Free Graphic Web Design Software
The best free graphic design software can help you make a professional-looking website, logo, banner, or social media post. You don’t need to be an expert to use these tools; they’re designed for beginners who want to create eye-catching images without spending a lot of money.
We’ve rounded up our favorite free graphic web design programs below. They’re all easy to use and provide great results. If you’re looking for something specific, like an easy way to create an animated GIF or make a collage from your photos, check out our list of the best free photo editing software available today.
Graphic Design Software: What Is It?
Graphic design software is used by people who want to create images for print or digital media such as websites and social media posts. These programs are often used by freelancers and small businesses because they allow people with little experience in design to create high-quality images quickly and easily (and sometimes even automate some parts of the process).
Free Graphic Web Design Software
When it comes to website success, what you see is what you get. While compelling text, blog, and social media content can help set your brand apart from the competition, the visual appeal of your site is the first thing users see when they follow backlinks or click through search engine results.
Recent research found that it takes just 2.6 seconds for users’ eyes to focus on a specific area of your website. What’s more, it takes just 0.05 seconds for visitors to form a general first impression of your site — meaning you’ve got just one opportunity to change their minds or reinforce this impression, and it happens in the first three seconds of arrival.
As a result, it’s critical to create webpages that are both aesthetically appealing and contextually relevant. For larger businesses, this often means hiring dedicated graphic designers to develop eye-catching designs and deploy them consistently across web pages, but SMB budgets may not support this type of spending.
Take our free Graphic Design Essentials Course on HubSpot Academy to learn design fundamentals and how to create simple designs.
What is the Best Free Graphic Design Software?
If your research turns up a problem — your images aren’t compelling, your text is hard to read and your color scheme hurts the eyes — you need a simple solution.
Free graphic design software offers the ability to customize the look and feel of your site without breaking the bank. But with a host of options on the market, which is the best fit for your business?
Two broad factors impact this outcome: Your current graphical ability and your potential use case. For example, if you have no experience with graphic tools, look for a solution that’s simple, streamlined, and does most of the work behind-the-scenes. If you have a graphic design background or natural inclination, tools with more robust customization and control may be a better fit.
If you’re planning to revamp your entire site with new colors, images, logos, and menus, you’ll need an in-depth solution that provides this level of control. If you’re starting small with minor changes to your color scheme or image quality, this kind of granular adjustment isn’t necessary.
So which software tool is the best fit for your business? Here’s a look at some of the best free graphic design tools and some pros and cons for each.
The Best Free Graphic Design Software for Marketers and Beginners
- DesignWizard
Platform: Windows
designwizarrd interface
Image Source
DesignWizard ranks among the best free graphic design software for beginners. The tool offers a large database of images along with a host of free templates (over 10,000), plus a simple, easy-to-use interface. While you can also quickly create custom templates, DesignWizard excels as a front-line, free graphic design tool for beginners.
Despite an easy-to-use interface and no upfront costs, it’s worth noting that most of the more powerful options in DesignWizard are only available in its for-pay version.
- Setka Editor
Platforms: Windows, Mac
Setka editor user interface
Setka bills itself as “everything you need to create content that converts.” This graphic design software is primarily focused on delivering enhanced content branding across your website, ad campaigns, and social media posts — and works from within your current CMS or in the cloud.
The caveat? Although the Setka Editor is free to try for two weeks, companies will need to select a plan — Starter, Pro, or Enterprise — to unlock the full feature set and keep using Setka.
- Canva
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS
Whether you’re looking to create an ebook, infographic, business card, or email header, Canva has a template to simplify your process. The free web design tool, developed by non-designers, offers professional, easy-to-customize templates for just about any design need you can think of.
The drawback? You might need to invest in the paid version or try one of the more advanced free graphic design softwares as you skill up. While Canva’s free version is great for new designers working with templates, you can access more complex tools and features — such as team sharing — in the paid version.
- Adobe Spark
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS
adobe spark user interface
Adobe Spark is a free alternative to the company’s popular, for-pay Adobe Illustrator. While it’s not nearly as full-featured, it does support integration with other Adobe products. It’s easy to use and it comes with a host of free templates. If you’re looking to quickly create posters or videos for ad campaigns, Spark is a great choice.
The potential drawback? A limited feature set makes this a great starting point for beginners but less useful for more in-depth projects or experienced designers. The good news is that Spark is available for both web and mobile, meaning you can design anywhere, anytime.
- Krita
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, Linux
Krita free graphic design softwareImage Source
Krita is a free, open-source painting program made by artists, for artists. Ongoing development of this tool depends on donations and is driven by the needs of the designer community at large. It’s no surprise, then, that Krita includes a customizable user interface, feature-rich toolset, and a comprehensive resource manager.
