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How effective are these 6 PowerPoint slides from McKinsey, Bain, and BCG?

By Paul Moss

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Top consulting firms like mckinsey, bain, and bcg all build high-quality presentations, but not all their slides are created equal..

In this post I’m going to rate and review slides from the three major consulting firms: McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. I’ll explain what they do well, what they could have done better, and what you can do to improve your own slide making. 

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Table of Contents

Slide #1 BCG

This first slide comes from a BCG presentation called “True-Luxury Global Consumer Insight” ( source ).

What strikes me right away is just how nice and crisp the overall design is. There’s a great use of color, I really like the font that they used, and the chart itself just looks great. I also like the background because it doesn’t distract from the content, but they managed to include some stylization which fits with the theme of the deck.

The title of the slide says “54% of True-luxury consumers do not expect to resume international leisure travel before 6 months”, and I like this title because it’s descriptive, but it doesn’t try to explain all the data on the chart. Instead it focuses on the most important takeaway on the slide, which is the 54% that represents those unwilling to travel before 6 months (shown on the leftmost column).

“True-Luxury Global Consumer Insight” BCG, 2020

Then the main part of the slide of course is the chart, which shows survey results that explain when people are likely to begin traveling again after the pandemic, broken down by country. The chart itself is fine, but what I really like are the extra details below the chart that help explain and interpret the data.

These circles show the average timeframe for each of the countries, then the takeaway boxes summarize the findings from the chart: that Europeans and Russians are expected to resume international travel sooner than non-Europeans in places like China, Brazil, US, South Korea and Japan.

By including this information they make it easier for me to understand and sort through the data, without having to guess what the key takeaways are. Charts can be tricky for the audience when you leave them open for interpretation, so spelling it out like this is always a good idea. 

So overall the slide is pretty good, but I do have a couple small gripes. The first is their choice to use a column chart instead of a bar chart. Typically but not always column charts are used for comparisons over time, but in this chart they just show a comparison between countries.

At first glance it’s confusing because the chart seems to be showing a trend over time. That’s because our brains naturally process visuals like this from left to right. If they would have used a bar chart instead, and then moved some of this information at the bottom to the right of the chart, I think the slide would have been more intuitive. 

Another thing I think could have been improved is their choice of color. Specifically how they’ve ordered the colors. When you see what seems to be different shades of the same color, it’s natural to assign meaning to those different shades . Like maybe the darker the color the higher the number, or something like that.

In this case this lighter green shade represents 6 months or sooner, then the darker shade is 6 months to a year, but then it goes to a light shade of grey for more than a year, and then a darker shade of grey for not traveling ever again. The colors look nice, but logically it seems to be a bit random.

I think a better choice would have been to either color it from light to dark, or to color it different shades of grey, then make the category you want to emphasize green. For example they could have made the 6 months or sooner category green, then changed the title a bit to say something like, fewer than 50% of consumers expect to travel within the next 6 months. 

Then finally, I wish there would have been a stronger visual emphasis on the 54% number, given how important it is to the slide’s main takeaway. You sort of have to look for it on the slide amidst a sea of numbers of visuals. Even just bolding it would have helped it pop just a little more. 

Overall it’s a great slide, but it could be made better with some minor tweaks.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Slide #2 Bain

Next up is a slide from Bain . The title says “The buyout market outdid itself in 2021, roaring to new records in deal value and exits, while keeping the gas on fund-raising”, which essentially is just claiming the buyout market is really strong.

“The Private Equity Market in 2021: The Allure of Growth” Bain & Company, 2022

And if you look at the charts you can see each of the three categories: investments, exits, and fund-raising . They’re all combination charts, meaning they show two different charts on top of each other (typically a column chart and a line chart, which is what they have here). The challenge with these kinds of charts is that sometimes they can be confusing, especially if there’s a lot of data to sort through, but these are simple, clean, and easy to read. 

One thing that Bain consistently does really well is to use standout colors to highlight their main point , while keeping the less important elements of the chart in neutral colors like gray or black. The red column shows what they want us to see, which in the case of this first chart is the total buyout deal value. Then the deal count is shown for context. 

Another great thing they’ve done here is to separate the data into three different charts. Sometimes there’s a temptation to put all the data you have into a single chart, but that can make things even more confusing. What they could have done instead is put all of the data into a single clustered column chart, which still would have shown the message they wanted to show, but it would have been much harder to see the insights. Instead they’ve given each topic it’s own chart, and it makes it really easy to see what they’re trying to tell me, which is that investments, exits, and fund-raising are all going strong. 

They’ve also done a good job of including footnotes and sources down at the bottom that explain what’s included in each category. It’s easy to overlook this, or to just put the sources, but they’ve done a good job of being thorough which is important when you’ve got a data heavy slide.

