Graphic design is a lot of things, but the most important part of the process is planning before anything else. Your plan could be a written document, or just thoughts in your head — however you choose to do it, make sure you plan everything out otherwise you won’t have time to execute on your ideas. Whether you are freelance, work in-house at a business or simply want to create something as a hobby, there are graphic design software tools that can help you with this process.
With so many tools and programs available, it can be tough to choose which one is right for you — however, I’ve come up with a list of the best free graphic design software that will allow you to tackle any project and grow your skills through the process.
Setka Editor
Platforms: Windows, Mac
Setka bills itself as “everything you need to create content that converts.” This graphic design software is primarily focused on delivering enhanced content branding across your website, ad campaigns, and social media posts — and works from within your current CMS or in the cloud.
The caveat? Although the Setka Editor is free to try for two weeks, companies will need to select a plan — Starter, Pro, or Enterprise — to unlock the full feature set and keep using Setka.
Canva
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS
Whether you’re looking to create an ebook, infographic, business card, or email header, Canva has a template to simplify your process. The free web design tool, developed by non-designers, offers professional, easy-to-customize templates for just about any design need you can think of.
The drawback? You might need to invest in the paid version or try one of the more advanced free graphic design softwares as you skill up. While Canva’s free version is great for new designers working with templates, you can access more complex tools and features — such as team sharing — in the paid version.
Adobe Spark
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS
Adobe Spark is a free alternative to the company’s popular, for-pay Adobe Illustrator. While it’s not nearly as full-featured, it does support integration with other Adobe products. It’s easy to use and it comes with a host of free templates. If you’re looking to quickly create posters or videos for ad campaigns, Spark is a great choice.
The potential drawback? A limited feature set makes this a great starting point for beginners but less useful for more in-depth projects or experienced designers. The good news is that Spark is available for both web and mobile, meaning you can design anywhere, anytime.
Picmaker
AppSumo Deal: Picmaker
Fast-track your way to stunning designs in just minutes—no professional skills necessary.
$69.00 | $300.00
Picmaker is an AI-based graphic design platform that lets you create eye-catching designs across 70+ categories. It has tons of ready-made design templates, 100 million stock images, 100,000+ icons, a custom brand kit, and many other powerful features.
It enables even non-designers to effortlessly create social media designs, logos, memes, flyers, posters, invitations, certificates etc. in minutes! Besides, its artificial intelligence-based MAD button lets you choose from a staggering mix of templates, colors, fonts, and pictures.
Choose Pickmaker if:
- You need stunning designs using an AI-based intuitive platform.
- You need access to 100,000,000 stock photos, AI-powered free background remover, one-click design resize, and more.
- Collaborate with your team on design projects and shared workspaces.
Price: Starts free; paid plans start at $7.99 per month, billed annually. Or you can grab the AppSumo lifetime deal for Picmaker at $69 for a limited time.
Crello
AppSumo Deal: Crello
Speed up the design process with thousands of ready-made templates and easy editing features.
$67.00 | $95.88
The feature that sets Crello apart from other Canva alternatives on this list is its Animation Maker suite, which gives users animated templates and objects to use to bring more engaging images and videos to life.
Animated templates include formats for vertical and square video, Facebook and Instagram stories, and Facebook cover videos, which will help set your brand apart online. Crello also has a large template and image library users can choose from, including illustrations, with plenty of options for various web content formats and platforms.
Crello starts free, but key features like Animation Maker are only available for Pro subscribers.
Choose Crello if:
- You want to create and share animated images.
- You want a mix of stock photography and illustrations to use in your images.
Price: Crello Pro starts at $7.99 per month, billed annually. Or you can get Crello’s annual deal at AppSumo for only $67.
Simplified
AppSumo Deal: Simplified
Create, collaborate, and scale all your content creation in one place.
$79.00 | $360.00
With Simplified, you can customize your templates instantly with a resource library filled with millions of photos, thousands of fonts, and a variety of design components.
Besides, Simplified lets you tap into magic AI that can remove backgrounds, create animations, and resize images in one click. You’ll never have to use multiple tools ever again! You can also take advantage of in-app publishing and scheduling that lets you create and publish all your marketing content on the same platform.
Choose Simplified if:
- You want to collaborate and scale your content creation in one place.
- You want to use AI for basic graphic design and copywriting.
Price: Simplified starts free with plans for small teams at $8 and businesses at $24, billed annually. For a limited time, can get the lifetime deal of Simplified for Businesses at AppSumo starting at $79.