For businesses looking to boost their graphic design impact, Krita is a great tool — if they have the help of an experienced designer. For companies in need of simple, streamlined solutions, other software on this list offers a better fit for beginners.
- Gravit
Platforms: PC, Mac, Chrome OS, Linux
graphic designer software
Image Source
Gravit is a vector design application created by the makers of Corel Draw. With a host of tools for creating vector art and a self-adjusting interface, Gravit earns its place among the best free graphic design software for Mac and Windows — the tool is also available for ChromeOS and Linux.
Worth noting? When you sign up for a free trial of Gravit you automatically get access to “Pro” features, including the ability to work offline and see version history. However, you lose these features when your trial is up unless you’re willing to pay for a subscription.
- Blender
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
Blender Graphic Design Software
Blender is an open-source, 3D creation suite that makes it possible for graphic designers to create everything from rigging to animation to rendering and motion tracking. It also provides support for 2D animation and has an active community of users committed to helping Blender improve.
While Blender is a powerful tool, it’s not ideal for beginners — complex menus and a massive amount of design options mean you need to know your way around graphic design basics to make the best use of this tool.
- Inkscape
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
Inkscape – Free – Graphic Design Software
Its tagline is “draw freely” and Inkscape lives up to that mantra — there’s no cost for this graphic design tool and it packs a host of features for both beginners and experienced marketers.
In addition to cross-platform support and an active community, Inkscape is known for superior vector art options and wide format compatibility. One drawback is that the sluggish controls can frustrate some users if they’re looking to quickly create and publish designs.
- SketchUp
Platforms: Windows, Mac
SketchUp Free Graphic Design Sofrware
SketchUp offers both free and paid design plans, with its no-cost version still offering substantial advantages for designers. A robust modeling platform, it’s a great tool for creating 2D or 3D designs for furniture or other complex objects.
With an easy-to-use interface and great support, SketchUp is a great tool if you’re looking to create product pages that feature in-depth images and dimensions. Potential drawbacks include limited storage space for free plans and no mobile support.
- Gimp
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
Gimp Free Graphic Design Software
One of the most popular open-source design tools, Gimp is often compared to its closest for-pay competitor, Photoshop, with users on both sides making passionate arguments for one platform over the other.
Gimp gets high praise as a free design tool for its support of all file formats, ease of digital retouching, and ability to quickly create new designs from scratch. In addition, Gimp features a customizable interface that allows more experienced designers to make use of the tool’s capabilities. Worth noting? Gimp does not support any Photoshop plugins.
- Genially
Platform: Windows
Genially Free Graphic Design Sofrware
Genially makes design easy with a user-friendly interface and robust options that allow designers to create their own artwork from scratch. With this software, you can leverage pre-built templates or add interactive features such as buttons, layers, and hidden text. The free version of Genially has no limits on the number of projects you can create and there are now more than 12,000,000 users worldwide designing with Genially and supporting the community.
There is a caveat, however. While the free version is substantive, some features — such as offline viewing and brand personalization — are reserved for paid plans only.
- Paint 3D
Platform: Windows
Paint 3d Free Graphic Design Software
The classic Microsoft design tool is back, free, and updated to deliver more functionality. While it can’t compete with some of the more robust design tools on our list, Paint 3D comes with realistic textures, 2D cutout creation, and a host of 3D tools and effects.
If you’re a beginner looking for an easy bar to entry for straightforward graphic design, Paint 3D is a great place to start. There’s virtually no learning curve and since it’s made by Microsoft, the tool naturally works well on all Windows 10 devices.
Picking the Right Platform for Graphic Design
Most of the tools on this list are available on multiple platforms — including PC, Mac, and mobile — but is there a distinct advantage to selecting one platform over the other?
The short answer: Not really. These tools offer the same functionality regardless of which platform you choose.
The not-so-short answer? For beginners, opting for PC or mobile is probably your best choice. While Macs remain a powerhouse for graphic design, their user interface (UI) is less intuitive than their PC and mobile counterparts. This presents a learning curve you likely don’t need if you’re just getting started with graphic design.
For graphic design professionals and marketing experts, Mac-based solutions may be preferable for their focus on function over form.
Creating a Great First Impression
The first thing users see when they land on your website significantly impacts their perception of your brand — and their likelihood to become paying customers. The right graphic design software ensures your site delivers visual value from first impressions to eventual purchases and streamlines the process of ongoing aesthetic adjustment.
free graphic design tools for beginners
From vector design to image editing and 3D graphics, graphic design tools can get pretty expensive. For beginners and other designers on a budget, many of the tools out there are more than you need and simply out of reach when it comes to price.
