If you've been keeping an eye out for easy-to-use, all-in-one solutions to create a stunning website, you've surely stumbled upon Squarespace website builder somewhere along the line.

It's hardly surprising since it's one of the best site builders for setting up beautiful personal blogs, online photography portfolios, and small online shops. For starters, all essential ecommerce website builder tools you'll ever need are part of the package you'll get with Squarespace. 

As soon as you land on Squarespace’s official site, you'll notice it's particularly pleasant to look at. It's also simple to use as it benefits from a clean, modern, user-centric design which makes navigating around the site as simple as anything.  

The company behind the site builder, New York-based Squarespace, Inc. has been part of the SaaS industry since 2004 - so, it was set up almost two decades ago. Its founder and CEO, Anthony Casalena, came up with the idea of Squarespace while still at the university and turned it into the famous, full-fledged platform we know today. As we write, Squarespace's team consists of over 1,600 talented individuals, and the platform itself is utilized by millions of sites across the world.  

So, Squarespace is a pretty popular, beginner-friendly web platform with more than a handful of handy features, but could the same be said about its site builder?

To answer this question, we'll cover core facts about this site-building solution as well as its pros and cons.

• Interested in Squarespace? Check out the website here 

What is Squarespace website builder? 

Squarespace started life as a simple tool for building static sites but soon evolved into the all-in-one web platform we got right now. This solution covers everything from domain name registration and cloud hosting service to full-scale site builder with built-in ecommerce features. 

As suggested, this is a hosted solution, which means it runs on its own servers and you don't need to purchase a separate web hosting service. Thanks to its beginner-friendly content management system (CMS) and incredibly intuitive user interface (UI), Squarespace site builder lets even the most clueless rookies create eye-catching sites in a short time. It's as simple as selecting a pre-built template and customizing it until you're captivated by it. Then, you can add blogging site tools, ecommerce elements, and custom code to expand its functionality further. 

This site builder is a superb choice for professional-looking personal blogs, professional creative sites, and small to mid-sized online stores.  

Squarespace features

Similar to most “up-to-the-minute” site-building solutions on the market, Squarespace strives to have a bit of something for everyone. A newcomer with a new site on the way will be supplied with all of the tools they need to do the trick, while well-versed designers and developers will get a secure space and freedom to create whatever they had in mind. However, since Squarespace was created with beginners in mind, it’ll appeal more to its core audience. 

Squarespace benefits from beginner-friendly drag-and-drop UI which makes it simple to customize any of the awesome ready-made templates without any coding skills. Currently, there are over 100 of these templates and new ones are added fairly frequently. So, whether you’re planning to start a cute membership site about cats or an e-commerce business site, you’ll find the thing you need. 

Since all templates are responsive, they’ll look as terrific on a screen of any size. So, whether your visitors are using a smartphone, tablet, or computer your site will seem the same, both in terms of looks and functionality. On the downside, if you want to change the template you’re using, you’ll have to start everything from scratch.  

As for additional features, all Squarespace plans come with a free custom domain. However, you’ll have to subscribe for no less than one year and it’s one free domain per site only. 

We’ve mentioned above that Squarespace solutions include a cloud hosting service but we didn’t point out that this web hosting features unlimited bandwidth and storage on all plans. So, it will probably be able to support a high-traffic site at any point.

Also, most packages include some media marketing features (such as Video Maker, audience management tools, and promotional pop-ups and banners) and fully integrated ecommerce features. Plus, you can add as many products as you want. 

Unfortunately, there’s one drawback with the “Business” plan – Squarespace charges a 3% transaction fee for all sales, which might not seem as significant at the start. However, once your sales kick off, this charge will start getting in your way. To break free, you'll be prompted to upgrade your plan to one of the pricier ones.  

If you go with these pricier plans, you'll also get an advanced site and ecommerce analytics so you can work out where your site traffic is coming from, what your visitors are searching for, and how they interact with your content, products, and services. 

Squarespace tools

If you’re into blogging, you’ll be glad to hear that Squarespace provides a full set of blogging features such as built-in blog pages, a comment section, and content promotion tools. However, if you’re making a blog as a means of making money, Squarespace shouldn’t be your first choice. First off, to get hold of ecommerce features, you’ll have to purchase the “Business” plan or up, and it will set you back $23 (£18.70) per month (if you subscribe for a year) or $33 (£26.80) for one month. 

This plan will let you integrate a shopping cart into your blog with ease, as well as sell physical products, digital downloads, online services, and subscriptions. However, if we take the 3% transaction fee on sales and the plan’s initial price tag into account, this solution doesn’t seem particularly pocket-friendly. So, if you plan to become a professional blogger on a tight budget, it’s better to use WordPress instead. 

Also, Squarespace isn’t as strong as some of its competitor (like Shopify) when it comes to shipping and payment options – for instance, manual payments isn’t an option and you can’t sell in multiple currencies.

Squarespace also offers superb search engine optimization (SEO) features, which will help you get your site in front of your core audience. There are also multiple options for social media marketing, email marketing, and custom post designs. So, it seems Squarespace has everything a small business could wish for.  

However, Squarespace doesn’t take too kindly to third-party tools – while there’s a decent variety of versatile tools it’s not up to scratch – so, you might feel like you’re stuck with Squarespace's ecosystem.

We should also talk about Squarespace’s up-to-date, drag-and-drop editor called Fluid Engine, a superior version to their old editor. As soon as you add an element or change something on the template you’re using, it will become visible straight away. It also offers a decent level of customization choices, so you can adjust your template to suit your needs and desires. 

The only major drawback is that you can’t place elements (such as images or text) wherever you want them to be - you can position them in pre-built places bounded by grid lines. Also, while you’ll be prompted to save your site after each change, you won’t enjoy the convince of the autosave functionality.

Is Squarespace website builder easy to use? 

At the start, you’ll be supplied with a simple-to-understand setup menu, where you can choose between a variety of templates based on the categories - online store, membership, blog, art & design, and photography to name a few. 

After this, you can shape the way your site looks and you have the freedom to personalize every element of it. However, as explained a bit earlier, your freedom will be confined to a somewhat limited grid system. Because of this everything is superbly streamlined, making both setup and editing as simple as can be. 

We should also note that the new Squarespace 7.1 version is superior to the 7.0 version when it comes to ease of use. While the previous version got a whole lot of criticism, there’s scarcely anything to complain about with the latest version of Squarespace.

Squarespace website builder pricing: is it a good value for money? 

