation up a notch! 

Here’s the complete list of supported extensions:

• JPG
• PNG
• PDF
• MP4
• GIF

Overall, the entire graphic creation process is as easy as can be. The Crello team designed a friendly UI that everyone can use to create quality graphics with just a little practice.

But… what if you don’t feel comfortable making a completely custom graphic? Before you hire a pro designer for hundreds of dollars, let’s talk templates.

Crello Templates

Next up in this Crello review, let’s talk templates.

Templates are an essential part of the non-designer’s design toolkit. They empower you to create stunning graphics in record time, without the need to understand the fundamentals of art and design.

Fortunately, Crello’s all-star team of designers have you covered in the template department, providing a one-stop-shop for every use case you can imagine.

There are currently over 50,000 templates on Crello for all types of graphics, including blog headers, ebook covers, social media ads, and much more!

Here’s a quick peek at some of the coolest blog-oriented templates, curated within Crello just for you!

Pretty cool, right?

No matter why you’re using Crello, you can count on the platform having an appropriate starting point for your design.

Want to shake things up a bit and deviate from what the designers created? No problem! You can edit the template just like your own design, creating the perfect presentation for your project.

What’s more, the Crello team is continually adding templates, with several thousand flashy new designs released in the past couple months alone. 

How can the team afford to keep cranking out new templates at lightning speed? One thing I’ve learned while writing this Crello review is that it all comes down to their freemium business model.

Crello Plans: Starter vs. Pro

Crello operates on a freemium business model. While you can create, edit, and download designs without paying a dime, you’re capped at just five downloads per month, making it a paltry offering for anyone serious about content creation.

Fortunately, Crello also offers a premium plan that removes all download caps, offers more photo editing functionality, and provides access to the new Crello Unlimited asset catalog. It also comes with many other perks designed to simplify, speed up, and enhance your workflow.

But… everything comes at a price, and you’ll have to shell out for access to Crello’s Pro plan.

Pricing

Now that we’ve gone over the differences between plans, let’s talk pricing.

First, the good news. For those just beginning their content creation journey, Crello’s Starter plan costs a whopping $0.00, as in zip, zero, zilch. Just sign up and start creating, no credit card required.

The bad news? The Starter plan is quite limited, and I can’t really recommend it for folks who are serious about upping their content creation game.

Fortunately, the Pro plan comes out to just $7.99 per month when purchasing an annual plan or $9.99 month by month. This is super affordable when considering all the design features, assets, and templates you gain access to.

Not only that, but the development team also offers regular lifetime deals on platforms like Appsumo, meaning there’s a chance to gain permanent access to the platform for a fraction of the cost. Huge kudos to the development team for taking their commitment to design accessibility seriously.

There is one “hidden fee” worth noting in this Crello review, however. While the Free and Pro plans include access to over one million assets, accessing other files within the Depositphotos library costs $1 apiece. This is still quite affordable, but it is one more cost atop your monthly fee.

Overall, Crello’s Pro plan is reasonable, especially when stacked up against their main competitor: Canva.

Crello vs. Canva

Now it’s time to address the elephant in the room: is Crello just a Canva clone?

To be completely honest with this Crello review, yes and no. 

Crello launched back in 2017, four whole years after Canva hit the scene. Yet, the two boast a virtually identical UI with many of the same features. It’s clear that the billion-dollar behemoth inspired Crello, but you can’t blame them when looking at Canva’s massive success.

What about features? Plain and simple, Canva offers more features than Crello, including more image manipulation features, more editing functionality, and more free assets (to the tune of millions).

So, why should you choose Crello over Canva?

Team Crello?

First, the price. Crello routinely offers LTDs that make purchasing it a no-brainer. But even if you aren’t able to snag one of those, Crello Pro is still less expensive than Canva Pro. The monthly price of Canva is $12.95 versus $9.99 for Crello.

Crello is also innovating in the space. In fact, Crello introduced features like animation and background removal before Canva. Once the folks over at Canva caught wind, they quickly rolled out their version in a game of catch-up. The underdog Crello is making waves, and the others are taking note!

And though Canva offers more features overall, Crello does have some unique offerings of their own. My favorite? The color picker tool, which automatically grabs the hex code from an existing element and pastes it into the element of your choice.

With all of that in mind, Canva is still the better choice overall. To put it quite plainly, Canva is the industry standard, and it’s backed by a mega team of programmers and designers cranking out new features at a breakneck pace.

After writing this Crello review, I believe that Canva is the better choice, while Crello is a fine runner-up.

Crello Review: The Verdict

Overall, Crello is an excellent tool. It helps newbie designers create incredible graphics in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost. Not only that, but you can use Crello to create all different types of graphics, from static images to animations and short videos.

Crello is delightful to use and offers a simple interface that anyone can pick up.

That’s not to say it comes without quirks. There are a handful of areas that feel a bit clunky or could use improvement.

For instance, the background remover tool takes about 10 to 15 seconds and offers no recourse if the AI removes too much or too little of your image (this happens more often than you might think). 

Another gripe I have is the lack of right-clicking and shortkey functionality. The worst offender among these omissions? There’s no CTRL + D duplication option, an unfortunate shortcoming considering Crello is a tool for designers. Instead, you’ll have to click an out-of-the-way button within the Editor if you want to duplicate something.

While this may sound like nitpicking, it’s honestly a huge bummer for those who are used to more optimized workflows.

A Work In Progress

Still, there are issues with every piece of software. When taking everything from this Crello review into account, the Crello Editor is still a great example of powerful software that’s simultaneously simple and easy to use after just minutes of tinkering.

No, it’s not quite up to the level of Canva. But the development team is forging ahead with their roadmap, introducing features that stay true to their own design mission.

If you don’t need access to Canva’s more powerful features (features such as their adjustable background remover, drop shadows, and specialized filters), Crello is a suitable alternative, especially if you snag a lifetime deal.

Crello Review Rating: 4.4/5