The 10 best alternatives to Microsoft PowerPoint

Have you ever thought about exploring options other than PowerPoint to create dynamic and compelling presentations? In our PowerPoint agency, the latter is king but we are always listening to the market. In this article, we are going to compare the top 10 alternatives to Microsoft PowerPoint. Whether you're looking for new features, a different interface, or simply a better user experience, there are plenty of free and paid options out there. Find out which tool best fits your needs and boost the impact of your presentations.

Pitch: the cloud-oriented startup

A recent player in the ecosystem, Pitch is redefining how teams create and share ideas. At its launch, Pitch stood out for its clean design and its functionalities designed for teamwork, offering an agile and elegant alternative to traditional presentation tools, with additional functionalities.

Praised by startups, Pitch is based on a pleasant interface and advanced customization options, all in a very current environment. Thanks to its innovative features and its ability to promote collaboration. Pitch is a robust solution, and the features are innovative, with lots of ready-to-use templates and a large image library.

Slidor's note:

Pitch is recent, and we appreciated the approach and the short editing time to achieve satisfactory results. The software is very focused on easy access to design, and integrates artificial intelligence directly. Although the results are adequate, the limitations of the tool offer little leeway for creative professionals. Again, the relatively closed environment is restrictive if you want to stay in an ecosystem like Microsoft or Google.

Figma Slides: the PowerPoint alternative for professionals.

Figma Slides is a promising new feature from Figma, launched at Figma Config 2024, and true to the ergonomics of Figma. Rather intended for professionals, it stands out for two important aspects:

• Integration of interactive prototypes : Users can integrate and interact with prototypes directly in the slides
• Live polls and feedback : Facilitates the collection of feedback and the engagement of the audience during presentations.
• Collaboration: Really in real time, we see collaborators' cursors move live.

Slidor's note:

As expert users of Figma, we really enjoyed the Slides version. That said, Figma is more for professionals and we can't imagine businesses adopting an interface that has a fairly steep learning curve. For designers, it is a very good alternative, along the same lines as what Ludus was able to offer us in the past.

Beautiful.ai

Beautiful.ai is emerging as an innovative alternative, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence. From its launch, the platform won over with its ability to automatically generate well-designed slides using artificial intelligence, thus saving precious time on deck creation.

The tool is designed to facilitate creation, even for those who are not design experts, while remaining compatible with common formats for export and sharing.

Slidor's note:

Beautiful.ai is ideal for fast, elegant presentations without requiring advanced design skills. However, advanced users might find its customization options limited, and the renderings remain fairly average. Automation, while effective, leaves little room for creativity, which can be frustrating for specific needs or high graphics requirements. A good choice for simple presentations, but less suitable for professionals who require great flexibility, a design that matches their charter, and more functionalities.

Slidebean

Recommended for startups and entrepreneurs, Slidebean is ideal for creating professional presentations quickly. Its limitations in personalization can hold back users looking for total creative freedom. However, Slidebean integrates artificial intelligence.

Slidor's note:

Slidebean is a handy tool to save time and get a polished look quickly. But for complex needs or a more advanced level of design, its limits quickly become noticeable.

Prezi: The Anti Slideshow

This dynamic and interactive presentation platform offers an interesting alternative to traditional slides. At the beginning, Prezi was famous for its beautiful Zoom and Unzoom transitions, and offered a new dimension to the fairly linear world of presentations.

Widely used in the academic world, Prezi is a complete solution based on a web experience.

Thanks to its innovative features and user-friendly layout, Prezi allows you to tell your story in an original way.

Slidor's note:

Prezi is less suitable for the professional world, we find that the editing time may seem longer than on ppt, even if the default options and the templates offered are of a very good level. Zoom animations have had their golden age, but current trends and design are less driven by flashy effects, which is why we never use this solution internally, which is also very rarely used by our customers, and is not very suitable for a commercial proposal, for example.

Google Slides

Google Slides has taken significant market shares within the ecosystem. Very well integrated with Google Workspace, Google Drive and Sheets, and based on the PowerPoint user experience, it is an easy to use software for employees who want to switch. Google Slides has been democratized in part thanks to teamwork but also through the sharing of presentations, useful in office automation.

Google Slides remains a very good choice if you want to stay in the Google suite and are looking for an alternative, offers a layout identical to PowerPoint, especially for entrepreneurs and small businesses, as well as a great ease of accessing your documents and storing them in drive.