The site builder’s price tag is on par with similar all-in-one solutions on the market and it provides plenty of bang for the buck. However, if you only wanted a pocket-friendly site builder without other components of Squarespace, we’re sorry to say you won’t find this here.  

If you’re in for an all-in-one solution, you can choose between four plans ranging from $16 (£13.30) to $49 (£40.65) per month, if you opt for an annual billing option, that is. If you choose a one-month-only option, the price will spike significantly. 

While Squarespace doesn’t offer a forever-free edition of its site builder, there is a 14-day free trial with all four plans and no credit card details are required.

As for payment methods, Squarespace accepts all major credit/debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, and American Express included), JCB, Diners Club (in USD only), and SEPA direct debit (in EUR only). As you already suspect, you can’t pay via PayPal or Bitcoin (BTC).

Squarespace website builder safety and security 

Squarespace will safeguard your site and its visitors with a strong set of safety and security features. All Squarespace sites are kept on the safe side with SSL certificates, two-factor authentication (2FA), protection against denial of service (DoS) attacks, page passwords, and a login activity panel. While log activity won’t protect your site by itself, it’ll help you discover if any logins were made from suspicious or unknown devices.  

Squarespace’s security staff is monitoring all Squarespace sites round-the-clock for threats and vulnerabilities to make sure your site is properly protected. Still, if you discover a vulnerability, you can report it to the security staff and they’ll conduct their investigation on it.

Squarespace help and support

If you get stuck somewhere during your Squarespace journey, you can seek assistance from Squarespace’s support staff via live chat, email, and Twitter. Sadly, phone support isn’t available. 

Live chat is available Monday to Friday, 5 AM to 8 PM, EST, and once you contact the staff, someone will get back to you in a matter of minutes. In contrast, email support is available 24/7, but the response time can sometimes be sluggish.

 As for self-service, you can visit Help Center which contains a well-supplied knowledgebase, video guides, and an avidly active community forum you can conveniently browse by topics. 

Squarespace website builder alternatives

Wix is an awesome alternative for those who want to build their site on a tight budget or entirely free - it offers a forever-free edition of its site builder. Plus, it’s super simple to use, packed with features, and provides automatic backups. 

If you’re searching for a cheap yet completely customizable site builder, WordPress is the solution of choice. Since it’s an open-sourced software, it has thousands of themes, templates, plugins, how-to guides, and a committed community that can lend you a helping hand. While it’s not as beginner-friendly as Squarespace or Wix, it makes up for it with a fabulous level of flexibility and freedom. 

Shopify is built for ecommerce from the ground up, so if an ecommerce solution is what you’re looking for, it might be the best choice. While Squarespace offers all essential ecommerce features, it’s better suited for a professional site or a blog. 

Is Squarespace website builder right for you? 

Squarespace is a splendid, simple-to-use site builder with terrific templates and it gets better each time a new version crops up. Hitting high marks in all major areas, Squarespace site builder qualifies as an amazing all-arounder in the market, and it’s also fit for small and mid-sized online stores.   

However, Squarespace keeps its users on a short leash with a low level of customization and the inability to switch between templates without starting from scratch. Also, the lack of auto-save features makes it less convenient than some of its competitors. 

 Squarespace website builder FAQ 

• We've featured the best small business website builder

With hundreds of VPNs on the market and most of them promising to do the same thing, it can be difficult to decide what will be the best VPN for you.

Today we’re looking at vpnjack, a division of Jack512 VPN & VoIP Solutions headquartered in the United States. Unfortunately, the United States is one of the least privacy-friendly countries in the world. This is due to the fact that the US is a participating member of the Five Eyes, which enables US authorities to obtain user information from the company with a warrant if they so desire.

As of the time of this review, we do not know how many servers they have. vpnjack claims to have servers located in several cities in the USA, which means you can only access their service if you are also based in the US.

Pricing & plans 

vpnjack is designed to be a cheap service, although not suitable if you’re looking for a free VPN. It currently offers six packages, depending on how long you want to commit for. You can subscribe to the service on a daily basis for $0.99, weekly for $1.99, monthly for $4.49, three months for $11.99, six months for $19.99, or on an annual basis at $29.99. Plans can be purchased through PayPal or with Bitcoin.

Payments made to this service are generally non-refundable, which is very unusual compared to competitors. For you to test the service and determine whether you want to purchase any of its plans, they offer a free trial that lets you use the VPN for 60 minutes every day for 24 hours. When compared to other VPN services, which permit you to test their VPN for at least thirty days, this is subpar.

Privacy & encryption 

The official website states that your data is only collected to the extent necessary for proper accounting and system health monitoring, such as the length of your VPN connection and average bandwidth. However, it should be noted that as of the time of this review, they have not requested an independent VPN audit to check the servers' logs.

Remember that vpnjack is based in the United States, part of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance. This is a group of countries that exchange surveillance information. Your privacy might be jeopardized as a result of vpnjack's obligation to turn over your data to the government upon request. If you desire a privacy tool which can offer confidentiality and anonymity, you might prefer to try an alternative.

No information is provided regarding the encryption used or any extra security measures employed to safeguard your privacy. We were only informed on the website that the provider uses PPTP and L2TP VPN transfer protocols. 

Streaming 

You shouldn't expect to be able to access international services like BBC iPlayer, because vpnjack has a US focus and only allows you to stream content from US streaming platforms. If you use streaming applications for an extended period, The service would limit your connection speed because of its fair usage policy. This makes it less desirable if you want a VPN for Netflix or other streaming. 

Speed & experience 

Since all the servers are located in the same nation, our speed tests produced identical results. We noticed that you would receive a relatively high server speed if you were close to the US, but results would be slower if you were halfway around the globe. 

Apps 

Although vpnjack doesn't provide any native desktop or mobile VPN apps, it can be manually enabled on a variety of devices, including Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, by following the set-up instructions on its website. Linux, routers, smart TVs, and game consoles are all incompatible. 

Customer support 

Both a support ticket and a 24/7 LiveChat window are absent, leaving email as the only method of communication, which takes a lot of time. The FAQ section on the website is sparse and not sufficiently comprehensive to assist you. 

Alternatives to vpnjack

Nord VPN

Nord VPN,  gives you access to geographically restricted content from anywhere in the world, offers an app that has strong encryption to add an extra layer of security to your online activities and gives you features like a kill switch, peer-to-peer networking, web threat management, and multiple concurrent device connection.

