Simplified AI vs Canva AI writer: A detailed comparison for content teams

Kenneth Pangan
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Kenneth Pangan

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Last edited January 26, 2026

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If you're on a marketing or content team, you know the drill: create more, create it faster. The demand for fresh blog posts, social media graphics, and videos is relentless. AI writing tools have become a go-to for keeping up, but choosing the right one is another job in itself.

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Promises but rarely delivers? Welcome to AI mediocrity.
You've probably come across Simplified, which pitches itself as an all-in-one platform for marketing teams, and Canva, the design tool everyone knows, which has added AI features to its Magic Studio. Both can help you write, but they're designed with very different goals in mind.

This guide will break down their AI writing features, show you how they fit into a real workflow, and look at the pricing. And if your main goal is to produce blog content that performs well in search engines, you might find that a specialized tool is a better fit. A tool like the eesel AI blog writer is built for that specific job, which we'll discuss later.

What is Simplified?

Simplified's landing page highlights its all-in-one suite for modern marketing teams.
Simplified's landing page highlights its all-in-one suite for modern marketing teams.
Think of Simplified as the Swiss Army knife for a modern marketing team. The whole idea is to be a single app that stops you from juggling a dozen different tools for writing, design, video, and scheduling.

It’s built around five main hubs:

With over 10 million users, Simplified is aimed at marketers, small business owners, and agencies who want one dashboard to handle their entire content process. It’s all about putting everything in one place to work more efficiently.

What is Canva?

Canva's website, which positions itself as a 'Visual Suite for Everyone' with its new AI Magic Studio.
Canva's website, which positions itself as a 'Visual Suite for Everyone' with its new AI Magic Studio.
You almost certainly know Canva. For years, it’s been the default tool for easy, template-based design, calling itself the "Visual Suite for Everyone." It’s famous for making design accessible to people who aren't professional designers.

Recently, Canva got into the AI game with "Magic Studio", a set of AI-powered features. A key part of this is its AI writing assistant, Magic Write. But it's important to know where it fits. Magic Write isn't a standalone tool for writing 2,000-word articles. It’s made to work inside the Canva editor, helping you generate text for a presentation slide, a social media post, or a flyer. Its main job is to support the visual design process, not to be your primary content writer.

Feature comparison: Simplified vs. Canva for content generation

While both platforms can generate text with AI, they do it in very different ways. Their features are built for their main purpose, whether that's all-in-one marketing or design-first creation. Let's break down what each one brings to the table.

A comparison of the key AI writing features in Simplified AI and Canva Magic Write.
A comparison of the key AI writing features in Simplified AI and Canva Magic Write.

Simplified's AI writer

Simplified’s AI writer is a dedicated tool within its suite, built for marketing copy. It’s a core part of the platform, not just an add-on.

It can do a lot. You get over 80+ specialized templates for specific marketing tasks, like writing long-form blog posts, coming up with ad headlines, or crafting social media captions. You can also write in over 30 languages and switch between 10+ tones, which helps keep your content on-brand.

Simplified uses a unified credit system for all its AI tools. Generating text costs 1 credit for every 100 words. This lets you use your credits for writing, design, or video, but it also means all your AI work pulls from the same pot. If you have a heavy video editing week, you might find your writing credits are running low.

Canva's Magic Write

Canva's Magic Write is less of a standalone writer and more of an AI assistant that lives inside the design editor. It’s great for when you’re working on a visual and need some quick copy.

Its main purpose is to help you brainstorm ideas, write a headline, summarize text, or draft a short paragraph without leaving your design. It's aware of the context within your project, so it can continue, rewrite, or change tone of text you've already added.

Magic Write access is tiered. The free plan gives you a very limited number of uses. Pro and Business plans offer "High" and "Higher" access, but this usage is shared across all of Canva's premium AI tools (like their image editor and background remover) and resets each month. It’s not really set up for high-volume writing.

Workflow and use cases: Simplified vs. Canva

A tool is only useful if it fits into your daily routine. Simplified and Canva are built for two completely different ways of working.

When to use Simplified AI

Simplified is the right call when your team wants one platform to do everything. The workflow is smooth and connected. You can generate a blog post with the AI writer, jump over to the AI designer to create custom graphics for it, turn the key points into a short video, and then schedule it all for your social channels without ever leaving the app.

This makes it a great fit for:

  • Social media managers who need to create both the visuals and the captions at the same time.
  • Small businesses and startups trying to save money by using one tool instead of five.
  • Content marketers who manage blogs, videos, and graphics and want an integrated space to keep it all organized.

When to use Canva

Canva is the better choice when your process starts with design. The workflow usually begins with a visual, like a presentation template or a social media graphic. From there, you use Magic Write to fill in the text boxes, brainstorm headlines, or generate some supporting copy. The visual is the main event; the AI text is just there to help.

This is ideal for:

  • Marketing teams building presentations or reports where design is the most important part.
  • Social media managers who focus on creating eye-catching visuals and just need a little help with the caption.
  • Anyone who needs a simple tool for occasional design work and wants some light AI help with the copy.

Pricing and plans: Simplified vs. Canva

Of course, cost is a big deal. The way these two platforms price their plans shows what they're focused on. Here’s how they compare.

