Hookra vs MagicBrief
MagicBrief is shutting down. Here’s the honest guide to what’s next.
MagicBrief closes on July 31, 2026 — the team joined Canva, billing is already cancelled, and their successor product is Canva Grow. If you’re here for a drop-in replacement, read this first: for most MagicBrief users, the honest answer is notHookra. This page tells you which tool actually picks up each job it did — including when it isn’t us.
The official successor
Canva Grow
Built by the MagicBrief team inside Canva — an end-to-end workflow for creating, launching and analysing ads. If your team already lives in Canva, this is where you land by default.
The dedicated swipe file
Foreplay
If what you will actually miss is the library — saving ads, boards, sharing inspiration across a team — Foreplay is the strongest dedicated replacement for that workflow.
How Hookra compares to Foreplay→The category decoder
Hookra
If you compete in UK DTC health and what you really wanted was to understand why the category’s ads work — and turn that into briefs — that was never quite MagicBrief’s job. It is exactly ours.
Where each job goes now
| What MagicBrief did | Where it goes now | |
|---|---|---|
| Swipe file & saved ads | Save ads from the ad libraries into folders and boards, shared with your team. | Canva Grow or Foreplay — a shared inspiration library is their lane. Hookra is deliberately not a save-board. |
| Ad library search | Search across saved and community ads, across every vertical. | Foreplay for breadth across verticals. Hookra searches one category completely instead — every UK DTC health ad, decoded, not sampled. |
| Briefs | Assemble briefs and storyboards by hand from the ads you saved. | Hookra generates the brief from a live pattern — hook, persona, beats, and a CTA matched to the awareness stage — rather than templating what you saved. |
| Creative insights | Connect your ad account and tie performance back to creative. | Motion is the dedicated own-account analytics tool; Canva Grow includes the analyse step. Hookra reads the category’s ads, not your account. |
| Competitor tracking | Follow brands and see their new ads as they launch. | In UK DTC health: Hookra watchlists with longevity signals — which competitor ads survived, not just which launched. In other verticals: Foreplay’s Spyder. |
| White space | Not the product’s job — a swipe file shows you what exists, not what’s missing. | Hookra’s headline feature: because the whole category is decoded, “3 of 1,400+ ads speak to the partner” is a fact, not a hunch. |
Shutdown details from magicbrief.com, July 2026. MagicBrief remains accessible until July 31, 2026 — export your saved boards before then.
If you’re not in UK DTC health, Hookra is not your MagicBrief replacement.
Canva Grow and Foreplay are both good tools, and for most teams one of them is the right call. But if you compete in UK DTC health — telehealth, clinical nutrition, at-home testing, specialist supplements — that’s the one category Hookra covers completely: every ad decoded for the psychology that makes it work, the saturated angles mapped, and the gaps nobody is testing turned into briefs.
The fastest way to decide is to look at your own category decoded.
Start free trial14-day free trial · 20 briefs included · Cancel anytime