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Design tools.

10 apps · 2,841 reviews held · 1,267 negative · 2026-09-02 snapshot

The market’s shape

2.1star
How angry
45%
Negative reviews
6%
Room to enter
9 of 10
Willingness to pay

Mostly solved: ads. 10 of 10 apps run below the store’s typical rate on it, while 10 of 10 still carry limits & caps complaints.

3 gaps.

Shares of this market’s 1,267 negative reviews.

Limits & capsextreme

8.4% vs 1.9% typical store-wide.

Counted in 106 reviews · 10 of 10 apps · 2.1star mean

What they said · 3 of 106
  • Linearity Curve Graphic Design1star· Sep 3, 2026

    enough!!! — it’s so disappointing to see what was once a great app turn into nothing more than a cash grab. i understand the need to have “premium features” that enable the company to keep the lights on but to keep the “export” and “print” options behind a paywall??? absolutely ridiculous and greedy. the fact that there’s a limit to how many active projects you can have at a time is something i ne

  • Canva AI Photo & Video Editor1star· Aug 10, 2026

    Used to be so good! — EVERYTHING behind a paywall. You can’t filter free things anymore, even the most basic designs require you to pay. SO over it

  • Linearity Curve Graphic Design3star· Jul 21, 2026

    Pretty good, export locked behind pro — This app has some really nice features but for some reason the ability to export your stuff to print, etc. is locked behind pro. I’ll have to resort to screenshots for now. Really, I have to ask why it’s behind pro, if from many of the reviews I’ve seen I’ve heard that it’s simply pushed people away. I think that most people who pay for pro are doing it fo

Named problems · 1
  • Core feature locked behind the paywall15 of 106

UXelevated

7.2% vs 4.9% typical store-wide.

Counted in 91 reviews · 10 of 10 apps · 2.5star mean

What they said · 3 of 91
  • Linearity Curve Graphic Design1star· Aug 24, 2026

    Money suck of burning hot garbage — I’m sure this app is great for avid users but I only needed it for a couple of images and so I was using the free version and I am not a fan of playing the game of “free for 7 days” subscription preview. I would subscribe if I found it been easier to use. I had to use AI to help me navigate within this app because it is not intuitive. Even AI struggled. But

  • Canva AI Photo & Video Editor1star· Aug 19, 2026

    Stupid — The app is so minimal. Makes it difficult to use. The desktop version is great but the app makes me so mad. Wish they could fix it. Never comes out clear and always have to adjust sizes after downloading images. So irritating.

  • Canva AI Photo & Video Editor1star· Aug 16, 2026

    Impossible to cancel — Don’t do the free trial. They won’t refund you after you automatically get enrolled and can’t find the cancel spot which is hidden. I’ve never even used this because it’s too confusing and keep getting charged. Won’t Refund me

Billingelevated

42.9% vs 30.8% typical store-wide.

Counted in 544 reviews · 10 of 10 apps · 2.1star mean

What they said · 3 of 544
  • Linearity Curve Graphic Design1star· Sep 3, 2026

    enough!!! — it’s so disappointing to see what was once a great app turn into nothing more than a cash grab. i understand the need to have “premium features” that enable the company to keep the lights on but to keep the “export” and “print” options behind a paywall??? absolutely ridiculous and greedy. the fact that there’s a limit to how many active projects you can have at a time is something i ne

  • Linearity Curve Graphic Design1star· Aug 30, 2026

    SCAM — Spent days on a project on this app, but when it came time to save and export the project, guess what? This app forces payment for pro version. Cannot save my work at all, in any format, without payment. Ridiculous. Wasted my time.

  • Linearity Curve Graphic Design1star· Aug 24, 2026

    Money suck of burning hot garbage — I’m sure this app is great for avid users but I only needed it for a couple of images and so I was using the free version and I am not a fan of playing the game of “free for 7 days” subscription preview. I would subscribe if I found it been easier to use. I had to use AI to help me navigate within this app because it is not intuitive. Even AI struggled. But

Named problems · 4
  • Trial converted without clear consent48 of 544
  • Price judged too high for the value41 of 544
  • Cancellation blocked or broken9 of 544
  • Charge the user never authorised7 of 544

Also counted

ThemeOf 1,267 negatives
  • Performance187 · 14.8% · 10 apps
  • Support52 · 4.1% · 9 apps
  • Login & auth51 · 4.0% · 6 apps
  • Ads12 · 0.9% · 5 apps
  • Sync & data10 · 0.8% · 4 apps
  • Accuracy5 · 0.4% · 4 apps

The tick marks the store-typical rate. A review can mention more than one theme, so these sum past 100%.