Luckily, there are tons of free graphic design tools available and most are impressively capable. Below, we highlight the 18 best free graphic design tools for different use cases.
Best free graphic design tools for beginners
The tools below are streamlined, simplified, and stripped down versions of graphic design software. Between templates and user-friendly design, they’re perfect for beginner graphic designers and non-designers alike.
Canva
Canva is one of the simplest, most streamlined options for graphic design. It’s particularly great for beginners because Canva offers tons of fully-designed templates for every project from social media graphics and slide decks to logos and print marketing materials.
You can tackle nearly any project in Canva completely free, though some templates and graphic elements do require a Pro account to download.
Just create a free account, click ‘Create a design’ and choose the type of project you want to design. From there, you can browse all the different templates available and customize the color scheme, text, and more.
Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is a pared down, free version of the more robust graphic design tools Adobe offers. While you won’t get all the granular, professional features, you can design images from scratch, build a web page design, and even do some light video editing with Spark.
Plus, we love the option to upload universal “brand ingredients” like your logo, color, and font which makes it super quick and easy to create branded designs.
Once you create a free account, it takes just a click to start working on common designs like social media posts and stories, web pages, and even your own templated custom designs. Most of the templates in Spark are free to use, but some do require a paid subscription.
Coolers
While you won’t be doing any actual graphic design work in Coolers, the website makes it super easy for beginners to find color schemes and palettes that coordinate well together.
Choose from a wide array of trending, preset palettes or start with your own designated color and fill out a palette that works seamlessly with it.
That means you can ensure your website, brand colors, and other design assets look great with colors that work well together—even if you have zero design experience.
Best free vector graphic design tools
For more advanced graphic design and editing, there are several free vector design tools you can use in place of more expensive software like Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. The tools below offer comparable features and editing experiences without the hefty price tag.
Gravit Designer
Gravit Designer is a full-featured vector graphic design app that works across a ton of different platforms. A web app, you can also opt to download Gravit Designer for macOS, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS.
The app includes many of the more granular features you expect from a pricier tool like Photoshop, including layer-based editing, opacity control, and image effects. Plus, you can also pull shapes, icons, emojis, and more from the app’s libraries.
For many designers, the free version of Gravit Designer is more than capable. However, features like version history, higher resolution PDFs, and more advanced export options require the paid version.
Vectr
Vectr is billed as a bona fide free alternative to Illustrator, with a web version and desktop apps for Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS.
On top of all the basic vector features you expect, Vectr also makes it easy to collaborate on designs, with features for live collab and syncing with a simple URL share.
While the limitations of Vectr fall mainly on the more advanced side, the app is completely free—meaning there aren’t any features or templates hidden behind a paywall.
Vecteezy
Source: Vecteezy
Vecteezy offers free vector art, stock photos, and videos, which means you can combine their library of creative resources with the editor to get graphic design work done really quickly. And you can also create designs from scratch—all within your browser (for Chrome, Chromium, and Opera).
The UI is simple and intuitive—much like beginner-focused such as like Canva. While Vecteezy Editor includes more advanced features than Canva, free users do miss out on features like booleans, knife tools, and blending modes.
Best free image and photo editing software for graphic designers
When you need to make professional-level edits to images, without the cost of Photoshop, the tools below are your go-to. Both offer advanced image editing capabilities and a UI similar to Photoshop’s—meaning it’s familiar and won’t throw you a steep learning curve.
Sumopaint
Source: Sumo
Sumopaint’s image editing software is completely web-based—so there are no downloads required. Still, the Photoshop-esque UI includes all the capabilities you expect from a full-featured drawing tool and image editor.
Graphic designers can choose from various shapes, text, brushes, gradients, layers and effects. Plus, Sumo has also built a whole suite of tools, including Sumo3D, Sumopixel, and Sumophoto, for all your design work.
And the only real trade-off with the free version is that you can’t download any apps.
Pixlr
Source: Pixlr
Pixlr is a photo editing app that enables designers to make quick work or professional photo editing, including overlays, background cut-outs, and artistic effects. Offering both Pixlr X—designed for one-click editing—and the more advanced Pixlr E, the app is a great option for both beginners and experienced graphic designers.
With that said, Pixlr is one of the more limited free versions on our list. You’ll need to buy a paid subscription to access the full suite including more advanced editing features, AI features, and a larger library of assets, overlays, and templates.
Best free 3D graphic design software
3D design software can get really expensive, really quickly. But you don’t need Creo or Autodesk to build 3D designs. The tools below offer everything you need to create in 3D without expensive CAD software.
