Canva acquires Affinity

TidBITS Talk
1

Press Release, Announcement and FAQ.

I don’t use Affinity products (or Canva) but among those that do, this may be the first question that comes to mind:

Canva’s business model is subscription, are there any plans to change how Affinity is sold?
There are no changes to our current pricing model planned at this time, with all our apps still available as a one-off purchase. Existing Affinity users will be able to continue to use your apps in perpetuity as they were originally purchased – with plenty of free updates to V2 still to look forward to!

4 Likes
2

OK, so V3 will be subscription … that’s bad.

But for me, having subscribed to using Adobe’s Creative Cloud :laughing: this is good news because this will put some pressure on Adobe :smile:

1 Like
3

Looks like Affinity felt it should rebut the comments and rumors that circulated immediately following the acquisition announcement. Here’s an excerpt of an email sent to Affinity users today:

[…]
1. We are committed to fair, transparent and affordable pricing, including the perpetual licenses that have made Affinity special.

We share a commitment to making design fairer and more accessible. For Canva, this has meant making our core product available for free to millions of people across the globe, and for Affinity, this has meant a fairly priced perpetual license model. We know this model has been a key part of the Affinity offering and we are committed to continue to offer perpetual licenses in the future.

If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it. This fits with enabling Canva users to start adopting Affinity. It could also allow us to offer Affinity users a way to scale their workflows using Canva as a platform to share and collaborate on their Affinity assets, if they choose to.

2. We will double down on expanding Affinity’s products through continued investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite.

We believe Affinity is the highest-quality professional-grade design suite on the market. It’s non-destructive, super fast, and easy to use. As such, we want to reassure you that it isn’t going anywhere.

In fact, we’re committed to using our shared resources to continue expanding Affinity’s products through further investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite. We’re looking forward to accelerating the rollout of highly requested features such as variable font support, blend and width tools, auto object selection, multi-page spreads, ePub export and much more.

These additions will further cement Affinity as the best advanced design suite on the market and will be released over the coming year as free updates to V2.

3. We will provide Affinity free for schools & NFPs.

Canva, which has pledged 30% of its value as a company towards doing good in the world through its two-step plan, offers premium plans at no cost to schools and NFPs all over the world. More than 60 million students and teachers, plus 600,000 charities and registered nonprofits, benefit from this each month.

We’re excited to extend this programme to include free access for schools and nonprofits to Designer, Photo and Publisher. These professional-grade tools will add enormous value to this free offering, helping millions of students to master the craft of design, and empowering mission driven organisations to amplify their voices and maximize their impact.

We’ll share more details on this in the coming months, including what it means for our education and NFP customers that already use Affinity.
[…]

2 Likes
4

Michael Tsai’s blog is worth reading. From the comments on that blog:

2 Likes
5

I don’t use their products as a LR and Ps user…but since they got bought they don’t have nearly as much say in perpetual license vs subscription as the new owners do…so in the short term it might stay but in the medium term I expect it t9 be a subscription because that has advantages for the company.

6

I use Affinity apps. I also use Creative Cloud (until I leave EDU land) free at work. My goal was and will always be, not to fork over $720/yr to Adobe. Even if Canva, which we use at work as well (I’m more, cough, advanced imaging user), makes subscription, I doubt it will be as costly as Adobe. Now if Canva gets bought by Adobe…

1 Like
7

It looks like that email matches The Affinity and Canva Pledge on both sites.

There’s no way to guarantee it will never change but such clear statements would make a reversal an even worse PR move.

Given the regulatory scrutiny Adobe’s attempted purchase of Figma got, I think them being able to buy Canva is even less likely.

1 Like
8

Hopefully this will curtail some of the “sky is falling” nonsense that’s been alive since the initial announcement.

There’s no guarantees in life - it could always change in the future - but for now it seems perpetual licenses are here to stay (it makes me wonder if it may have been a condition of the sale).

If they do happen to roll Affinity products into Canva the subscription price might be so low as to be a better option anyway - Canva is quite cheap for what it provides.

1 Like
9

If anyone is on the fence about buying Affinity apps, they’re having a 30% off spring sale on the apps and 5O% off add-ons. So $115 (normally $200) for a Universal license that covers all three apps on all platforms (iOS, Mac, Windows). Or you can get individual apps if you don’t want them all. It’s a perpetual license, not subscription.

Regardless of what may happen in the future under ownership by canva, the current versions should keep working for awhile.

I discovered the sale due to the takeover though–I bought a universal licence last year, but never got around to downloading the desktop versions. So I figured I ought to get that done just in case…

2 Likes