Is anyone looking for this?

What Apple and Google complete after design tools, in their order.

Who they're for
ui uxinterior designgraphic designclaudeweb development3d printingsoftware developmenthtml
Google
design toolsdesign tools freedesign tools softwaredesign tools prodesign tools examplesdesign tools duct sizerdesign tools onlinedesign tools ai
App Store
ai home design freeai video generatorapps with free interior design toolsfree graphic design appai video editordesign my modelgraphic designgraphic design free

Marked App Store phrases are searched, but no app in this market says them in its name. Audiences are what Apple and Google complete after “design tools for”, with the query stripped.

Potential customers

People the apps here do not serve, and what they asked for.

  • Wants lesstoo many features 7 · just a basic one 210

Counted in 1 to 4 star reviews. The small numbers are how many reviews named each thing. What they wrote is in the free trial.

Who’s in it

All 10 apps counted in this market · 2026-09-02.

Installs are Google's own count, captured 2026-09-06. 1 of 10 apps have an Android listing we could match. A dash means we could not pair the two stores, not that the app is absent from Play.

What they charge, and what it costs them

Prices from Apple’s public pages; the share counts payment-mechanics language only.

AppMoney complaints
Logo Maker, Design Creator.$4.99–$49.99 · 7 tiers21.6% of 37
AI Logo Maker: Graphic Design$1.99–$39.99 · 10 tiers20.4% of 152
Graphic Design & Logo Creator.$3.99–$99.99 · 10 tiers11.9% of 159
Linearity Curve Graphic Design$7.99–$119.99 · 9 tiers6.8% of 235
Concepts$1.99–$39.99 · 10 tiers5.5% of 91
FLYP - Fashion Design Studio$0–$99.99 · 9 tiers3.4% of 88
Canva AI Photo & Video Editor$1.99–$143.99 · 9 tiers2.7% of 148
3D modeling: Design my model$5.99–$39.99 · 4 tiers0% of 77
Deko: AI Home Design & Remodel$4.99–$99.99 · 6 tiers0% of 32

Browse the apps behind these counts

Every app we count, with the complaint it runs furthest above the store’s typical rate.

Open the app library

Is there a market for a new design tool?

10 apps compete on this shelf, holding 2,841 App Store reviews. And the widest unfixed complaint, limits & caps, runs in 10 of 10 of them at 8.4% of negative reviews against 1.9% typical. Those are counts, not a verdict. The page shows what is unfixed, not whether to build.

What do users complain about most in design tools?

1. Limits & caps: in 10 of 10 apps, 8.4% of negative reviews; 2. UX: in 10 of 10 apps, 7.2% of negative reviews; 3. Billing: in 10 of 10 apps, 42.9% of negative reviews.

How many design tool reviews did App Imp count?

2,841 US App Store reviews across 10 apps, 1,267 of them negative. Counted on the 2026-09-02 snapshot, never estimated.

How markets are ranked

We give each market a mark out of 100 for seven things (nobody's fixed it 20 · above the norm 15 · how angry 10 · room to build 15 · room to enter 15 · getting bigger 20 · willingness to pay 5). Then we multiply the marks together. We do not average them.

Averaging lets a market hide one bad problem behind good numbers. Multiplying means one bad mark pulls the whole score down. That is the point. A market you cannot win is still a market you cannot win, however badly it is served.

Each mark has a fixed rule. Nobody’s fixed it and willingness to pay are plain shares. Above the norm maxes out at 4 times the store’s usual rate. How angry runs from star3.0 down to star1.5. Room to enter is what the biggest app does not own. Getting bigger hits 100 at 10% growth. Room to build is different. It is a sweet spot, not a size. A market can be too small to live on, or too big to break into.

If we cannot count something, we leave it out. We never guess it. The score only sorts this list. Every other number you see on a market is counted.

How this is counted

Every number is arithmetic over the reviews we hold, re-counted weekly: nothing modelled, nothing scored. Themes come from a frozen pattern classifier rather than a model reading reviews, so the same review always lands in the same bucket. A market rate is pooled across every app here; the store rate is the same count across 12,728 apps. A complaint is only called a gap when at least half the market carries it, at least 20 reviews are behind it, and the market’s rate is elevated above the store’s, the same cutoff used everywhere on this site, because a problem concentrated in one app is that app’s bug, and a problem every app on the store shares is nobody’s gap. This market has no full report yet, so the per-app notes are absent rather than estimated. The anger axis is counted either way: mean star of the reviews carrying each theme, from the same classifier as the counts above.