In the past few weeks, I built an open-source design editor that works similarly to Polotno — and decided to open-source it as OpenPolotno.
The goal was simple: create a Canva-like editor that developers can fully control, customize, and self-host.
🚀 Why I Built This
Polotno is a great tool, especially for quickly building design editors.
But while working with it, I felt a few limitations:
Limited control over customization
Dependency on a proprietary ecosystem
Constraints when scaling or extending features
I wanted something that:
Gives full ownership of the editor
Allows deep customization
Can be self-hosted without restrictions
So I decided to build an alternative — compatible with Polotno, but fully open.
🧠 The Idea
Instead of reinventing everything, I focused on:
👉 Compatibility
If developers are already using Polotno, they shouldn’t need to rewrite everything.
So OpenPolotno supports:
Similar API structure
Template compatibility
Familiar data format
This makes migration or integration much easier.
✨ Features
Here’s what the editor currently supports:
🎨 Drag-and-drop canvas editor
🖼️ Text, images, and layer management
🧩 Polotno-compatible templates
🔌 Similar API structure
💾 JSON-based import/export
⚡ Fast and lightweight performance
🔓 Fully open-source
🧱 Challenges I Faced
Building a design editor is not trivial. Some of the biggest challenges were:
- Canvas Rendering Performance
Handling multiple elements (text, images, layers) while keeping the editor smooth required careful optimization.
- Data Structure Compatibility
Making the system compatible with Polotno templates while keeping it flexible internally was tricky.
- UX Complexity
Even small features (like dragging, resizing, layering) require a lot of edge-case handling.
- Scalability
Designing the architecture so it can grow into a full product (plugins, extensions, etc.) took planning.
🎯 What This Can Be Used For
OpenPolotno can be used to build:
Canva-like SaaS products
Social media design tools
Internal design platforms
Marketing automation tools
Basically, anything that requires a visual editor.
🔗 Links
GitHub: https://github.com/therutvikp/OpenPolotno
NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/openpolotno
💬 Feedback Welcome
This is just the beginning. I’d love feedback from developers who:
Have used Polotno
Are building design tools
Need a customizable editor
If you have suggestions or ideas, feel free to share 🙌
Top comments (4)
did you just rip it from their source code or actually make this yourself?
Rutvik Panchal, I’ve been actively trying to find your repository for a few hours now without any success—what is the reason? Does GitHub no longer grant us access?
I think this is illegal to do according to license but if you still want to access you can download the npm package and just ask the AI agent to unwind that from that it worked.
I had to create a account on dev to answer this question, I previously didn't had one.
To the team either dev or polotno please delete this post ASAP.
This guy is literally crazy that is pretty expensive software. I was thinking to buy the code for a moment from him. Thanks a lot bro 💪