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What application springs to mind when you think of creating visual aids to accompany your business presentation? For most people, it’s Microsoft’s PowerPoint. But that’s certainly not the only game in town. Plenty of other tools and services are cooler, faster, easier to use, and—in almost all cases—less expensive.
We’ve rounded up five compelling alternatives to PowerPoint, including Web apps that let you dispense with installing software, and mobile apps that allow for presentation-building (and presenting) on the go. Not included are well-known options such as, and, all of which offer basic slide-builders that can easily pinch-hit for PowerPoint and don’t cost a dime. Those tools, however, haven’t changed much in recent years. Our goal is to showcase presentation options that will help you get your point across a little differently, so your audience’s eyes don’t glaze over in the middle of your pitch. And if your business saves a bit of cash in the process, all the better! Haiku Deck (iPad) for iPad is designed to turn your ideas into beautiful presentations in about the time it takes to ride the train to work. It gives you built-in access to a wealth of free art.
Haiku Deck provides excellent tools for finding free art to illustrate your business presentations. Indeed, half the battle in crafting attractive slides is finding appropriate artwork to go with the text. Haiku Deck lets you add your own (from your iOS device’s camera roll or from any other image library), but it can also search millions of free, Creative Commons-licensed images based on the words you’ve chosen for that slide.
Let’s say your slide contains the word profits and the phrase 3D printing: You’ll quickly get a list of thumbnails matching those terms. Tap one you like, and presto! You have the perfect background for your slide. Alternatively, you can choose a solid background color or insert your choice of a bar, pie, or numeric chart (with manually added labels and numbers). Ultimately, Haiku Deck is all about whipping together attractive slides, and it’s great for that task. When you’re done, you can share your deck via Facebook, Twitter, or email. You can also grab embed code for your blog or website.
On top of that, Haiku Deck lets you export your presentation for further tweaking in, say, PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote. The app doesn’t support sound, transitions, or animations, though, and you can’t manually place your text or change the background color for charts. In fact, trying to make any major slide changes often causes you to lose the work you’ve already done. A save option is desperately needed here. That said, once you figure out Haiku Deck’s mechanics, you’ll find it a great tool for building short, simple, and attractive slide decks on the run.
And you can’t beat the price: It’s free. If you want extra themes, they’re available for purchase in-app. Kingsoft Presentation Free 2013 If you’re looking for a more traditional alternative to PowerPoint, one that runs in Windows and closely emulates the standard slideshow-building process, Kingsoft offers a compelling option in. Available separately or as part of the Kingsoft Office Free 2013 suite, this program should satisfy most of your slide-deck needs.
If you’re already familiar with PowerPoint, you’ll have a huge head start on Presentation Free: Its default interface borrows heavily from Microsoft’s Ribbon, though it has a second interface option that closely resembles older versions of PowerPoint. It’s an easy product to learn either way. Whichever interface you choose, Presentation Free has one amenable feature that still eludes PowerPoint: document tabs that make switching between multiple open presentations much easier. Presentation Free 2013 looks and works very much like Microsoft's PowerPoint, but you don't need to buy an entire productivity suite to get it. As its name implies, it's free! Kingsoft supplies a generous library of presentation templates that you can use as a jumping-off point, along with a nice selection of layouts, color schemes, animations, and the like.
You can add a wealth of elements to your slides, everything from sounds and background music to movies and Flash animations. Perhaps of greatest importance, Presentation Free can open existing PowerPoint presentations, including those saved in the newer.pptx format. It can save only to the older.ppt format, or to Kingsoft’s native.dps format. You also have the option of converting presentation files to PDFs.
Presentation Free 2013 is without question the prettiest PowerPoint clone you can get, and save for VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) support, the free version is every bit as capable as its commercial counterpart, (which also includes word processing and spreadsheet programs). Pixxa Perspective (iPad) What is a presentation if not an audiovisual story?
That’s the idea behind the iPad app. It’s a powerful tool, though it does come with a learning curve—and a price tag. Building a story works the same as building a presentation: You create individual slides (known here as scenes) and populate them with data. For each scene, Perspective gives you a choice of image/text, diagram, various charts (bar, bubble, line, and the like), and PDF. You can also import a wealth of file types, including locally stored Excel and CSV files, the contents of the clipboard, or anything you have stored in Google Drive. These needn’t be static additions, either: Perspective’s bar and bubble charts are “motion” charts, meaning that you can animate the elements to better highlight data such as sales forecasts and market trends.