The only thing I can think of that would have made this chart just a little bit better would be to include small icons next to each of the subtitles . There’s a lot of text in that part of the slide that sort of blends together when you’re just skimming through the slide. So just a nice small black icon that matches each topic could have helped separate that text just a little, and make it a little easier to read quickly. 

Overall this is a fantastic slide and Bain’s done a really good job.

Rating: 9 out of 10. 

Slide #3 BCG

Next up is a slide from BCG . The title says “ In face of nationwide transitional media slowdown, NYC has been growing and gaining substantial national share ”. And right off the bat I can already tell that they’ve structured this slide really well. The title gives the overall takeaway of the slide, but then they’ve split that takeaway into two parts.

“Evaluating NYC media sector development and setting the stage for future growth” BCG, 2011

But not only that, the color, size, and bolding of the title means it’s going to get the most attention, with the underlined subtitles getting the second most attention. This is great because this is exactly how you want the audience to process the slide, from the highest level idea down to the lowest. 

Then the table shows the percentage of jobs in each of the categories that were in New York versus the broader US, and they did it for 2002 and for 2011 so you can see the change. What’s good about this table is how well designed it is. Sometimes I see the default PowerPoint design used for tables and it just looks so tacky. Here they’ve added some color, lines, and bolding to help put emphasis on the important parts, which really helps me as a reader. 

Another good thing they did here was to actually use a table instead of a chart. Charts are extremely common and are useful in the right settings, but tables definitely have their place too. In this case they’re trying to show different types of data – the percentage of jobs that come from New York, the growth in New York jobs, and then the salary figures at the bottom. Showing all that in a chart would have been pretty difficult.

But despite this being a pretty good table, they’ve made a critical mistake that I think really hurts the slide, and that is that there’s no real connection with the subtitle . There doesn’t seem to be any mention in the table of either of the 40k numbers from the subtitle. In fact, the only absolute numbers in the whole table are the salary numbers down at the bottom. I still think the topic of the table matches, but the numbers are a bit confusing to me and hurt the logical consistency of the slide. 

Another complaint I have with the slide is the amount of bolding . They were off to a good start with the visual hierarchy of the title and the subtitles, but then the section on the right is just completely bolded. That makes it a lot harder for me to read and process all the information because it all just sort of blends together without any real attention getting put on the key takeaways. 

So overall the slide starts off really great, and certainly has some nice initial structure and a good chart, but their lack of attention to detail really hurts the slide.

Rating: 6 out of 10. 

Slide #4 McKinsey

The next slide is from a McKinsey presentation titled “Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation”. The title says “By 2030, automation has the potential to replace up to 47 percent of work hours in the US in the earliest adoption scenario ”, which is a pretty good title. It’s descriptive and detailed, and seems to summarize the main takeaway from the slide.

“Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation” McKinsey & Company, 2017

Looking at the slide it’s primarily made up of just one chart , which is a stacked column chart that shows automation’s projected impact on different jobs by country, and broken down by different industries. And this format is actually really common in consulting decks – a main takeaway in the title supported by a single quantitative chart or sometimes multiple charts. So the overall structure of this chart is good, but unfortunately there’s a lot of other stuff here that just isn’t very good. 

For one, there’s just way too much color on this slide, which makes it really hard for me to quickly make any conclusions about the data. I can understand the temptation to use all these colors, because they’re trying to show data from a broad range of industries, but the problem is the breakdown doesn’t really add to the message in any meaningful way.

The message of the slide is about how automation has the potential to replace 47 percent of work hours in the US, which is really just talking about the total of the US column . So everything else on the slide is just there for context. And visually speaking, the breakdown of industries is very distracting, which hurts the readability of the slide and makes it harder for the audience to understand the main message. In other words, it doesn’t provide a lot of useful information but it comes at a high cost. 

They’ve also included all the other countries even though the message is just about the US, but this is a lot more appropriate because it provides context for the data. Using just one number by itself doesn’t provide a whole lot of meaning, but putting that number in the context of numbers in the same category (i.e. showing data from all these other countries not just the US), makes the data more meaningful. 

And then just like with the BCG slide from earlier, I think a bar chart might have made a little more sense here. What this looks like is a trend increasing over time, but it’s not . These are categorical, so there’s no natural order to them. I can see why they chose a column chart, because a bar chart would probably have led to some white space on either side of the chart, but white space on a slide isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so in this case I think they should have done it. 

So overall, I don’t think it’s that great of a slide. The biggest mistake is their decision to make this a stacked column chart and include all these different colors, which in my mind makes this slide a lot worse.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Slide #5 McKinsey

This one is a bit older but it’s an absolute classic. It’s from a presentation McKinsey did back in 2010 for the US Postal Service, who was facing some real tough losses at the time.   This slide in particular talks about how their decline in mail volume is even worse than what they had predicted five years earlier.

“USPS Future Business Model” McKinsey & Company, 2010

Overall the design of the slide is a bit plain, and this was actually very common for McKinsey at the time. They’ve since done a nice rebrand, but for a long time McKinsey slides were really nothing special from a design perspective. 

