Introduction

In the current digital landscape, visual communication is no longer a luxury—it is a necessity. From marketers striving to increase engagement on social media to educators simplifying complex concepts for students, the ability to create compelling visuals is a critical skill. This demand has given rise to a plethora of infographic design tools, each promising to transform raw information into stunning graphics without requiring a degree in graphic design.

Among the frontrunners in this space are Piktochart and Easel.ly. Both platforms have carved out significant niches by offering user-friendly interfaces and extensive template libraries. However, choosing the right tool depends heavily on your specific requirements, budget, and design proficiency.

The purpose of this comparison is to provide an objective, in-depth analysis of Piktochart and Easel.ly. We will dissect their core features, user experience, integration capabilities, and pricing models to help you make an informed decision. Whether you are a small business owner, a corporate trainer, or a freelance designer, understanding the distinct advantages and limitations of these tools is essential for optimizing your content creation workflow.

Product Overview

2.1 What is Piktochart?

Piktochart is a web-based graphic design application that empowers users to create professional-grade infographics, presentations, flyers, and reports. It is widely recognized for its polished, business-oriented aesthetic and robust data visualization capabilities. Piktochart positions itself as a solution for professionals who need to communicate visual stories effectively. It utilizes a "block-based" editing system that simplifies the management of long-form infographics, making it a favorite among marketing teams and corporate communicators who prioritize high-quality output.

2.2 What is Easel.ly?

Easel.ly is a simple, straightforward infographic maker designed to be as accessible as possible. Its philosophy revolves around the idea that "thousands of people use Easel.ly to create and share visual ideas." The platform is particularly popular in the education sector due to its low barrier to entry and affordability. Easel.ly offers a vast repository of community-generated templates and objects, functioning almost like a canvas for quick, drag-and-drop creation. While it may lack some of the high-end polish of its competitors, it excels in flexibility and ease of use for beginners.

Core Features Comparison

The true value of an infographic tool lies in its feature set. Below, we break down how these two platforms stack up in critical design areas.

Templates & Design Flexibility

Piktochart offers a curated library of professionally designed templates. These are not just visually appealing; they are structured to ensure narrative flow. The designs are modern, clean, and highly customizable. Users can edit color schemes, fonts, and layout structures with precision. The "content blocks" feature allows users to clone, delete, or rearrange sections of an infographic easily, which is a massive time-saver for long-format designs.

Easel.ly, on the other hand, boasts a massive volume of templates, though the quality can be inconsistent. While there are premium, professionally designed options, many templates are user-generated. The platform offers extreme flexibility; you are not confined to a grid system, meaning you can place elements anywhere on the canvas. However, this freedom can sometimes lead to alignment issues for inexperienced designers compared to Piktochart's snap-to-grid features.

Data Visualization & Charting Options

For users transforming raw numbers into visual stories, this is a pivotal category.

Piktochart is clearly the superior choice for Data Visualization. It allows for interactive charts where viewers can hover over data points to see specific values—a feature crucial for digital reports. Easel.ly provides standard charting tools that are sufficient for school projects or simple statistics but may fall short for complex business analytics.

Media Library & Asset Management

Both platforms provide libraries of icons, photos, and illustrations. Piktochart integrates with Unsplash, offering high-resolution stock photography directly within the editor. Its icon library is vector-based and consistently styled. Easel.ly offers a massive library of objects and media, but the style consistency varies. You might find a flat-design icon next to a skeuomorphic clip-art image, requiring the user to curate carefully to maintain a cohesive look.

Collaboration & Sharing Capabilities

Collaboration is where enterprise-grade tools separate themselves from individual tools. Piktochart offers "Piktochart for Teams," which includes project sharing, commenting, and role-based permissions. This makes it viable for a marketing department where approval workflows are necessary. Easel.ly allows for sharing via email or link and has a "Group Share" feature, but it lacks the sophisticated real-time collaboration or detailed permission settings found in Piktochart.