Read our full NordVPN review 

Cyberghost

Cyberghost VPN supports up to seven simultaneous device connections, unblocks major streaming platforms, offers 1200 servers spread across more than 50 countries, permits torrent downloads, and offers a generous 45-day money-back guarantee.

Read our full Cyberghost review

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is based in a privacy-friendly jurisdiction and has thousands of servers dispersed throughout the world. It’s secure, does not keep any logs, unblocks streaming websites, allows for five connections at once, and has a quick speed.

Read our full ExpressVPN review

PureVPN

PureVPN is the best protection against ISP speed throttling. It allows you to access blocked websites and protects you from third-party spying, while also giving access to features such as intrusion detection systems, anti-spam, IP protection, and web threat monitoring.

Read our full PureVPN review 

Verdict

vpnjack doesn't have any exciting features or even P2P support for torrenting. The website doesn't give so many details about the product, so we could not tell what kind of encryption it uses. 

Although they have a low subscription price, they operate in just one country, don't support multiple connections at once, and can't boast of a secure service. In our opinion, vpnjack isn't worth your time. 

Zoho Desk is a customer service help desk product that bills itself as the first “context-aware” solution in the industry. That means that every interaction with a customer is guided by a range of information that Zoho has about them, including their history and past issues and activities—anything that will help an agent understand the issue more quickly, which in turn brings about a quicker resolution. 

Zoho Desk: Plans and pricing

Zoho has a range of plans to suit most business needs. You can test each of them out in a 15-day trial. You can change between subscriptions during this time and Zoho actually encourage you to do so, so you can try out different features.

The good news is that Zoho offer a free plan, which they describe as being suitable for "minimal support needs" This plan can encompass up to 3 agents. You also get basic e-mail ticketing and a knowledge base.

Zoho also offer an 'Express' plan costs just $7 per user per month if you pay annually or $9 per user per month if you pay annually. This supports up to 5 users and also includes a basic ticketing system, analytics and social media integration.

Both the free and 'Express' plans are nestled further down the pricing page and we had to hunt around for them. This is in contrast to our original review of Zoho Desk in 2020 when the features of the free plan were listed alongside the paid tiers at the top of the page. 

The current page lists the top 3 pricing tiers. The 'Standard' plan costs $14 per user per month if billed annually or $20 per user per month if you pay monthly. Perks include five e-mail channels, your very own help center, a feedback widget, five advanced web forms, social media support for 1 brand (Facebook and Twitter) and Instant Messaging. There's also no limit on the number of agents you can have on the 'Standard' plan provided you're able and willing to pay the subscription fees.

The 'Professional' plan costs $23 per user per month if paid annually or $35 per user if you pay monthly. It includes all of the above along with other perks like the ability to 'follow' tickets and customers as well as add ticket resolutions to your knowledge base.

The 'Professional' plan also has safeguards to avoid ticket 'collisions'. Zoho Desk can alert you if another agent has begun responding to a ticket and you can even chat with them.

Crucially this is the tier that allows you to integrate your help desk with approved telephony providers and create custom workflows.

The 'Enterprise' tier costs $40 per user per month if billed annually or $50 per user if you're paying monthly. It includes everything in the above-mentioned plans plus some heavy-hitting extras.

These include support for up to one hundred e-mail channels, no fewer than twenty web forms for each of your departments, as well as integration for up to two brands for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Most importantly this tier supports live chat, so you can interact with customers directly on your website and convert conversations into tickets.

We've only been able to scratch the surface of the vast number of features available with various Zoho Desk plans here, so encourage you to visit the main website for a detailed comparison.

Zoho Desk: Features

The Enterprise plan clearly boasts an impressive feature list, but even the free plan comes with features that make it worthwhile considering. These include the multilingual email ticketing and customer management system which is at the core of the software, a help center with a private knowledge base, macros for executing repetitive tasks automatically, mobile apps, and 24/5 email support.

Zoho Desk’s ticket management system is multichannel meaning that email, phone, social media, and live chat can all be used for customer support interactions. Tickets are automatically organized, and a number of handy tools exist to increase ticketing efficiency, and by extension, agent productivity.

Zoho Desk also has an artificial intelligence feature called Zia that can speak to your customers and share relevant knowledgebase articles with them, automatically tag tickets, alert agents to unusual activity, and be trained to carry out actions specific to your business.

Zoho Desk: Interface and in use

When you first log in to your Zoho Desk dashboard, you’re presented with a list of your tickets. The other main tabs in the dashboard are for knowledge base articles and customers.

Similarly to many online helpdesk apps, Zoho Desk provides you with a lot of control over what can be edited for each ticket – for example, status, owner, priority, classifications, and channel. You can also view a ticket’s activity history and apply various actions to it.

At the bottom of the window when viewing a ticket is a button for Apply Macro. However, when you click on it, it says “macros aren’t created yet,” and there’s no indication as to how to create one. Other helpdesk software apps we’ve looked at have a default set of macros included, and you can add others if you need ones specific to your business.

The lack of help with the macros is just one example of how Zoho Desk doesn’t feel as intuitive as other helpdesk solutions we’ve looked at. There are many different links and buttons scattered all over the dashboard, and it feels a bit overwhelming to find your way around. Some of the links and buttons are also tiny and thus difficult to read.

Zoho Desk: Support

Zoho Desk is a bit different from other helpdesk software providers in that it provides different levels of support. There are three tiers, with the first being free and the other two costing either 20% or 25% of your license fee.

 The free option only offers live chat and toll-free phone support during business hours, while the others offer those options for 24 hours. You can also e-mail or raise a request in the self-service portal. Zoho Desk claim the maximum response time for this is 24 hours. The Enterprise plan is available seven days a week as opposed to the five days for the Premium plan.

The two paid plans introduce remote and configuration assistance and product onboarding. Meanwhile, the Enterprise plan gives you your own account manager, along with a quarterly report on your usage of features, with suggestions on how to optimize your business processes.

Zoho Desk's support plans also include 'onboarding' to 'Premium' and 'Enterprise' subscribers for 45 or 60 days from the date of purchase respectively. This involves an onboarding specialist working with you to set up Zoho Desk, learn about different features and get assistance with customization and automatization.   

Zoho Desk: Security

Zoho, the company behind Zoho Desk, produces many different software products and takes the same high-level approach to security for all of them. One of the ways it does this is through the 'Roles' feature which allows you to manage what information is visible to which agents and/or departments. You can also create profiles to save you having to manually set permissions per worker.