Pixelied
Pixelied is just like Canva, but with thousands of ready-made templates and icons, millions of stock images, and a suit of photo-editing capabilities like removing background in one click.
Out of the many features Pixelied has, two set itself apart from many DIY graphic design tools in the market and make the designer in you go wild! First, you get to create powerful product mockups for your brand with its mockup editor. And with its workspace feature, you can easily switch between workspaces, each with its own separate assets, designs and team members.
Choose Pixelied if:
- Your business needs a tool with a wild range of graphic design capabilities.
- You want to let your inner designer goes wild.
Price: Pixelied starts free and with Pro plan at $7.95 per month.
Pixlr
Unlike other Canva alternatives, Pixlr shines with its photo editing capabilities. With Pixlr, editing photos has never been easier, faster, or smarter — which also makes it a good alternative to Adobe Photoshop.
Ever try in vain to remove unwanted objects or people from a photo, or blur out an ugly background with exact pixel precision? For those of us that weren’t blessed with perfect vision and steady surgeon hands, there’s the AI Cutout button, which lets you remove backgrounds with just one click. You can also add accents or textures, like light streaks, dust flecks, and glitter to your photos.
Choose Pixlr if:
- You want a DIY graphic design tool with photo editing capabilities.
Price: Starts free; paid plans start at $4.90 per month, billed annually.
Tyle
Canva is good when you’re using it to create social media images, but it lacks features in creating social media videos. So many marketers miss out on the engagement that video brings due to limited time and resources. And that’s where Tyle comes into play.
Tyle’s smart video and image editor lets you quickly create high-quality content and daily social posts. All you need is to choose a template, and place your media and messaging. From there, it’s simple to quickly and easily edit each layer to customize your video to your specifications.
The best part: You don’t have to shoot your own video or take your own photos to make a share-worthy video for social.
Tyle offers access to three million free stock photos and video clips right within the native tool. Now you can focus on your message and leave the visuals to the experts.
Choose Tyle if:
- You’re creating video content and social media posts for your businesses and brands.
- You want to save time from endless tweaks by letting the smart editor adjusts your design automatically to optimize the video for overall appearance and readability.
- You want access to (over three million) free stock photos and video clips right within the native tool.
Price: Starts free, paid subscription starts at $31 per month.
RelayThat
RelayThat is an ideal option for creating your own branded visuals for landing pages, social media, and ads when you don’t have a lot of time to spare moonlighting as a designer.
Users simply upload their brand assets, and RelayThat will suggest various design sizes and formats for different platforms. If you’ve checked out Canva and need more template options to choose from or tested design suggestions, RelayThat is a great tool.
The more images and colors you add to its library to choose from, the more custom image templates RelayThat will suggest for you. If you’ve started building up an arsenal of branded content, you can upload it to RelayThat, but if not, it offers thousands of royalty-free images to choose from. It also includes image SEO capabilities to help your images rank in organic search.
Choose RelayThat if:
- You’re creating images for multiple different website, ad, and social media platforms.
- You’re not a designer, and you need an easy to use tool when it comes to choosing the right colors and text styling to help your images convert.
Price: $25 per month for Pro subscription.
Piktochart
Piktochart’s specialty is helping you create your own charts, graphics, and infographics with their library of data visualization templates.
Piktochart’s niche is easy-to-use data visualization tools, but it also offers templates for creating your own social media images and presentation slides. Piktochart doesn’t offer all of the same capabilities as Canva, but it offers more data visualization templates and capabilities if that’s a form of visual content you want to create more of.
Piktochart’s free plan offers only limited access to different templates, so if you anticipate doing a lot of infographic and chart creation with this tool, it would be worthwhile to upgrade to the paid tier.
Choose Piktochart if:
- You want to produce data visualizations for sharing on your website, in your content marketing, or on social media.
- You want to create more visually appealing presentation slides.
Price: Starts free; $29 per month for Pro subscription.
Conclusion
There are plenty of graphic design software out there these days, apps you can use to work on your projects anywhere you find the need. Some are paid while the others operate on the world wide web. The good news is that the latter comes with free access. The bad news is that a few of them might be at times unreliable, so it will always be best to check if a site you intend to use for your project does get to launch well every time. Still, a great number of Reddit members tend to prefer Gimp for Windows and Mac as it is acknowledged by almost everyone as being one of the best free graphic design software in existence today.