Designers don’t get a congratulatory badge if they start all their designs from scratch. Nor are those using design templates deemed any less competent. In fact, relying on design templates is no longer just a shortcut but a prerequisite for meeting the demands of the market. This is what makes choosing a template design tool—or choosing the right mix of AI tools for template design and template design tools—so important.
Template design tools go beyond social media ad templates or graphics and templates for industry-specific needs. They cover vast, complicated use cases that can free you from the shackles of creative fatigue while removing the so-called Sunday scaries that come with a blank canvas.
Below, we’ll run through five template design software, some of which include AI tools for template design, to give you an idea of which ones are best suited for which purpose. You can use these to find design graphics and templates suitable for each of your business projects:
1. Creatopy: Best for display and social ad templates
Creatopy is a creative automation tool that, beyond offering AI graphic design templates, helps you create, scale, and launch personalized ads quickly and in alignment with your brand identity.
As one of the best AI tools for template design, it comes with an extensive template library that includes social media banner templates for Instagram stories and Facebook banners, as well as design templates for different display and banner sizes. Despite countless design templates, they can easily be filtered by size, color, style, type, and even industry or celebration. This system makes it easy to find the most suitable social media ad templates or free graphics templates.
But what makes Creatopy truly stand out as a leading template design tool is how it bridges the fork in the road of design, combining the paths for designers, non-designers, and design capabilities into one platform to help you scale visual asset production. How? By making ad creation accessible to non-designers while simultaneously ensuring designers have precise control over the design principles and branding applied to designs.
Here’s how it works:
Designers set up their Brand Kit, starting with a ready-made ad template or creating one from scratch using Creatopy’s Ad Studio. The Ad Studio is Creatopy’s design interface for designers, equipped with advanced capabilities that allow them to make detailed, precise edits to every element within their template.
Once designers finish their templates, they can lock in particular elements, such as the template’s layout or brand colors. Non-designers, in their roles as “Editors,” can then edit these templates in Creatopy’s separate, simplified editor called the “Light Editor.” Using this editor, non-designers can only edit the design template within the limits set by designers, meaning they’re barred from making changes to the core layout, sizing, or branded components.
After editing it, non-designers can immediately request designer feedback and collaborate directly on designs using comments, attachments, and tags. And once designs are approved, these ads can be exported or launched directly to chosen social platforms or ad networks.
Dual-role editing and permission-based capabilities to help drive brand consistency while retaining flexibility for cross-functional projects.
Automatic resizing features allow you to quickly replicate an existing template or design in different dimensions and formats without manual input.
Ad serving capabilities help users manage and distribute their advertisements directly to different ad networks straight from Creatop.y
AI editing for images and text allows you to generate images, remove backgrounds, change image elements, and update ad copy to ensure it aligns with your brand style and tone of voice.
What we don’t like
Templates are mostly limited to display and social media ads, and while it offers some templates for different marketing use cases such as posters and flyers, they’re not as plentiful as other design template platforms.
User reviews
“I love being able to create multiple versions and sizes of an ad easily and quickly. This tool offers great templates and gives me tools to create great-looking ads quickly.”
2. Vistacreate (formerly Crello): Best for printed marketing materials
VistaCreate traces its roots to the Dutch online printing company VistaPrint, which acquired Crello, an online design platform, and rebranded it as VistaCreate post-acquisition.
This template design tool offers thousands of templates and adds new ones every month to keep their library fresh and timely. And while their templates span various use cases, Vistacreate focuses more on templates for printed marketing materials such as business cards, posters, flyers, brochures, and invitations.
Editing templates in VistaCreate is straightforward. Simply browse through VistaCreate’s selection of templates, choose one you like, and then edit it directly on the platform. You can customize its background, adjust its text, or add additional photos or objects to make it uniquely yours.
You can then use VistaPrint’s printing services to print these marketing materials, making VistaCreate an end-to-end solution for creating and printing digital graphics as marketing materials. Just click “Print online,” then select your printing options and place your order.
What we like
Large stock image collection packed with over 70 million royalty-free assets.
Library full of short video tutorials that guide you through creating, editing, and printing VistaCreate designs.
The ability to order printed versions of your design directly in the platform—though access to this feature is limited to certain regions.
What we don’t like
Lags and inconsistencies in advanced editing tools, such as background removal, which doesn’t interact well with certain types of images.
Weak template search functionality meaning searches don’t always yield the most relevant results.
Fewer AI tools than expected for a design tool.
User reviews
“VistaCreate has a huge range of design templates for a variety of formats: business cards, social media ads, t-shirts, even podcast covers. The best part of VistaCreate specifically, though, is that you can order products directly from the site.”
