5 Free (and Way Better) PowerPoint Alternatives
We, along with our bosses and our co-workers, have been seeing the same slides, text effects, and animations from MS Office PowerPoint for the past 10 to 15 years. A phrase has even been coined as a result of PowerPoint ennui: DEATH BY POWERPOINT
If you are not in the business of assassinating your organization via boring slides (we know that you’re not THAT kind of office ninja), take a look at the following 5 presentation alternatives. Did we mention that these websites and apps are free and simply “way better”?
1. Canva
Interactive. Online. Beautiful. Canva is a website that allows you to create slides with built-in high resolutions images, vectors, and text effects. Many of the backgrounds and other design elements are free, but the premium design elements may cost you a bank-breaking $1.00. It is a user-friendly tool, and when you sign up, they even offer you an interactive tutorial. Share your slides via link faster than your boss can demand a PowerPoint on a flash drive.
For an in-depth tutorial about Canva from your favorite office experts (#NinjaLife), click here.
2. Bunkr
Bunkr offers a presentation platform that puts your social sharing options right beside the presentation! This works very well for ninjas who have to communicate with remote audiences online. Not only is the interface and design clean, it is super easy to use. What it lacks in pure artistic options, it makes up for in readability and interactivity. Also, because we love making your life easier, Bunkr allows you to export content to PDF files, HTML5 files, and (yes, it still makes an appearance) PowerPoint.
3. emaze
Cloud-based, responsive, and downright pretty templates are the draw of this online presentation website. Emaze makes creating attractive and dynamic presentations easy by providing you with free, pre-made templates. Just populate the templates with content and graphics, and then you’re ready to amaze your boss with your emaz-ing creation (see what I did there?). In the event their free package is not enough for you, their highest tier package offers unlimited space and sharing, as well as a host of other handy premium features (like offline viewing and privacy controls), for only $9.90 per month.
Dive right into emaze with our step-by-step tutorial (written by yours truly)!
4. Slidebean
If you are a no-nonsense ninja, then Slidebean may be your presentation medium of choice. Stressing the idea that “less is more,” Slidebean is a highly content-oriented platform that can be displayed on any browser and on any device. It is significantly less graphic intensive than the other PowerPoint alternatives, allowing it to be easily viewed and shared. In other words, no more excuses from people who claimed, “I couldn’t access the presentation… [insert null complaint here].”
5. Google Slides
This may alarm you, but you may have held the secret to creating compelling slides ever since you started using GMail. If you have no idea what Google Drive is, you HAVE to visit your Google account NOW. At the top right hand corner, you will see an icon that looks like nine itty-bitty squares. Click it and visit Drive. Once inside your Drive, you will be able to create presentations with Google Slides. Although the interface and design options are PPT-esque, Slides allows you to share the presentation easily via link or attachment.
Coming Soon: Microsoft Sway
It looks like Microsoft was aware of DEATH BY POWERPOINT too. Although their Sway presentation application is still in development, its concept is to bring together many different mediums- YouTube, social media, image databases, wikis, etc.- and offer drag and drop functionality that allows you to integrate them into your presentation. It looks promising, and we’d love to see where Microsoft decides to take this idea.
What are your favorite alternatives to Powerpoint?
Hi,
At FPPT we have a huge collection of presentation templates and backgrounds.
Here are some examples:
https://www.free-power-point-templates.com/articles/presentation-background/
These are great especially while working from home.
Regards,
MJ
This was sooo helpful, thx.
Good article! Thanks :)
I have used Libre Office Impress for some time now. It presents excellently even for large audience accepts music etc. I guess its better than PPT and free for ever.
Beautiful.AI just launched a year ago and is still free and super simple to use. https://about.beautiful.ai/
Hey Ninjas, and readers alike!
We’ve been working on a way to get presentations to become simple with a bunch of kicking ready made PowerPoint slides.