The structure of the slide is pretty good with a nice bold title that captures the main takeaway of the slide , but one thing I think they could have done better is to make the subtitles a little smaller and less eye-catching. When you’re building a slide you want to have “font hierarchy”, where the most important and broadest ideas command the most attention, then the next level down (in this case the two subtitles) attracts the second most attention. But here it looks like the subtitles and the main title are both the same size.

What I do really like about this slide though is the excellent line chart. First of all, they chose a line chart instead of a column chart which to me makes a lot of sense because it allows them to make these forecast comparisons much more easily. And they’ve made them look really nice and easy to understand. Where possible it’s a good idea to put your labels right next to the lines instead of in a legend, because with a legend you have to constantly look back and forth and it can get really confusing for the audience. 

I also like the bold labeling they used to show that these were forecasts from 2005 . The bolding sticks out without being obnoxious, and really helps drive home the point of the chart. 

The text in the right side isn’t too bad. I like that they’ve used bullet points to make it a little easier to read , and even sub bullet points to help separate the different layers of the text. Bolding might have made the text a little easier to parse through, but it’s a minimal amount of text so I think it could go either way. 

Overall it’s a really good slide. It could have been better with a more modern design and smaller subtitles, but the chart really brings it home.

Rating : 8 out of 10. 

Slide #6 Bain

Just like some of the other consulting slides on this list, this Bain slide is just a title with a chart that emphasizes the message in that title. The title says “ To date, most US hyperscaler M&A spending has benefited consumers or enriched market dynamics ”. Then looking at the chart you can see that each bubble represents an acquisition, and those acquisitions are plotted along two axes.

“Regulate with Care: The Case for Big Tech M&A” Bain, 2021

The X axis shows the acquisitions effect on end consumers, ranging from less value to more value, then the Y axis shows the market dynamics after the acquisition, ranging from less competition and investment to more competition and investment. Overall the title seems to match with the message being shown in the chart. Most of the bubbles tend to be on the right side of the chart, and many of them are on the top right.

But unfortunately, that’s about where the good things on this slide end.  

The main issue with the chart is that there’s just too much going on . The temptation with bubble charts like this is to introduce too many variables, but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. The only really important part of this chart is to show that most of the acquisitions fall within the bottom and top right quadrants , whereas everything else is just noise.

In addition to the placement of the bubbles, they’ve also shown the size of the acquisition (bubble size), the company that made the acquisition (colors), whether or not the the acquisition was recent (red lines), and whether or not the acquisition has been divested or shut down (dotted lines). 

I’ll admit that including one or two of these variables could provide important context, but to include all of them just makes the chart more confusing. If it were me I would have done away with the lines around the bubbles because they’re too hard to see anyway and really don’t add much value , and I would have probably also done away with the size of the bubble as well and maybe even the coloring to represent each company.

Now I know that might be controversial, but remember the main message of the slide, which is to show that M&A spending has benefited consumers or enriched market dynamics, which is reflected in the chart by where these bubbles are placed. The size of the bubbles, although relevant, is not the main focus and just clutters the chart without providing enough benefit. 

If I did use colors though, I would have definitely chosen different colors than what they have here . What they’ve done is to use what’s called a diverging palette, where the colors are at two ends of the same spectrum. So it looks like Microsoft is on one end of the spectrum, and Amazon is on the other end of the spectrum. But in reality, these colors have absolutely no meaning whatsoever. 

Anytime you use color on your chart you want to do it with intention, because the audience is going to naturally assign meaning to those colors. A better choice here would have been to use colors that match the branding of the companies, or just colors that were clearly distinct and not along any sort of spectrum . Instead, their choice to make their chart pretty hurts it’s readability. 

Overall, it’s a slide that looks nice, but has a complicated visual that really makes things hard on the audience.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Final Thoughts

Top consulting firms (and really all consulting firms) go to great lengths to make their slides clear, persuasive, and engaging. They do this by guiding the audience through the slide with insightful charts, well-structured content, and a professional looking design. Sometimes these firms are effective at their goal, and sometimes it seems that too much effort takes away from the overall quality of the slide.

If you’re looking to build your own high-quality, consulting-style slides, be sure to check out our advanced courses for individual learners and for teams .

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Canva vs PowerPoint (2024) — Which is Better?

This content has been independently produced in adherence to a strict honesty policy, but note that it contains affiliate links . When you buy via these, we may receive a commission.

Written by Chris Singleton | Researched and reviewed by Matt Walsh

In this Canva vs Powerpoint shootout, we compare an established presentation app (PowerPoint) with a cloud-based app that promises to make graphic design in general easy for everyone (Canva). Which solution comes out on top? And which one is best for your business?

Well read on, because we’re going to do a deep dive into both tools, and help you answer these important questions.

But first…

What’s the main difference between Canva and Microsoft Powerpoint?

