Best YouTube Banner Makers – 10 Top Banner Makers to Use in 2021

Best YouTube Banner Makers – 10 Top Banner Makers to Use in 2021

Here are the lists of the best youtube banner makers – 10 top options to consider in 2021. In case you’ve been wondering, the answer is no – you don’t really need a specialized YouTube banner maker to create your channel art.

However, if you’re looking to keep visitors on your channel page longer, you might want to work with nothing but the best YouTube banner maker.

Well, here’s the thing. While the YouTube channel header might understandably seem trivial to some users, the fact of the matter is, it happens to be one thing that welcomes visitors to your YouTube channel page. YouTube has even purposely designed it to be adequately prominent across all its platform versions – PC, Mobile, and TV.

Best YouTube banner makers

As such, it’s the banner – not the video thumbnails – that quickly connects with the subconsciousness of every visitor, consequently forming the first impression of your entire YouTube channel.

You see, the general rule of first impressions is, it only takes about seven seconds to form a judgment. And if you thought that’s as bad as it gets, it turns out people are not even that patient online. According to research conducted by Google, internet users typically form opinions within 50 milliseconds of landing on your site – with visual design being their primary consideration.

Now, that alone places the YouTube banner smack in the middle of it all. This is what your visitors will primarily base their opinion on before taking the next step.

And so, with stakes that high, it’s only natural that serious YouTubers will turn to the best YouTube banner maker.

What you get from the best YouTube banner maker

The good thing about YouTube banner makers is that they’re specifically optimized for channel art creation. The leading solutions on the market, for instance, are known to offer an extensive array of elegant pre-built templates, along with easy-to-use customization tools.

Then get this. You don’t even have to pay to access them. While most of them are premium, some of the top YouTube banner makers offer decent capabilities for free.

The best YouTube banner makers in 2021

Well, I’ve been testing them out for a while now. And, based on my first-hand assessments, I’ve been able to conclusively identify the 10 most outstanding ones in the industry.

You might want to go ahead and read along to find out which is the best YouTube banner maker for your channel art. They are:

• Canva
• Adobe Spark
• Snappa
• Placeit
• Creatopy / Bannersnack
• Fotor
• BeFunky
• PicMonkey
• FotoJet
• Venngage

The 10 best places to create YouTube banners that win more viewers

1. Canva

Canva is still one of the best YouTube banner makers available

Canva happens to be one of the most popular graphical editors on the web for several good reasons. When it comes to creating YouTube channel art, for example, Canva generously gives you more than 100 stylish templates to work with. And that’s not all. You also get a huge selection of stock photos that you could use on your YouTube banner.

The design process itself is pretty straightforward, as Canva additionally provides an intuitive easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. Beginners should have an easy time customizing their banner templates – since all it takes is dragging and dropping layout elements and then tweaking their visual settings.

You can, for example, apply filters, flip/rotate elements, adjust colors and fonts, plus introduce additional illustrations and images from Canva’s rich asset library.

The only problem is, while Canva’s YouTube banner maker is free to individuals, some of its high-quality assets can only be accessed through a paid plan.

Features:

• Collaborate with team members.
• Upload your own images, photos, or videos.
• Pick from millions of free stock videos, photos, images, GIFs, and illustrations.
• Work with professionally designed templates.
• Built-in image editor.
• 5+ GB of cloud storage
• Resize designs infinitely.

Pricing:

On Canva’s free plan, individuals should be able to create decent YouTube channel art without paying anything extra. It comes with enough features for basic editing.

If you’re collaborating with a small team, though, you might want to purchase Canva Pro for $12.99 per month. Canva Enterprise, on the other hand, is appropriate for large teams with over 20 members – at the cost of $30 per month per person.

2. Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark can be used to make stunning YouTube banners

Coming in as the second best YouTube banner maker is Adobe Spark, which – as you’ve probably figured out already – was created by the same company that developed Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and the likes. So, of course, you can bet Adobe Spark knows its stuff when it comes to design and editing.

That said, Adobe Spark is more of an easy-to-use tool for creating professional animations, videos, flyers, collages, and graphics. If you need to design your YouTube header, all you need to do is proceed with its “YouTube Channel Art” option, and voila! Adobe Spark will help you create everything in five simple steps.