There is no new tech to learn, and no zooming Prezi headaches, just a lovely design loaded platform to build up a presentation from the slide library, then download the whole thing right into PowerPoint :D
I know we’re not free at the moment, but we do have a lifetime subscription option! Imagine never having to battle with PowerPoint again…
https://www.slidecamp.io
Try for free https://hypersay.com/ and deliver interactive presentations to connected audiences. Keep them engaged with polls, questions, private notes and live slide sharing.
Hypersay is a platform for interactive presentations that massively increase engagement. Keep your audience engaged with polls, questions, private notes and live slide sharing. Store, enrich & deliver presentations from your cloud.
Thank you so much for sharing!!! this is really a big help
I love the 1at one
Hi,
I just need to create a slide show for my husband’s 40th birthday party with some music and be able to play it on the tv. What is the best program for me to do that?
Thanks.
Thank you! I HATE PowerPoint, but I’m having to create presentations for school and working on doing some screenshare-style videos for business purposes, so none of the concerns other commenters have mentioned are relevant for me, but being able to make non-ugly slides without jumping through too many hoops IS. There are some really great-looking options here!
Yes! We love non-ugly slides as well ;) Let us know which you use and how those presentations turn out, Rachel!
Have you heard of Niftio (I’m the Tech Lead for that project)? It’s a rather new presentation software. Here’s a quick sneak peak:
1. dozens of designer made templates to make it easier to create a presentation
2. use of any mobile device to control your presentation while delivering one
3. audience q&a to receive feedback & questions on your topic in real time.
And much more
Take a look https://niftio.com
Nope, not yet, but it’s nice to meet you and your software, Cristi! We love checking out new ways to do old things better :)
Great..!!
Presenter Club seems interesting. It focuses more on the speech aspect rather than slides. But I find it really quick to make slides with it. It is free: https://www.presenter.club/
Thanks, Sam! Free is always good ;)
Hi! Nice post :)
However, why isn’t Genial.ly included? I think it should when it comes to PowerPoint alternatives… It’s online, it’s free, and it’s really easy to use. I love it for presentations, infographics, posters. Seriously, it’s a great tool. Here: https://www.genial.ly/
Bye!
Hi, Please try Academic Presenter as well. It is a free Prezi-like (slide-based + canvas-based) presentation software but offline. You don’t need to be connected to internet always to present your work. There are several tutorial video on Youtube.
Download Link from CNet: http://download.cnet.com/Academic-Presenter/3000-2075_4-76178419.html
Official Website: http://danialesm.wix.com/academic
Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxB7byx-3rdqbLdCP9CAyww
These programs BLOW AWAY Powerpoint, but how reliable is their functionality when it comes time to actually project your slides in a room full of people? How many times have we all seen a presentation go down in flames because the hardware was not playing well with the presentation software?
It happens all the time, and it really sucks for all the parties involved; it’s embarrassing.
I have absolutely no problem with Prezi, using or viewing.
What about Canva? I’m worried about that very same problem for a presentation I have coming up in October. My Canva slide deck won’t open on Powerpoint, only on Windows Media Viewer. I’ve tried asking Canva Support about this but it’s always the same vague answers that provide NOTHING usable. Anybody know the best way to display Canva in a presentation?
We did find a little info on some options from Canva, which you can find here: http://bit.ly/1JKlp3N
Thank you so much for the post! very interesting!
Glad you liked it Wendy – let us know if you test any of these out and which ones are your faves!
These are all very appealing alternatives, and I could see using one or more for externally focused presentations (i.e. marketing, sales pitches). I would be very interested to learn the level of information security offered on each of these platforms. If a presentation contains internal-only or sensitive information, how is that data secured (if at all)?
Great question Laura – we’ll do some digging and let you know!
Prezi is a nice alernative. It has both, a free and a pro version.
We’re absolutely fans of Prezi as well – our only complaint would be it takes a bit to learn how to use it – but learning it DEFINITELY pays off!
Do you guys know any others student-friendly, where you can easily delete your account if needed? That would be really helpful!
Thx!
Also, if you have any suggestions can they be just websites, not like, desktop apps? We need something to be easy, because this is for remote learning in Covid-19.