Canva is a fantastic tool. We use it to design presentations, social media graphics, and brand documents. But when someone tells us, ‘I built my website on Canva,’ we have to give them a friendly reality check. Because Canva is not a professional web platform, even if it has a tab that says ‘Websites.’ At Codingtel, we develop custom websites and software. And every week we receive at least one client who comes in with a website built on Canva… and with serious loading, ranking, or mobile usability problems. It’s not the design’s fault (Canva is pretty), it’s the technology’s fault. If your business depends on showing up on Google, selling online, or generating leads, you need to read this to the end.

Canva’s Pros

Aspect	Analysis
Visual design	The templates are aesthetically above average. If you are looking for “pretty at first glance,” it delivers.
Learning curve	Nonexistent. If you know how to use Canva for social media, you know how to “make” a website.
Upfront cost	Included in the Pro subscription (≈€120/year). It seems cheap. But remember: cheap can end up being expensive.

So far, so good. Now comes what Canva doesn’t tell you.

Technical Cons (the difference of professional development)

Responsive Design: the weakest point (and the one that hurts the most)

“Canva generates an automatic mobile version that you CANNOT edit. What you see on desktop rearranges itself, with chaotic results: overlapping texts, disappearing buttons, poorly cropped images.” Key fact: Over 60% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices. If your website looks bad on an iPhone or an Android, you are losing more than half of your potential clients. On a professional website (built with WordPress, Laravel, or any serious framework), responsive design is designed, tested, and adjusted by breakpoints. In Canva, you simply… pray.

SEO: nonexistent for serious projects

Google doesn’t care about pretty templates. Google understands:

• Clean and customizable URLs → In Canva, they are fixed and generic.
• Schema markup (structured data) → Canva doesn’t support it.
• Indexation control → You can’t decide which pages Google indexes.
• Load speed → You depend on extremely slow shared servers.

Try it yourself: Run a Canva-built website through PageSpeed Insights. The mobile score rarely exceeds 40/100. A professional website should be 90+.

Scalability: zero

Need a blog with categories and tags? Canva has a basic feature that doesn’t scale. An online store? Impossible. Integrations with a CRM, email marketing, or booking system? Forget it. Memberships, online courses, or user directories? They don’t exist. A real website grows with you. Canva leaves you trapped in a “digital brochure” with no options.

Ownership: you don’t own your own website

• Your website lives inside Canva. If you cancel your subscription, your website disappears. Yes, it’s that serious.
• If you want to migrate, there is no structured export: you would have to manually copy and paste every text and every image.
• You are building your digital presence on rented land.

At Codingtel, we hand over the code, the database, and the freedom to take your website wherever you want. That is ownership.

Security: out of your control

• You depend 100% on Canva’s infrastructure.
• If they have an outage (it has happened and will happen again), your business is offline and there’s nothing you can do about it.
• No external backups, no possibility of restoring it on your own.

With professional development, you have daily backups, firewalls, monitoring, and a team that responds in minutes. ¿What IS Canva actually good for? We are not demonizing Canva. It is a great tool, but it must be used for the right things:

• Temporary landing pages for specific campaigns (a weekend promo, an event).
• Creative portfolios that prioritize aesthetics over functionality and don’t depend on organic traffic.
• “Business card” sites for businesses that get clients purely through referrals (a professional who already has their network).
• Rapid prototypes to showcase an idea before building the final version.

But if your goal is to sell, rank, or scale, Canva is not the answer.

What should you use instead of Canva?

At Codingtel, we build professional websites with:

• Robust Content Management Systems (WordPress with custom elements).
• Modern frameworks (Laravel, React, Vue.js) for custom applications.
• Responsive design tested on all devices.
• Technical SEO from the very first line of code.
• Integrations with your favorite tools (email marketing, payment gateways).

And most importantly: you are the owner, we are the technical ally.