Is there a software that you can compare it to that offers a similar set of features, but feels more intuitive?

I would reserve judgement until you get to try it out first hand.

There's also those sites that give away free assets or templates that request emails, sometimes I find newsletters in my inbox for stuff I've downloaded previously.

It's that and a combination of other things, larger tech companies like Shopify invest in an brand-illustration style to help communicate a multitude of things like value props, to empty states in their app.

Slack also starts creating their own colourful illustrations...then Asana has their own, and it begins to start influencing smaller companies to do the same and invest in illustrations to tell their story. Smaller companies might point to these references and tell an illustrator to "do that style", and dribbbler's start hopping on the trend.

Despite it being trendy, I like the illustrations as well, I think sometimes illustration can convey things about a brand or concept more than a photograph can. I've also seen enough of them where I can say definitively that there are all differences that make something like the Shopify illustrations different than Slack illustrations.

https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm