Long ago, if you wanted to do any creative work on a computer, you basically had to buy some products from Adobe. They had such a monopoly, in fact, that “photoshop” has become a verb. You’re not “editing a photo”, no, you’re “photoshopping it”. Even if you use a completely different program to do so. And whenever a company has a monopoly, they will abuse it. Over time, Adobe became more and more expensive, and switched to a subscription model instead of a one-time payment.
But then a company called Serif came along. And they made a bunch of apps called Affinity that promised to do things differently. They made a version of Photoshop (“Affinity Photo”) that was the same in many ways, and better in some ways, which you could buy for a small one-time fee. It would forever be yours! No subscriptions! No recurring monthly payment to keep using the software you rely on!
As expected, this attracted many people. Including me! I switched to Affinity’s products pretty much the day they launched version 1. Granted, I had to switch. I lost my university’s license for Adobe products when I finished my study, and my computer was getting so old that it could not even start Adobe Illustrator anymore.
Fast forward to today. A year ago, Canva bought Serif. This past month, they took the website offline (no ability to purchase Affinity anymore, no forums, no nothing) and teased some big announcement on October 30th.
Everyone was worried. Canva was a subscription-based company. Surely they were going to ruin it all. It was “enshittification” all over. Canva were going to turn Affinity into some monstrous shadow of itself, where every feature was hidden behind a paywall. They were going to turn the software for professionals more into their website for amateurs. Most of all, they were going to chase profits over basically anything else.
Then the reveal came … and I’ve been thinking about it for days. Unsure what to think. Unsure how I feel about it.
People online are split into two camps. Some say that their worst fears came true, while others say that this is actually a very good deal.
What was the announcement?
All of Affinity’s apps are bundled into one free (!) program. If you want to use specific (AI) features, however, you need a subscription.
Anybody can go to their website now, create a Canva account, and download the software for free. Something that would cost hundreds of dollars before is now free to all. Something that required multiple programs can now be done from the same program. All features that were available before, are still available, making this—with one sudden blow—by far the best deal for professionals. That’s good!
At the same time, they do require an account. They have put features behind a subscription. Which also means they have broken their biggest promise (“one-time payment, yours to keep forever”), which makes it likely they might break their current promises in the future too. It might be free today, but not tomorrow. And if you’ve created 100 projects with this software … now you suddenly can’t open them anymore. That’s bad!
So what do I think of the announcement? Good? Bad? Do I like it? A step forward or backward? If you’ve read some of my past articles, you know I am dead set against subscriptions and abuse from companies. I have no tolerance at all for the shady practices of these companies and how they pick profit over everything else.
And yet … I am pretty positive about all this. Yes, I am surprised about that myself.
In this article, I wanted to quickly relate my experience with this new version, as well as explain my thoughts about it.
What exactly is this new version?
As said, it bundles all previous apps (Vector Design, Photo Editing, Print Design) into a single app. You can switch to the other modes at any point; they’re all integrated into the same system. In fact, they added a few extra modes, such as one similar to Adobe Lightroom.
To get it, you need to create a free Canva account. They only need to know your email address. They’re upfront about any data collection and it is disabled (“opt-in”) by default.
I have not read their terms and services in detail, of course. And this can always change. But as it stands, they’re open about it and have disabled telemetrics by default. Which is more than I can say for basically all other large companies.
Once you’ve installed the app, you only need to be online for your first launch. (It authenticates your account.) Afterwards, I immediately blocked the software from connecting to the inernet. It’s been working fine ever since. If I wanted, I could keep this version forever on my local machine.
Which is a very good deal. This is powerful, good, professional software. I’ve been able to make anything with it for years, and I vastly prefer its UI and workflow over the Adobe alternatives.
They’ve changed a lot in this new version. Buttons are in different places. Icons are different. Some workflows have received an extra step, or lost one step.
And, as usual, I hated many changes at first simply because they were new. I was used to years and years of doing things some other way! Having to learn a new way is like having to learn to brush your teeth with your wrong hand. It will be a bit slow and annoying at first, it always will be. After using the software for a bit longer, I quite like most of the changes.