Daz 3D
Daz 3D is one of the best tools for building 3D designs quickly. With an extensive library of people, animals, objects, and animations, anyone can start creating 3D models in no time.
The free software is available to download for Mac and Windows users and handles everything from rigging and morphing to animation, rendering, and physics.
The biggest thing to note when comparing Daz to paid software is the lack of texturing and modeling capabilities—plus, some of the assets in Daz’s library do require a purchase to use.
Blender
Blender is a great option for designers, illustrators, animators, and more. It includes features for rendering, modeling/sculpting/UV, VFX, animation and rigging, and both 2D and 3D story art.
The app is completely open source and 100 percent free to create, share, and even sell your graphic designs.
With a huge number of options and an emphasis on building from scratch, Blender is best suited for experienced 3D designers. That learning curve and the potential for bugs are the biggest trade-offs versus pricier 3D modeling software.
Free graphic design storage solutions
Storage is an easily overlooked—but often substantial—cost for graphic designers. If you already pay for a graphic design software like Adobe, storage may be built into your subscription, so be sure to check on that.
Otherwise, the solutions below offer generous storage capacities for free, with reasonable costs to upgrade your space when the need arises.
Google Drive
Google Drive’s free tier offers the largest storage capacity by far, with 15 gigabytes available for free. It’s important to note, though, if you also use Gmail, your email storage will eat into that 15 GB. But, if you outgrow the free tier, Google’s paid storage is super reasonable at just $1.99/month for 100 GB.
With simple uploads and plenty of organization options, and tons of software integrations, Google Drive is a great option for back-end storage. But some designers note it isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing or customizable way to share work with clients.
pCloud
pCloud offers up to 10 gigabytes of cloud storage for free, which includes access from any device and link and folder sharing.
Some graphic designers note that pCloud is a better option for client sharing—because the app includes more options when it comes to file previews.
And for designers needing a lot of space, the paid plans start at only $4.99/month for 500 GB. Plus, pCloud’s desktop apps make it easy to work across devices without worrying about backups or syncing.
Dropbox
Dropbox is one of the most popular file storage solutions on the market, and the graphic design industry is no exception. While Dropbox is known for its ease of use and fast upload speed, the free version (Dropbox Basic) is pretty limited, offering only 2 GB of storage before you need to upgrade to a paid subscription.
While paid tiers include a ton of space—as in 2 terabytes—even the lowest plan runs $9.99/month.
Best websites for free fonts and typography
No matter what style of font you’re looking for, there are tons of free options available online. The websites below will help you find what you need quickly and easily.
MyFonts and WhatTheFont! by Monotype
Monotype’s MyFonts tool is basically a search engine for fonts and type collections. Filtering options make it easy to find what you’re looking for and narrow results down to only the free fonts.
The unique WhatTheFont! tool allows designers to upload any PNG or JPG image into the search bar and the tool will match the font(s) used from Monotype’s extensive library. It’s one click from there to download the font.
Google Fonts
With Google Fonts, you can search for specific font families or browse and filter by category, language, and font properties. Opening a font family shows you available styles, glyphs, and suggested font pairings. Plus, you can type in your own custom text to preview.
The library of over a thousand fonts includes open source licenses exclusively, so they’re all completely free to download and use. Once you find yours, it’s one click to download the whole family or you can select only the styles you need.
Best websites for free stock photos
Free stock photos don’t have to be stiff, posed, or low quality. With the websites below, you can search through thousands of beautiful, high-quality stock photos and graphics to find exactly what your project needs.
Unsplash
With Unsplash, you can search through a library of over 2 million high-quality, high-resolution photos and images, all of which are completely free to use. Browse through categories like nature, people, current events, fashion, and more—or search for exactly what you need.
Plus, Unsplash always includes the creator’s information, so you can easily give credit to the photographers who power your work.
Pexels
Pexels also offers a huge library of quality, free-to-use stock photos. Unlike Unsplash, Pexels also includes stock videos you can download and use, too.
Explore popular collections from “covid” to “Pride Month” to “cute cats” or search for the specific photo or video you need. Download your chosen file in one click and easily give credit to the artist behind the image or video.
Pixabay
Pixabay also offers a huge collection of more than 2.3 million high-quality images, videos, and even music that are completely free to download and use.
Stock images on Pixabay include photos, vector graphics, and illustrations, making it one of the most flexible libraries of free imagery. Browse through each category or search for whatever you’re looking for.
Free graphic design tools to power your creativity
Stunning design work doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg to produce or store. With the free graphic design tools above, you have everything you need to bring the designs in your head into the world. Now, get to it!
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