Although Canva and PowerPoint can both be used to create attractive presentations, the two tools are quite different in nature.

While PowerPoint is a tool that has been specifically designed to let users create presentations , Canva is a multi-purpose tool that lets you design a huge range of visual assets — social media graphics, simple videos, presentations, slides, posters and even websites.

Another key difference to note between the two tools is that Canva only works if you are online .

This is because all your designs are saved in the cloud, as are all the templates, images and other visual elements the platform uses. Although a desktop app and a mobile app are available for Canva, these only work if an Internet connection is present, and in truth the best way to use Canva is probably via a web browser.

By contrast, PowerPoint can be used offline, via the desktop and mobile versions of the app.

Now, given that this is a Canva vs PowerPoint comparison, I’m going to largely focus on how good both tools are for creating presentations.

So, let’s move on and do that, starting with a look at the templates available for both Canva and PowerPoint.

Templates are the starting points for presentations — you pick one, tweak some colors, add your content and then present the results.

So what’s the template offering from Canva and PowerPoint like?

Well, in terms of quantity , it’s a clear win for Canva . Out of the box, Microsoft PowerPoint gives you just 70 or so templates to design with; and although you can download an additional 300+ free and premium templates from the Microsoft site, this total pales by comparison to Canva’s offering of 26,000+ ready-made presentation templates.

The quality of templates in Canva is better too; the templates are more varied in nature and are often bundled with more individual slide types.

In terms of aesthetics, I feel that Canva’s templates definitely have the edge. Many of the PowerPoint templates look quite dated (having in my view quite a 1990s look to them), employ very corporate fonts and scream ‘Microsoft’ at you.

By contrast, the Canva templates look really contemporary, make use of a wide range of interesting typefaces and are simply more ‘fun.’

Templates are just the starting point for a design of course — they can be brought to life and made much more appealing when customized.

So how easy is it to customize designs in Canva and PowerPoint?

Customizing presentations

Once you’ve picked a template in either PowerPoint or Canva, the next step is to customize it and make it your own.

Canva and PowerPoint let you do this by adding a variety of elements to a template and then positioning and resizing them. Let’s look at both processes — and how they differ — in turn.

Adding elements to a template

In Canva, you add elements to a template using a vertical menu on the left hand side of the screen (see screenshot below).

As you can see, this lets you add the following to your template:

• graphic elements (icons, photos, images, clip art, graphs)
• content you’ve uploaded to Canva
• backgrounds

If you’re on a ‘Canva Pro’ plan, this menu also lets you apply brand styles (more on using your own branding in Canva and PowerPoint shortly).

The best thing about the process of adding elements to a presentation in Canva is the simplicity: you simply pick the item you’d like to add and drag it onto your design. This makes for a really quick and smooth workflow.

Adding elements in PowerPoint involves a clunkier process. First, you need to click the ‘Insert’ option in the main menu.

You’ll then see a ‘ribbon’ menu that gives you the option to add items into your template (some of these are shown in the screenshot below).

Unlike in Canva though, there’s no drag-and-drop facility — you’ll need to click on the item type, browse the available elements, and then click an ‘insert’ button to add it to your presentation. And doing so will place it in the middle of your presentation, rather than the position you might have envisaged for it (not the end of the world, however as you can reposition it easily — more on doing this in a moment).

The assets you can add in PowerPoint are similar to those available in Canva, but there are two extra elements available from PowerPoint that are worth dwelling on for a moment.

3D models, as their name suggests, are 3D images that you can rotate to meet your requirements. Quite a lot of them are available, and they can help bring a presentation to life, or illustrate a point (see screenshot below for an example of a PowerPoint 3D model being manipulated).

Although there are a variety of 3D graphics available in Canva, you can’t rotate and customize them to meet your needs the same way as you can in PowerPoint.

(It’s also harder to find them, because there’s no dedicated option for displaying them — you’ll just have browse Canva’s image library and try to spot them).

As for equations, PowerPoint gives you the option to insert and edit them easily into presentations, thanks to its aptly named ‘Equation’ feature.

While at first glance this might strike you as a bit of a ‘niche’ feature, it’s actually quite an important one — there are a lot of math and science teachers out there who will find it extremely useful.

Positioning and resizing elements

Once you’ve added an element to a Canva or PowerPoint presentation, you’ll usually need to move or resize it.

The process of moving elements around a presentation in Canva and PowerPoint is very similar — a drag-and-drop process, where you simply click on the the item and move it where you want it to go, applies in both tools (see screenshot below).

Similarly, both tools let you specify which element should go in front or behind others via ‘bring forward’ and ‘send to back’ tools.

Resizing things involves a fairly similar process in both tools too — you click on an element, a container box appears around it, and you extend or reduce the edges of that container to resize the item (see screenshot below for a demonstration of this).

However, when it comes to resizing text, Canva takes a different approach to PowerPoint. Resizing text in Canva works exactly the same way as resizing an image — you extend or shrink the text’s container box to adjust its size, as demonstrated below.