If you’re short on artwork, the app’s handy Web-search option makes it easy to find online images for your story. And for anyone serious about presenting data, Perspective supports the creation of (a specialized kind of flow diagram), though this feature requires a separate in-app purchase ($100).
Pixxa Perspective Pro costs between $50 and $100 depending on the features you want, but it allows you to create compelling presentations in the office or on the go. Alas, the app doesn’t let you embed videos or webpages, and you can’t add audio elements such as music or sound effects. You can, however, record a voice-over after your story is complete and ready for presenting. Speaking of which, you can share a snapshot from your story via email or Twitter, and a recently added Airshow option lets you share stories directly from your iPad to up to ten other iPads. It may take you some time to learn how to use Perspective’s various tools, especially for arranging elements in a scene and tweaking the data in motion charts. But it’s not unlike learning PowerPoint: Once you know what you need to do, presentation-building goes pretty quickly.
Although the Perspective app is initially free, you can use it to create only one story—think of it as an app test drive. To unlock all the features and create unlimited stories, you must upgrade to Perspective Pro, which costs $50. That’s a little steep relative to some of the other tools here, but Perspective offers robust data-visualization options. And since it’s entirely mobile, you needn’t stay tied to a PC. Prezi Far too many presentations are boring, with a capital B. In many cases, it’s not because the content is dull, it’s just that audiences have seen enough static slideshows to last a lifetime. Creates eye-catching custom animations that blow ordinary slide decks out of the water.
It works like this: You assemble various snippets of information—text, graphics, videos, and the like—onto the virtual equivalent of a giant, themed poster board. (Think PowerPoint slides splayed out on a single surface.) Instead of flipping from one page to the next, PowerPoint-style, flies around that poster board, zooming in to one area for viewing, then up, out, and onto the next. Prezi neatly flips the slideshow concept on its head.
All of this happens with a dazzling, animated flow. It looks like something a professional effects shop would take weeks and thousands of dollars to create. But it’s really just a Prezi template stocked with your data and some extra infographics. Earlier this year, Prezi added a long-awaited new feature: sound. You can now include background music that plays during the presentation, or even add voice-overs or sound effects to “path steps” (the transitions between areas of the scene).
That might not seem like a huge deal, but Prezi delivers such a smooth, cinematic experience, it almost begs to have a soundtrack. Prezi has also added a creator app for iPad and a viewer for iPhone, meaning that you can build and/or make your pitches on the run. They’re free, as is Prezi Basic.
Upgrade options start at $59 per year. This is one of the coolest PowerPoint alternatives I’ve seen, period. If you’re as sick of creating static slide decks as people are of seeing them, you should give Prezi a try. SoftMaker Presentations Mobile (Android) If Microsoft ever decided to release PowerPoint for, it would probably have a lot in common with. This powerful app belies its $5 price tag, allowing you to not only create slide decks from scratch right on your Android device, but also to import and save your existing.ppt and.pptx files. Who says you need a PC to make compelling presentations? With SoftMaker Presentations Mobile, all you need is an Android device.
To be fair, Presentations Mobile offers little of the mobile-presentations finesse of Haiku Deck or Pixxa Perspective. It is, at best, a rudimentary PowerPoint clone, allowing for the creation of only the most basic slides. Even something as simple as changing a slide’s background is elusive within the app’s toolbar system, which consists entirely of unlabeled icons. It can, however, import presentations from a variety of sources, including local memory and online services such as Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and SkyDrive.
Once you have those files in place, you can make basic edits and then restore the files to their homes, or forward them via email. Depending on which Android device you’re using, you can also connect to an external display to deliver your presentation—complete with any embedded sounds, transitions, and animations.
(Unfortunately, it doesn’t support videos.) In our tests, Presentations Mobile did a great job importing a 54-slide PowerPoint file from a Google Drive account to a Barnes & Noble Nook HD. The process went slowly, however, requiring several minutes to download and open the slideshow. But it played back perfectly, transitions and all. Ultimately, this app isn’t so much about replacing PowerPoint as it is about making PowerPoint mobile, with simple tools for building basic slides and robust tools for accessing your existing presentations on the go.
For a mere $5, it’s hard to beat. Take the ‘no boring presentations’ pledge The only experience more painful than sitting through a boring presentation is giving a boring presentation. If a concept is worth presenting, it’s worth presenting effectively. Take the “no boring presentations” pledge: Invest a little time, give these programs a try, and create a slideshow that will capture your audience’s attention so that you can persuade them to embrace your ideas. It could make all the difference for your business.
