Questions on Canva acquiring Affinity

[elk]

My fist reaction to this announcement – which I got a few minutes ago – is » The end of a brilliant era.

I think the main reason for this opinion is that Canva is such a popular tool for marketers and individuals. To me, this means that it's not aimed at professional designers, graphic artists and artists, but at people who want to be creative by accessing ready-made templates. - I have often feared that this day would come, because I could not imagine that Serif could achieve at this price level what many professionals (often excessively, imho) demand in order to replace the forced subscriptions of the top dogs.
Somehow this development seems unavoidable - and there is still the faint hope that this time things will be different than usual - because Serif is Serif. And because the people at Canva perhaps don't have the greed that is generally assumed.

So I’m looking forward to the lots of cool updates that will come for the 2.x versions, wish all the best for the serif team members and stay tuned!

[Ascy]

As an occasional and very long time user of Serif products, I'm very sad to hear this news. Whilst it may not be the same as Adobe buying Macromedia (remember them?) or Corel (was it?) buying Ulead's PhotoImpact (RIP), I still think that Affinity will soon move to a subscription only model (within the next couple of years). Once Serif has been sold to Canva, there will literally be nothing Serif staff can do about it.

I don't buy the logic that the Canva sale is required to invest in Serif to make the products better. If you look at Serif's accounts (available online as they are a company registered in England), they made around £16m profit out of around £32m in sales in 2022. Admin expenses (which includes staff wages) were less than £13m, so Serif weren't short of cash to invest in other projects or more staff (though, as a software dev/architect, more staff does not always equate to greater productivity, indeed sometimes the opposite). But the money was there already, assuming 2023 wasn't a complete disaster for them.

Basically, the shareholders have sold Serif for presumably a large payday. There was enough profit to invest in other stuff, should they have wished to. Now they've lost control of the company (or are about to), so are no longer in charge of their own destiny. What a shame for British software.

[dystopia]

There are a few things that people here completely overlook about Canva.

They have a completely free version. Then there is also 'Canva Pro' which is a subscription with 'pro features'. 

Canva Free has about 80% of the functionality as the subscription... for free. 

Also, Canva isn't just 'templates.' You can design using Canva from scratch.

If anyone thinks that Affinity is going to continue to be offered as a standalone software... well they are just in denial right now.

It will 100% be added as web-based 'Apps' within Canva, and most likely require a subscription (or license) to use .. just like all the other apps integrated in Canva are.

People was laughing saying that Affinity didn't need to integrate AI almost a year ago, while others said they would be left behind... well that is what has happened now.

[CM0]

3 minutes ago, Ascy said:

 There was enough profit to invest in other stuff, should they have wished to. Now they've lost control of the company (or are about to), so are no longer in charge of their own destiny. What a shame for British software.

The only argument you can make if that is the case was mismanagement of the company. If they had the resources and didn't use them then you can't argue the company was under satisfactory leadership making appropriate decisions. Seems an unlikely scenario.

[Linkyop]

I found out about this through Twitter.

First reaction?

Quote

They... didn't...

Personally, so far it's the worst thing that happened in this year.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

27 minutes ago, Ascy said:

As an occasional and very long time user of Serif products, I'm very sad to hear this news. Whilst it may not be the same as Adobe buying Macromedia (remember them?) or Corel (was it?) buying Ulead's PhotoImpact (RIP), I still think that Affinity will soon move to a subscription only model (within the next couple of years). Once Serif has been sold to Canva, there will literally be nothing Serif staff can do about it.

I don't buy the logic that the Canva sale is required to invest in Serif to make the products better. If you look at Serif's accounts (available online as they are a company registered in England), they made around £16m profit out of around £32m in sales in 2022. Admin expenses (which includes staff wages) were less than £13m, so Serif weren't short of cash to invest in other projects or more staff (though, as a software dev/architect, more staff does not always equate to greater productivity, indeed sometimes the opposite). But the money was there already, assuming 2023 wasn't a complete disaster for them.

Basically, the shareholders have sold Serif for presumably a large payday. There was enough profit to invest in other stuff, should they have wished to. Now they've lost control of the company (or are about to), so are no longer in charge of their own destiny. What a shame for British software.