But with PowerPoint, this automatic resizing of text doesn’t always happen; it depends on how much text you’ve got in a container.

If you’ve got a large block of text (i.e., several bullet points or paragraphs), PowerPoint will resize it as you adjust the container edges.

But for small blocks — single words, short sentences etc. — you’ll nearly always have to use a font dropdown menu to manually specify the font size (much as you’d do when formatting text in Microsoft Word). This makes for a more inconsistent and clunkier workflow.

It’s worth pointing out that Canva gives you fine grain control over font size too, if you want it — you can adjust font size manually in a similar way via a dropdown menu. This gives you the best of both worlds when it comes to formatting text.

Overall, the processes involved in adding, positioning and resizing elements in Canva and PowerPoint are fairly similar, but I find Canva’s approach a bit slicker and one that leads to a more efficient workflow.

Background removal

Both PowerPoint and Canva give you easy-to-use background removal tools: you just hit a suitably named ‘remove background’ (PowerPoint) or ‘Background remover’ (Canva) button to extract the image of a person from a busy background.

This is useful for creating headshots for your presentation, as the example below demonstrates, or placing different background colors behind a photograph of a person.

However, in my tests I found that the Canva background tool was the better one, especially when dealing with images where it was hard to distinguish the background from the person in the photograph. While Canva consistently managed to remove backgrounds from photographs in a way that left the person in the image ‘intact,’ PowerPoint consistently struggled to do this.

Here’s an example of the same image being used to test both tools’ background removal tools. In the case of Canva, I encountered no problems at all when separating the person from the background.

But look at what happened when I use the same image to test the background removal feature in Powerpoint:

As you can see, the subject’s hat and feet were removed by PowerPoint!

Now, PowerPoint does give you some tools to improve the results — you can use a ‘mark area’ tool to highlight bits of the image that you don’t want removed. But this is a bit fiddly to use; and ultimately, while Canva’s background removal tool just works out of the box, you’ll usually end up doing more manual tidying up with the PowerPoint one.

Ensuring brand consistency in Canva and PowerPoint

A key part of designing presentations for use in a corporate context involves branding — you usually need to stick to strict brand guidelines.

You can do this easily enough in Canva and PowerPoint, but the process differs for both products.

In Canva, you work with ‘brand kits’ that let you specify your brand colors, define your brand font, upload a brand logo and add other brand assets such as photos, graphics and icons. These can then be applied to anything you design using the platform.

In PowerPoint, you don’t get a similar brand kit tool — it’s a case of creating a template that adheres to your brand guidelines and re-using it.

You can also take the latter approach in Canva if you like, creating a branded template that serves as the starting point for your design.

So overall on the branding front, it’s a win for Canva , simply because it gives you two ways to create on-brand presentations, while PowerPoint only offers you one.

Royalty free images, videos and audio

Earlier I looked at how you can add elements to PowerPoint or Canva — but didn’t discuss what you can add.

On this front, both tools give you access to libraries of royalty free images and video; Canva goes one better and gives you free audio clips as well.

In terms of the quantity of multimedia files available, Canva is more generous: while Microsoft states that ‘thousands’ of royalty free images and videos are available for PowerPoint (so long as you are a Microsoft 365 subscriber), Canva gives you millions .

You might not think that this disparity would necessarily have a huge impact on presentation design or content — surely access to thousands of images is enough? — but it does, as a little test I ran showed quite quickly.

As part of our work in ecommerce, we create a lot of content about ecommerce companies such as eBay ; occasionally we need to create presentations about these platforms too.

Now, if I enter the phrase ‘eBay’ into PowerPoint’s image search, here’s what I get:

But look at the results offered by Canva for the same query:

So in this example, Canva gives me immediate access to the images I might need for my eBay presentation, while PowerPoint forces me to look elsewhere.

To be fair, it’s easy to grab images from royalty-free media sites (for example Unsplash or Pexels) or a Google image search. But this involves using other tools or add-ons, saving files locally, and then inserting them manually into your presentation — all of which can end up being a time-consuming process.

PowerPoint does try to make things a bit easier on this front, by giving you a facility to search for images online. However, you won’t necessarily have the rights to use the images you identify with it.

By contrast — and this is a key selling point of Canva in general — you are licensed to use all the images it gives you access to.

It’s a similar situation with videos in Canva and PowerPoint: although some stock videos are provided by PowerPoint, the range on offer is nowhere near as wide as Canva’s.

So, all in all, when it comes to providing access to royalty free videos, images and audio, it’s a clear win for Canva .

Apps and integrations

So far in this comparison we’ve looked at what PowerPoint and Canva can do ‘out of the box.’ But what about integrating them with other tools, or adding functionality?

Well, both Canva and PowerPoint give you access to a library of apps that let you do this.

Canva gives you around 250 apps and integrations to play with in its ‘app directory’; this can be accessed on the left-hand side of the Canva dashboard via an ‘Apps’ link.