For starters, you’ll get a host of attractive pre-built YouTube channel art templates to pick from. Then, once you’ve made your choice, you should be able to customize various aspects of the template using Adobe Spark’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor.

If you’re on a free account, however, expect your YouTube banner to come with an Adobe Spark watermark. You can only get rid of it by switching to a premium plan.

Features:

• Professionally designed templates.
• Saves your creations.
• Auto-magical resizing tool.
• Text animation.
• Animated stickers from GIPHY.
• Automatically integrate your brand logo, colors, and fonts.
• Access the complete library of beautiful Adobe Fonts and premium templates.
• Create, manage, and share assets and templates.
• Pick from thousands of free images and icons.

Pricing:

While the Starter Plan is available for free, you can only unleash Adobe Spark’s full design power by paying for the premium version – which starts at $9.99 a month. Adobe Creative Cloud subscribers, however, are exempted from the rule, allowing them to access the premium features for free.

3. Snappa

Snappa graphic design software

Joining Canva and Adobe Spark on the list of the best free YouTube banner makers is Snappa, a graphic editor that helps non-designers create stylish illustrations for social media, blogs, ads, etc.

On its free account, you’ll have access to more than five million high-resolution photos and graphics, over 6,000 channel art templates, plus an allowance of three downloads per month. Premium users, on the other hand, get the privilege of downloading an unlimited number of creations per month.

Whichever you choose, you’ll certainly enjoy working with Snappa’s user-friendly interface and graphic design tools. What’s more, you get to connect to not just YouTube, but also the rest of the popular social media platforms. Snappa even tops it off with a feature that automatically resizes your YouTube banner for repurposing across other social platforms.

Features:

• Repurpose YouTube channel art for other social media platforms.
• Customizable graphics, shapes, and text.
• Access to over five million high-resolution royalty-free stock photos.
• Professionally designed YouTube channel art templates.
• Remove image backgrounds
• Custom font uploads.
• Team collaboration.

Pricing:

Snappa won’t charge you anything as long as you’re contented with a limit of three downloads per month. Otherwise, its Pro version will cost you $15 a month, while the Team package stretches to accommodate up to five users for $30 per month.

4. Placeit

Placeit landing page

At first, Placeit might feel overwhelming because of all the tools and templates it comes with. You’ll find a mockup generator for all sorts of business-related mockups, a video maker, a logo maker, plus an online graphics designer that covers ads, social media illustrations, and flyers.

As it turns out, however, Placeit is actually pretty straightforward. Its YouTube banner maker gets you started with more than 130 elegant templates to choose from. Then, once you’ve picked one, its online designer swings into action and offer you simple customization tools. You can use them to tweak, among other elements, your channel art’s font, text, background, and layout. Imagine getting to do all that without even registering an account.

Features:

• Over 130 pre-built YouTube banner templates.
• Drag and drop your designs.
• Personalize channel header font, text, background, and layout.
• Unlimited design downloads.
• Easy-to-use interface.
• Design and download without account registration.
• Cloud storage.

Pricing:

Placeit allows you to jump straight into YouTube banner creation without signing up. But, the kicker is, your channel header download will come embedded with a Placeit watermark.

On a brighter note, though, you can avoid that by paying at least $14.95 for a subscription package, which will even grant you access to thousands of design templates.

5. Creatopy

Creatopy is a drag and crop tool for making YouTube banners

Previously known as Bannersnack, Creatopy is a visual design platform that has deservedly earned its spot as one of the best YouTube banner maker tools out there.

This is one area where you won’t be required to possess any graphic design skills. As a beginner, you can fire up Creatopy’s drag-and-drop editor and then proceed to create your channel art right off the bat. And while you’re at it, you’ll notice that its tools are particularly ideal for animated banners, including interactive static HTML headers.

You don’t have to start from scratch, though. Creatopy offers a rich array of professionally designed templates to make your work much easier.

Unfortunately, however, Creatopy isn’t exactly the cheapest YouTube banner maker. Its premium plans are considerably pricier than similar packages offered by its closest competitors.

