Kittl is a newer design tool receiving a lot of buzz for rivaling the popular design tool Canva. 

While I am a huge lover of Canva myself, I wanted to give Kittl a try and see what it offers for creating and selling digital products. Here’s my in-depth breakdown of Kittl and Canva’s best features, their pros and cons, and which is better for selling digital products in 2024.

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Canva design templates

How Are Kittl and Canva Similar?

Kittl and Canva are browser-based drag-and-drop template designers, so no software installation is required. 

The biggest similarities: 

• Both offer free plans and premium subscriptions. 

• Kittl and Canva offer many design options, including social media graphics, invitations, mugs, merch, cards, t-shirts, posters, labels, and more. 

• Both offer thousands of editable templates. You can also create projects from scratch with either tool if you don't love using templates. 

• You can upload your own fonts with a premium subscription to either program. 

• Kittl offers a newsfeed, and Canva has a “Discover Templates” section to help you discover their new template launches. 

• Each platform saves and stores your design as you work on it, so you never have to worry about losing your progress. 

• You can favorite templates on either program. Kittl allows you to “heart” designs, while Canva has a built-in “star” feature. You can also follow your favorite template designers so that you’re notified of new designs they release. 

• You can easily choose from set template sizes (such as an Instagram post template with the correct dimensions already built-in) or create custom dimensions for your project. 

• Canva and Kittl have educational resources, such as blogs, design tutorials, and more, to help you learn how to create stunning designs fast. However, I found that Canva offers more comprehensive video tutorials and articles on other topics, like marketing, branding, and other key business topics. 

• Both programs offer AI-generated features like mockups, written text, and more. 

• Canva and Kittl allow you to name your designs and organize them so that you can keep track of your designs easier. 

Kittl design templates

The Biggest Differences Between Kittl and Canva

Canva offers far more templates with free and premium plans, with over 250,000 design templates available just with its free plan. 

Of course, Kittl is a newer tool. It may catch up with the number of templates in the future, but currently, they have fewer options. 

One pro for Kittl over Canva is its detailed text effects and editing options. With Canva, you can shape your text, add a shadow, special effects, and more. However, I found Kittl’s text effects to be more nuanced and detailed, allowing me to get a more unique, specific look with my text. 

Kittl automatically detects the colors in your project and creates recommended color groups for you, allowing you to make different colored versions of your project quickly. This is a very helpful tool when designing digital products, as you can quickly churn out different colors and styles of the same product to list in your shop. 

Currently, Kittl is only available to use on a computer or laptop. In contrast, Canva offers a desktop app (PC/Mac), runs in multiple web browsers, and has a mobile app for on-the-go designing. 

Pricing Options & Limitations

Canva and Kittl offer free plans to get you started as a digital product creator. However, there are some critical differences between the two that I want to touch on. 

Kittl’s free plan includes a commercial license. However, it requires attribution, meaning you must disclose any assets you use in your design, like photos or graphics. It also only has low-res image export with its free plan, which won’t meet the standard for high-quality images that customers expect. 

In this respect, Canva is the clear winner because it doesn’t have these limits. 

I recommend upgrading to at least the pro plan with Kittl if you create digital products with this program. 

Kittl’s pricing options

Canva and Kittl’s prices are comparable, with Canva’s pro plan being slightly higher. 

Canva’s pricing options

Kittl vs. Canva: Which is Better for Creating Digital Products? 

I don’t think there’s a clear answer to which design tool is better because it’ll largely depend on your preferences and the type of digital products you create. 

For example, Kittl has more advanced text effects and editing capabilities, which may be helpful if you specialize in creating graphic designs, sublimation designs, t-shirt graphics, monograms or posters. However, Canva has more built-in options for designing animations, presentations, books, and more. 

Canva has been around since 2012, so it’s well-established and offers hundreds of thousands more templates than Kittl. While this will likely change as Kittl expands, it is a strong advantage that Canva currently has, especially if you plan on using templates as the basis for your digital products. 

On the other hand, many of Kittl’s templates are more intricate and have a more polished look. However, Canva offers similar design tools, so these looks can still be achieved using Canva. 

Overall, both programs have their strengths and weaknesses. I personally like Kittl's versatility and the larger number of templates and since the digital products I sell on Etsy are much design-based they are now my go-to, but you could use either program to launch a great digital product! 

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