In August, we released several updates to our pricing plans. One significant change was the new download limit which affected all the Free plan users.
We had to introduce a two-download limit (non-renewable) because we wanted to stand by our promise always to offer a free version of Piktochart. You might be asking yourself, “how is this related?”.
In the ideal world, we wouldn’t have any costs and could offer an unlimited version of the Free plan to everyone. Unfortunately, the reality is that every plan at Piktochart generates costs for us as a business. This includes hosting, maintenance, employees’ salaries, and so on. Offering unlimited downloads in PDF and PPT would make it impossible to sustain the Free plan in the long run.
Yes, we are aware that some providers like Canva offer unlimited downloads. But unlike Canva, which has raised a total of more than $300 million from investors, Piktochart is a bootstrapped company. This means that we are 100% funded by you – our customers.
We appreciate every single one of you and are grateful that you support us. At the same time, we also understand that not everyone can afford to pay a monthly or a yearly subscription.
That’s why, as of today, we have released pay per download. We hope this will offer you more flexibility moving forward.
Below, you will find a recap of all the September releases.
Pay per download
Unlike Pro and Enterprise plan users who can download an unlimited number of visuals, Piktochart’s Free plan users have a two-download limit in their account. This limit used to be non-renewable, and the only option to increase was to upgrade to a paid plan.
We are introducing an additional option for users who used up their download limit with the September release.
As a Free plan user, you can now purchase additional download credits without upgrading to a paid subscription plan.
The cost of one download is priced at $3.50 + sales tax (varies based on location). You can purchase additional download credits by clicking on the “download” option in the top navigation bar of the Piktochart editor.
No more watermark on downloads
When you pay for additional downloads, you don’t want to have any watermark on them. That’s why, moving forward, we are getting rid of watermarks on downloads. We will still keep watermarks on embeds which, unlike downloads, are unlimited and free.
At the same time, we are also enabling export in high-quality for the Free plan users. This will allow you to download visuals like posters or banners for print in better quality.
Integration with Pexels
When you scroll through the Photos library in Piktochart, you might notice some new stock images in there. That’s because our library is now integrated with Pexels.
Pexels is a free stock photo and video website that helps designers, marketers, and everyone to find great photos and videos that can be downloaded and used for free, even in commercial campaigns.
We love the high-quality photos from Pexels because they are perfect for relaying unique and authentic visual stories or being used as background images against your texts. You can use them on social media graphics, presentations, posters, or other visual content assets where you need your message to stand out.
We encourage you to check out some of the Pexels Stories to get a peek into the stories behind the pictures.
Some of our favorite images:
What’s ahead?
We keep ourselves busy working on the new, better version of the Piktochart editor, which we can’t wait to share with you towards the end of Q4 2021. The last quarter of the year will also bring some payment improvements and currency localization for selected countries. We will share more with you soon!
