Two tools keep coming up when a shop owner asks how to make marketing visuals without a designer. Canva has been the default answer for a decade. Google Pomelli is the new one, and since April 2026 it has been available in France. So which one should a retailer actually use?
Short version: they are not the same kind of tool, and the honest answer depends on what your shop needs on a Thursday afternoon when the weekend promo has to go out. This comparison sticks to what each company documents on its own help pages, linked as we go, and was checked on 3 September 2026.
Two different tools, not two versions of the same thing
Canva is an editor. You open a template, change the text and images, and export. Around that editor Canva has built a Brand Kit, a scheduler called Content Planner, a print service, a spreadsheet-to-designs tool called Bulk Create, and a large library of templates and stock media. You do the designing; Canva makes it easy.
Pomelli is a generator. You give it your website address, it derives a "Business DNA" (colours, fonts, tone), proposes campaign ideas, and generates finished visuals. You review and download. Pomelli does the designing; you choose.
That difference explains most of what follows. Canva gives you more control and more places to send the result. Pomelli gives you speed and consistency from a single input.
Language and price
Canva is available in French, interface and help centre included, and it has a free plan. Canva Pro, which unlocks scheduling and Bulk Create, is listed at 110 € per year for one person on the French pricing page, with a free trial. Pro+ is 170 € per year per person.
Pomelli is free of charge during its Google Labs period, according to Google's Get started page, and it is available in France. But it is offered in English only: Google's availability page lists exactly one supported language. A French shop gets its campaign ideas and captions back in English and translates them.
So on price, Pomelli wins today. On language, Canva wins today. Neither of those is the interesting part for a shop.
Head to head for a retailer
Here is what each tool does with the five things a shop actually needs, sourced from the help pages linked in the last column.
| Need | Canva | Pomelli | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language | French interface and help. | English only. | Canva · Google |
| Price | Free plan; Pro 110 €/year; Pro+ 170 €/year. | Free during Labs. | Canva · Google |
| Products and prices | Bulk Create (Pro) fills a template from a CSV, Excel or Canva Sheet, up to 300 rows, as a one-time sync. Shopify Connect brings product images, videos and titles into Canva; you type the prices. | Catalog items added one at a time from a URL, by hand or from a Photoshoot; no store connection documented; no price field. | Bulk Create · Shopify Connect · Pomelli Catalog |
| Scheduling | Content Planner (Pro): Facebook Pages, Instagram Business, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack, Tumblr. One platform per design at a time; no Reels, Stories or carousels; TikTok not listed. | Download and post by hand. Instagram (professional account) can post immediately; Google Ads receives shared visuals. No scheduling documented. | Content Planner · Connected apps |
| A4 flyer templates, PDF export, and Canva Print delivering within Europe. | No print format documented; Animate in 9:16 only. | Canva Print · Pomelli Campaigns |
Read the third row twice. It is the one that decides the weekend promo. Canva can fill a template from a spreadsheet, but the spreadsheet is yours to keep current, and the sync is one-time: change a price on Monday and Tuesday's design still shows Monday's. Pomelli does not hold prices at all.
What the Thursday promo actually takes
Feature tables hide the real cost, which is your time. Here is the same weekly job, "twelve products on offer this weekend", as each tool documents it.
None of this makes Canva or Pomelli bad. It makes them tools for a different job: producing a design. A shop's job is producing this week's offers, with the right prices, everywhere its customers look, in French, and then doing it again next week.
Where Pomelli wins
You have a website with a clear identity and few or no products, you are comfortable in English, and you want a stream of on-brand ideas and visuals for free. Pomelli's Business DNA step is genuinely good at reading a brand from a URL, and Photoshoot puts a product in a clean generated scene without a photographer. A consultant, a café or a service business gets a lot from it.
Where Canva wins
You want control over every pixel, you already know your way around templates, you need to print, and you want a scheduler for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Pinterest without another subscription. Canva Pro at 110 € a year is a fair price for that, and the French interface means no translation step. If your product list is short and stable, Bulk Create from a spreadsheet covers a promo.
What neither does for a shop
Neither starts from your catalogue. Neither carries your prices from your store onto the visual. Neither generates French copy from an English-language product list. Neither schedules to WhatsApp, Telegram or TikTok. Neither puts your offers on a consumer deals site where people go specifically to look for promotions.
That is the gap Liflio is built for. It imports products and prices from Shopify and WooCommerce (PrestaShop in beta), generates posts and A4 flyers in French from those products, schedules and publishes directly to eight channels, and lists catalogues, coupons and price cuts on Liflio Deals. It is paid, from 29 € a month with a short card-backed trial, and it is not an editor: if you want to move a logo three pixels, Canva is still the better tool. We keep a sourced, dated side-by-side with Pomelli on our Pomelli alternative page.
Running a shop with prices that change every week? Start from the comparison page, then try Liflio with your own catalogue and see the Thursday promo take one pass instead of five.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Pomelli better than Canva?
They do different jobs. Pomelli generates on-brand visuals from your website with almost no input and is free during Google Labs, but it is English only and does not hold prices or schedule posts. Canva is a French-language editor with templates, a scheduler on Pro and a print service. For a shop, the deciding factor is usually the catalogue, which neither manages.
Can Canva schedule posts to Instagram and TikTok?
Canva Pro's Content Planner schedules to Facebook Pages, Instagram Business accounts, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack and Tumblr, one platform per design at a time. According to Canva's help page, Instagram Reels, Stories and multi-image posts cannot be scheduled, and TikTok is not among the listed platforms as of September 2026.
Does Pomelli work in French?
Pomelli is available in France since Google's European rollout on 21 April 2026, but Google's availability page lists English as the only supported language, and no date has been announced for French. You can feed it a French website; the ideas and captions come back in English and need translating before customers see them.
Can Canva pull my products and prices from Shopify?
Shopify Connect for Canva brings product images, videos and titles into Canva and exports designs back to product pages. It does not bring prices. Bulk Create can fill a template from a CSV that includes prices, but it is a one-time sync limited to 300 rows, so the spreadsheet has to be rebuilt whenever prices change.
Which one should a French shop choose?
If you mainly need good visuals and you work in English, try Pomelli; it is free. If you want a French editor with scheduling and print, Canva Pro is the safer choice. If your shop has a catalogue with changing prices and several channels to feed each week, look at a catalogue-first tool such as Liflio, which starts from your products instead of a template.
Liflio Team
Liflio Team