You know what it's like to sit through a bad presentation – slides packed with dense text and cheesy transitions leaving you confused, bored, or both. But it doesn't have to be that way. A presentation made using software that offers engaging visuals and animations can really grab an audience's attention, get them engaged, and make sure they actually remember the information. Although Microsoft Powerpoint has become almost synonymous with presentations, it isn't the only way to get your slides on screen.
If you don't fancy paying for a Microsoft Office subscription, there are lots of free tools that will help you create attention-grabbing slideshows, and are quick and easy to use. Modern Microsoft Office style design Once known as Kingsoft Office, is, in interface terms, about as close to Microsoft's office software as you're likely to find. WPS Presentation (its PowerPoint-alike) has enough muscle to perform just about every task you'd expect of a slideshow app. WPS Presentation is fully compatible with PPT and PPTX files, and incredibly stable – as you might expect from commercial software that's been around for this long. The range of templates on offer is particularly impressive, and there's also a stack of animations, transitions and effects to choose from. There's even support for embedding numerous different file types including Flash SWF files and most video formats. This flexibility makes WPS Office Free the best free presentation software.
Design
Read on for four more of the best tools for bringing your slideshows to life. Looks a little dated 's free presentation software, Impress, has an, er, impressive pedigree.
It also has a raft of features and templates at its disposal, but don't make the mistake of thinking it's an exact PowerPoint analog. Certain features of more modern PowerPoint versions aren't included (internet broadcast, collaboration, animated diagrams) though LibreOffice Impress adds some pretty cool features of its own, like various export formats including SWF, import compatibility with Keynote files, and full support for embedding fonts in your presentations. Plus, of course, it's completely free open source software. There's another benefit, too: you'll need to do some heavy work to get Office 365 running on anything earlier than Windows 7, but LibreOffice Impress maintains compatibility right back to Windows XP.
Doesn't support PPT documents You might be familiar with its superb photo editor, but also offers an excellent browser-based presentation tool. Canva is extremely simple to use – just sign up for a free account (or log in with your Google or Facebook account), then pick a template to get started. Some designs are exclusive to premium account holders, but there's a huge choice of free options to choose from. Once you've picked a template, you'll be given a choice of page templates so you can make a smart, cohesive presentation. Select one, then double-click an element in the editing window to begin customizing it.
You can't import and edit Microsoft PowerPoint documents in Canva, but you can invite others to collaborate, share the completed presentation online, or export it as a PDF, JPG or PNG file. There are no flashy transitions for animations, but that's no loss; Canva focuses on what's important: presenting information in a way that's attractive and, most importantly, easy to read and interpret. Less powerful than desktop app Apple's flagship presentation software is, in our opinion, the best part of the suite formerly known as iWork, and it's free to anyone who owns a post-2013 Mac. However, we think Keynote's best incarnation is, mainly because anyone with an Apple ID – whether they're using macOS, Windows or Linux – gets free access through a web browser. A pretty good translation of the package, though it's a little closer to the iOS version than the desktop one. This means there are a few caveats you'll have to live with.
Documents created with the full version sometimes include elements which aren't supported by the online version, and while you'll have no problem creating some very flashy presentations with the numerous 4:3 and 16:9 templates, the simplistic tools mean they won't match the complexity of those created by its desktop counterpart. Anything you do create can be shared online by sending simple link to any recipient, or you can take your pick of Keynote, PDF or Powerpoint downloads. Presentations are public by default 's take on presentations is very different, since it does away with slide decks altogether in favour of a massive canvas.
Cram it full of all your pertinent info, lock off views representing the most important areas, then zoom, twist, reveal and jump between them for a truly dynamic presentation. It's all very special and next-generation, and it's certainly easy enough to get some brilliant looks out of Prezi's online presentation tools, but there are some big downsides too. Primarily, the free edition makes all of your presentations public by default, presumably to discourage business users from exploiting the tool without paying for it. There's a secondary negative too: many people, faced with Prezi's sometimes unpredictable movements, find themselves becoming somewhat seasick when watching particularly active presentations. Be careful with your movements, and watch a few of the advice videos on Prezi's site so you're sure you're doing it right. Need a full office suite?
NOTE: This is a list of 40 different presentation software tools. You’re looking for only Free Presentation Programs, view our post on. Great for educators and students. If you are truly serious about purchasing new presentation software and need some guidance, you should view our. At, we like to think that everyone can use our presentation software to create better looking presentations, thus serving as a great powerpoint alternative to people. But that won’t always be the case. We cater to businesses greater than 10 employees and organizations that need an all-in-one presentation program.
