Canva website builder review (2026): price, limits and leaving

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What Canva websites are and who they’re for

Canva is a design tool with more than 220 million monthly active users in 190 countries, according to its about page (the page doesn’t say when that figure was measured). Website publishing is one feature inside it. You design pages in the normal Canva editor, then publish them as a site that adjusts to phones.

A Canva site can be a single page, such as a landing page, event page or portfolio, or up to 45 pages, each with its own address and a navigation menu. Canva says close to 1 million new websites are published on it each month (Canva newsroom, 2026).

Our verdict: Canva is a quick, good-looking way to publish a simple site if you already design in Canva, and it costs nothing extra if you already pay for Pro. It is not built for stores, blogs or sites that need to rank in search, and a site designed in the normal Canva editor can’t leave Canva as a working site.

Plans and what they really cost

These prices come from Canva’s US pricing page, which has a yearly and a monthly view. In the yearly column, the per-month figure in parentheses is our own math (the yearly price divided by 12).

A note on Business: Canva’s websites help page lists Free, Pro, Teams and Education as the plans with websites and doesn’t name Business. Canva’s domain help does name Business among the plans that can connect your own domain. Confirm with Canva before you buy Business for a website.

Canva Teams is “no longer available for new sign-ups or upgrades,” according to the pricing page. Existing Teams accounts keep website publishing, custom domains and insights. Pro and Business offer a free trial, but the pricing page doesn’t say how long it lasts.

Canva’s help doesn’t list a fee for connecting a domain you already own. Canva also sells domains, resold from Tucows, priced by extension and billed yearly. They renew automatically and include WHOIS privacy, but Canva doesn’t publish the prices on the pages we read.

A 3-year cost example

Here is a small business site on Canva with a .com from an outside domain registrar and one Google Workspace inbox. Canva doesn’t offer email, so you need separate email hosting for an address at your domain.

The math: Pro is $144 x 3 = $432. Business is $250 x 3 = $750 for one person; a three-person team on Business pays $2,250 over 3 years before the domain and email. The domain is $11.28 for the first year plus two renewals at $18.48. Paying month to month, Pro is $18 x 36 = $648 and Business $25 x 36 = $900, for totals of $948.24 and $1,200.24. The Free plan costs $0, but you stay on a my.canva.site address.

Without the inbox, Pro plus a domain is $480.24. For comparison, with the same domain and inbox, Carrd Pro Standard comes to $357.24, WordPress on Bluehost Starter to $432.60 and Wix Core to $1,332.96.

One thing works in Canva’s favor: many people already pay for Canva Pro for social posts and flyers. If you do, the website adds only the domain and email to your bill.

What you can build

Design and pages

Design is Canva’s strength. You start from a Canva website template (Canva doesn’t publish how many there are) and edit it with the same tools you use for everything else in Canva. Sites can have a navigation menu, embeds, password protection and a “resize on mobile” option.

The limits: up to 45 pages per website and up to 20 sections per page while you design. Free publishes only 10 sections per page; paid plans publish 20. Canva says there is also a storage limit but doesn’t publish the amount. Mobile Website and Link in Bio designs publish only to canva.link addresses.

Forms

You can embed Canva Forms, Canva’s free form builder, in a site. Responses collect in Canva Sheets or download as a CSV file. Canva’s forms and quizzes help adds that on Canva websites “responses are always anonymous. Names can’t be collected.” It doesn’t say whether a name or email field the visitor types in is affected, so test a contact form before you rely on it.

Store and blog

Neither is available. Canva’s hosting page says “e-commerce is currently not supported,” so selling means linking out to a checkout on another service. Canva’s website help lists no blog or post feature.

SEO and analytics

Canva calls its own SEO tools “basic SEO features,” and that’s fair. For the whole site you set a title, a favicon, a social share preview and whether search engines can see it. For each page you set a page title, a page description (Canva recommends 150 to 160 characters) and a custom URL path. Canva documents no sitemaps, redirects, canonical tags or structured data.