3. Canva: Best for non-designers and simple templates
Canva can be seen as the gateway template design tool—a starting point for all things design. Its Jack-of-all-trades approach to design, coupled with its freemium model, allows it to cover vast use cases while lowering the learning curve for design. It has an extensive repertoire of versatile design templates, including presentations, marketing materials, invitations, and social media ad templates.
While Canva’s simplicity is great for those looking to dip their toes in the basics of design, it may be unsuitable for those looking for more particular or professional use cases. For example, this tool’s simplicity trickles over into basic integrations. You can’t import data or PSD files from other applications, making integrating Canva into your tech stack in a cohesive way rather tricky.
What we like
A beginner-friendly drag-and-drop interface allows users with little to no design experience to edit design templates and create visually appealing graphics.
A library full of free and paid stock photos, illustrations, and icons allows users to find everything they need without sourcing things externally.
Its mobile app enables users to design on the go, giving them the flexibility to create from wherever they prefer or have access to.
What we don’t like
Data imports and integration capabilities are limited compared to other design tools.
Export options are limited to standard formats such as JPG, PNG, and PDF but don’t support those such as SVG.
Unsuitable for professional designers seeking to create complex or custom visuals from scratch, as the design tool is more oriented toward arranging existing elements and creating designs solely based on templates.
User reviews
“I like Canva because it offers vast collection of template designs, customisable brand kit and integrated stock photos library. Moreover, even a novice can easily work on it.”
4. Piktochart: Best for infographic and data visualization templates
Piktochart’s mission is to empower users to create infographics that are web-publisher-ready, engaging, and able to stand alone as pieces of multimedia content. This template design tool makes it easy to present complex information in an appealing without straining resources or taking up too much employee time—which is where Piktochart’s library of customizable infographics and free graphic templates comes in.
Piktochart’s design templates, while covering different use cases and industries, focus on those that require visual communication to get their message across—think education, non-profit organizations, and business consulting. And if numbers are needed to paint the right picture, Piktochart’s advanced map and chart builders make it easy for designers and non-designers to create and present data-driven visuals.
What makes this template design tool so easy to use is its modular approach to building or customizing design templates. Think of its modular components as templates within templates—micro-graphics, if you will—that can be easily reused across designs without needing to be redesigned from scratch. These can comprise photo grids, badgers, or stickers embedded across different design templates to speed up set-up and publishing.
What we like
Great for visualizing data, given VistaCreate’s advanced data-oriented builders.
Vast collection of modular designs you can add to your design templates.
AI design tool feature that allows you to automatically generate data-driven or explanatory graphics, such as infographics, charts, or presentations, based on your input text or data.
What we don’t like
Doesn’t integrate too well with platforms such as Microsoft Office 365 and faces challenges when handling large datasets that are meant to be fed into design templates.
Piktochart's limited set of customizations, such as font and media options, can impact creative flexibility.
User reviews
“Very easy to use and navigate. Provides clear instructions on how to make good and detailed infographics with nice templates.”
5. Figma: Best for UI/UX design templates
Figma is a tool that helps users design wireframes, user interfaces, mockups, and prototypes. While it can also be used to create graphic visual assets such as icons, logos, and graphic designs, it’s better known as an architect’s tool for UI/UX and product designers.
As a result, Figma’s design templates focus on these types of projects, with a template gallery comprising over 300 templates. Some of its templates focus on the foundations of project interfaces, such as wireframing kits and mobile UI design templates, while others focus on the project management side of things, such as strategic planning, brainstorming, and meeting templates. But users aren’t just limited to the design templates offered by Figma: Figma’s community also contributes to these templates, building an expansive resource hub of design templates that can be duplicated and used in either solo or collaborative projects.
What we like
Designers can co-design simultaneously with co-workers or follow with Observation Mode, which lets users shadow presenters’ every move.
A well-connected plug-in ecosystem with over 400 easy-to-use plugins that embed Figma into your tech stack without too much hassle.
Interactive animations and prototyping features allow you to create different interactive flows and variants for user testing to see how a user may interact with your design.
What we don’t like
Suffers from performance issues with large projects or files, which slows down the platform’s performance for complex design tasks.
The long-winded learning curve can be time-consuming—especially as Figma offers limited screen guides or AI assistance for new users.
User reviews
“I love the live collaboration and being able to leave comments on different pages. We use different boards for each of our brands. All in all – it's a great tool to pre-design a site template. We are currently using it for our new websites set to launch this month!”
Choosing the best design tool for your needs
Regardless of your design challenges or need for versatility, the market is rife with different design template tools suitable for every use case. Experimenting with template design tools like Creatopy, Figma, or Canva and assessing them individually to see whether they match your needs—can help you determine which is best for your business and whether you need multiple design tools to meet your design needs.