Integration & API Capabilities

Piktochart Integrations and Available APIs

Piktochart has developed a strong ecosystem of integrations aimed at improving workflow efficiency. It connects seamlessly with Google Sheets and Excel for dynamic data linking. If you update the data in your spreadsheet, the chart in Piktochart updates automatically. Furthermore, it offers integrations with SurveyMonkey, allowing users to visualize survey results instantly. While Piktochart does not offer a public API for building custom applications on top of their engine, their export options (including HTML for embedding) serve as a functional bridge for web integration.

Easel.ly Integrations and API Support

Easel.ly keeps things simpler. Its primary integration points are regarding export and sharing (e.g., social media platforms). It does not offer the same level of dynamic data integration as Piktochart. However, Easel.ly has previously offered a REST API for specific partners or enterprise clients to create visuals programmatically, though this is not a core feature marketed to the general public. For the average user, the focus is on manual creation rather than automated integration.

Usage & User Experience

User Interface & Onboarding Process

When you first log into Piktochart, you are greeted with a dashboard that is clean, intuitive, and modern. The onboarding process includes a helpful tutorial that guides you through the dashboard. The editor uses a sidebar on the left for assets and a toolbar on the top for properties, a standard and effective layout.

Easel.ly presents a more "blank canvas" approach. The interface is simple but feels slightly dated compared to Piktochart's sleek UI. The onboarding is minimal, encouraging users to dive straight into a template.

Customization Workflow & Ease of Use

Piktochart utilizes a Drag-and-Drop mechanism that feels solid and responsive. The interface handles layers and grouping well. The standout workflow feature is the ability to adjust the canvas size by dragging the bottom handle of a content block, automatically adjusting the total height of the infographic.

Easel.ly also uses Drag-and-Drop but offers a looser feel. You can drag an object anywhere, resize it, and rotate it. The workflow is very fast for simple tasks but can become cumbersome for complex designs requiring precise alignment, as the snap-to-grid functionality is less rigorous than Piktochart's.

Mobile & Offline Access

Neither platform offers a fully robust offline desktop application for editing; both are cloud-based. Piktochart offers an iPad app which allows for viewing and presenting, but heavy editing is best done on a desktop browser. Easel.ly is also browser-centric. Both platforms offer responsive websites, but creating complex infographics on a smartphone screen is not recommended for either due to screen real estate limitations.

Customer Support & Learning Resources

Documentation, Tutorials, and Webinars

Piktochart excels in education. They offer the "Piktochart Academy," which includes video tutorials, design courses, and webinars. These resources teach not just how to use the tool, but the principles of design and data storytelling.

Easel.ly provides a blog and a help center with articles and YouTube tutorials. Their content is practical and helpful, often focusing on how to use infographics for education and SEO.

Community Forums & Knowledge Base

Piktochart maintains a comprehensive Knowledge Base that is searchable and well-organized. Easel.ly’s support page is functional but less extensive.

Response Times and Support Channels

• Piktochart: Offers email support and, for higher-tier plans, priority support. Response times are generally within 24 hours.
• Easel.ly: Offers email support and chat support (availability varies). They are known for being friendly and accessible, particularly to the education community.

Real-World Use Cases

To truly understand the utility of these tools, we must look at where they are applied most effectively.

Marketing and Social Media Infographics

Piktochart is the winner here. Its templates are designed with conversion and brand authority in mind. The ability to upload brand assets (logos, fonts, color palettes) ensures that all social media graphics remain on-brand. The high-resolution export guarantees that images look crisp on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

Educational and Training Materials

Easel.ly shines in the classroom. Teachers use it to create syllabi, and students use it for book reports or history timelines. Its low cost and simple interface make it perfect for a grade 6 classroom where the goal is learning to visualize information without getting bogged down in complex design software.

Business Reports and Presentations

For pitch decks, quarterly reports, and internal memos, Piktochart is the industry standard between the two. The ability to import complex data and present it in interactive charts makes it suitable for board meetings. Easel.ly’s aesthetic is often too informal for high-stakes corporate environments.

Target Audience

Small Businesses and Startups

Startups often lack a dedicated design team. Piktochart serves this demographic well by acting as a "designer in a box," providing professional results that can be used in investor pitches.

