Canva said it will acquire Affinity, a UK company with a design suite that competes with Adobe's Creative Cloud.
The timing of the Canva-Affinity deal is notable given Adobe Summit kicks off this week.
In a blog post, Canva Co-Founder and COO Cliff Obrecht said Affinity's photo editing and design software is used by more than 3 million people. Canva plans to scale that reach by pitching Affinity to the 175 million people who have used its software.
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Obrecht said:
"While our last decade at Canva has focused heavily on the 99% of knowledge workers without design training, truly empowering the world to design includes empowering professional designers too. By joining forces with Affinity, we’re excited to unlock the full spectrum of designers at every level and stage of the design journey."
Affinity's software is available on Windows, Mac and iPad. The company has 90 employees. The stack includes:
- Affinity Designer, a vector-based graphics application for illustrations, art, graphics and brand design.
- Affinity Photo, an image editor to cover a wide range of use cases.
- Affinity Publisher, a layout application for Web, publications and marketing content.
Version 2 of the Affinity suite for individuals goes for $164.99, but is on sale for $114.99. The company runs on a license model without subscriptions. A universal license for multiple business users is $109.24 per license currently. Each application in the Affinity family is also sold separately.
Canva has a free version of its software with tiers for businesses, teams and enterprises. Canva Pro for one person is $119.99 for a year, $300 for a team of 5 people and a range of plans for a minimum of 100 people.