PicMonkey vs Affinity Designer: Which One Is Better in 2024?

PicMonkey and Affinity Designer are essential for businesses and designers, offering tools to create professional-quality visuals. We'll compare PicMonkey's user-friendly design features and extensive templates with Affinity Designer's advanced vector and raster capabilities to determine the best fit for your needs.

A Quick Overview of PicMonkey and Affinity Designer

What is PicMonkey?

PicMonkey is a company that provides a comprehensive photo editing and design tool aimed at helping users create professional-quality images for social media, marketing, and branding. The tool is designed to be easy to use yet powerful, catering to both personal projects and business campaigns.

PicMonkey offers ready-made templates for various needs like flyers, Instagram posts, YouTube content, presentations, logos, and invitations. The tool also includes advanced photo editing features such as Touch Up, Color Changer, and background remover, which are not commonly found in similar tools.

What is Affinity Designer?

Affinity Designer is developed by Serif (Europe) Ltd, a company that creates professional-grade graphic design and illustration software. They offer a suite of applications including Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, and Affinity Publisher, aimed at providing high-quality tools for creatives without the need for subscription-based payments.

Affinity Designer features live, responsive performance, handling thousands of objects with no lag. It also offers vector and raster workspaces, allowing users to add raster brush textures, edit single pixels, and mask pixel layers.

Features of PicMonkey and Affinity Designer

Similarities

Both PicMonkey and Affinity Designer are powerful tools for creating stunning visuals, each offering a range of features that cater to different user needs. Despite their unique strengths, they share several key similarities that make them both excellent choices for graphic design and photo editing.

• Both platforms offer robust photo editing tools, allowing users to enhance and manipulate images with ease.
• They provide a variety of templates for different design needs, making it easy to create professional-quality visuals quickly.
• Both support vector graphics, enabling the creation of scalable and detailed designs.
• They offer customizable design elements, giving users the flexibility to tailor their projects to specific requirements.
• Both tools are suitable for creating professional-quality designs for branding and marketing purposes.

Differences

PicMonkey and Affinity Designer cater to different user needs with their unique features. While PicMonkey focuses on ease of use and social media templates, Affinity Designer offers advanced tools for professional-grade design work.

• Templates: PicMonkey provides a wide range of ready-made templates for social media, marketing, and branding, which Affinity Designer lacks.
• Photo Editing: PicMonkey includes advanced photo editing tools like Touch Up and Color Changer, not available in Affinity Designer.
• Vector and Raster Workspaces: Affinity Designer offers both vector and raster workspaces, allowing for detailed and complex designs, a feature missing in PicMonkey.
• Performance: Affinity Designer handles thousands of objects with no lag and offers a live outline view, which PicMonkey does not support.
• Typography: Affinity Designer includes sophisticated typography options like flowing text along any path and adding ligatures, features not found in PicMonkey.

User Interface and Usability

PicMonkey's user interface is designed to be straightforward, with a clean layout and easy navigation. The experience is intuitive, making it accessible for users with varying levels of design expertise. The overall usability is enhanced by the availability of numerous templates and simple editing tools, which streamline the design process.

Affinity Designer, on the other hand, offers a more complex interface tailored for professional designers. The user experience is robust, with advanced features and customization options that cater to detailed and intricate design work. Despite its complexity, the software remains responsive and efficient, handling large projects without lag.

Affinity Designer has a more advanced user interface and usability compared to PicMonkey.

Collaboration

PicMonkey does not emphasize collaboration features, focusing instead on individual design capabilities. The platform lacks specific tools for teamwork, making it less suitable for collaborative projects. Users can create and share designs, but the absence of dedicated collaboration features may hinder seamless teamwork.

Affinity Designer, however, supports collaboration by maintaining the same file format across Windows, Mac, and iPad, allowing team members to work on the same project across different devices. It offers professional output options and supports various file types, enhancing compatibility with other tools and platforms. The Universal Licence further facilitates team collaboration across different operating systems.

Affinity Designer is better suited for collaboration than PicMonkey.

PicMonkey and Affinity Designer Pricing

PicMonkey offers three subscription plans: Basic at $72 annually or $7.99 monthly, Pro at $120 annually or $12.99 monthly, and Business at $228 annually per user or $23 monthly. A 7-day free trial is available for both the Basic and Pro plans, but there are no one-time purchase options.

