As Canva crashes worldwide, here are 5 design alternatives you can now use

Canva has been down since early Monday morning, preventing millions of users worldwide from logging in, editing, saving, or sharing their work. The outage is attributed to technical issues at Amazon Web Services, which hosts Canva’s cloud infrastructure. Reports of login failures and crashes quickly surfaced on DownDetector.

The design platform acknowledged on its status page a significant increase in error rates and stated that engineers were actively investigating to restore full access. This message remained consistent throughout the day, indicating ongoing widespread problems with the platform.

AWS acknowledged delays and increased error rates affecting multiple services in its US-EAST-1 region. Consequently, other platforms hosted on AWS, including Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Duolingo, Xero, Grammarly, and Amazon.com, experienced similar issues.

AWS’s infrastructure underpins many applications and websites, eliminating the need for physical servers. This outage highlights the widespread dependence of internet services on cloud platforms, where regional technical issues can disrupt numerous services and impact millions of users.

The impact of Canva’s downtime

The Canva outage impacted students, freelancers, educators, marketers, and businesses who depend on the platform for presentations, marketing, social media, and school projects. The disruption caused workflow interruptions, deadline delays, and the need for alternative solutions.

This outage underscores the risk of relying on a single platform for critical tasks. Service disruptions can halt projects and decrease productivity. For companies dependent on Canva, this translates to potential revenue loss, missed opportunities, and the necessity for alternative solutions.

Also read: Nigerians, others react as Canva experiences major outage

For millions of individual users, the outage emphasises the importance of having a backup plan. Whether it’s using an alternative design platform or saving copies of work offline, relying solely on one service can leave users vulnerable when technical issues arise.

Keep your projects moving: 5 designing tools like Canva

While Canva remains down, users can turn to other platforms to continue creating designs. Here are five popular alternatives:

1. Figma – A web-based platform that allows users to design graphics, interfaces, and presentations. Figma supports real-time collaboration, making it suitable for teams working together remotely.

2. Adobe Express – Previously known as Adobe Spark, this tool lets users create social media graphics, short videos, and marketing content quickly. It offers pre-designed templates and easy editing tools for beginners.

3. Crello (VistaCreate) – Similar to Canva, Crello supports graphic and video design with thousands of ready-made templates. Users can create social media posts, flyers, banners, and other visual content.

4. Pixlr – A browser-based photo editor and graphic design tool that allows for quick editing and creation of images. Pixlr is lightweight and easy to use, making it suitable for simple projects.

5. Visme – A platform designed for presentations, infographics, and social media content. Visme offers drag-and-drop tools, templates, and collaboration options, making it useful for teams and educators.

These alternatives provide similar functionality to Canva, allowing users to continue their work without interruption. While switching platforms may require some adjustment, all five options can help maintain productivity until Canva restores full access.

What users should know

The outage may take several hours to resolve, depending on how quickly AWS stabilises its infrastructure. Canva and AWS teams are working to fix the issues. Users are advised to keep checking Canva’s status page and consider using backup platforms in the meantime.

For companies and individuals who rely heavily on Canva, this incident is a reminder to save copies of work regularly and to explore alternative tools. Diversifying the tools you use for design and content creation ensures that technical problems do not completely halt your projects.

Canva’s downtime highlights both the reach and risk of cloud-dependent platforms. Millions of users were affected when AWS experienced technical difficulties, showing how a single infrastructure problem can disrupt multiple apps and websites.

While Canva works to restore full access, alternatives like Figma, Adobe Express, Crello, Pixlr, and Visme offer reliable options for continuing work. Users are encouraged to explore these platforms and maintain backups of critical projects to avoid disruption in the future.