For instance, you can create a profile for new agents which allows them to change the ownership of tickets but not close them.

Zoho Desk's security page also touts its 'field security' feature. This allows you to set permissions about which fields can be edited by certain workers. 'Enterprise' plan subscribers can also benefit from 'field encryption' whereby sensitive data entered into fields can be encoded. Zoho's comprehensive knowledge base informed us that this is done using industry standard AES encryption. 

Zoho Desk also claims to be GDPR compliant. One strong point in their favour is that all subscriptions (including the free plan) give users the choice where their data is stored. When reviewing other help desk platforms we've only ever seen this feature available as a paid extra or for higher tier subscribers, so were very impressed. Current data center choices are the US, EU, India, Australia and Japan.

Parent company Zoho has also published an extensive Security Whitepaper, detailing the stringent measures they take to keep their own customers' data safe.

For instance, they specify their facilities have 24/7 monitoring, video cameras and biometric access. The company is ISO 27001, ISO27017 and ISO27018 certified.

We were also very pleased to see that Zoho has a detailed page on exactly how it encrypts customer data. In brief, all connections between users and Zoho's servers are protected by the latest versions of TLS (1.2 / 1.3). 

Databases are protected using ultra-secure 256-Bit AES encryption and Zoho claim they also use full disk encryption on their hardware. 

Like the free choice of data centers, this is refreshing change from other help desk platforms who claim to use encryption and secure data but don't provide exact details on the type of encryption or password hashes used. 

Zoho Desk: The competition

If you like to shop around before deciding on a purchase, there are plenty of alternatives in the online helpdesk space for you to consider, including Freshdesk and Zendesk.

Freshdesk is another solution offering a large range of features. There are a selection of plans, including a free option that can be used by unlimited agents. Its paid plans range in price from $15/agent/month up to $79/agent/month, and all plans come with a 21-day free trial. 

LiveAgent is another option with a free plan that has no limit on agents, while paid plans go from $9/agent/month up to $69/agent/month. Like Zoho Desk and Freshdesk, as you move up through the plans, more features are added to those available from the previous level.

Zoho Desk: Final verdict

Zoho Desk has competitive pricing, with its high-end plans cheaper than those of many competitors. However, its free plan has a small limit on the number of agents and you have to pay to get better levels of support.

The software’s feature set is impressive but we found the app itself a bit overwhelming to use and lacking in tips or guides on how to make the most of it.

We've also highlighted the best live chat software.

Although having your identity stolen might seem unlikely, over 10% of American adults experience identity fraud each year. In 2021 alone, these occurrences resulted in damages totaling more than $6.1 billion, demonstrating the financial vulnerability of identity theft across the 5.88 million reported events.

Today, there are numerous choices available to consumers who want to secure their identities. We'll examine the platform's features in detail in our Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection review to help you decide if it's the best choice for you. Bitdefender is one of the most effective identity theft protection services currently, although it lacks some of the technologies offered by its rivals.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection: Plans and pricing

As of writing, for the lower Standard tier, an annual subscription for Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection is priced at $6.99/month for the first year, before switching to $12.99/month. However, there is also the option for an annual discount savings by paying $69.99 for the year, which reduces it to $5.83/month for the first year. This plan includes a smart SSN tracker, a credit score tracker, lost wallet protection, and up to $1 million of identity theft insurance, along with 1 bureau credit monitoring.

There is also a higher, Premium tier, which increases the cost to $9.99/month for the first year, or $99.99 annually. It adds features such as court records monitoring, change of address monitoring, and up to $2 million in identity theft insurance. It also increases the credit monitoring to all three credit bureaus.

Bitdefender doesn’t offer any short-term subscriptions or free trials.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection: Features

With Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection, your information is continuously monitored throughout both traditional and dark web databases, ensuring that you are notified whenever it appears online. Emails, passwords, social security numbers, credit card information, and phone numbers are just a few of the data pieces it may locate.

The program also has top-notch capabilities for keeping an eye on your digital footprint. Although it's difficult to gauge how well they work in practice, the program's main objective is to make it easier for you to keep track of all of your personal data, such as your name, phone number, home and email addresses, as well as any associated photographs and URLs.

In addition, Bitdefender continuously scans 25 social media platforms for impersonation. Unfortunately, a list of the supported platforms is not displayed on the website. They probably cover Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other well-known networks, but without more details, it's impossible to determine for sure. After waiting for more than a week, we asked a support person for clarification, but regrettably we did not hear back.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection: Interface and in use

Bitdefender is super simple to sign up and only requires your phone number and email address to begin monitoring for identity theft. Although Bitdefender Mobile Security includes mobile apps for both iOS and Android, they do not apply to the platform's identity protection capabilities since this is solely a web-based platform.

Overall, Bitdefender provides consumers with all the information they need to protect their identity, and also looks and functions nicely. If you don't consider the lack of a mobile app to be a deal-breaker, Bitdefender is a very simple service to use.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection: Support

Like several other identity protection companies, Bitdefender includes a rather comprehensive support page with solutions to frequent inquiries regarding the settings and functionality of the program. If you require assistance with Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection, start by visiting the Support Center.

Bitdefender offers several other options beyond the answers available in the Support Center. You can contact the company’s support team directly via a choice of phone, email, or live chat.

Although there are no specified hours for live chat assistance, English-language phone support is offered around-the-clock. The Bitdefender support system may be able to address any issues you run through, however we never received an answer to a question that was quite simple.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection: The competition

Although Bitdefender is substantially less expensive than many other identity protection services, its feature set is also more constrained.

For instance, Norton LifeLock is one of the most well-known and reputable companies in the sector. Depending on your demands, subscriptions are offered for $124.99, $239.99, and $339.99 annually, though each plan is considerably less for the first year.

That’s obviously much higher than Bitdefender’s $69.99 for the first year, but LifeLock might be worth the extra money for some users.

Furthermore, the three subscription tiers at LifeLock start at $1 million in identity theft insurance, and offer additional features such as buy now, pay later alerts.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection: Final verdict

With a respectable feature set at a reasonable cost, it's understandable why so many customers rely on Bitdefender to safeguard their identities. However, people seeking more security should think about Norton LifeLock or another company with an even larger feature set. Of course, your demands and budget will ultimately determine whether such amenities are worth the extra money.

As a well-known provider of cybersecurity services, Bitdefender can find any dangers to your identity with ease.

We've listed the best free antivirus.

