Canva, a popular graphic design platform, is planning to significantly raise the prices of its Canva Teams subscriptions next year, as per a recent report by The Verge. This move comes after the company introduced several new generative AI features.

According to The Verge, this price hike could be as much as 300% for many users. The report outlines that in the United States, some Canva Teams users who were paying $120 per year for up to five users have reported their costs jump to $500 per year. To ease the impact, Canva is offering a 40% discount for the first year, bringing the cost down to $300.

According to Information Age, in Australia, the price change is even more dramatic. A team of five users that was paying $39.99 AUD per month will now have to pay $40.50 AUD per user each month, raising the yearly cost from $480 AUD to $2,430 AUD.

Louisa Green, Canva's communications lead, said in an interview with The Verge that the company has added many new tools, such as the Visual Suite and Magic Studio, which include AI features like a text-to-image generator and a background extension tool. As such, these increases are part of Canva's effort to align existing customers with a new pricing structure that reflects the platform's expanded capabilities, states Green.

Canva communicated these price changes mainly through customer emails, with little public announcement. Furthermore, the Verge reported that while this affects Canva Teams users, other plans like Canva Pro and Enterprise seem to be unaffected.

This pricing shift marks a big change for Canva, which was once seen as a budget-friendly alternative to more expensive design software like Adobe. While Canva believes the new prices are justified by the added features, it remains to be seen how customers will react to these changes once the new reported pricing goes in effect.