Affinity Designer provides a subscription-free model with one-time purchase options: $69.99 for macOS or Windows, $18.49 for iPad, and $164.99 for the Affinity V2 Universal Licence. Volume discounts are available for businesses and educational institutions, and a free trial is offered for the Universal Licence.

Affinity Designer has better pricing due to its one-time purchase options and lack of recurring subscription fees.

Comparing PicMonkey and Affinity Designer to Piktochart

Piktochart transforms complex ideas into captivating visuals that inform and engage your audience. With Piktochart AI, you can create stunning infographics, reports, and presentations in seconds, perfectly aligned with your brand. No design experience required.

Pros of Piktochart

• Ease of Use: Piktochart's intuitive drag-and-drop functionality makes it accessible for users of all skill levels, allowing anyone to create professional visuals effortlessly.
• Variety of Templates: With a wide range of templates for infographics, presentations, flyers, posters, and reports, Piktochart offers versatile options to suit various design needs.
• Content Repurposing: Piktochart's online video editing tool enables users to turn long videos into customized bite-sized clips, perfect for social media and other platforms.
• Automatic Subtitles: The platform automatically adds subtitles to videos, enhancing accessibility and engagement, with customization options for different social media formats.
• Fast and Efficient: From creating to publishing, Piktochart streamlines the design process, ensuring a quick and easy experience for users looking to produce high-quality content.

Piktochart's Pricing

• Free: $0 (Free forever)
• Pro: $29 per member/month (billed monthly) or $14 per member/month (billed annually, save 52%)
• Business: $49 per member/month (billed monthly) or $24 per member/month (billed annually, save 52%)
• Enterprise: Custom Pricing (Contact for details)
• Campus: Custom Pricing (Minimum 3000 seats, contact for details)

What Are Others Saying?

PicMonkey Reviews

Overall, users have given PicMonkey a rating of 4.4 out of 5. While they appreciate its ease of use and variety of templates, frustrations include limited features and performance issues.

"The background remover is not efficient and often leaves traces." - John D., 3.5/5

"Expensive pricing for the features offered." - Sarah M., 3/5

"Limited advanced options for edits." - Alex P., 3.8/5

Find more of PicMonkey reviews on G2!

Affinity Designer Reviews

Overall, users have given Affinity Designer a rating of 4.6 out of 5. While they appreciate its affordability and intuitive interface, frustrations include tool limitations and a steep learning curve.

"The software has a steep learning curve and lacks some advanced features." - Manoranjan R., 3/5

"Importing files can be problematic and sometimes results in errors." - Nidhi B., 2/5

"The complexity of the tool makes it difficult for beginners to use effectively." - Ashutosh R., 1/5

Find more of Affinity Designer reviews on G2!

Piktochart Reviews

Our users have given Piktochart an overall rating of 4.4 out of 5. They find the platform particularly useful for its ease of use and variety of templates. Here are some of their thoughts:

• "Piktochart is very easy and simple to use online graphics creation tool." - Andrea V.
• "Piktochart offers good looking pre-built templates for creating graphics." - Ganesh P.
• "Easily Create Social Images and Infographics to Boost Business Services." - Rachel L.

Find more of our reviews on G2!

Why choose one over the other?

Why choose PicMonkey over Affinity Designer:

• PicMonkey is ideal for social media marketers and small business owners who need quick and easy design solutions with a variety of templates and user-friendly photo editing tools.

Why choose Affinity Designer over PicMonkey:

• Affinity Designer is perfect for professional designers and illustrators who require advanced vector and raster design capabilities, along with sophisticated typography options and performance features.

Why choose Piktochart over Affinity Designer and PicMonkey:

• Piktochart is suited for communications professionals, educators, and marketers who need an intuitive platform to create engaging infographics, reports, and presentations quickly, without requiring design experience.

PicMonkey, Affinity Designer, or Piktochart: Which is the best platform for you?

While PicMonkey and Affinity Designer offer impressive features tailored to different needs, Piktochart stands out for its ease of use and versatility. Whether you're a communications professional, educator, or marketer, Piktochart empowers you to create stunning visuals effortlessly. We believe Piktochart is the best choice for anyone looking to transform complex ideas into captivating visuals without the need for design experience.