Features:

• Over two million stock photos and videos.
• Intuitive drag-and-drop graphics editor.
• Download your designs as PNG or JPG.
• Collection of professionally designed templates.
• Apply your brand’s color palette, typography, and imagery to your channel headers.
• Repurpose content after auto-resizing.
• Typography presets.
• Create animated designs.
• Team collaboration.

Pricing:

Although you can start off without paying anything, the free package here will limit you to three designs. Plus, you’ll have about 1,000 free templates to work with.

If you’d want more capabilities, the premium version of Creatopy will cost you at least $32 per user per month – or an equivalent of $17 per user per month when you proceed with the yearly billing option. That should remove the limitations, granting you an unlimited number of designs, over 8,000 template options, plus more than two million stock photos and videos.

6. Fotor

Fotor is one of the best YouTube banner makers available online

If you’re thinking of creating your channel header from photos, then Fotor is certainly worth a try. This happens to be the best YouTube banner maker when it comes to photo editing and design.

But, not because of its name. Rather, Fotor is an incredibly powerful graphic designer that specializes in fine photo editing.

You can, for example, use its tools to adjust the color temperature of your banner photos, as well as their saturation, brightness, and contrast. The platform also allows you to introduce filters, change shades, plus tweak advanced HDR settings.

In short, therefore, Fotor is more like a web-based replica of Photoshop that manages to double as a YouTube banner maker. The design interface itself looks a little like Canva’s, but with much more editing capabilities.

Now, that alone makes Fotor a double-edged sword. You see, while these robust tools make it perfectly suitable for experienced graphic designers, the situation is not quite the same on the other end of the spectrum. The many features only complicate things for beginners.

Features:

• Built-in library of stock photos, images, vectors, and illustrations.
• Customize templates with your own text and images.
• Template library that covers nearly all themes and styles.
• Intuitive interface drag-and-drop editor.
• Design auto-resizing.
• Cloud storage.
• 300+ stylish fonts.
• 100+ photo frames.
• High dynamic range (HDR) tech.
• 200+ photo collage layouts.
• Advanced beauty touch-up.

Pricing:

Thankfully, Fotor happens to be generous enough to offer a permanently free plan. On the flip side, though, it turns out that arrangement only comes with basic design and editing capabilities.

If you want more, you’ll have to part with at least $8.99 per month to unlock advanced editing tools.

7. BeFunky

befunky homepage

Joining Fotor in the league of specialized photo editors is BeFunky, a design tool that rightly describes itself as an “all-in-one creative platform.” That means it essentially tries to enhance your creativity through graphic design, collage making, and photo editing.

This is where you come when you need various photo effects on your YouTube banner. You see, BeFunky’s photo effects library happens to be one of the largest on the web – with over 185 options across 30 different categories. You can, for instance, customize your channel art with various shades of Chromatic, Pop Art, Pin Hole, Old Photo, Vintage, Instant, and Oil Painter effects.

But, it doesn’t stop there. BeFunky further allows you to add vector graphics to your YouTube banners, as well as customize your designs with collage layouts, plus touch-ups.

And no – you don’t need to register an account to get started. You can go ahead and create your banners straightaway, after which you could proceed to download them in high resolution.

Features:

• Over a million free stock photos.
• Professionally designed YouTube banner templates.
• Drag and drop graphic designer.
• Thousands of premium graphics, stickers, and icons.
• Customizable digital photo frames.
• Smart photo enhancement tool.
• Photo batch processing.
• Collection of artsy effects for enhancing photos.
• Background remover.
• Cutout tool.
• Clone tool.
• Extensive photo effects library.
• Image touch-up.

Pricing:

BeFunky’s free version is pretty decent, as it offers all the basic graphic design and photo editing tools that you might need to create a standard YouTube banner.

Its premium package, on the other hand, provides more power along with advanced capabilities for $8.99 a month or $59.88 per year (which translates to $4.99 per month).

8. PicMonkey

PicMonkey is one of our pciks for the best YouTube banner makers

If you’re looking to design your YouTube banner on a simpler version of Photoshop, I’d strongly recommend that you try out PicMonkey.

