We’ll say the quiet bit first.
If you have taste and a weekend, Canva can produce a one-page site that looks as finished as anything on this website. For a lot of solopreneurs that is the whole job: who I am, what I do, here’s how to book.
If that’s still the job, stay.
Canva becomes the wrong tool the moment the site has to do something. Take an order. Carry more than a brochure. Get you found for the work, not just your name. Connect the booking to the calendar so you stop being the glue.
Stay if this is you
- The business fits on a handful of pages.
- The actual work happens off the site — a call, a consult, a job you book somewhere else.
- You already live in Canva and like it that way.
- You want it done this weekend, by you.
A coach, a consultant, a freelancer, an artist. Those are Canva Sites businesses. Don’t let a developer talk you into a project you don’t need.
Leave when the brochure is the bottleneck
The “shop” is a button to somewhere else. Etsy, a form, a DM. You’re sending buyers off the page.
Nobody finds you unless they already know your name. Fine at the start. A problem when you need the next ten customers.
You’re still the integration. The booking, the follow-up, the invoice — they only happen if you remember.
The brand has outgrown the layout. You can feel it. It looks like Canva. It doesn’t look like you.
What you get instead
A shopfront that can grow. GalaBags needed a real shop and a look no template had. FORM3D needed to feel like a contractor you’d trust with a slab. Indigo Garlic needed to feel like a farm, not a slide.
You change the words and photos yourself. You can take money on the site. Later, if the week needs it, customers can log in and the tools you already pay for can talk to each other.
You don’t have to buy all of that on day one. A lot of people start on Canva, then move when the brochure runs out. That’s a smart sequence, not a failure.
The money, simply
Free is free, with a Canva address and a ceiling. Pro is about $260 a year — $1,300 over five years.
A site you keep starts at $500 plus about $20 a month to host — around $1,700 over five years. Slightly more than Pro. A different thing: a shop, a proper domain, a page that can win a search, and a site that still works if you leave.
Already on Canva?
If the brochure still does the job, stay. If you’ve started sending people off the page to finish the job, tell us how a customer actually buys. We’ll say whether moving is worth it.