We also don’t usually promote our competitors. Shout out to ClearSlide on that one. But at the end of the day, we want you to have a pick from the full list of presentation tools that are on the market and that could fit your needs. Powerpoint alternatives are great, but we know there are plenty of options to choose from. Some have their advantages and disadvantages while others are perfect for a certain audience. We’ll examine the presentation maker programs we believe would be great and even the ones that may not be but could still be another viable solution. Presentation Software – CustomShow Summary – presentation software program used mainly for businesses and companies with more than 25 employees that need a robust presentation software solution.
With over 40 years of rich presentation history, the presentation software company was created out of the presentation design agency, Sales Graphics. The software allows companies and organizations to build better custom branded presentations that look light years better than your typical powerpoint presentation. We would consider ourselves a great sales enablement tool because sales professionals benefit a great deal from the software. Perfect For – Marketing Teams, Sales Teams, Sales Professionals, Marketing Professionals, CEO’s, Design Agencies Other Review Sources –, Website.
SlideRocket Marketing Software Summary – Clearslide purchased Sliderocket several years ago. If volume sales is important to you, Clearslide could be a good tool for you. There is more emphasis on the sales and tracking than the presentation creation side of the software. After going through a series C $50 million round of funding, the company is focusing more on sales enablement more broadly and less on presentations specifically. Nonetheless, the tool is worth reviewing.
Advantages – Can upload files from Keynote, Powerpoint, PDF, Excel and other formats; good metrics; online delivery; slide sharing Disadvantages – Interface is complex and limited in the ability to create “better looking presentation”; video isn’t seamlessly integrated into presentations. Perfect For – High Volume Sales & Marketing Organizations Other Review Sources –; Prezi (Personal) Summary – The mothership of powerpoint alternatives, they’ve been around for many years. Leveraging the concept of ZOOM and transitions to new spaces on a slide, they give the effect that the presentation has not moved to a new slide. Prezi provides people with creating better style and effect in their presentations. Prezi uses the concept of Pathway Points instead of slides to give the visual cinematic appeal of their presentations. These guys just raised another $50 million in November in order to compete with Microsoft.
Advantages – Present on multiple devices; can share with coworkers; can be used by practically anyone; easy to learn how to use; cost effective; can work on the presentation offline; Disadvantages – Very template driven – always looks like Prezi; cannot easily customize slides or repurpose presentations; can cause motion sickness. Perfect For – Educators; Keynote Speakers; Organizations; Students Other Review Sources –; Prezi For Business Summary – The mothership of powerpoint alternatives, they’ve been around for many years. They decided to make a stronger push for the business market. Thus, they came out with Prezi for Business. Lots of companies already use Prezi for one-off presentations like conference keynotes, town halls and investor pitches, but this version is trying to target the managed and repeatable presentations of sales and marketing teams. Advantages – Better for teams; good for collaborating. Disadvantages – Very template driven – always looks like Prezi; hard to edit by non-designers; not easy to repurpose content. Perfect For – Medium-sized companies that require limited customization by the sales team.
Other Review Sources –, Slideshark Summary – Taken directly from the horse’s mouth, SlideShark is an app used by sales professionals and other presenters worldwide to present and share PowerPoints via their chosen devices. It’s features include cloud storage integration, sharing and tracking views, broadcasting or presenting over the web, creating annotations on the slides, and of course presenter mode. Advantages – Can present powerpoint slides anywhere; cloud-based; free but paid version is known as Business pro; can be utilized for webinars Disadvantages – unable to customize presentations; primarily a delivery system (good and bad thing). Perfect For – sales and marketing professionals; individual business owners. Other Review Sources –;, Haiku Deck Summary – This is a template-based platform that allows for people to create elegant looking presentations. The software comes with 35 many templates and over 35 million stock photos that can be used within the slide templates.
This platform is a step between a company like CustomShow and Powerpoint. Advantages – easy to use; fast onboarding process Disadvantages – cannot do offline work with the App; cannot truly Customize presentations anyway you want Perfect For – students; educators; presenters in general Other Review Sources –;, SlideDog Summary – Known as a presentation launch pad, SlideDog mainly takes all of your documents, presentations, pictures, or video and places them into a play list that can be moved around and presented in a seamless way. You can upload just about any type of file from videos down to other presentation software devices such as Prezi. Advantages – Make transitioning smooth; can share across multiple devices; live polling; free version Disadvantages – Not used for creating presentations Perfect For – People who want to present more seamlessly across multiple documents; individual presenters Other Review Sources –, Powtoon – Animation Presentation Software Summary – Probably one of the leaders in the DIY presentation animation space, Powtoon allows consumers to create presentations and videos that are animated, interesting, and engaging. It is not difficult to learn how to use and the software is a breath of fresh air to those looking to create presentations that are different and engaging.