Solarwinds Service Desk is a software solution for IT service management (ITSM) aimed at supporting a company’s own employees. It can be used for incident and asset management, cataloging and fulfillment, and as a single portal for the submission of tickets and requests.

Even though the focus of a service desk is more internal, it still has the same end-user focus as all the best help desk software solutions. In this Solarwinds Service Desk review we help you decide whether it could be useful for your business as we take a look at its pricing, features, support, and ease of use.

Solarwinds: Plans and pricing

SolarWinds offers a very simple pricing structure, offering a choice of three plans. The 'Essentials' plan is designed for 'growing teams' and is priced at $39 per month, per technician. There's an additional charge of $0.30 per month per device.

This includes features like Incident Management, as well as your own Knowledge Base and a Service Portal where teams can collaborate on work. SolarWinds 'Essentials' plan also makes it easy for you to respond to user feedback, offering both Satisfaction Surveys and Real Time Agent Feedback.

There's also a helpful Service Catalog for users, as well as a 'Service Request' feature which allows you to capture all service requests along with any relevant details. The plan also supports SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and management of requests and approvals.

The 'Advanced' Plan starts at $79 per month per technician, with an additional fee of $0.50 per month per device. It includes all the features of the 'Essentials' Plan plus superior features such as custom fields and forms, contract management, license compliance, scheduled reports and API access. Crucially the 'Advanced' Plan also supports automation of work flows as well as benchmarking.

The 'Premier' plan is touted by SolarWinds as being for 'full customizability'. Subscriptions cost $99 per month, per technician plus $0.70 per device. It includes all the features bundled with the 'Essentials' and 'Advanced' plans plus a visual CMDB (Configuration Management Database) with Automatic Dependency Mapping. Other perks include a 'Premier' Virtual Agent, up to 1500 API calls per user, per minute and automated runbooks. 

The pricing plans are clearly laid out. Our only complaint is the higher charge per device for more expensive plans, as it would be more intuitive to offer greater discounts to customers who are paying a higher charge per user.

All plans support an unlimited number of users and can be tried out free of charge for 30 days.

Solarwinds: Features

Solarwinds Service Desk has a large selection of features including tools for incident, IT asset and problem management, an employee service portal, and a knowledge base.

Incident management software is used for streamlining ticket submissions, with tickets able to be submitted by email, phone, the service portal, live chat, or in person. The software also includes the ability to automate simple tasks and route tickets to the right people so that incidents are resolved more quickly. Built-in artificial intelligence can also speed up ticket resolution by recommending solutions.

Problem management functionality allows your agents to easily group similar incidents together to avoid multiple agents working on the same issues and prevent redundancy. Automation features mean that tickets can be categorized and routed to the correct technician without manual involvement.

The employee service portal is a web app that employees can use to submit and track service requests or find answers to questions that may have been asked before via the integrated knowledge base and other resources. Not only is the service portal helpful for employees, but it gives technicians all the data they might need to resolve incidents quickly in one place.

Solarwinds: Interface and in use

Solarwinds Service Desk has a very clean interface that we found easy to navigate. Access to all of the main sections of the dashboard is hidden behind a hamburger menu icon in the top left corner of the window, but the menu itself is very responsive, and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.

The dashboard comes with a pre-selected group of widgets displaying your organization’s data, but you can add new ones or edit or remove the existing ones. You can also create completely new dashboards if you don’t want to add too many widgets to a single page.

When viewing a list of incidents, you have a lot of control over how the data is filtered and sorted, and you can customize the columns that are displayed. Once you’ve selected an individual incident to view, you again have a lot of control over its settings, and the user interface makes it easy for even novice users to figure out how to update and add to an incident.

For those that do need a little extra help, every page you visit has a text and video tutorial that can be accessed by clicking on the ‘?’ button near the top right of the window.

We were impressed at how easy Solarwinds Service Desk was to use but did find that sometimes pages, or parts of pages that displayed data, were a bit slow to load. In particular, we found building reports to be very slow, even at the very beginning of our testing, when we only had a handful of sample issues.

Solarwinds: Support

SolarWinds offers varying levels of support to customers based on their subscription plan. If you choose the lowest 'Essentials' tier you benefit from 'Community Support', where other SolarWinds users can offer advice and assistance via a dedicated forum. 

If you don't want to trust your business to other customers' goodwill, you'll be pleased to hear that both e-mail and chat support are available via Service Desk 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

If you've signed up for either the 'Advanced' or 'Premier' plans then you'll also benefit from phone support, which is also available round the clock, 365 days a year. Advanced and Premier users can also avail themselves of a CSM (Customer Success Manager) ℅ Service Desk, who apparently can answer any question your company has about "using the solution". It's unclear what a CSM would offer over and above a regular Service Desk query but presumably it's safer to have a dedicated Success Manager and not need one than need one and not have one.

We were blown away by SolarWinds free online Resource Center, which includes brochures, white papers, helpful videos, datasheets and demos to name just a few. The pages are easy to navigate as you can filter down by subject category and/or resource type.  

Solarwinds: Security

As with most providers of helpdesk software, Solarwinds takes a rigorous approach to security, which applies to the various layers that go into developing web apps. 

Employees sign confidentiality agreements and undergo specific security training. World-class data centers are used, protected by fire suppression systems and security guards. All changes are logged and regular audits are carried out. Networks are protected by firewalls and malicious code protection, and disaster recovery systems are in place. 

SolarWinds confirm all of the above on their dedicated 'Information Security' page, which includes a link to their 'Security Statement'. In this they confirm that they follow the voluntary NIST Cybersecurity Framework, which is designed for companies that form part of the critical infrastructure of the USA. 

Unfortunately if you're looking for specific examples of how data is encrypted during transmission and in transit e.g. TLS and AES, then you'll need to contact SolarWinds directly to ask how this is being done.

On the plus side, if you're an administrator configuring the SolarWinds platform, there's an extensive 'best practices' guide on how to secure it, including:

- A recommendation to use at least 2048 Bit RSA encryption for SSL certificates.

- Confirmation that SolarWinds supports encrypted database connections via SSL.

- Support for TLS cipher suites and certificate validation. 

- Lockout of accounts after 10 failed login attempts.

SolarWinds also has an extensive policy on data protection requirements for their vendors and affiliates, which include provisions banning shared user accounts and requiring encryption of customer data in transit and at rest.  

Solarwinds: The competition

The ITSM market is smaller than the overall helpdesk software market, but there are still some competitors worth considering, like Freshservice by Freshworks and Jira Service Desk by Atlassian.

