SketchWow vs Canva

by Gralio Mar 10, 2025

SketchWow and Canva are design tools catering to different needs. SketchWow suits users wanting affordable, engaging visuals with a focus on hand-drawn styles. Canva offers broader design capabilities, collaboration, and stock resources, but comes with a subscription fee.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 5489 reviews and 60 websites, saving 1 day, 6 hours, 59 minutes of reading.

Logo of SketchWow
Logo of Canva

About

SketchWow is a diagramming software that helps you create engaging visuals instead of typical, boring diagrams. It offers hundreds of hand-drawn style templates and icons that are customizable and can be animated. You can use SketchWow to create presentations, social media content, diagrams, infographics, mind maps, and more. SketchWow is a one-time purchase and can be installed on multiple computers.
Canva is a user-friendly design platform that makes it easy to create professional-looking visuals. It offers a wide range of templates and design tools, including a library of stock images, videos, and fonts. Canva can be used to create social media graphics, presentations, marketing materials, and more. Its drag-and-drop interface and intuitive features make it suitable for users of all skill levels, even those without prior design experience. Canva's focus on simplicity and ease of use has made it a popular choice for individuals and businesses alike.

Summary

Main difference
SketchWow is a desktop application purchased once for use on multiple computers, focusing on hand-drawn visuals and animations. Canva is a subscription-based web and mobile app, offering broader design capabilities with stock photos, videos, and collaborative features.

Relative strengths of SketchWow (compared to Canva)

  • One-time purchase for multiple computers.

  • Focus on hand-drawn and animated visuals.

  • Easy to use for creating engaging presentations and diagrams.

Relative weaknesses of SketchWow (compared to Canva)

  • Limited design capabilities compared to Canva.

  • No mobile app or web access.

  • Smaller template library than Canva.

Who is using SketchWow and Canva?

No data
Inovo VC
CEE-focused VC with a few unicorn investments
Michel Lieben
Founder / CEO @ ColdIQ
Greg Sekulski
Partner at Techteams. Head, Director, VP Search for Tech Companies. Product, Growth, & Engineering.
Ismael Briasco
Mentor for impact-driven leaders | Personal Branding, Digital Business | CEO LinkedUp | Co-Founder NIXGrowth | 25+ yrs experience
Kevin Jurovich
Co-founder & CEO at Circles and Huble
Show all 22 stacks

Who should use SketchWow VS. Canva

SketchWow is a user-friendly diagramming software ideal for creating engaging visuals. Users love its easy-to-use interface, hundreds of customizable templates, and affordable one-time purchase. However, some users mention limitations with large format printing and the lack of a mobile version. Its hand-drawn style helps simplify complex concepts, making it perfect for presentations, social media content, and more.

Canva is a user-friendly design platform praised for its intuitive interface and vast template library. Users appreciate the diverse stock assets and collaboration features but note the free version's limitations. It's ideal for creating social media graphics, presentations, and marketing materials.

  • Ideal for small to medium-sized businesses, educators, marketers, consultants, and solopreneurs.

  • Suitable for any industry seeking visually engaging presentations, diagrams, or social media content.

  • Ideal for small to medium businesses, marketers, educators, and nonprofits.

  • Suitable for various sectors, including healthcare, finance, e-commerce, education, and more.

SketchWow and Canva features

Supported
Partially supported
Not supported
Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

  • Data Visualization
    Not supported

    SketchWow creates visually appealing diagrams, but not interactive data visualizations.

    Partially supported

    Canva supports interactive data visualization through its Flourish integration.

  • Social media graphics
    Supported

    SketchWow allows creating social media graphics with various sizes and styles.

    Supported

    Canva excels in creating social media graphics, offering diverse templates, design tools, platform optimization, and integration options for seamless content creation and publishing.

  • Drag-and-drop editor
    Partially supported

    SketchWow has a drag-and-drop editor, but it's not specifically for logo design.

    Supported

    Canva supports drag-and-drop functionality for designing logos.

  • Logo generation
    Partially supported

    SketchWow does not explicitly offer logo generation but has design tools adaptable for logo creation.

