Piktochart vs. Canva, Visme, Venngage, and Easel.ly: Which Infographic Maker Actually Fits Beginners With No Design Background?

You have a spreadsheet full of numbers a client actually wants to see, and no idea how to turn it into something people will stop scrolling for.

The problem with turning data into something people will actually look at

I spent a stretch managing social content for a couple of small clients, and the recurring request was always some version of the same thing: “can you make our quarterly numbers look like one of those infographics.” Nobody wanted a bar chart pasted into a slide. They wanted the version that gets saved, shared, and pinned — the kind of visual that makes a report feel like it was made by a design team, not assembled at 11pm by someone whose actual job title has nothing to do with design.

The honest problem isn’t a lack of data or even a lack of good ideas about what to show. It’s that “good with words” and “good with layout” are different skills, and most people doing content marketing, small business marketing, or client reporting only have the first one. Open a blank canvas in a general-purpose design tool and the blank page problem hits immediately — where do the numbers go, how much text is too much, what colors don’t clash, how do you make five data points look intentional instead of cramped.

That gap is exactly what infographic-specific tools are trying to close: not “give me more design tools,” but “give me a structure that already knows what a good infographic looks like, so I just have to fill it in.” Some tools do that well. Others hand you a blank canvas with a nicer toolbar and call it done, which isn’t actually solving the problem.

There’s a credibility cost to getting this wrong, too, and it’s easy to underestimate. Good data presented in a cramped, misaligned, or visually confusing layout doesn’t read as “the numbers are still solid, the design just needs work” — it reads as sloppy, full stop, and that impression attaches to whoever’s name is on the report. A client or a boss who can’t immediately tell what a chart is showing doesn’t stop to appreciate the underlying analysis; they just lose a little confidence in the person who made it. The tool doing real layout work for you isn’t a nice-to-have in that situation, it’s what keeps the actual content from getting undermined by its presentation.

None of the five tools here are bad software. But “has infographic templates” and “makes infographics easy for someone with zero design training” turn out to be two different claims, and the gap between them is where most of the frustration people report with these tools actually comes from.

Before I found a tool that actually fit this workflow, my default was to fight it out in whatever was already open — Word, PowerPoint, sometimes a hand-me-down Illustrator file from a designer friend. All three technically work. None of them are built for the specific problem of “arrange numbers, labels, and a bit of narrative into a single vertical image that reads at a glance.” What that looked like in practice was a lot of manual alignment, guessing at font sizes, and redoing the whole layout because one extra data point didn’t fit the space I’d already built. It’s the kind of task that eats an evening for something that should take twenty minutes once you have the right tool.

Three things worth judging any infographic tool on

Strip away the marketing screenshots and the decision mostly comes down to three questions — and, similar to most template-based software, a lot of the disappointment people report after buying one of these tools traces back to judging it on template quantity instead of these three things.

1. Are the templates actually built for infographics, or borrowed from a general design tool? A template built specifically for a “5-step process” or “before/after comparison” or “annual report summary” does a lot of the layout thinking for you — the hierarchy, the spacing, the natural reading order are already baked in before you’ve typed a single word. A general social-media template awkwardly repurposed as an infographic usually still leaves you fighting with spacing and hierarchy — the parts that are hardest for a non-designer to get right on their own, and the parts a template is supposed to solve in the first place.

2. Can you get real data in without manually placing every number? The difference between typing numbers into text boxes one at a time and pasting in a spreadsheet or connecting a live data source is the difference between an infographic taking twenty minutes and taking two hours — and it’s also where errors creep in when you’re updating five different fields by hand instead of re-importing a single source of truth.

3. Does the output actually look finished, or does it read as “made in a template tool”? This is the least talked-about criterion and probably the most important one. Some tools produce results that look polished regardless of the user’s design skill, because the underlying template design is doing most of the heavy lifting. Others produce results that are recognizably template-shaped no matter how much you customize them, which matters if the infographic is going in front of a client or a boss rather than staying an internal draft.

With those three lenses in mind, here’s how the five tools actually compare.

Side-by-side comparison

(Pricing reflects publicly listed entry-level plans and can vary by billing cycle, region, or promotion — always check the provider’s own pricing page before committing to a plan.)

It’s worth reading that table with one caveat: “cheapest” and “easiest for a non-designer” aren’t always the same tool. Easel.ly wins on price and simplicity, but that simplicity comes from having fewer templates and less flexibility — fine for a quick one-off, less fine if infographics are becoming a regular part of your workflow. Likewise, “most features” isn’t automatically “easiest to use” — Visme’s depth is genuinely valuable for data-heavy work, but it’s also the tool most likely to feel like overkill if all you need is a clean, simple report once a month. The breakdown below goes into where each tool actually earns its price tag.

What each tool is actually good and bad at

The table above is a fast filter, not the full picture — price and free-plan generosity only tell you so much about whether a tool will actually feel easy to use once you’re twenty minutes into a real project with a deadline attached. The breakdown below is closer to what you’d get from watching someone actually build something in each tool, rather than reading a features page: what it’s genuinely good at, where it starts to show its limits, and who ends up frustrated versus who ends up recommending it to a coworker.