The apps on offer include integrations with well-known social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc.) and marketing tools (like Mailchimp, LinkedIn and Hubspot); you’ll also find apps in the directory that add bits of functionality to Canva — for example image enhancement tools; frame tools; mockup tools and more.

As for PowerPoint, a wider range of add-ons is available — around 320 of them. A ‘get add-ins’ button in the PowerPoint ribbon menu lets you browse these.

However, while the Canva apps are quite broad in terms of their features and purposes, the ‘add-ins’ available for PowerPoint are essentially to do with presentation-related functionality.

(This is fair enough really, given that PowerPoint is a tool that has been designed for creating presentations and Canva is a multi-purpose graphic design app.)

You’ll find lots of PowerPoint add-ins to help you embed content from other services into your presentation; there’s also quite a few apps for sourcing stock images and icons for them. But you won’t find any official integrations between PowerPoint and social media apps, and there’s no add-ons for integrating PowerPoint with popular marketing tools either.

Accessing free trials of Canva and PowerPoint

If you’re interested in trying out all the features of Canva and PowerPoint, free trials are available for both. For a limited time only, you can avail of a 30-day free trial of Canva by clicking here .

As for PowerPoint, you can use it for free for 30 days as part of the Microsoft 365 free trial .

Creating charts

Both Canva and PowerPoint give you access to tools that let you create graphs and charts and add them to your presentations.

PowerPoint is the more generous tool in terms of the range of chart types that you can add to your presentations, letting you choose from around 60 chart designs — each of which come in a number of variants — to Canva’s 18.

The process for creating these graphs is much easier in Canva, however — while PowerPoint forces you to link an Excel spreadsheet to your graph, Canva just lets you enter the relevant data for the graph directly within the tool. This makes for a much easier workflow.

(And if you do want to use Excel as a source of data, this is possible too, via CSV file upload; you can also use Google Sheets as a source of data for your graphs).

But overall, PowerPoint is the more powerful tool when it comes to charts — while the customization options in Canva are fairly limited, you can edit just about any aspect of a chart created in PowerPoint.

There is one catch with the PowerPoint chart creation functionality however: it can only be used in the desktop version of PowerPoint — the online version doesn’t let you create charts.

Working with video

Both Canva and PowerPoint let you add video content to your presentations easily.

However — and in keeping with the fact that Canva is a ‘multi-purpose’ tool and PowerPoint is a ‘presentation-only’ one, the options for manipulating your video content in Canva are much more extensive.

This is because Canva includes a video editor in its feature set. While it’s not going to compete with the likes of Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro any time soon, it’s nonetheless very usable and very handy for creating simple videos that you can drop into your presentations. You can split, trim and create transitions between clips with ease; you can also remove backgrounds from them really easily too.

With PowerPoint, you can trim video content — so theoretically you can do some basic editing, by trimming a clip into different versions and inserting those into different slides.

But realistically, if you want to edit video for use in a PowerPoint presentation, you’re probably better off using a separate tool. So a win for Canva here .

Presenting tools

Creating a presentation is one thing; giving it is another! So how do Canva and PowerPoint shape up when it comes to the ‘presenting’ part of the equation?

Well, it’s fair to say that PowerPoint wins here, by giving you a host of tools for presenting your content exactly the way you want to.

Not only does PowerPoint give you lots of ways to present your slides, it gives you different ways to rehearse your presentation too. These even include an option to rehearse with a virtual ‘coach’ that assesses your performance — after you’ve given your presentation, your coach will give you a report containing information about your pace, length of presentation and suggestions on how to improve your performance.

The presentation options in Canva, by contrast, are pretty basic: you get just three ways to present — via a ‘standard’ presentation, a ‘present with notes’ option and an option to record your presentation.

On the subject of recording presentations, this works in a similar way in both tools: you can record your presentation with audio and video (i.e., your webcam). When finished, this can be exported as a video file.

Exporting and sharing your presentation

Once you’ve finished creating your presentation, you’ll want to share it with others. So what exporting and sharing options do Canva and PowerPoint offer?

Exporting presentations to different file types

When it comes to outputting presentations into different file formats, both tools let you export your content into a wide range of file types, although the options available differ.

Canva lets you export your presentation (either the whole thing, or individual slides) into the following file types:

• SVG (vector graphics file)
• PPTX (PowerPoint)

To export your Canva presentation into most of these formats, you simply click the share button above it, followed by the ‘download’ option.

Exporting to PPTX in Canva involves a slightly odd process however — this format isn’t included in the platform’s default export options. To save a file in PPTX format you have to install a dedicated app for doing so, then click the ‘Share’ button followed by ‘More…’ to access the PowerPoint export option. This is a bit convoluted.

As for PowerPoint, some of the formats it lets you export to includes:

If you’re unfamiliar with these file types the basic point I’d make is this: if you need your presentation in super high quality photographic or video format, then PowerPoint takes the win (thanks to the option to let you export your files in TIFF and MOV format).