This is yet another versatile cloud-based photo editor that focuses specifically on creating social media images, including YouTube’s channel art. You can think of it as a lighter version of Photoshop, without all the technical jargon. It is so user-friendly that even beginners should have an easy time customizing their selected templates with PicMonkey’s advanced editing tools.

Features:

• Millions of stunning authentic stock photos.
• Hundreds of YouTube banner templates.
• Autosaving to our cloud storage.
• Customize your image’s size, shape, color.
• Add your logo to your channel art.
• Add graphics and style your text.
• Team collaboration in real-time.
• Design animation.

Pricing:

Unfortunately, PicMonkey doesn’t offer a permanently free package. The best you can get here is a free trial, which runs for only seven days – leaving you with three subscription options.

You could purchase the Basic plan for $7.99 per month or $72 per year, Pro for $12.99 per month or $120 per year, or maybe Business for $23 per month or $228 per year.

9. FotoJet

Fotojet

FotoJet is a free graphic designer that’s uniquely developed to help you convert your photos into stunning posters, photo cards, collages, and social media illustrations like YouTube channel headers.

It’s not entirely free, though. While FotoJet’s free account comes with basic editing capabilities, it’s on the premium version where you actually get to play around with advanced editing tools and privileges. That includes access to more than 800 templates, over 30 font options, more than 20 photo effects, at least 30 graphic overlays, over 300 clipart images, etc.

And while you work on your channel art design, you’ll notice that FotoJet’s editing interface is built to give you seamless access to all its layout elements. You can easily add photos, clipart, background, text, and templates, as well as tweak their individual appearance.

Features:

• No download or registration is required.
• Dozens of YouTube banner templates.
• 20+ premium frames.
• 30+ premium overlays.
• 300+ premium clipart images.
• 20+ premium photo effects.
• 30+ premium fonts.
• Up to 500MB of storage space.
• Custom canvas size.

Pricing:

Apart from offering basic editing capabilities, FotoJet’s free version tends to add a watermark to its downloads. To avoid that, you’ll have to pay at least $6.99 per month or $39.99 per year for the premium package.

10. Venngage

Vennagge is one of our picks for the best YouTube banner makers

As an online graphics editor that largely specializes in creating infographics, Venngage is the best YouTube banner maker for information-based channel headers. This is what you turn to if you’re trying to showcase charts, statistics, facts, pointers, data, and descriptive illustrations on your channel banner.

In addition to tens of channel art templates, you’ll get access to a built-in library with free pictures, symbols, icons, stock photos, abstract drawings, and illustrations. You can use these to create colorful but insightful, thought-provoking banners.

The design process itself is admirably simple and straightforward – regardless of whether you’re starting from scratch, or customizing a pre-built template.

Features:

• Downloads your YouTube banner as a high-quality PDF or PNG.
• Adds call to action.
• Professionally designed YouTube banner templates.
• Adds embellishments, icons, and shapes.
• Free charts.
• Real-time team collaboration.
• Cloud storage.
• Intuitive drag-and-drop designer.
• Millions of icons, stock photos, and illustrations.

Pricing:

While it’s commendable that Venngage starts you off on a free package, the truth of the matter is, you’ll be limited to five designs and five image uploads. What’s more, Venngage will go ahead and plaster its watermark on all your creations.

Well, you could try to improve this situation by upgrading to the cheapest premium plan for $19 per month per user. But, that won’t sort out the watermark issue. Venngage only drops its watermarks when you commit to its much pricier Business plan for $49 per user per month.

My Final thought

Which is the best YouTube banner maker for your channel?

So which one of these tools is the best YouTube banner maker for your channel? Do you have your favorites?

For me, Canva is number one. But, here’s the thing – although I’ve ranked all of them based on multiple consideration factors, you don’t have to strictly abide by our lineup. Rather, the best YouTube banner maker for your channel/business should be determined based on the type of channel art you intend to create, your editing skills, as well as your project budget.

If you’re planning to work with photos, for instance, you might want to consider BeFunky, PicMonkey, Fotor, or maybe FotoJet. The likes of Canva and Adobe Spark, on the other hand, are best reserved for in-depth graphic design, while Creatopy is the best YouTube banner maker for animations.

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Which YouTube banner maker have you used? Let us know in the comments section below!

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