Design.com review: the all-in-one branding platform for entrepreneurs

Design.com can be traced back to DesignCrowd, an Australian-based freelance graphic designer marketplace founded by Alec Lynch in 2007. It sits alongside BrandCrowd, a sister platform that effectively serves the same audience and exists under the same corporate umbrella.

But this isn’t a DesignCrowd review, nor is it a BrandCrowd review, so I won’t delve too much into the relationships between these brands and other historical details. In fact, I’ll cut straight to the chase.

Launched as a subsidiary and, essentially, successor to DesignCrowd in 2024, Design.com is, at its core, an AI-first web-based design platform. It essentially acts as a full-on brand identity agency, allowing small businesses and entrepreneurs to quickly create high-quality logos, business cards, websites, and social media graphics, without starting from scratch.

In this Design.com review, I’ll dive deeper into the robust platform and explore its interface, features, and subscription plans. By the end, you’ll know whether Design.com’s AI logo generator, templates, and website builder suit your needs.

Who is Design.com for?

Whether you’ve just started your entrepreneurial career or you’re launching your next project, you know how important a logo is. It’s the instantly recognizable face of your brand, grabbing attention, setting you apart from the crowd, and building trust. Yet, for many up-and-coming solopreneurs and smaller businesses, a professionally designed logo can often be out of reach.

That’s the exact gap that Design.com strives to fill. The relatively new design tool aims to be the best AI logo generator on the market, with almost 400,000 logo templates to choose from. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

As an all-in-one platform, Design.com offers a vast collection of over 1 million unique designs, 62,000+ custom vector shapes, and 750+ fonts (525+ of which are exclusive to the platform). As such, it can be used as a business card maker, or for everything from gift cards and QR codes to social media covers and posts, and even full-on website designs.

The best part? You need zero design experience to take advantage of these assets. The entire platform was built with non-designers in mind, which makes it ideal for solopreneurs, startups, and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) who either don’t have the budget for a professional designer or just don’t feel like hiring one.

First impressions and ease of use

Speaking of its non-designer-first approach, Design.com offers a super beginner-friendly experience. In fact, using the Design.com logo maker is as easy as entering your business’s name, adding a few keywords, and choosing from thousands of AI-generated options.

You can then insert more keywords and apply logo-style and color filters to narrow down the countless options. From there, it’s only a matter of picking a design and adjusting it to your specific business needs.

The customization part takes place inside Design.com’s easy-to-use editor. With it, you can change the text, layout, background, logo, and shape through a bunch of pre-made options. You can even animate certain elements of your logo using a few pre-built styles.

Then, there’s the prompt section. Here, you can describe the changes you’d like to make to the design and have the AI make them for you.

And while the Design.com logo maker is only one of the 50+ tools the platform provides, the design experience is pretty consistent across the board. Yes, there are minor differences here and there, but the steps are quite similar between tools, and you can create some pretty great designs even with zero previous skill.

What Design.com actually offers (feature breakdown)

From logos to print-ready designs, Design.com bundles dozens of tools under one roof. These can save you a ton of time as you’re building your brand, so let’s check them out in detail:

AI logo generator and editor

Taking center stage is the Design.com logo maker, an AI-powered tool that lets you describe the logo you want and then generates thousands of designs based on your input. Each design features custom images and text, so you can skip the whole generic logo thing and get started with hundreds of options in just a few seconds.

Design.com is also home to a massive library of almost 400,000 logo templates, which you can browse by keywords and industries. Moreover, both AI logo generator designs and pre-made templates can be further customized to spec in Design.com’s easy-to-use editor.

50+ branding and design tools

Even if the AI logo generator gets the most attention from solopreneurs, Design.com offers a lot more than that. From social media cover, post, and profile picture makers to link-in-bio pages and AI-powered business card, flyer, poster, name, and domain generators, this robust all-in-one tool has over 50 other tools that can save you a lot of time.

Moreover, the templates use automatic branding inheritance, so the colors and fonts you’ve chosen for your logo will carry over to other designs, as well. As such, Design.com can easily go head-to-head with some of the biggest design platforms. Some users even call it the top Canva alternative for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

File formats and technical specs

Versatility is another one of Design.com’s strong suits. There are over 750 different fonts to choose from, including 525+ exclusive ones, and 62,000 custom vector shapes.

That versatility extends to file formats, as well. You can download logos (or any other types of designs you generate and customize, for that matter) in multiple formats. These include:

• Vector files: SVG, EPS, and PDF
• Raster files: PNG and JPG
• Video files: MP4 and GIF

Keep in mind that video file formats will only be visible if you’ve added animations to your logo. You can also choose to download your design as a full logo, an icon-only version, a text-only version, or a grayscale version.