However, if you want to export your presentation as vector graphic files (SVG), then Canva has the edge.

Sharing your presentations

When it comes to sharing your presentations with others, an easy sharing option is just to download your presentation as files which you then send to colleagues or clients.

However, both Canva and PowerPoint let you share your presentations in more sophisticated ways.

Canva is particularly flexible here, giving you a multitude of ways to share your presentation. For example, you can share it as a URL; embed it on a website; or create a QR code to share it to mobile phones.

There’s also the option of sharing presentations with colleagues for collaboration purposes. You’ll need to be on a Canva for Teams plan to do this; this allows you to create and share folders and files that can be accessed by multiple users.

(More on Canva plans and pricing shortly).

As for PowerPoint, the sharing options aren’t quite as extensive — you can share a link to a presentation, or enable multi-user access on the file. These options are probably fine for most applications, however.

(It’s important to note that if you are an existing Microsoft 365 user, PowerPoint slots much more neatly into that environment. You can pull in data from other 365 document types; make use of Microsoft 365 team collaboration features; and share your presentations on OneDrive easily.)

What about importing PowerPoint files in to Canva?

Canva recently released an import feature that lets you import PowerPoint files into Canva. However, depending on the fonts and layouts used in the original presentation, imported presentations may not always be faithful to the PowerPoint original.

Plans, pricing and value for money

It’s a bit tricky to compare the fees for Canva and PowerPoint, as two different pricing models are involved. But let’s do our best!

Let’s start with Canva .

Canva pricing

There are three versions of Canva available:

• Canva for Teams

As its name suggests, Canva Free is an entirely free plan. It doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles of the paid-for version of Canva — key omissions include the option to create a brand kit, use the background removal tool and access to premium content (i.e., the full library of stock photos, audio and images).

Despite this, it is still a highly functional tool that lets you create attractive designs and presentations easily.

Moving onto the premium plans, Canva Pro costs $14.99 per month and gives you access to the full range of Canva features and image/video libraries. However it can only be used by one user.

Canva for Teams starts at $29.99 per month. For this, 5 users get access to all the Canva features and libraries, plus a range of collaboration features (including the ability to set user permissions and lock custom templates). If you need to add more users to your account, the monthly price will increase — you can calculate the pricing for your team on the Canva website.

(Please note that in some regions, pricing for ‘Canva for Teams’ is based on a flat fee for each team member — this fee can range from $11.99 to $14.99 per team user per month, depending on your location).

Note : for a limited time only, Canva has made a 30-day free trial available. This gives you access to the full suite of premium Canva features and assets for several weeks. You can access this here .

As for PowerPoint pricing, as mentioned above, the app comes as part of a wider package of Microsoft tools. There are a multitude of pricing options available, which range from $6.99 per user per month to $54.75 per user per month, depending on whether you need a basic business package or an enterprise one. A 30-day trial of Microsoft 365 is also available.

(For full details of the main pricing options for Microsoft 365, please read our Microsoft 365 versus Google Workspace comparison ).

In all cases, the key thing to remember about buying PowerPoint is this: you won’t just get PowerPoint, you’ll have access to a host of other Microsoft apps too — like Word, Excel and Outlook.

In a sense however, this is also the case with Canva: when you subscribe to it, you’re not just getting a presentation-making tool but a video editor, image editor, stock photography library, social media scheduler, basic website builder and more besides.

So in truth, both tools give you a lot of bang for your buck — and it will boil down to how much you value getting your hands on a range of Microsoft products as part of a subscription, or the simple ‘all-in-one’ approach taken by Canva.

Canva vs PowerPoint conclusion

So which is better for your project, Canva or PowerPoint?

For me, there are three main arguments for using Canva over PowerPoint. Most importantly, ease of use — Canva is an absolute breeze to use, and considerably better than PowerPoint in the user-friendliness stakes. Second, Canva’s library of stock images and videos is huge — for the price of a single iStock or Getty picture, you get access to millions of multimedia items per month with Canva. Although PowerPoint does give you access to some stock photography and videos, the choice available on both fronts is much more limited. And finally, there’s the fact that unlike PowerPoint, Canva does so much more than presentations — it’s a video editor, poster designer, website builder and much more besides.

PowerPoint is a better choice for some users, however — particularly those who have invested heavily in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, or need to work with other businesses who routinely use Microsoft products. And buying PowerPoint means you end up getting a host of other useful industry-standard apps, like Word, Excel, Outlook and Publisher.

Below you’ll find a summary of the relative pros and cons of Canva and PowerPoint.