FreshService has a very similar feature list to Solarwinds Service Desk and also has a choice of four plans that go from $19/month/agent up to $119/month/agent if you're willing to pay annually. There's even a 21-day free trial period and you can book a live demo of the service if you want to try before subscribing.  

Jira Service Desk has a different (and rather more complicated) pricing structure, including a free plan, and offers both cloud and self-managed versions of its software. 

The free plan is for up to three agents. The Standard plan is $21 per month per agent.

You can also pay $600/year for up to three agents but then increases to $1050 per year for up to 5 agents. 

After 15 agents, the price starts to come down slightly. The Premium plan starts at $47/agent/month but you can also make some savings if you have multiple agents and want to pay annually. The paid plans support up to 10,000 agents if you're able and willing to pay for them. All plans also support an unlimited number of customers but only one site, unless you sign up to a bespoke 'Enterprise' plan. 

Solarwinds: Final verdict

Solarwinds Service Desk is ideally suited to companies with large IT departments that are looking to provide high levels of service for their own employees and internal customers. It is reasonably priced and comes with a generous free trial so you have enough time to evaluate its capabilities.

While we did find the web app to be a bit slow sometimes, in general, we were impressed by how easy Solarwinds Service Desk is to use and the level of control offered over how data was presented and updated. 

The Resource Center is magnificent and we were impressed to see that even customers on the lowest pricing tier can benefit from 24/7 e-mail and chat support. The forum also contains some excellent resources on getting started and customizing the platform for your needs. For the most part other documentation is extremely helpful and detailed. The one exception to this is SolarWinds 'Security Statement', where we would have appreciated more specific information on the type of protections in place, such as how data in transit is secured.

There is no 'free' tier but as we said, it's not likely an SME would need to sign up for so extensive an ITSM, as the range of resources and data customization is better suited to larger organizations.  

We've also highlighted the best live chat software.

Most popular email services that we use are free. But, you’ll be right to discern that nothing is really free. “If you’re not paying, then you’re the product” is a quote that applies to most digital services. In exchange for using these free email platforms, you give the owners access to your data, which they can sell or use to enhance advertising algorithms.

Many people don’t want to give up their data to third parties and, thus, seek alternative, secure email services. PrivateMail is one of the best secure email providers you can choose. It offers sophisticated encryption to guarantee your privacy and security.

PrivateMail was founded in 2019 by entrepreneur Benjamin Van Pelt. The company is based in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.

PrivateMail: Plans and pricing

PrivateMail doesn’t offer a free plan, which we consider a disadvantage. It offers different premium plans for individuals and businesses. Individuals can choose either the Standard or Pro plan.

The Standard plan costs $8.95 monthly and gives you 10 GB of encrypted mail storage plus an extra 10 GB for file storage. This plan lets you create up to 5 email aliases.

The Pro plan costs $15.95 monthly and gives you 20 GB of encrypted email storage plus 20 GB of extra file storage. You can create up to 20 email aliases on this plan.

Businesses can choose either the Pro or GroupShare plan. The Pro plan costs $64.95 per month and unlocks 100 GB of email storage plus an extra 100 GB of file storage. 

The GroupShare plan costs the same as the Pro plan and offers the same features save for supporting shared file storage, shared contacts/calendars, and account collaboration. 

PrivateMail: Features

PrivateMail offers many beneficial features, including

End-to-end email encryption

End-to-end encryption is a security protocol guaranteeing that no third party accesses data while it’s being transmitted. When you hit the send button, your email is encrypted on PrivateMail’s servers and can only be decrypted on the recipient’s server via a unique private key. If anyone intercepts the information in transit, it’ll be useless to them because they don’t have the required private key to decrypt it.

PrivateMail uses the OpenPGP encryption standard. This is the most popular encryption protocol that emails providers use and guarantees that only an intended email recipient will be able to read its contents. 

Cloud storage

PrivateMail offers cloud storage for your files. You can keep photos, videos, audio, and any type of document. Your files will be encrypted just like your emails, so you’re sure that unauthorized third parties can not access them. You can share your files with other PrivateMail users via a secure link. 

Mobile and desktop apps

A good thing about PrivateMail is that it offers native mobile and desktop apps, unlike most secure email competitors. You can download the iOS app from the Apple App Store or the Android app from the Google Play Store. You can also sideload the Android app by downloading the APK directly and installing it on your smartphone.

PrivateMail has desktop apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux. A page on the official website gives you the download links for all operating systems.

These apps make it easier to use PrivateMail and send encrypted messages. You can simply open the app on your smartphone or desktop whenever you want to use it instead of opening a web browser over and over again.

Alias addresses

An alias is an extra email address that forwards to your main address. The purpose is to interact with people or online platforms without giving out your main address. For instance, if your main address is jill@privatemail.com, you can create an alias called jill+edu@privatemail.com for educational messages, jill+games@privatemail.com for your gaming apps, and jill+work@privatemail.com for work-related emails.

PrivateMail lets you create up to 20 aliases depending on the plan you’re subscribed to. 

Custom domains

Many individuals and businesses need emails with a custom domain name because it makes them look more professional. The good thing is that PrivateMail lets you create an email with your own domain. You just have to adjust your domain’s MX records to point to PrivateMail’s mail servers, and you’re good to go.

Self-destructing mail

PrivateMail lets you send emails that delete themselves after a specific period. Self-destructing emails provide an extra layer of security and privacy if you’re sending sensitive information.

Contacts/calendar

PrivateMail offers a tool for creating and managing contacts. You can also access a tool for creating calendars and planning your schedule. You can create multiple calendars for different purposes, e.g., one for weekends and another for weekdays. You can share your contacts and calendars securely with other PrivateMail users.

PrivateMail: Interface and in use

PrivateMail offers a broad range of features, but its interface isn’t too intuitive. The platform’s interface looks more like something you’ll find in the earlier days of the internet. A glance at the website and the way the text and images are arranged shows that the interface needs improvement. 

PrivateMail: Support

PrivateMail offers support through email. You can message the company's support email directly and wait for a response. The Standard plan subscribers should expect a response within 48 hours, while users on the Pro and GroupShare should expect a response within 24 hours because of the priority support they paid for. 

PrivateMail: The competition

Proton Mail is the main competitor to PrivateMail we’ll highlight. This platform offers similar features and sophisticated encryption to PrivateMail. You can also access ProtonMail via an iOS or Android mobile app. But Proton Mail outshines PrivateMail in user-friendliness and ease of use. 