Educators and Students

Easel.ly targets this group aggressively with special pricing and features tailored for schools. It is a staple in EdTech for visual assignments.

Marketing Teams and Designers

Professional marketing teams will find Piktochart indispensable due to its team collaboration features and brand kit management. Professional designers might find both tools limiting compared to Adobe Illustrator, but will use Piktochart for quick turnaround tasks.

Pricing Strategy Analysis

Pricing is often the deciding factor. Both offer free versions, but the limitations differ significantly.

Free Plan vs. Paid Tiers

Value for Money

Easel.ly is significantly more affordable, often costing a fraction of Piktochart’s price. For users who need quantity over premium quality, Easel.ly offers immense value.
Piktochart commands a higher price point, but the value is justified by the professional quality of assets, the robustness of the editor, and the data security features.

Enterprise and Team Licensing Options

Piktochart offers specific Enterprise plans with SSO (Single Sign-On), security reviews, and dedicated account management. Easel.ly offers "Easel.ly for Business," but it is lighter on enterprise-grade security features compared to Piktochart.

Performance Benchmarking

Load Times and Rendering Performance

In our testing, Piktochart requires a bit more bandwidth to load due to its heavier, feature-rich editor. However, once loaded, the experience is smooth.
Easel.ly loads quickly because it is lighter, but it can experience lag when the canvas is crowded with hundreds of individual objects.

Stability under Heavy Use

Piktochart is highly stable. We experienced no crashes during the creation of complex, multi-block infographics. Easel.ly is generally stable, though browser memory issues can occur if a student duplicates an object hundreds of times on a single canvas.

Export Quality and File Formats

• Piktochart: Exports to PNG, PDF, and PowerPoint (PPTX). The PDF export handles text as vectors, meaning it remains sharp at any zoom level.
• Easel.ly: Exports to JPEG, PNG, and PDF. The export quality is good for web use, but the print quality on lower tiers may not match the crispness of Piktochart.

Alternative Tools Overview

While Piktochart and Easel.ly are excellent, they exist in a crowded market.

• Canva: The behemoth of the industry. Canva offers infographic tools alongside social media posts, video editing, and printing. It is a "jack of all trades." If you need an all-in-one design suite, Canva is a strong contender.
• Venngage: Known as the "infographic maker for business." Venngage is perhaps the closest direct competitor to Piktochart, focusing heavily on B2B data visualization.
• Visme: Another high-end competitor that blurs the line between presentation software and infographic design, offering strong animation features.

When to consider others: Choose Canva if you need to design everything (business cards, t-shirts, websites). Choose Venngage if your charts are extremely complex. Stick to Piktochart for a dedicated, high-quality infographic experience, and Easel.ly for budget-friendly, quick visuals.

Conclusion & Recommendations

Key Takeaways

The choice between Piktochart and Easel.ly comes down to the dichotomy of Professionalism vs. Accessibility.
Piktochart is a powerhouse tool built for creating polished, data-driven content that reflects well on a brand. It invests heavily in UX, support, and integration.
Easel.ly is a democratizing force, making visual creation accessible to students, teachers, and casual users at a very low price point.

Recommended Use Cases

• Choose Piktochart if: You are a marketer, business analyst, or entrepreneur who needs to present data professionally. If you need high-resolution PDFs for print or interactive charts for the web, Piktochart is the correct investment.
• Choose Easel.ly if: You are a teacher, student, or blogger on a strict budget. If your goal is to create a quick, fun visual to explain a concept without worrying about corporate branding guidelines, Easel.ly is the perfect companion.

FAQ

Can I import existing data into each platform?
Yes. Piktochart allows dynamic linking to Excel and Google Sheets. Easel.ly allows for static CSV uploads.

How secure is my content?
Piktochart offers password protection for published infographics and enterprise-grade security for team accounts. Easel.ly content defaults to public on the free plan, so paid plans are required to keep designs private.

What are the limits of the free plans?
Piktochart's free plan limits the number of active projects and retains a watermark. Easel.ly's free plan restricts access to the majority of templates and assets, serving mostly as a trial of the editor's mechanics.