Piktochart

Piktochart is built specifically around the “I have data, I need an infographic” workflow, and it shows in the small details — templates organized by purpose (reports, social media graphics, presentations), and a spreadsheet import feature that fills in a chart without manually typing each number into a text box. For someone whose actual job is marketing or client reporting rather than design, that specificity saves real time compared to adapting a general template. It also means the defaults tend to already look reasonable before you’ve customized anything, which matters more than it sounds like when you’re working against a deadline rather than iterating for hours.

• Pros: templates genuinely structured around infographic and report use cases, straightforward data import from spreadsheets, output that reads as intentional rather than template-shaped, reasonable learning curve
• Cons: the free plan is limited enough that you’ll bump into paywalls quickly if you’re testing it seriously, and the template library is smaller than Canva’s simply because it’s more specialized

Canva

Canva’s biggest strength is also its biggest tradeoff for this specific use case: it does everything, which means its infographic templates are one category among dozens rather than the main focus. If your team already lives in Canva for social posts and presentations, staying there for infographics avoids learning a second tool — and the sheer size of the template library means you’ll usually find something close to what you need. What you’re trading for that breadth is a bit more manual work getting a template to actually feel infographic-shaped rather than a resized social post.

• Pros: an enormous, constantly updated template library, a genuinely easy editor that most people already have some familiarity with, and strong value if you’re also using it for other content types
• Cons: infographic templates can feel like general templates with data slapped on rather than purpose-built layouts, and spreadsheet-style data import is less native than in tools built specifically around data visualization

Visme

Visme leans hardest into data visualization of any tool on this list — animated charts, interactive elements, and data widgets that update rather than sitting static. For teams that present data regularly, whether in reports or client-facing decks, that depth is the actual selling point, not just the infographic templates themselves. It’s the closest thing here to a presentation tool that happens to also make infographics, rather than the other way around.

• Pros: genuinely strong charting and data visualization tools, useful for interactive or presentation-style content beyond static infographics, professional output
• Cons: the extra depth comes with a steeper learning curve than Piktochart or Canva, and the entry-level paid plan costs more than most of the alternatives here

Venngage

Venngage organizes its templates by specific infographic type — comparison, timeline, process, statistical report — which removes a decision non-designers often get stuck on: not “how do I design this” but “which layout even fits what I’m trying to show.” Picking the right starting template does a surprising amount of the design work automatically, since the structure itself already implies where the eye should go first.

• Pros: templates categorized by use case rather than just by industry or aesthetic, which makes picking a starting point faster, solid range of chart and data widgets
• Cons: some of the more useful features (like certain export formats and premium templates) sit behind higher tiers than the entry-level paid plan, and the free plan is restrictive enough to limit real evaluation

Easel.ly

Easel.ly is the deliberately simple option here, and it’s honest about that rather than trying to compete on feature depth. The editor is stripped down to drag-and-drop basics, which is exactly what someone making their first-ever infographic — with no intention of doing this regularly — is usually looking for. There’s a real appeal in a tool that doesn’t ask you to learn anything before you can start dragging elements onto the page.

• Pros: very low price, genuinely minimal learning curve, good for a single quick infographic without a big time investment
• Cons: the template and feature set is noticeably thinner than the other four tools, and it starts to feel limiting fast if infographics become a recurring part of your work rather than a one-off

Which one actually fits your situation

If you’re a solo marketer or small business owner making infographics regularly — monthly reports, recurring social content, the kind of thing that comes back around every few weeks whether you feel like designing or not — Piktochart’s purpose-built templates and spreadsheet import will likely save the most time per infographic, week over week, once the initial learning curve is behind you.

If you’re already using a design tool for everything else — social posts, presentation decks, maybe even print materials — and don’t want to manage a second subscription just for infographics, Canva’s breadth makes it the practical default, even if its infographic templates aren’t quite as specialized as a dedicated tool’s.

If your work involves presenting data to clients or leadership rather than just publishing infographics publicly, Visme’s interactive and animated data visualization goes further than a static image can, and that extra polish tends to matter more in a boardroom than on social media, where a chart that updates or responds to a click can carry a conversation further than a static export.

If you know exactly what type of infographic you need — a timeline, a before/after, a step-by-step process — Venngage’s use-case-organized templates get you to a finished layout faster than browsing a general template gallery and trying to mentally map a generic layout onto your specific content.

And if this is a one-time project rather than an ongoing need — a single conference handout, one client request that probably won’t repeat — Easel.ly’s low cost and minimal learning curve make it hard to justify paying more for depth you’re unlikely to use again, especially once you factor in that a subscription you cancel after one use rarely feels like it was worth setting up in the first place.

None of these are the universally correct pick — they’re built around different assumptions about how often you’re making infographics and how much control you want over the process. The honest way to choose is to match the tool to how regularly this is actually going to be part of your work, not to whichever template looked best in a demo video.

Try it before you commit to a template

The fastest way to know if a tool actually fits your workflow is to bring one real dataset — the report, the survey results, the numbers you already have sitting in a spreadsheet — and see how long it takes to turn into something you’d actually publish. If it still feels like fighting the tool by the second attempt, that’s a better signal than any feature list.

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