PrivateMail: Final verdict

PrivateMail is an ideal platform for people seeking to send emails without any third party harvesting their data. It provides very solid encryption that you can trust. The main drawbacks are its outdated interface and being a relatively expensive tool.   

We've also highlighted the best email services.

First impressions count - and USAIP VPN left us seriously unimpressed. The company website needs some work, feeling like an outdated mess. But what caught our eye was the assertion that the VPN promises ‘full and strong anonymity’. Nearly all VPNs make this claim, then either fail to have an independent party run a VPN audit to check the companies live up to their claims. So, how does USAIP VPN stack up in the privacy and security stakes? 

The service was founded in 2017, with 35 servers spread across 20 different countries around the world in regions like Pakistan, China, Russia, Estonia, Luxembourg, and the USA. This is significantly fewer than the industry average, and tiny compared to big-name VPNs like CyberGhost VPN, which boasts over 8,100 servers in 90 countries. 

USAIP VPN: Pricing & plans 

The VPN service offers a single plan - so everyone gets the same features and benefits. However, it does have different pricing based on subscription length. 24 hours for $1.49, $3.99 a week, and $7.99 a month. An annual subscription costs $74.99. 

There’s no free VPN option here - but the VPN provider offers a free trial that includes unlimited access but requires you to reconnect every 7 minutes. You can request a refund during the first 3 days of your subscription if you're extremely dissatisfied with the service. 

USAIP VPN accepts credit cards, PayPal, Webmoney, Skrill, Perfect Money, and Ukash, as payment options.

USAIP VPN: Privacy & encryption 

According to USAIP, the service does not collect sensitive user information; however, in their privacy policy they state that “any mild information may be shared with 3rd parties or law enforcement officials.” This indicates the company logs data, even though it's vague about the kind of data collected.

Our primary concern with the USAIP logging policy is the absence of a recent external audit, which would support the company's assertions regarding the types of logs maintained.

It is imperative to keep in mind that this VPN is based in the US, which is a member of a 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance (a group of countries that share surveillance data with each other). Your privacy might be jeopardized as a result of USAIP's obligation to give your data to the government upon demand. We suggest using VPNs like Express VPN instead, which are transparent and have had their software openly audited to prove their privacy claims. If you still want to proceed with getting this virtual private network, proceed with caution.

USAIP uses military-grade 256-bit encryption, which is unbreakable even by anyone or a computer, along with the PPTP, L2TP, IPSec, SSTP, and OpenVPN protocols. To break it, you would need to try a gazillion of different combinations, which hasn't been done yet. This isn’t a VPN for torrenting though, or a VPN for China for that matter, due to a lack of obfuscation tools. 

USAIP VPN: Streaming 

USAIP VPN is touted to be a streaming VPN, its website promising to grant access to well-known geo-restricted streaming services - we found out otherwise. We couldn't access any of its servers, so there was no way we could test it to see if it would unblock any streaming channels. If you’re looking for a Netflix VPN to access content on streaming platforms, you can try USAIP, but you may need to look for a more reliable alternative.  

USAIP VPN: Speed & experience 

Despite the VPN's assertions that its service increases internet speed, tests for USAIP’s VPN servers were not possible because we were unable to make the service function no matter how hard we tried. It's highly likely that the service in now wholly inactive - a statement that, if true, should've been made clear on its outmoded website. 

USAIP VPN: Apps 

The tool runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, with mobile VPN apps for Android, iOS, and iPad. Routers are also supported. For each of them, the website offers comprehensive setup instructions and configuration files to make installation easier, as well as a list of possible error codes and their solutions. 

USAIP VPN: Customer support 

Customer support for USAIP subscribers appears to be defunct, or at least ignored. As we do with all VPN providers, to test their response time, we emailed USAIP VPN's support team. We never received a response.  

USAIP VPN: Alternatives 

Since during our review, USAIP appeared almost entirely inoperative, we strongly recommend investing in a more reliable alternative. After extensive testing, top tools we recommend trying include:

ExpressVPN which is one of the best VPN services available that enables five concurrent connections on devices and unblocks all major streaming platforms. 

NordVPN has over 5,200 servers scattered across 60 countries. 

Proton VPN does not monitor your actions or utilize any of your personal information. 

PureVPN has an encrypted VPN tunnel that allows you to access prohibited websites and browse around the world at speeds up to 1,000 times faster than normal. 

Verdict

Despite all those big promises on its website, our devices simply wouldn't connect to USAIP's VPN.  And our requests for support from the company appear to have been ignored. This is unfortunate because we think it would have been a really good VPN with support for Netflix and Hulu. In the end, there is absolutely no situation under which we would suggest this VPN for use, as there are plenty of other VPNs out there that can give what USAIP VPN promises, and more. 

With demand for visual content on the rise, businesses found they needed a tool for quickly producing design assets with professional results - whether they had access to an experienced designer or not. 

It’s in this space that Canva effortlessly sits, serving up a free, online design app for your browser. 

Hailed by marketing teams as one of the best graphic design software, the the drag-and-drop tool continues to grow its user-base in part because of its streamlined interface (anyone can create a masterpiece here). And partly because it boosted its offerings with everything from the Canva PDF Editor to Canva Video, the company’s basic and free video editing software.

The web-based digital art tool comes packed with an impressive number of features too, whether you need to add text and stickers to your social media photos or totally revamp your printed assets. But will it hit your creative spot?  

• You can sign up for Canva here

Canva: Pricing & plans

Canva may be subscription based, but its lowest tier is free, which is definitely cause for celebration. With it, you get access to their media editor, over 250,000 templates, 5GB of online storage, and what we’re most interested in for the purposes of this review: over a million photos and graphics.

Should you wish to upgrade to ‘Canva Pro’, you’ll get premium templates, and stock media as a bonus, a crucially useful resize tool (which includes resizing your canvas), and 1TB of online storage, among many other features. This would cost you $120 per year.

If you work with colleagues, you can opt for ‘Canva for Teams’. This would give you all the advantages of Pro, but with the addition of collaborative tools, among others. It’s $150 per year for the first five people you add to your account, and your ‘Pro’ subscription will be automatically upgraded the moment the second person joins your team.

Canva does offer you to try out the Pro version free for 30 days, or use the ‘Free’ tier to test most features out.

