Literally on the landing page they have two columns comparing:
Affinity vs Affinity + Canva premium plans
And the FAQs under it are trying, repetitively, to upsell the Canva AI plans:
Are AI features available?
Yes. With a Canva premium plan you can unlock Canva AI features in Affinity.
Can I access AI tools without a Canva Pro or other premium plan?
No, these are only available to those with Canva premium accounts.
Up to 10 or 12 times, I think I've seen it just in that FAQ.
Freemium definition: A type of business model that offers basic features of a product or service to users at no cost and charges a premium for supplemental or advanced features.
Yes, you can add on additional AI if you want it. But, the product is not at all limited in features. It is a complete product, 100% of what we were paying for before, now for free, plus new features, also free.
I would define it more like a lost-leader than freemium.
Freemium would imply it's a stripped down version of what they used to sell, but that's not what's happening there. You get every feature that used to be behind a paywall for free and then they slapped some AI features on top.
If anything, I'm happy it's behind a paywall instead of ruining the core experience.
It is a freemium model, but they are doing it in the proper way. I’m a bit worried this could lead to enshittification down the road, but for now I’m glad they’re doing this, will definitely give it another try, and might throw in a few bucks even. (Especially if they reconstider their stance on Linux support!)