Website Insights, on Pro, Teams and Education, shows visits, countries, devices, traffic sources and link clicks. It uses no cookies or IP tracking, so one visitor can count several times.

AI features

Canva Code uses AI to generate interactive pages, which you can publish as live sites. Canva’s newsroom says more than 6 million Canva Code creations have been made so far. Paid plans include a monthly AI allowance shared across Canva’s AI tools.

What happens when you leave

Canva has no HTML export. Its help page on download file types lists JPG, PNG, SVG, PDF and other formats, and HTML is not among them. Canva Email designs can export HTML, but Canva documents that for email designs only.

Pages made with Canva Code are the one exception. Canva’s Canva Code help says you can view the generated code and “copy it for reuse outside Canva,” though it “can’t be exported as a file.” That doesn’t apply to sites designed in the normal editor.

• Content: you can download your pages as images or a PDF and copy the text out by hand. That’s a reference for the rebuild, not a site.
• Design: stays behind. An image or PDF of a page can’t run on another platform.
• Code: none for sites built in the editor. No HTML or CSS download is documented for websites; Canva Code pages can only be copied and pasted.
• Data: form and poll responses download as CSV, though website responses are anonymous. Canva documents no export of website insights.
• Domain: a domain you connected stays at your own registrar. A domain bought through Canva can move: in Settings, open Web domains, choose Manage, turn off the domain lock and use the auth (EPP) code at your new registrar. You can only do this 60 days after purchase, and the domain locks again if no transfer request arrives within a week. Canva mentions no transfer fee.
• Redirects: no redirect tool is documented, so old page addresses won’t forward.

Canva scores 4 rather than lower because your domain can always leave and there is no store or customer list to lose. It scores no higher because everything you designed has to be rebuilt by hand somewhere else. Leaving is easy; rebuilding is the work. Our guide to leaving your website builder covers the order to do it in.

Gotchas

• The free footer stays. Free sites keep a “Designed with Canva” footer that can’t be removed, and publish only 10 sections per page (Canva help).
• No HTML export. Website designs download only as images, PDF and similar files (download file types help).
• Anonymous form responses. Canva says responses on Canva websites are always anonymous and names can’t be collected (forms and quizzes help).
• Teams is closed. New teams pay per person on Business, $250 a year each (pricing page).
• Visits, not visitors. Insights don’t count unique visitors, because they use no cookies or IP tracking (website insights help).
• A 60-day domain wait. A Canva-bought domain can’t be transferred out for 60 days after purchase (domain transfer help).
• Monthly billing costs more. Pro is $18 a month billed monthly, versus $144 a year billed yearly ($12 a month). Business is $25 versus $250 a year per person.

Who should pick Canva, and who should not

Pick Canva if:

• You already design in Canva and need an event page, portfolio, link page or simple landing page.
• You want a quick free one-pager on a my.canva.site address and don’t mind the Canva footer.
• You already pay for Canva Pro and want a branded site on your own domain without another subscription.

Look elsewhere if:

• You want to sell online. Canva has no store.
• You plan to blog or need your site to rank in search.
• You might move the site to another platform later.

Alternatives worth a look

• Carrd: one-page sites on your own domain for $19 a year (Pro Standard), with an HTML download on Pro Plus ($49 a year). Exit score 6 out of 10.
• Google Sites: free, simple and built for embedding Docs, Forms and Calendars. Exit score 6 out of 10.
• Wix: lots of design freedom plus a blog and store, from $17 a month billed yearly. Exit score 3 out of 10.
• Squarespace: design-led templates with a blog and store, from $19 a month billed yearly ($25 billed monthly). Exit score 5 out of 10.
• Square Online: if you need to sell, Square Free is $0 a month, with online card payments at 3.3% + 30 cents.
• Free website builders compared: where Canva’s free plan fits among the others.