Canva: Features

Canva is a versatile graphic design tool that runs in your browser and as an app on Android and iOS: it lets you create brochures, flyers, posters, social media graphics, invitations, calendars, videos, presentations, cards, logos, infographics, labels, letterheads, resumes, menus and more. You can start off with a template or a completely blank slate, and build your design up however you want.

The platform includes an impressive number of editing and layout tools as well – covering everything from image cropping to blur effects to background removal. Objects can be easily arranged and layered in a project, and it's straightforward to add extras like text captions or fun stickers on top of whatever you're doing.

Canva prides itself on being simple to use for anyone, with or without graphic design experience, and it's certainly true that the templates and intuitive tools mean you can create something very professional-looking very quickly. However, it's not just a suite of apps for beginners – seasoned design professionals can also get plenty of use out of Canva, as long as they don't want too much detailed control over what's on the page.

We'll explain the pricing plans a little later on, but free and paying users alike get access to thousands of different templates across more than 100 categories to get designs started, while those who are paying a subscription can also get at millions of stock photos, videos and design elements to play around with.

From tweaking your pet photos to putting together a full social media campaign, Canva can turn its hand to almost anything in the world of image editing and graphic design. With no software to install on Windows, macOS or Linux you can just jump straight in and start using it.

Canva: Interface

Canva's ease-of-use is one of its most appealing features, and everything really is well laid out and organized. Just tell Canva what it is you're trying to design, and you'll be met with a wealth of different templates and layout options – one of the strengths of Canva is the number of templates you can work from, which run into the thousands even before you start paying up for a monthly subscription.

Once you have a template or a blank page in front of you, getting elements together is very straightforward. You can change the entire theme of a design – colors, fonts, background images – with a couple of clicks, so it won't take you long to start personalizing the basic template so that it fits with your brand image or whatever you're looking for.

When it comes to layouts, Canva is a little more restrictive than the top-tier professional applications – you can take full control over where everything is in a design, but there's not quite the same level of depth in terms of pixel-by-pixel tweaking. Still, Canva does a great job of keeping everything simple for beginners while also packing in plenty of features to cater for more ambitious designers.

As you move elements around the page, helpful guides appear to enable you to keep everything aligned and looking consistent, while swapping out parts of a design (such as a photograph) can be done with a couple of mouse clicks. Whatever you want to do, whether it's dropping in a new background or embedding a video, Canva makes the process stress-free and intuitive.

The same approach is evident in the mobile apps as well: obviously it's not quite as easy to manage and adapt designs on a smartphone screen, but the Android and iOS apps are as user-friendly as the main web portal. You might be surprised of the quality of work you can get done on your mobile, which again is testament to how well put together and powerful Canva actually is.

Canva: Stock content library

Looking for Canva's free stock photo, video, and graphics library? By default, the sidebar is focused on the project’s Templates, but click on ‘Elements; instead, and scroll down until you see thumbnails for Photos and one row down, Videos. 

This is where Canva’s stock libraries were hiding. As you scroll down, you’ll see other libraries, for Audio, Charts, Frames, and more. Click on ‘See All’ for any of them to replace the sidebar with a larger view of what Canva has to offer for each of these categories.

Take Photos as an example. The sidebar will now show you trending thumbnails in an endless scroll format. Top of the sidebar is a search field, which allows you to find more specific images. 

The concept is as simple as you’d expect it to be: type in some keywords, and Canva will return a bunch of results. Notice that some thumbnails have a little gold crown to their lower right. This indicates those photos are premium ones. All those without the crown can be used for free.

Mouse over a thumbnail to reveal a circle with three dots inside it, top right. Click on that to get more information about the image, like it, add it to a folder, or see other media taken by the same photographer.

Canva : Using stock assets

To use a chosen piece of media, simply click on it, and it’s instantly added to your project. You’ll find handles on the corners and sides of the image, so you can crop and resize it to your liking. You can add as much media as you’d like into your project, and reposition them at will - you’ll notice magnetic guides will help you snap to the centre or edges of the canvas, or any other media already added to your project. All of this applies to photos, graphics, and videos Canva showcases.

You can of course use them with any template for anything Canva caters for, or should you fill your canvas with just the media you chose, you’ll be able to download it straight to your computer, via the ‘Share’ button, top right of the interface.

Select ‘Download’ from that dropdown menu, choose the correct file type you’re after, and download your media.

If that’s all you’re after, there is a much easier way: as we mentioned earlier, there’s a button top right of each thumbnail granting you access to information about it. One such data happens to be where it comes from. It seems most free ones originate from Pexels or Pixabay, while the premium ones can be found in Getty Images. Maybe it would be easier to grab them directly from the source?

As it stands, although Canva offers a stock media library, and you can browse and extract samples for your own use elsewhere, it’s not really ideally suited for use outside of its own templates. Although it can be done, there are easier ways to achieve the same goal, like grabbing them from the original libraries they came from.

Canva: Docs and ChatGPT

In recent months, the company has continued to add new tools and features to the platform. In a move away from pure graphic design, Canva Docs is the latest.

Since the dawn of the word processor, tools like Microsoft Word and Google Docs have had a fundamental problem. It’s nigh-on impossible to design smart-looking documents. A sentence with just one word too many can send everything off-kilter. Text boxes spiral off onto new pages. Images create yawning chasms of negative space no matter how many times you resize them. 

Canva Docs solves this challenge. It effectively bridges the gap between word processor and page layout designer - a sort of simplified DTP software. And it works in a similar fashion to the excellent Canva PDF Editor (and, to be fair, the platform as a whole, with its intuitive design consistency). Notably, you can take these pages and transform them into a PowerPoint-style document using the Docs to Deck function. 

Docs also features a really useful Magic Write tool. Drawing on the power of chatGPT AI, you can quickly get writing prompts and text by clicking the plus and typing what you want from the bot. In our tests, this worked really well to produce content fast - although it’s always best to give these things a good proofread.  

Canva: Final verdict

When you weigh Canva up against something like Adobe Creative Cloud, there's nowhere near the level of complexity or number of features, but then not everyone is looking for what Adobe CC has to offer – some people will prefer a simpler, more intuitive option that takes seconds to learn and get into, and that's exactly what Canva is. In fact, it's arguably a cleaner, more intuitive than its closest competitor, Adobe Express.

While advanced users are going to want more in terms of functionality and flexibility, there's no arguing with the quality of the results that Canva can come up with – the app is capable of producing some really professional-looking designs, with less effort on your part than you might think.

• Best drawing apps and digital art software: Top programs for artists and illustrators