FeatureSimplifiedCanva
Free PlanYes, Free Forever plan with 5,000 AI words (one-time) and limited features.Yes, Free plan with limited access to premium AI tools.
Pro Plan (1 User)Pro Plan: $12/month (billed annually)Pro Plan: $120/year ($10/month)
Team PlanBusiness Plan: $18/month (billed annually) for 3 users.Business Plan: $200/year per person.
AI Writing ModelAll-in-one suite with a unified credit system. Pro gets 10K credits, Business gets 30K credits monthly.Design suite with tiered AI access. Pro has "High" access, Business has "Higher" access.
Best ForTeams needing an integrated platform for writing, design, video, and social media.Teams with a design-first workflow needing AI assistance for visual content.

Simplified pricing

Simplified's pricing is built around giving you access to its entire suite of tools. The plans are straightforward: Pro starts at $12/month, Business (for 3 users) is $18/month, and Growth (for 5 users) is $49/month, with discounts if you pay for the year.

The main difference between the plans is the number of monthly unified AI credits you get. The Pro plan has 10,000 credits, Business has 30,000, and Growth has 100,000. How much value you get depends on how much you use the different AI features across the platform.

Canva pricing

Canva's pricing is based on its core design features. The Pro plan is $120/year for one person, while the Business plan is $200/year per person.

You’re mostly paying for a great design tool. The access you get to Magic Write and other premium AI features is based on those "High" and "Higher" usage tiers. Because that usage is shared across all AI tools and resets monthly, it’s not set up for teams that need to produce a lot of written content.

An alternative for SEO content: eesel AI blog writer

While Simplified and Canva are effective general-purpose tools, teams whose primary goal is driving organic traffic with blog content may find a specialized tool to be more suitable. For creating SEO-optimized articles consistently, a purpose-built platform can offer a more focused feature set.

The eesel AI blog writer dashboard, one of the best AI social media marketing tools for content creation.
The eesel AI blog writer dashboard, one of the best AI social media marketing tools for content creation.
The eesel AI blog writer is a tool that takes a single keyword and turns it into a full, publish-ready blog post designed to rank. We used it ourselves to grow our traffic from 700 to 750,000 daily impressions in just three months.

What makes the eesel AI blog writer different?

How does it compare to the all-in-one tools? It’s all about the features that matter for getting your content seen on search engines.

  • It does the research for you. Generic AI writers often give you surface-level text. Our tool digs deeper. If you're writing a comparison post, it finds pricing data. For a product review, it pulls up technical specs.
  • You get more than just text. It generates a complete article with AI images, charts, and tables. This saves you the headache of creating all your visuals from scratch.
  • It pulls in social proof. To make content more interesting and trustworthy, it can embed relevant YouTube videos and find real quotes from Reddit threads.
  • It's optimized for AEO. The content isn't just set up for traditional SEO. It's also optimized for AI Answer Engines, like Google's AI Overviews, which is a big deal for search visibility now.

The best part? It's completely free to try, so you can check out the quality for yourself.

To get a better sense of how these AI features work in practice, especially within a design-focused tool like Canva, it can be helpful to see them in action. Here’s a detailed look at Canva's Magic Write and other AI capabilities:

A walkthrough of Canva's Magic Write, demonstrating its capabilities as an AI assistant within the design editor. ## Simplified vs. Canva: Which should you choose?

So, what's the bottom line? It all comes down to what you're trying to do.

  • Choose Simplified AI if: You need an all-in-one platform to manage writing, design, video, and social media from one place. It's for teams who care most about the convenience of an integrated workflow.
  • Choose Canva if: Your work starts with design. You mostly create visuals like presentations and social graphics, and you just need some light AI help with the copy.

While both tools are effective for their designed purposes, teams focused on scaling content marketing for search engines might find a specialized tool offers a more direct path to their goals.

For those whose primary goal is publishing high-quality, SEO-optimized blog content to generate organic traffic, exploring a purpose-built tool is a logical next step.

Generate your first blog post for free with the eesel AI blog writer and see what a difference a purpose-built tool can make.

Frequently Asked Questions

The main difference is their [core purpose](https://socialrails.com/blog/canva-vs-simplified). Simplified is an all-in-one marketing platform where the AI writer is a central feature. Canva is a design-first tool where its AI writer, Magic Write, is an assistant for creating copy within visual projects.
It depends on your needs. If you need a single tool for writing, design, video, and social media scheduling to keep costs down, Simplified is a strong choice. If your primary need is design with occasional writing help, Canva's free or Pro plan might be more cost-effective.
Simplified uses a unified credit system where all AI activities (writing, design, video) pull from the same monthly pool. Canva's AI usage is tiered and pooled across its premium "Magic Studio" features, resetting monthly, which is less suited for high-volume text generation.
Simplified is [better equipped for long-form content](https://wavel.ai/compare/canva-vs-simplified) with its dedicated AI writer and templates. Canva's Magic Write is designed for shorter text snippets inside designs and isn't ideal for writing full articles. For serious SEO blogging, a specialized tool like the eesel AI blog writer is a better alternative than both.
Simplified is likely the winner for most social media managers because it integrates content creation (both text and visuals) with a built-in social media scheduler. This allows you to manage the entire process from one dashboard.

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Kenneth Pangan

Writer and marketer for over ten years, Kenneth Pangan splits his time between history, politics, and art with plenty of interruptions from his dogs demanding attention.