The Rise of Canva: from Idea to Platform
Background reading for my Canva for Family Historians workshop (Society of Australian Genealogy)
The Canva Story
Canva began with a frustration familiar to almost anyone who has ever tried to design something: using professional design software was slow, complex and expensive. In 2007, a young Western Australian university student named Melanie Perkins was teaching classmates how to use programs like Photoshop and InDesign. She saw firsthand how people struggled, even with simple tasks such as exporting a PDF or resizing an image. The idea that design tools should be intuitive, accessible and enjoyable took root.
Perkins and co-founder Cliff Obrecht launched their first experiment in 2007: Fusion Books, an online design tool that allowed schools to create their own yearbooks. It offered drag-and-drop design long before it became mainstream, and its growing success proved a bigger idea was possible. By 2010, Perkins and Obrecht began imagining a platform that would allow anyone to design anything; posters, social media graphics, presentations, workbooks, banners, all in one place, all with simple tools.
Turning that vision into reality required capital and technical expertise, both hard to find in Australia at the time. In 2011, Perkins travelled to Silicon Valley, pitching the idea repeatedly before eventually securing support from technology investor Bill Tai and engineer Cameron Adams who became Canva’s third co-founder and Chief Product Officer. Together they assembled a small team in Sydney, Australia to build the platform.
In August 2013, Canva officially launched. The premise was radical for its time: a web-based, free-to-use design platform powered by templates, simple tools, and a library of photos, icons and fonts. Anyone, regardless of design training, could drag, drop, and produce professional-looking work in minutes. Within a year, Canva had attracted hundreds of thousands of users and widespread international attention.
I joined Canva in August 2015. My first design 👇 was an image for for my blog featuring best-selling author Cheryl Strayed, a guest on my ABC-TV show, One Plus One.
Let’s continue the corporate story…
As social media usage exploded, Canva’s ease of use aligned with a world hungry for visual content. By 2015, the platform had expanded its library, introduced collaboration features, and attracted major investors. Canva also developed a strong internal culture of purpose, integrating philanthropy into its business model from the beginning. The company committed to donating the equivalent of 30 percent of future equity to charitable causes through the Canva Foundation, focusing on education, poverty reduction and climate resilience.
The next major leap came in 2019 with the launch of Canva for Enterprise, expanding the platform from individuals and small teams to large organisations seeking brand control and collaboration tools. In 2020, as global work shifted online during the COVID-19 pandemic, Canva became essential for remote teams, educators, and community organisations. Usage soared, and the company achieved “unicorn” status while remaining proudly Australian and privately held.
Throughout the 2020s, Canva continued its transformation from a simple design tool to a full visual communications platform. It introduced video editing, presentation modes, website building, whiteboards, AI-powered tools, and a growing suite of workplace products. Its mission also evolved: to empower the world to design, and to make visual communication accessible to everyone.
By the mid-2020s, Canva, now a multi-billion dollar company (valued at $65 US) has more than 100 million monthly users across 190 countries. It has become the default design tool for teachers, students, small businesses, nonprofits, family historians and global organisations alike. The company’s founders remained committed to their early values: simplicity, equality of access, and the belief that design is not a luxury, but an essential part of communication.
Today, Canva is one of the most widely used creative platforms in the world, a testament to a simple but powerful idea born in Australia: that everyone should have the tools to tell their stories beautifully.
The reality
In November 2025, I received an odd email from Canva (no, it wasn’t spam) telling me I was going to be billed for an extra team member. I went into my paid account and that sent me down a rabbit-hole exploring the controversy over changes to pricing which created a bit of a backlash.
I am not going to explore the backlash and price increases here, as it appears there are differences relating geography and legacy users of the platform. I read about that episode (2024) here.
Advice
For new users of Canva: I suggest using the free version first (email and password required) Stick with this for at least your first ten designs.
Be aware that you will be given a free 7 day upgrade within a few days of signing up for canva. You might as well use this free upgrade to experiment.
Then you will be constantly nudged to upgrade with a free month trial. My suggestion is that you don’t use this until you have decided on your first project. That way you can get the most out of your free month.
If you’d like to know more about the features on offer in the free and paid versions of Canva, this table may help:
Check the Canva pricing page before deciding which paid version you’d like.
Jane’s tip
If you don’t want to commit to an annual subscription (I pay A$165, I believe it’s $120 US) then sign up for a monthly subscription (A$20 or I believe US $10). This way you can pause your subscription when you don’t need it.
Nice to read Canva started out from my home state Western Australia. I’ve done what you suggest, to take out a months subscription when I have a project to complete.