    Supported

    Canva allows users to design and generate logos using provided templates, design elements, and a user-friendly interface. Users can customize these templates, incorporate various design elements, and export their logos in different formats.

  • Design elements
    Not supported

    SketchWow offers design elements but not specifically for logo template customization.

    Supported

    Canva provides access to a library of design elements specifically for customizing logo templates, as part of its extensive design element library.

  • Access to a library of pre-designed logo templates.
    Not supported

    SketchWow does not offer pre-designed logo templates.

    Supported

    Canva provides access to a library of pre-designed logo templates.

Qualities

  • Value and Pricing Transparency
    +0.36
    Rather positive sentiment
    -0.08
    Neutral sentiment
  • Customer Service
    +0.84
    Strongly positive sentiment
    +0.22
    Neutral sentiment
  • Ease of Use
    +0.98
    Strongly positive sentiment
    +0.94
    Strongly positive sentiment
  • Reliability and Performance
    +0.66
    Rather positive sentiment
    +0.05
    Neutral sentiment
  • Ease of Implementation
    +0.73
    Strongly positive sentiment
    +0.83
    Strongly positive sentiment
  • Scalability
    +0.6
    Rather positive sentiment
    +0.52
    Rather positive sentiment

SketchWow and Canva Pricing

No data

User sentiment

Strongly negative
-1

See full Pricing page

No data

User sentiment

Neutral
-0.04
We couldn't find a pricing page for Canva.

SketchWow and Canva review insights

5410 reviews analysed from and

Users love

  • Easy to use and create engaging visuals.
  • Hundreds of customizable templates and icons available.
  • Frequent updates with new features and improvements.
  • Affordable one-time purchase for multiple computers.
  • Hand-drawn style helps simplify complex concepts.
  • Easy to use and intuitive interface
  • Wide variety of templates for every need
  • Extensive library of stock images, videos, and fonts
  • Great collaboration features

Users dislike

  • Lack of some resources to manipulate the design.
  • No mobile version available.
  • Difficult to find certain elements with the search engine.
  • Limited stylus support, still buggy.
  • Not ideal for large format printing (e.g., 3ft+)
  • The free version is quite limited
  • Many features are locked behind a paywall
  • The mobile app is underwhelming and laggy
  • Limited offline functionality

SketchWow and Canva Ratings

  • G2
    4.8/5
    (346)
  • G2
    4.7/5
    (2674)
  • Capterra
    4.7/5
    (2444)
  • Glassdoor
    4.2/5
    (732)

Company health

Employee growth

No data
21% increase in the last year

Web traffic

No data
7% increase in the last quarter

Financing

No data
June 2024 - $3B

How do SketchWow's hand-drawn templates compare to Canva's vast template library?

SketchWow's template library emphasizes hand-drawn styles for a unique, engaging aesthetic, while Canva offers a vastly larger library with a broader range of styles, catering to diverse design needs beyond the hand-drawn look. Therefore, while SketchWow excels in its niche, Canva provides more template variety and caters to a wider audience.

Which product better supports complex diagram creation, SketchWow or Canva?

SketchWow is better suited for complex diagram creation. While Canva is a versatile design tool, SketchWow focuses specifically on diagramming and offers features like flowchart creation, data visualization, and animation, which are crucial for complex diagrams. Canva's strength lies in general graphic design and social media content creation, making it less specialized for intricate diagram projects.

What are the advantages of SketchWow?

SketchWow's advantages include its focus on creating engaging, hand-drawn style visuals, its affordability as a one-time purchase for multiple computers, and its frequent updates with new features and improvements based on user feedback. It offers a large library of customizable templates and icons, making it easy for users to create visually appealing content quickly. This hand-drawn aesthetic helps simplify complex concepts and makes presentations and other visuals more memorable.

What are the disadvantages of SketchWow?

SketchWow has some limitations regarding design manipulation resources, lacks a mobile version, has a search engine that makes finding specific elements difficult, limited and buggy stylus support, and is not ideal for large format printing.

Alternatives to SketchWow and Canva

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Prezent
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Read more
Page co-authored by
MK
Michal Kaczor
CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

TT
Tymon Terlikiewicz
CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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