Reasons to use Canva instead of PowerPoint

• It’s a much easier-to-use product.
• It gives you access to a much bigger range of images, graphics and videos than PowerPoint.
• The bundled range of templates is much larger than PowerPoint’s.
• Its background removal tool is significantly better than PowerPoint’s.
• Working with video is significantly easier in Canva.
• Canva is not just a presentation-creating tool: it’s is a photo editor, an image enhancer, a screen recorder, a website builder and much else besides.
• There are more ways to share Canva creations than PowerPoint ones, particularly where social media is concerned.

Reasons to use PowerPoint instead of Canva

• When you buy PowerPoint, you’re actually subscribing to Microsoft 365 — and getting access to a host of really useful Microsoft products in the process.
• PowerPoint integrates much better with other Microsoft apps and services than Canva does.
• A significantly wider range of add-ons is available for PowerPoint.
• There are dedicated tools for working with 3D models and equations in PowerPoint — this is not the case with Canva.
• PowerPoint lets you output your presentations to a wider range of formats than Canva, including higher-res image and video formats.
• You can create more sophisticated graph types with PowerPoint.
• PowerPoint gives you more ways to rehearse your presentation.

Key alternatives to Canva and PowerPoint

Canva and PowerPoint are by no means the only tools for creating presentations.

When it comes to ‘all-in-one’ design apps like Canva, Visme, VistaCreate (formerly Crello) and Adobe Express are probably the main competitors. You can learn more about these products in our Canva vs Visme comparison , our VistaCreate (Crello) vs Canva comparison and our Adobe Express vs Canva shootout .

As for direct alternatives to PowerPoint, Google and Apple provide the main competition, in the form Google Slides (part of the Google Workspace suite) and Keynote (an iWorks product) respectively. We have yet to review Keynote or iWorks, but we do have a Microsoft 365 vs Workspace comparison available.

In certain contexts, Adobe Photoshop can be used as an alternative to Canva, but it’s not really a direct competitor to PowerPoint. Check out our Canva vs Photoshop comparison for more details on the key differences between this app and Canva.

Now…over to you!

Got any thoughts on PowerPoint vs Canva? Or any questions you’d like to ask? Do leave them in the comments section below — we read all comments and do our best to answer all visitor queries.

Canva vs PowerPoint — FAQ

Can i use canva and powerpoint for free.

In the case of Canva, a free version is available, or alternatively, you can make use of a 30-day trial of Canva Pro . PowerPoint can be tried for free for 30 days as part of a Microsoft 365 trial .

Is Canva better than PowerPoint?

It’s better in some ways — it’s easier to use, gives you more stock photography to play with, and gives you built-in video editing tools that are not present in PowerPoint. However, PowerPoint beats Canva when it comes to integrating with Microsoft 365 apps, giving you ‘niche’ tools for working with 3D models and equations, and being more flexible when it comes to creating graphs.

Can you create professional presentations in Canva?

Yes — you can create extremely professional presentations in Canva that make sophisticated use of audio, images and video; you can also export them to a wide range of formats.

Can I import PowerPoint presentations into Canva?

Yes. Canva recently released an import feature that lets you import PowerPoint files into Canva. However, depending on the fonts and presentation layouts involved, imported files may not always be faithful to the PowerPoint original.

About the author

Chris Singleton

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Chris Singleton is the Editor of Style Factory.

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, he is now London-based.

Since graduating from Trinity College Dublin in 1999, Chris has advised many businesses on how to grow their operations via a strong online presence, and now he shares his experience and expertise through his articles on the Style Factory website.

Chris started his career as a data analyst for Irish marketing company Precision Marketing Information; since then he has worked on digital projects for a wide range of well-known organizations including Cancer Research UK, Hackney Council, Data Ireland and Prescription PR. He founded Style Factory in 2009 as a way to share his expertise with a wider audience.

He is also the author of a book on SEO for beginners, “Super Simple SEO.”

You can connect personally with Chris via Twitter (X) or LinkedIn .

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When I download my canva video presentation that i made it turns a little bit pixeled. Do you know why that happens?

The main culprit might be if your video involves footage that has been blown up too much — but it could theoretically be a Canva bug too. If you suspect the latter is at the root of the problem, I’d suggest trying a re-export, and having a word with the Canva support team if the issue persists.

You cannot print in Canva from the web — Canva files have to be always downloaded in some format, then printed. This is a bad process. There is no offline access either.

Canva is great, yes.

However, I find MS PowerPoint to be much more effective than Canva in producing graphical artwork from the bottom up for the following reasons:

(1) MS PowerPoint gradients are simply better. (2) Canva lacks indispensable vector-type tools like ‘Freeform’, ‘Curve’ and ‘Scribble’ that are present in MS PowerPoint and other Microsoft programs. (3) MS PowerPoint ‘Autoshapes’ and ‘Merge Shapes’ feature sets are lacking in Canva and are also quite indispensable for more complex graphical artwork/design from ‘scratch.’

Very thoughtful and helpful review. I am an advanced PPT user, and I started looking into Canva based on some recommendations. My first question was, hey, how does this compare to Powerpoint. Your review was excellent. Thank you!

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