Review: The three best free online infographic generators

Until recently infographics were used mainly as a teaching tool by educators seeking interesting ways in which to display information to learners. Of late however the successful use of infographics within the marketing industry has caused the popularity of infographics to skyrocket.

Infographics are able to tell a story which regular data analysis methods just cannot do. It is entirely unique in that the data displayed has a clear beginning, middle and end within the infographic and can guide viewers along a very specific line of thought.

Infographic agencies

Additionally companies are finding that infographics are the optimal way in which to display company data regarding corporate vision, sales numbers, marketing tactics and countless other information blocks. As such, a new marketing niche industry has sprung up with the arrival of agencies exclusively producing infographics. Companies are paying agencies several thousand dollars for the production of infographics.

Free infographic generators

In the current economic climate this isn’t a viable option for many small businesses and individuals seeking infographics. Fortunately there are now several websites which host infographic generators with free features. We review the top four –

www.easel.ly

About: Easel.ly is an infographic generator currently in beta mode. It is currently completely free and offers several template and design options.

Template Options: Easel.ly currently offers 16 templates for use. They are fairly standard in size with portrait and landscape templates available.

Best Feature: It is incredibly user friendly and virtually all its features can be mastered within a few minutes. A wide array of shapes and icons are available on your infographics.

Features that could improve: The template options – it would be useful if longer page templates were available to allow for more data to be included in a single infographic. Another area which could improve is the addition of a feature which enables users to create a chart. It is however not crucial as numerous other chart generators like hohli.com are available free online and charts created on other platforms can simply be imported into easel.ly as images.

Infogr.am

About: Infogr.am is an online start-up from hack.fwd which provides both infographic and chart generators. It is currently completely free and its array of available features continues to expand.

Template Options: Infogr.am currently offers six templates. They are however all highly customizable.

Best Feature: Without a doubt the chart generator. Data can be displayed in 20 different ways with Infogr.am’s chart feature. Each chart is visually appeasing and data can be added manually or through importing data.

Features that could improve: A longer template would again be handy as the current length of the available templates somewhat limit the amount of information which can be displayed on a single infographic. The option to add shapes and icons to an infographic would be handy too.

Piktochart

About: Piktochart is the original online infographic generator. Currently free and premium features are on available.

Template Options: Piktochart currently offers six free themes and more than 100 premium themes.

Best Feature: Piktochart offers a variety of template sizes (and lengths,) icons and shapes and other features on the free version.

Features that could improve: The charts available are particularly limited especially on the free version.

Will you start to create your own infographics?

3 Comments

  1. Bart Sintenie says:

    Thanks Aimee, (and great picture btw)

    You might want to change the part that says “We review the top four” though, as there are three, as the title suggests.

  2. Cheer Lin says:

    How do you save these infographics created on these websites as jpegs so they can dropped into powerpoint presentations?

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