 

For all here interested in the company Serif Labs (EUROPE) and wants to see ALL information about Serif, not only the account balance revenues, but also much much more, see here:

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02117968

As I can see it now it's just all about for the big asses in the top of Serif Labs to cash in money, a lot of personal money - they doesn't care about us, they just see the poison, the money...

[CM0]

25 minutes ago, dystopia said:

 

It will 100% be added as web-based 'Apps' within Canva, and most likely require a subscription (or license) to use .. just like all the other apps integrated in Canva are.

 

You can't turn Affinity into a web app with the same features/performance. It would also require nearly a complete rewrite. That is an enormous investment. The most logical outlook is that Canva is looking to broaden its business sector into offering more professional tools.

[JCP]

I hope this doesn't end up like Bluebeam Revu did. It was a perpetual license with optional "maintenance" for annual upgrades. Then it got purchased by Nemetschek. The next version (21) was subscription only and a massive price increase. We went from a $300 initial purchase with $80 a year maintenance per user to $400 per year. Do the math on 500 users, although they have "graciously allowed us to be grandfathered in on existing users at a 10% annual increase until we reach full price.

License agreement does allow us to use the older version forever.....however they have been shutting down the ability to activate older licenses. So you are fine until you want to move the software to a new PC, you can no longer deactivate and reactivate.

I will say the difference here is that Bluebeam is mostly superior to Adobe Acrobat in its toolset. We even considered going to Acrobat as it was now a cheaper subscription but we lost too many tools that affect productivity. Not certain that's the case with Affinity. I'm a casual/hobbyist user, if they go subs I'll keep what I have as long as possible. If I have to sub in the future, it better be much less than Adobe's subs.

Edited March 26 by JCap

[chirpy]

10 hours ago, michael-o said:

Terrible news. Throughout my 25-year career, every company acquisition has resulted in negative outcomes such as layoffs, reorganization, and increased costs. Does anyone recall Director, Flash (the original), Fireworks, PageMaker, ImageReady, Muse, Edge Reflow, Edge Animate, GoLive, ... FREEHAND?

 

Same here. I would pay A LOT of money for someone to buy Freehand back from Adobe and re-release it. Fireworks, as well.

[Cooner]

8 hours ago, kaffeeundsalz said:

I'm not an offender of subscription models in general. If they are fairly priced (which I know is a highly subjective manner), I'm happy to give them a try.

I agree with this in general — if it’s a small developer and a subscription service helps keep the lights on, I’m all for it — although with a few caveats. The biggest is file portability. Most of the apps I have a subscription with are providing a service — syncing data between my devices, etc. — and if I wanted to cancel the subscription all my data could easily be exported or copy/pasted to a text file or similar. On the other hand …

One of the big problems with Adobe-style subscriptions is that even when you’re not actively using the software, you still have to keep paying for it to access your own documents. I have probably hundreds of Illustrator, InDesign, and AfterEffects documents I can’t open, or can’t open cleanly, not to mention dozens of old GoLive and Muse site designs for which the software to make changes doesn’t even exist. (And God forbid if and when I can cancel my Photoshop subscription, I’ll have thousands of files that may or may not open cleanly in Photo or other apps.) If the Affinity apps switched to a subscription model that would become a huge question in my mind about starting up any new projects with the software.

(Also, to be honest … Adobe products still have a lot more functionality, and if it became a matter of contrasting one subscription service vs. another for my professional work, I’d have to give an honest think to going back to Adobe, much as I’d be loathe to do so.)

For now I’m taking a wait-and-see approach, but I’m anxious. The other big worry for me is enshitification of the interface. I’m an independent designer, I don’t do collaboration, I don’t do in-the-cloud design work, I don’t need access to clip art or templates or generative output. A brief glance at Canva’s offerings reveal absolutely nothing I would have any use for. It would be a shame if Affinity’s interfaces got cluttered up with all that garbage. Design app UIs are complicated enough, thank you.

(Also as an independent artist I find the association with generative AI disturbing. I find it both unethical and useless for my work and certainly don’t need it gumming up my work applications.)

So, fingers crossed, I guess. But I’ll be starting to keep an eye out for options again, just in case.

[AffntyXara]

I don't really see this ending well, activation servers will go offline and the name Affinity will be just as well known as Macromedia...

[JCP]

24 minutes ago, AffntyXara said:

I don't really see this ending well, activation servers will go offline and the name Affinity will be just as well known as Macromedia...