Ultimately, the format you pick should align with your specific needs. For example, if you’re planning to resize, edit, or print your design, vector files (SVG, EPS, and PDF) are a great choice. Meanwhile, raster files (PNG and JPG) are ideal for social media, website use, and white-label branding across different platforms.

Website builder and domain registration

Speaking of websites, you can absolutely make one with Design.com. Although the platform’s standard website builder is somewhat limited, it does let you create and host a basic watermarked website with up to three pages, completely free of charge.

On the other hand, the AI website builder is far more powerful. It removes watermark and page-number limitations, unlocks all website editor features, and lets you add contact forms, videos, and maps to create a far more professional-looking website.

You can then host the website and connect it to a custom domain, which you can purchase directly on Design.com. For solopreneurs and business owners, this adds immense convenience, as it means you can keep all brand assets in one place.

Merchandise and printing

Last but certainly not least is Design.com’s built-in printing service. This straightforward yet noteworthy extra service allows you to turn your digital designs into physical materials for marketing, events, or personal use.

Namely, once you’ve created a logo, you can create custom apparel, like t-shirts and caps, or have the design printed on business cards, cups, mugs, and mousepads without ever leaving the platform. And the best part? You also get free delivery on all print orders.

Pricing plans explained

One of the great things about Design.com is that it kicks things off with an entirely free plan. That means you can choose from a selection of free logos and adjust your design without spending a dime. The basic website builder is also free, and so are the digital business card maker and link-in-bio creator.

All of these options let you download your designs in high quality, with industry-standard file formats. You can also publish everything for free, which makes Design.com the go-to option for solopreneurs and business owners on a tight budget.

The free plan also includes access to 50+ design tools that sync with your logo colors, so you can easily create flyers, social media posts, and print designs. That said, downloading these and taking full advantage of the robust all-in-one platform requires a subscription plan.

At the moment, Design.com offers these three options:

Plan	Annual price	Monthly price	Key features
Starter	$60 ($5/month)	$15/month	Logo pack with unlimited changes and high-resolution video, raster, and vector file downloads, and access to 50+ design tools
Value	$72 ($6/month)	$24/month	Everything in Starter + unlocked website features
Premium	$84 ($7/month)	$29/month	Everything in Value + digital business cards and mobile-friendly link-in-bio pages

It’s worth noting that Website Builder is also available as a standalone plan. It includes hosting, unlimited pages, and all website editor features and is available at $9/month or $72/year.

What customers are saying

This Design.com review would be incomplete without checking the platform’s trustworthiness. And that’s precisely what I did by exploring its standing among customers across multiple review platforms, and, most importantly, on Trustpilot.

With almost 4,000 total comments and a rating of 4.7/5 stars, Design.com is one of the best-rated companies I’ve recently reviewed. Almost 90% of reviews are 5-star, as most customers have had an overwhelmingly positive experience with both the all-in-one design tool and the support team helping out when issues arise.

The majority of these positive comments praise Design.com’s ease of use, with the platform’s design versatility and AI-powered functionality coming in a close second.

That said, Design.com isn’t immune to negative feedback. In fact, there are a few dozen 1-star reviews on Trustpilot alone. Most of these seem to be related to billing, with a few comments from customers who were unaware that they were signing up for a subscription-based service rather than paying for a one-time logo design.

What’s missing? (honest drawbacks)

While Design.com works wonders for non-design entrepreneurs and business owners, it’s not without its drawbacks:

• Lack of customization options. Although you can adjust text, layout, background, color, and shape, Design.com is still fairly limited. As such, it may not be the best fit for brand strategists and illustrators trying to create bespoke designs.
• Not as precise as professional tools. While Design.com’s editor is super easy to use, it lacks the precision of professional graphic design tools like Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, or even the open-source Inkscape.
• Potentially formulaic AI-powered designs. Design.com’s AI-powered generators work quickly and are great for basic needs. But for most design enthusiasts, they won’t feel unique at all. After all, they’re generated from existing assets.

Final verdict: is Design.com worth it?

Ultimately, Design.com has more advantages than drawbacks. It’s a top-tier all-in-one tool for logos, social media graphics, gift cards, and even website designs. And that versatility is precisely what makes it well worth it for most solopreneurs.

The platform’s free plan is ideal for anyone who’s just getting started and doesn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on professionally designed logos. Meanwhile, the simplified interface and design-creation processes, along with dozens of quick AI-powered tools, make Design.com a top choice for time-starved business owners.

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