Canva hits 40m active users

Australia’s design start-up darling is going from strength to strength during the pandemic.

Canva co-founders Cameron Adams, Cliff Obrecht, and Melanie Perkins

Australian start-up darling Canva has hit 40 million active users, with the company’s design software doubling its customer base every year.

The Sydney-based company, which reached a $US6bn valuation in June this year, says it is now exploring acquisition opportunities after a $US60m funding round earlier this year. Its co-founder Melanie Perkins became one of Australia’s three richest women after that fund raising.

“We’ve been very fortunate to continue experiencing tremendous growth,” Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht told The Australian. ”We’ve now grown to more than 40 million people using Canva each month, and the numbers continue to double every year.”

October marks a year since Canva signed a deal with marketing and sales software company Hubspot, and Mr Obrecht said that thousands of customers had used Canva’s design tools within the Hubspot platform. The integration means HubSpot users can access Canva’s online design tools from within the HubSpot platform, by clicking a “Canva Button”. Previously, HubSpot users would have to leave the platform and go to Canva’s website for their design needs.

“The deepening of our partnership between Canva and Hubspot is the logical next step as we bring our communities together to better streamline processes and workflows,” Mr Obrecht said. “This is the future of work — where everyone in every business – big or small – are given equal access to collaboration platforms that was once only afforded to companies with deep pockets for digital transformation.

“In 2020 we’ve seen major changes in the way that businesses are operating all over the world. Now more than ever organisations of all sizes are doubling down on building an agile workplace and are in search of more collaborative, more affordable and more user-friendly platforms such as Canva and HubSpot. Collaborations such as ours will continue to help support businesses in their efforts to be more scalable.”

HubSpot CEO and co-founder Brian Halligan told The Australian that Canva and HubSpot hold a number of common attributes which have made the partnership successful.

Hubspot co-founders Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan. Source: Supplied.

“The first is one that we haven’t talked about a lot, but is at the crux of our successes and a core reason for why customers choose Canva and HubSpot — that software can be both powerful and easy-to-use. There doesn’t need to be a trade-off between a user’s experience and a powerful solution,” he said.

“HubSpot and Canva both have competitors where customers are forced to choose one over the other, yet our founders and our organisations take a different view here. It’s a really big part of what sets us apart from the crowd.

“And the second is one we’ve spoken about in the past: the alignment of the culture and values between our organisations. We hold similar values and both believe in the power of design in engaging audiences, which plays an important role in helping businesses grow. It’s one of the reasons we built this partnership a year ago.

“As Canva moves into the US market, there is an opportunity here to harness our strong customer base and awareness to grow in the market, and vice versa with Canva being a household name in Australia. We both work with similar customers — they’re sophisticated businesses who are focused on disrupting the customer experience, so with this in mind, we have a number of sales and marketing campaigns we’re working on together, like our recently launched offer providing new HubSpot users 30 per cent off Canva for Enterprise.

“We have also developed a Canva specific HubSpot Academy course to help upskill our customers of the platform. These types of cross-company campaigns will continue to be a focus for us to help our customers and each other grow. We’re only just beginning.”

Canva’s US boss John Eitel said over 95,000 designs had been published through Hubspot since the integration was launched.

“We’re seeing one in three users come back multiple times a month,” he said. ”What they’re designing and publishing is also varied – from email banners and tiles through to blog assets and web graphics. HubSpot customers are not just using the platform for one purpose, but many — which is really pleasing to see.

“I wouldn’t say that’s overly surprising as much as it is pleasing to see how the HubSpot community has embraced the Canva platform. Hubspot is an extremely innovative brand when it comes to marketing and employee engagement. They were one of our early adopters of the Canva for Enterprise platform, so their feedback has been invaluable in helping us drive our technical direction. We are also excited to have many shared clients using both platforms which reinforces the integration.“

Canva also recently announced that it was using cloud providers Workday and Cloudflare, as well as Accenture, to help power its rapid growth.

“We chose Accenture and the Workday platform as it offered scalability across disparate forms and processes. And despite the challenges brought on by COVID-19, we have successfully been able to implement the platform,“ Crystal Boysen, Head of People at Canva, said.

“They’re a great company, and I’m a big supporter of theirs,” Cloudflare’s Australia boss Raymond Maisano told The Australian. “If you look at them, and their growth over the last four years that they’ve been a customer of ours, they really are democratising graphic design. We’re helping democratise cyber security, and that alignment goes really well together.”