Well worst cases is we have 2 or 3 years still as it would take time a new version for them to move to subscription only model. I think voicing dissent is the way to go so they know the impact.

[Waltarus]

As a nature/landscape photographer who has no interest in design or publishing software I see absolutely no up-side to this takeover.  I enjoy editing my photos in Affinity but now I'm concerned that a company like Canva is going to royally mess up that experience for me.

 

[hds]

10 hours ago, OriolFM said:

Look at Open Source Design/Art Software:

 - Blender is probably the best example, but the interface is still a bit clunky and the learning curve is steep. Lot of support and the community is great, though.

 - GIMP is... not bad, but the interface is also quite poor. It's functional for most things, but still not Photoshop by a long shot. Still, you can find add-ons and tutorials easily.

 - Inkscape is absolute hell. I tried using it several times, but the interface is downright unusable and counterintuitive. It looks as if someone deliberately made it more difficult for the user. And I know some people use it regularly and have done great things with it, it is just too painful. If it was more user-friendly, I'd probably be using it instead of buying Affinity Designer.

 - Before purchasing Affinity Publisher, I had also tried Scribus, as an open source publishing software. Scribus may have advanced functions, but it suffers from the same clunky interface as most of the other design open source programs do. Scribus support and documentation is also poor, and it is extremely difficult to use.

 

I love open source software. I used Ubuntu and Libreoffice for years at my desktop, and I only moved back to Windows because I got a Microsoft Surface and Clip Studio Paint did not have a version for Linux. I got back to Microsoft Office instead of Libreoffice because MS365 comes with 1TB Onedrive storage, and that was cheaper than keep using Libreoffice and get a stand-alone cloud storage service. Still, whenever I can I use open source software, and when I need a program that's the first I check. But when it comes to design, OSS does not quite cut it, except maybe for Blender, which despite the UI and learning curve, is a pretty amazing program overall.

If there was a team working in an open-source suite of design software similar to Affinity with well-written documentation and an intuitive UI, I wouldn't even think about subscribing to their Patreon (or whatever) as long as they kept the development going.

I use Linux and a ton of FOSS/FLOSS software. Inkscape is definitely no replacement for Illustrator or Designer. That's why the devs from Affinity need to fix Inkscape when they get laid off in 6 months from the Canva family. 

[CM0]

31 minutes ago, hds said:

I use Linux and a ton of FOSS/FLOSS software. Inkscape is definitely no replacement for Illustrator or Designer. That's why the devs from Affinity need to fix Inkscape when they get laid off in 6 months from the Canva family. 

There is no fixing Inkscape. Graphite is the future for open source media tools. https://graphite.rs/

[Comrade Haz]

58 minutes ago, CM0 said:

There is no fixing Inkscape. Graphite is the future for open source media tools. https://graphite.rs/

Browser based is not the future of anything, especially graphics. So so so clunky.

[CM0]

16 minutes ago, Comrade Haz said:

Browser based is not the future of anything, especially graphics. So so so clunky.

It is written in Rust on WebGPU platform. It will be capable of running anywhere. The browser is simply one delivery target.

[Pandovski]

Serif inspired me greatly both as a professional designer and a Christian when you gave amazingly generous deals during very dificult times while the pandemic was on. So I'll be patient and hold any judgment or fear about this decision, instead I wish you the absolute best for everyone's sake. Many of us make a living and depend on using your tools and found them to be a great blessing. 

I encourage Serif to keep up the good work and all the satisfied users not to fear about the future. 

[pixelstuff]

23 hours ago, michael-o said:

It's just speculation for now. However, it seems unlikely that Affinity will remain an affordable standalone suite with a one-time payment option. Why would they acquire the company and not try to profit from it?

I think they definitely intend to profit from it, but perhaps not by trying to be a carbon copy of Adobe. When I look at what Canva offers and what Affinity offers, my guess is their first focus will be to create a two-way road between the desktop apps and the cloud A.I. and storage services. I would have no problem if the cloud services are subscription based, as long as they maintained the perpetual license for the local apps.

It could be pretty interesting to launch an Affinity app just like we do now, and then open a Canva persona that lets me fiddle with the Canva templates and import a design with full layers into the Affinity app for full customization.