Slidor's note:

Google Slides is a major player in the market, and Google's choice to imitate PowerPoint has undoubtedly resulted in very good adoption in business. However, Google Slides offers fewer things than PowerPoint, does not handle vectors and gradients well, offers a less extensive animation engine compared to Microsoft Office, and does not allow to achieve such advanced rendering levels. We hope to see, in the future, efforts by Google to improve its solution but the product seems not to be at the heart of the software publisher's attention, as evidenced by the rare updates. A very positive note should still be considered on real-time collaboration on a document, which can be an argument in favor of the tool.

Keynote

Keynote is a tool developed by Apple in the Mac environment, and allows users to design engaging and professional slides in a few clicks. Keynote offers a multitude of predefined templates, transition effects, and animations to boost your presentations.

Additionally, the tool offers great flexibility when it comes to customization, allowing users to easily change the layout, colors, fonts, and images. Thanks to its compatibility with Apple devices, Keynote makes it possible to create presentations that are easily accessible and engaging, whether on a computer, tablet, or smartphone.

Slidor's note:

Keynote has always been a powerful and well-thought-out software. Suffering from the lack of integration of the Apple suite in the professional world, it is often neglected but nevertheless offers renderings and a very satisfactory workflow when you use a Mac and do not want to use PowerPoint. We do not recommend using it on PC, which offers a less pleasant experience.

Slides

Not to be confused with Google Slides, Slides is a software program with the major advantage of its ease of use and record loading times.

The Slides tool is complex but allows you to create custom presentations with CSS and HTML. Tutorials are available to support users and it is accessible on smartphones and tablets. Everything seems quite complete in a solution that is made for experienced presenters, but also for developers who want to touch the code.

Slidor's note:

Perfect for web integration and lightweight renderings, as well as clean code generation. Less suited to the corporate world from our point of view.

Canva: not just slides

Canva is an all-in-one design platform that democratizes visual creation by making professional tools accessible to everyone. Since its inception, it has established itself as a reference thanks to its intuitive interface and its innumerable templates, adapted to a wide variety of needs: presentations, social networks, marketing materials, and much more.

Whether for a startup pitch, an infographic, a customer presentation or a business report, Canva is a powerful creative solution and highlights thousands of pre-defined templates. Thanks to its ease of use and its great flexibility, Canva is an essential tool that has become very widespread in the academic and professional world.

Slidor's note:

Canva is a versatile, very powerful solution that is perfect for simple projects or for those who are just starting out in design. However, its limitations in terms of advanced customization and its heavy dependence on templates can be frustrating for business users looking for total flexibility. An excellent choice for creating quickly and well, but less suitable for projects requiring a unique visual identity.

Zoho Show

Zoho Show has been a tool that has been present for many years, among the interesting features that the tool has, we find compatibility with the Microsoft 365 suite, the cloud, template and font libraries, and export to pdf format.

Built for teams, Zoho Show allows you to collaborate in real time with colleagues and easily share presentations online.

Slidor's note:

A good software, quite complete, perfect for the Zoho environment, their CRM and their ecosystem, but not up to the more complete software offered by the giant Microsoft, Apple or Google.

Should you stop using PowerPoint?

As professionals, the vast majority of the demand is on this tool, and the complexity and flexibility of the software has never limited us in our creativity. The situation of virtual monopoly of the software suggests that it will be complicated to replace this player in the short term, but also because a very large mass of users use it on a daily basis. Finally, software is often adopted because it is part of robust ecosystems, like Microsoft or Google.

If you are looking to diversify your presentation tools, do more for reasons of cost, integrated office suite, or business requirements. Many offer a 30-day free trial or a free basic version, allowing you to test before choosing a subscription. But keep in mind that PowerPoint remains, in our opinion, the most complete and most successful software on the market since it offers us everything we could hope for: real-time rendering, integration of vectors, 3D, animations, animations, macros, macros, macros, numerous third-party plugins to go faster, and a very complete interface that has always won over our designers.

What free software can you use for presentations?

You can use LibreOffice Impress as a free alternative to Microsoft Power Point. It is a free and open source presentation software that offers many features similar to Power Point, such as creating slides, adding text, images, and transition effects.

You can download it for free from the official LibreOffice website.

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