The only features you don’t get for free, are “AI Features”. For example, AI is quite good at detecting backgrounds in photos and removing them. You need a Canva Pro account for that. I have no qualms with this, for two reasons.
- I don’t really care about those features anyway. It’s fine if I can just hide them and forget about them, and continue to use the program.
- Running AI models is a recurring, large expense. That’s the exact situation in which subscriptions are your only sustainable and logical model.
And so, in the end, I was able to download this professional design toolkit for free (I only needed to give my email, which they already had anyway), install it, and get to work (completely offline, all the old features present) within a few minutes.
That sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?
But, of course, we’ve been in this situation before …
Is free ever really free?
By making it free, no strings attached, they’ve enabled anyone to start their creative journey right now. Even those with terrible Wi-Fi and no money to spare ;) That’s a really good thing, isn’t it? It will open doors for so many people, especially kids or students, who would have never been able to purchase the software before. It will help collaboration and archiving, as anything made in this software can be opened by anyone years later.
I would have loved to have this kind of professional software for free when I was in high school. Instead, I used some ancient half-cracked Adobe program, and then some old Affinity Designer version I downloaded from a sketchy website, until I was finally old enough to actually buy the software.
And here’s the thing: a few years ago, Affinity’s software stopped working on my laptop. It was simply too old and broken. None of it could start anymore. It forced me to stop designing for a while. Then, I managed to install it again on a different drawing tablet. But that created the annoying issue that I had to switch between two devices all the time, which is demotivating and made me do far less graphic design than I should have.
This new version works on my laptop again! After many years, I can finally work on both writing/programming and drawing/design on one device. Which is just so much nicer and quicker. The new version even added a few features that speed up my specific workflow a lot, such as making it easier to place new artboards (and exactly how you want them).
And so, despite my hate towards subscriptions and “freemium” and what not, I found myself switching to this version and using it a lot anyway. Was I selling my soul? Or was it actually just a good deal?
It’s clear how Canva intends to make money: through their PRO accounts. Either people need the AI features and pay for that, or, through Affinity, they’ll be introduced to Canva’s other products and subscribe to those. When you look at Canva’s profits, buying Affinity and giving it away for free is really just a drop in the bucket. They can keep this up for a while, even if nobody buys their subscriptions, if they wanted to.
But do they want to? Of course not! The goal of a company is to make as much profit as possible. If profits fall, they might lock more of the standard features behind a paywall. If it all goes wrong, they might abandon the software or twist it into something far less free. They might! They might not!
Free software usually stays free because you pay some other way. You pay with your data. You pay by becoming a loyal customer who now depends on this software, which means you can’t leave (and keep paying), no matter how terrible they make the deal.
It’s all about power
Which brings me to my first major point.
You should never become fully dependant on one company/software.
You might think Canva has the best intentions. You might think they’re horrible and already ruined Affinity for good. It doesn’t matter. You can’t predict the future, and your only problem is that you need software right now that helps you create work right now.
So, it seems to me that you should simply prevent becoming dependant. Do not lock yourself into an ecosystem willingly. For example, do as I did,
- Immediately check if software continues working completely offline and detached. (At this moment, the answer is yes.)
- Immediately turn off any data collection or potential privacy issues. (At this moment, Affinity is upfront about it and makes it eay.)
- Keep old versions of your files and software. So you can always open them later. (Use a cracked version for all I care, if the actual software needs Wi-Fi for authentication. One day, Serif’s servers will go down for V1 and V2, and you can never use those programs again. Even though they were “yours to keep, forever”.)
- Work as much in plain text files as possible. Those are cheap, easy, and can be opened by anything.
- (For example, I used to add sketches, notes and to-do lists inside the Affinity Designer file. Seems sensible, right, to keep it all in one place? Keep your list of notes next to your artboard as you draw? Until I realized that I need to open the files to get that data. Which is annoying enough as it is, but if I can’t open it at some point in the future, then I lose a lot more than I could’ve.)
- And as soon as a company starts getting shittier … make plans to abandon ship. It can be as simple as downloading an open source alternative and checking if it has all the features you would need. It can be as simple as letting them know you’re leaving if they keep this up.
