Design & Creative

Canva

SaaS

Canva is an online design platform that lets people create visual content through a drag-and-drop interface. It provides templates, photos, fonts, and illustrations for projects ranging from social media posts and presentations to documents, videos, and printed materials. AI-powered tools can generate images, write copy, remove backgrounds, and automate repetitive design tasks. The platform is built for a wide audience, including everyday users, marketers, educators, and small businesses that lack formal design training. Users pick a template or start from scratch, customize elements visually, and export or publish across channels. Team features support shared brand kits, collaboration, and approval workflows. Canva has grown into one of the most widely used design tools worldwide, competing with professional software by prioritizing simplicity. It follows a freemium model, with paid plans and enterprise tiers adding premium content, brand controls, and expanded storage.

www.canva.com

Adobe Express

SaaS

Adobe Express is a web and mobile design application from Adobe that helps users create social posts, flyers, logos, short videos, and other graphics without professional editing skills. It combines templates, stock assets, and generative AI within a simplified drag-and-drop interface. The tool is aimed at small businesses, students, marketers, and creators who want fast, on-brand results. Its strengths include thousands of ready-made templates, one-click background removal, and Firefly-powered generative features for images and text effects. Brand kits and scheduling tools support consistent, ongoing content production. Adobe Express offers a capable free plan alongside premium subscriptions that add more assets, storage, and AI credits, and it connects with Adobe's wider Creative Cloud ecosystem. It evolved from Adobe Spark and now serves as Adobe's accessible entry point for everyday design.

www.adobe.com/express

Photopea

SaaS

Photopea is a free, browser-based image editor that runs entirely on the web without installation. It supports advanced editing tasks such as layers, masks, selections, and adjustment tools, and it opens and saves a wide range of formats, including PSD, XCF, Sketch, XD, and standard image files. The editor appeals to designers, photographers, and hobbyists who want capabilities similar to Photoshop without a subscription. Its familiar interface makes it easy for existing Photoshop users to adapt, while its ability to edit native project files from other applications makes it useful for opening and reviewing designs quickly. Photopea is funded through advertising, with an optional paid plan that removes ads. It is developed and maintained single-handedly by its creator, Ivan Kutskir, and has grown into a widely used tool serving millions of people worldwide.

www.photopea.com

Figma

SaaS

Figma is a browser-based design platform for creating user interfaces, prototypes, and design systems. Because files live in the cloud, multiple people can work on the same canvas at once and watch each other's cursors, making design collaborative in the same way documents became collaborative online. It is aimed at product designers, developers, researchers, and the wider teams around them. Core capabilities include vector editing, reusable components and styles, interactive prototyping, developer handoff with inspectable specifications, and FigJam, a companion whiteboard for brainstorming. A growing set of AI features helps with tasks like generating layouts and drafting content. Figma runs on a freemium model, with a free starter tier and paid plans priced per editor for professional and organization use. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, the company remained independent after a proposed Adobe acquisition was abandoned, and it later went public.

figma.com

Sketch

SaaS

Sketch is a vector-based design tool for macOS used to create user interfaces, icons, illustrations, and prototypes. It centers on artboards, reusable symbols, and shared styles, giving designers a fast, focused environment for digital product work. The application is built for UI and UX designers, particularly teams designing apps and websites. Standout features include components and libraries for maintaining consistency, responsive layout tools such as Stacks, and a browser-based workspace that lets collaborators view, inspect, and hand off designs. A plugin ecosystem extends its functionality further. Sketch uses a flexible licensing model that combines a one-time Mac license with optional subscriptions for collaboration and cloud features. Created by Bohemian Coding and first released in 2010, it helped popularize modern interface design workflows and remains a mainstay among Mac-based product teams.

www.sketch.com

Spline

SaaS

Spline is a 3D design tool that runs in the browser and lets users model, animate, and build interactive scenes without specialized rendering software. It provides an approachable editor for creating objects, applying materials, and adding animation and interactivity that can be embedded directly into websites and apps. The product is aimed at designers, developers, and creative teams who want to add 3D and spatial elements to digital experiences. Its strengths include real-time collaboration, an intuitive interface for people new to 3D, and export options for the web, along with AI-assisted features that generate 3D content from text prompts. Spline follows a freemium model, offering a free tier with paid plans that add collaboration, storage, and advanced capabilities. Founded in 2020, it has grown quickly as demand for interactive 3D on the web has increased.

spline.design

Descript

SaaS

Descript is an editing application that treats audio and video like a text document. It automatically transcribes recordings, and edits to the transcript apply directly to the underlying media, so removing a sentence deletes the matching footage. The tool also supports multitrack editing, screen recording, and AI features such as voice cloning and filler-word removal. It is aimed at podcasters, video creators, marketers, and teams who want a faster, more approachable workflow than traditional timeline editors. Users record or import media, edit the words on screen, and export finished audio or video. Collaboration features let multiple people work on the same project. Descript is positioned as an all-in-one studio that lowers the technical barrier to producing polished content. It follows a freemium model, with paid tiers adding transcription hours, advanced AI tools, and higher export quality, and has drawn backing from prominent technology investors.

www.descript.com

VEED

SaaS

VEED is a browser-based video editing platform designed to make production accessible without installing software. It offers timeline editing, automatic subtitles, background removal, and a library of templates and stock assets. AI features help generate captions, translate audio, clean up recordings, and turn text or scripts into finished clips. The platform serves marketers, social media teams, educators, and small businesses that need quick, professional-looking videos. Users upload footage or record directly in the browser, edit with drag-and-drop tools, and export in formats suited to different social channels. Collaboration and brand-kit options support teams working together. VEED positions itself as an easy alternative to complex desktop editors, competing on simplicity and speed. It began as a bootstrapped startup and grew through a freemium model, with paid subscriptions unlocking longer exports, higher resolution, and advanced AI capabilities.

www.veed.io

CapCut

SaaS

CapCut is a video editing application developed by ByteDance, available on mobile, desktop, and the web. It offers a full editing timeline alongside automated tools for trimming, transitions, effects, and audio, making short-form and social video production accessible to a broad audience. The app is designed for social media creators, marketers, and casual users who want quick, polished results. Standout features include automatic captions, background removal, text-to-speech, a large library of templates and effects, and AI-driven editing that speeds up common tasks. Projects sync across devices for flexible editing. CapCut is free to use with an optional Pro subscription that unlocks premium effects, assets, and cloud features. Launched in 2020 as the international counterpart to ByteDance's Jianying editor, it has become one of the most widely used consumer video tools worldwide.

www.capcut.com

Riverside

SaaS

Riverside is an online platform for recording high-quality podcasts and video interviews remotely. It captures each participant locally in up to 4K video and lossless audio, then uploads the separate tracks to the cloud, avoiding the quality loss common with standard video calls. The service is built for podcasters, marketers, and content teams who record with remote guests. Its strengths include local recording for reliable quality, a text-based editor that edits audio and video by editing the transcript, AI-generated clips for social media, and live streaming. Recording continues even if a connection drops. Riverside operates on a subscription model with a limited free tier and paid plans that expand recording hours and features. Founded in 2020 by brothers Nadav and Gideon Keyson, it has become a popular tool for professional remote content production.

riverside.fm