Neither anarchist nor good citizen could use Affinity or Canva without a Canva account. 
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I get sensitive about rights, I guess.
It isn’t right to tell a user what ideas they may not express with a tool like a word processor. On a web site the vendor owns, sure. You can’t jump on a table at a restaurant and start preaching vim. Not only is emacs the One True Editor, it isn’t your table to jump on, either.
If I can’t speak my mind without oversight on my own equipment, I think I’m on a slippery slope.
Yeah, yeah, I know. “Fire” in a crowded theater and all that. Rights have responsibilities, I would never argue otherwise.
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You took me way too seriously. I was only attempting to add a little humor to the conversation. 
Sorry for the bad humor on my part.
I don’t quite get this “Canva Account”. All I had to do was give my email address. No account password (like I have/had with Serif), no license keys, no credit card. They state they will make their money with the AI add-in sales, and I have no interest in using AI. What’s the big deal?
My “no sense” comment was about needing an account to use the software, especially if I’m not using the ‘premium’ features.
I’m sure the folks at Canva think they know what they are doing. Time will tell.
As a long-time user of Affinity Designer, and more recently also Photo and Publisher (for very minor work) I must say, this upgrade seems quite underwhelming.
The main changes are
- one app now contains the full, three previous apps
- a few new features, mostly significant if you were waiting for them
- a really good UI upgrade with loads of customization options
The core of each app hasn’t changed all that much, they could as well be released as v2.7 IMHO. However, I get that a lot of work went into this new release.
Now, the business model is puzzling to me, but then again, a super capable video editor like DaVinci Resolve is also free (except advanced color grading) and that is equally puzzling.
Affinity has a solid toolset, it has fully replaced Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for me. As for creative expression, I can’t blame it on limitation in the tools 
Anyway - if you need any of these capabilities, Affinity by Canva is a no-brainer at this time. For the longest time, Adobe’s offerings was also a no-brainer for professionals, but times change. They may of course change for Affinity/Canva as well, but I don’t really see them limiting the current tool-set anytime soon, given the bombastic promises given yesterday.
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No, please don’t apologize! I appreciated your comments.
I’m a newcomer here. Please keep me honest!
All the best.
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For some definition of “subscription”.
I came up with this analogy the other day. Believing “subscriptions are bad” is like believing cash is bad because a friend got short changed once.
There are so many different subscription models. I personally have one piece of software which I bought on subscription, I stopped paying that, and I still own and use it.
One app always contained the other two — Publisher. I’m astonished how few people know this, given it is literally the origin story of the Affinity brand. Yes, you had to own licenses for all three, but it could be argued you still do… they’re just all free.
But this is no different to the model you mentioned. If you only pay once it’s not sustainable for the developer.
I agree there are differing models out there. I like Due and Agenda’s model where you pay for new features. However, I’m not sure how sustainable it is in the long run.
My experience the last 10 years is the number of Indie developers who asked for user support, received it and when the product was good sold it to a large business who raised prices.
In the end there is no real solution. Users will pay the minimum they can and developers will charge as much as they can. In the UK financial climate I find myself consolidating and dropping subscriptions as much as I can. This is no disrespect to the developers, but a purely financial decision. I’m rapidly moving towards FOSS. Even Apple’s pricing is pushing me to ditch their platform.
When costs escalate and you realise you can do the same work in less polished or feature rich apps that are cheaper or free you’re going to move in that direction.
Apologies for moving the thread in a different direction.
Back to topic.
My concern with Affinity and now Canva is that Canva didn’t spend $380 million to make the product free and gain no return. Their investors would not be happy. This means revenue must come from somewhere. Someone mentioned it will come from AI, but if AI doesn’t produce the expected return then they will need to charge elsewhere. Having seen this happen before, I’m asking myself if I have the energy to journey through Affinity’s transition only to need to drop it due to cost down the road and go elsewhere. I’m also in the position where these apps are not mission critical for me. I will of course hope for the best and watch from the sidelines.
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So, if I only bought a license for Publisher, I would still have the full binaries for Designer and Photo on my system but unavailable until I got the licence?
I always thought Publisher just had a very smooth integration with the two other installed applications, so this was news to me.
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I agree there are differing models out there. I like Due and Agenda’s model where you pay for new features. However, I’m not sure how sustainable it is in the long run.
Tinderbox, now on V11, has been using this model ever since I started using it in (checks…) 2010 with V5.
That’s fifteen years, and I imagine it was in use well before that – Tinderbox was first released in 2002, I think – so the model can be sustainable in the right developer’s hands.
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Glad to have you here! This is a great forum with great folks. Don’t worry, they’ll keep you honest, they do me! 
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Thank you! I will check this out. I hope the suite will also be available for the iPad. I use my iPad for a lot of work! Thanks again, much appreciated.
Yes, it is still in development. They are saying Q1 2026 for the iPad app. I am almost exclusively working with Designer and Photo v2 on my iPad Pro, and love how powerful they are. Basically nothing that I need to do on the Mac, even if it’s nice to be able to work on the same file across devices when it’s suitable.
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I can’t imagine what Canva is thinking, particularly after seeing the tone of their October 30 rollout. To my eye, with my best effort to be nice, it was oriented to the unseasoned user.
A wild guess is they figure if I use Affinity as a non-Canva customer they haven’t lost much in trade for trolling my desktop for an AI subscription. If you click the three dots menu in Affinity’s toolbar and deselect the AI option, the AI button disappears. I have about five minutes experience with the new version. I could be missing things.
Devonthink has a reasonable subscription plan which they stress is $49 for a year, not $49 every year.
From an insider on DT’s forum:
It is not “annual”, but “for one year”. If you pay every year or every second, third or tenth year doesn’t matter. When you pay, you get the then current version including all updates it had received since you last paid. And you receive all updates in the next 12 month. If you don’t want to pay, then don’t and use the current version.
That’s a fairly gentle subscription plan.
Straight from Canva’s cofounders mouth, how Affinity can be free and be beneficial to Canva’s business model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9YR9KeCJDY
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That actually made sense to me.
Their play seems to be a bottom-up growth plan, where the money will be coming from Canva plans that your creative teams will pay for to get access to the collaboration features. I imagine this is a key feature that finally can put Affinity into a real alternative to Adobe-based workflows.
I like this. I may sign up for that free Affinity account. I can always upgrade to Canva should I ever desire or need that capability. Thanks for posting that.
That’s the thing, Affinity are the pro-tools of the offering, Canva is for enabling people without deep skills in these tools to create materials using templates and a very simple interface. Probably very useful for roles like Social Media Managers or anyone with the need to supply a wide variety of maketing material. Somewhat similar to Adobe Spark, now rebranded as Creative Cloud Express, if you are familiar with that.
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The only thing missing in the offering, in so far as I understand it, is an iPad version of Affinity. I believe I read somewhere that they were working on it. I certainly hope that is the case.