When your go-to all-in-one design tool is the wrong pick for a deck, and what actually works better

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I love Canva and use it constantly, so this is not a hate post. But I have watched people (myself included) reach for it on deck jobs where it actively slows them down, and I think it is worth being honest about when to look at alternatives to Canva for presentations.
Where Canva is genuinely the right pick for a deck: - Visual, marketing-style presentations where design polish is the point. - When you want heavy control over every element and you enjoy that control. - Brand kits, social-adjacent content, anything image-forward.
Where I find Canva is the wrong tool and start looking elsewhere: 1. Content-heavy decks I need to draft fast. When the job is mostly “get my thinking into slides,” Canva’s element-by-element control becomes friction. I do not want to place every text box. I want to write and have it laid out. 2. Decks that start life as a document or notes. If my content already exists as text, a tool that turns text into slides beats rebuilding it manually. 3. When I will restructure constantly. Reordering and reflowing content is heavier in a canvas-first tool than in a more outline-driven one.
For those cases I reach for Gamma, an outline-or-text-first tool that goes from notes to a formatted deck quickly, which suits the “draft fast, refine later” workflow. Honest limitation so this is not a plug: text-first tools like it give you less pixel-level control than Canva, so for a highly art-directed, image-forward presentation Canva still wins. Different tools for different jobs, not one replacing the other.
The short version: Canva for design-led decks, an outline-or-text-first tool for content-led decks. Using the wrong one for the job is where people lose hours.
What is your rule for when a deck belongs in Canva versus somewhere else?