If you keep this in mind, then it doesn’t matter what a company’s intentions or future plans are. If they go down the drain, you are not forced to go with it.
Right now, it’s great software that you can use without being locked into an ecosystem. I would say: enjoy it while it lasts.
The socialist whales
I mentioned paying for free software with your data and dependence. I also mentioned that Canva, as far as I can see, expects to fund Affinity through its Canva PRO users instead.
This is a very common business model these days. Most mobile games are free, funded by something we call “whales”. Only a tiny fraction of the playerbase actually pays for anything in those games. But it’s enough, and they pay enough, to sustain all the free users.
This is often seen as a negative development. Wasn’t it much better when you could just buy a game for a few bucks? And you would own it, forever? You never needed to pay more, and the game couldn’t change and update (for the worst) right beneath your nose?
I thought so too. I have never made anything that requires a subscription. Everything I’ve made has been either free or a one-time purchase (and you own and keep the thing forever). It’s the simplest method. The one that gives everyone actual ownership of what they buy, and the most peace of mind.
At the same time, remember my comments about how I started. It’s the same story as most people. I started learning (digital) design when I was too young to have a proper computer or money. They only reason I could practice for years, was because I was able to get illegal copies. I simply could not pay that one-time fee. Not even one as low as Affinity’s. If I hadn’t sailed the high seas—and my country hadn’t made it relatively easy to do so—I would not be where I am today. I would not be writing this article that is (mostly) in support of Affinity and praising it. Unless something much better comes along, I can see myself using these tools for years and years in my professional work.
The system of “one-time purchase, same price for all” is fair in one sense, but not in another. It’s fair at the input level, instead of fair with its results. It’s equality versus equity. It’s the exact problem that has divided politics and voters since forever. Should we help everyone an equal amount … or should we help people who need it (the poor, the disabled, the young) more?
Which brings me to my second major point. Yes, I’m saying it,
This “freemium” model is basically extreme socialism.
Ironically, capitalism has twisted itself so many times that most companies have come full circle and turned into communists.
At least 99% of users will never pay a dime for Affinity. They are too poor. They don’t need the PRO features. It’s not important enough, or they don’t want to support Canva’s business practices.
But that’s expected. Canva expects that. It’s exactly how the model works. Their income is handled by the “whales”: the 1% of users who do pay a nice fee every month. The users who are rich and don’t care about such small sums of money. The users who are companies and can write it off as a tax expense.
The rich are holding up the poor. The strongest users are allowing the software to be free for everyone else.
Is that not … a good thing? It’s equity, equality of outcome. Some pay a lot for the software, some pay nothing, but everyone can use it now.
Conclusion
As long as Canva keep it this way, I don’t see a reason to hate this development.
As long as all people get access to all basic necessities/features for free, this should be the dream of most users. It’s fine if people who pay more get more. Socialism has never been about complete equity, it’s about making sure people don’t fall below some baseline. People need food—it’s a basic necessity—so socialism says that the richer people pay more taxes so the poorest people can eat “for free”. Same with basic things like healthcare and housing.
And so, as long as Canva holds the line on this, then I can stand behind this new version. I will use it. I will allow myself to depend on it slightly.
Once they start removing basic necessary features for “free users”, they have turned away from this model. And it will probably be their demise, but that’s too early to call.
Once they start requiring online authentication at all times (“always online”), they have turned away from this model.
Once they start adding “tiers”, and the free tier is basically a handicapped version that can’t even export a PNG, they have turned away from this model.
They will lose me, they will lose all the customers who simply can’t pay or use it then, and it will be Affinity’s final note.
Let’s see what the future brings. For now, I am happy with the new version that works offline, on my laptop again, and even has some improvements in store. I hope many kids can now fulfill a dream of learning graphic design and getting familiar with these tools.
And I hope, same as all of you, that Canva doesn’t turn it all into shit. But if it does … I will just keep using my offline version of this software, until I can switch to something else, because I did not make myself dependant.
Those were my thoughts,
Tiamo / Pandaqi