I also wouldn't mind if the cloud subscription service also included a tier with the apps for free, again, as long as they maintained the option of a perpetual license model for the local apps.

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm pretty shocked and disappointed by this news.

First of all, I just can't stand Canva. In my day job doing sign design work I'm dealing with an increasing amount of customer provided art made in Canva. Much of it is unusable garbage (especially the SVG files it outputs). The only thing that seems to yield art elements that can be "harvested" is its PDF for Print export filter. I'm always having to walk customers through finding the export filter in the online app. Canva is really dumbed down software. It can do some basic, rudimentary design work. Really the app just seems to be a glorified viewer of clip art and design templates. The only sort of positive thing I can say about Canva is its fonts collection is pretty impressive (especially the subscription version). Well, Monotype made a licensing deal with Canva. That explains the giant amount of fonts. BTW, Monotype sure looks like it is trying to monopolize the type industry. It's just scary how many type foundries the company has absorbed.

Normally I wouldn't feel all that bad about one software developer acquiring another software company. But that's not what's really going on here. Canva got its start being bank-rolled by a couple or so private equity companies. Monotype is owned by a private equity company. These business people with the stock trader bro mindset have tunnel vision. They're only concerned about cutting costs to the bone and running any scam they can to goose the stock price if the company is publicly traded or doing other less than ethical things if the operation is all private. I just don't have a positive opinion at all of private equity firms. I've used CorelDRAW for a long time and I think that application's future is starting to look bleak -the app has been stagnating under private equity ownership since the 2000's. It's probably a lucky thing the app still exists at all.

I've been wanting to see a number of new features and improvements added to Affinity Designer. But with Canva (and its private equity bosses) now in the mix my expectations are shot. These guys can promise all sorts of things to customers. But there are countless examples of how private equity firms or the private equity business mindset have hollowed out once good companies. Just look at the $#1T-show going on at Boeing. That's the private equity mindset at work right there. Boeing was more interested in cost cutting and stock buy-backs than paying any attention to quality control.

[Kantares]

With my wife we bought a set of Affinity licenses (V1 and V2). Could they be returned with purchased addons and cost returned?

 

With Canva purchase I feel V2 development will be rushed to asap change to V3 and subscription.

I do not want to support another subscription company.

[Bit Disappointed]

6 hours ago, Comrade Haz said:

Browser based is not the future of anything, especially graphics. So so so clunky.

Yes, exactly. A lot of these types of projects are based on small needs and the founders' fleeting dreams, but what I do, and what my industry does, puts quite a bit of pressure on the hardware. Browser-based graphic tools have always failed me performance-wise, and I've turned my back on all of them based on actual tests.

That's one thing. I also don't need to be a naively hopeful guinea pig in yet another one of the far too many separate newly-started products that all start from scratch, seem promising at first, stall when the really hard work needs to be done, and then still don't perform well for professional, large-scale work.

A third thing is that I'm a professional and can't use such chronically clumsy programs as GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus as people mention in panic. They will never get much better and will never be adopted by industries or people with high demands. They're free. That's what they're really about. 

Affinity was built on some good ideas and on a company, a more solid foundation, and despite flaws I've pointed out here, it was cohesive, and made with sales in mind, which obliges and requires greater effort. It needs to be replaced, and I have to choose professional alternatives if it comes to that.

My deepest sympathy to all those who, due to economics, must consider the aforementioned free alternatives. Especially to those who have used the programs as part of their work and to generate a personal income, and for whom there is now an uncertain future waiting for them.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Kantares said:

With my wife we bought a set of Affinity licenses (V1 and V2). Could they be returned with purchased addons and cost returned?

 

With Canva purchase I feel V2 development will be rushed to asap change to V3 and subscription.

I do not want to support another subscription company.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @Kantares.

Purchases from the Affinity Store are covered by a 14-day ‘no quibble’ money back guarantee, so some of your purchases may qualify if they were recent enough. Since your version 1 licences must have been purchased more than four months ago, they are outside the guarantee period.

[Petar Petrenko]

And who can guarantee that Adobe will not acquire Canva and, that way, kill two rabbits with one shot?

[woefi]

58 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

And who can guarantee that Adobe will not acquire Canva and, that way, kill two rabbits with one shot?

Well, given how the "Figma-situation" went down, I think this is not a realistic scenario...