Advantages – Ease Of Use; Truly Customizable Animated Presentations Disadvantages – Not suitable to live presentations (but that’s OK) Perfect For – Educators (Check out their new app for educators); businesses that want to create a service/product video; small business professionals; trainers Other Sources –;, Keynote – Powerpoint Alternative Summary – One of the standard bearers in the presentation software space, is meant to allow presenters to create customizable presentations. It comes with 30 themes that you can start with and pre stock photos. Advantages – Present on multiple devices (Apple owned); easy to share; powerpoint friendly; inexpensive; allows for animations.
Disadvantages – Can only be used for MAC (ios systems); fairly template driven; no slide library Perfect For – Business owners and individuals Other Sources –; MediaShout Summary – To switch things up a bit MediaShout is a presentation software tool for religious institutions and churches. It is a powerful platform that can be utilized by churches of all size and combines. The software works well with the team that is managing the media and productions during any religious service but particularly during the sermon.
Advantages – Stage mirroring; announcement deck; great with video; add scripture from 65 different bibles; include sermon points; sound and music enabled Disadvantages – Hmmmwe’re not going there. Perfect For – Religious institutions and churches Other Sources:, Kineticast Summary – Built mainly for B2B sales people, Kineticast is a cool presentation tool that enables sales people to be more effective in their sales and. Their process includes creating the presentation (uploading files), emailing to your list of contacts, and then tracking the results. The purpose of this tool is to create customized messages with slides that are meant for specific prospects. Advantages – Enables sales professionals to improve effectiveness Disadvantages – Cannot create customized presentations (wasn’t built for that anyway though). Perfect For – B2B Sales Professionals; Possibly Marketers Other Sources – Knowledge Vision Summary – Knowledge Vision is one of the newest players on the block when it comes to creating better looking presentations that are customizable.
The company has a collection of software tools that are combined into 1 that companies can use. You can also create videos within the software package. Advantages – Complete Package of Production Tools; Cloud-Based; Analytics; Live Webcasting Disadvantages – Maybe ooo many tools; Could be challenging to learn Perfect For – Business; Producers; Digital Agencies Reviews –, Visme Visme allows you to make professional presentations & infographics online.
The tools is actually relatively easy to use and comes with 1000’s of templates & graphics. It’s a relatively new software and is geared more toward infographics rather than presentations, but nonetheless it’s a great tool. Reviews –, GoAnimate – Video Presentation Software Summary – One of Powtoon’s biggest competitors, GoAnimate is all about animated video presentations. You can create DIY professional animated videos without having to hire a video producer. It integrated with other software sales apps and is a solution that can be interesting for the budget busting video animation companies. Of course there are other whiteboard animation companies, but GoAnimate does showcase another alternative.
Advantages – Great For Video; Cost Effective; Think Product Videos Disadvantages – Only Video Centered (Not a real disadvantage though) Perfect For – Business; Producers; Digital Agencies Other Sources –, Wink – Powerpoint Alternative Summary – is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users. Advantages – Free; multilingual; good support Disadvantages – No ‘undo’ feature, audio compatibility issues Perfect For – Individuals and small businesses who just need to create simple animated tutorials and software demonstrations. SnagIt Summary – Offers advanced features and extra tools for organizing, simplifying, and editing screen captures.
If you produce Windows screen shots on a regular basis, SnagIt is a great tool for that. Advantages – Easy-to-use screen capture program, Disadvantages – Windows only Perfect For – Window’s screen shot-ers Other Sources – Camtasia Summary – Camtasia Studio is an integrated suite of applications for producing professional videos of on-screen activity. Advantages – 5 applications provide solutions for end to end video production, multiple output options Disadvantages – Costly for the value; for windows only Perfect For – Creating Video demonstrations for customer support, employee training, and product presentations. Other Sources – Camstudio – Video Presentation Software Summary – Free and simple, straightforward program to record screen activity to AVI or SWF format.
Advantages – Free Disadvantages – no movie editing, hard to use annotation tools Perfect For – Recording basic activity for webinars and basic presentations Other Sources – Slidesnack Summary – Mainly used for sharing presentation and not necessarily building presentations, Sldiesnack can still be an effective tools for people. Advantages – Free; great for sharing Disadvantages – not great for building presentations. Perfect For – great for teams and collaborating Reviews –, Articulate Presenter Summary – Articulate Presenter is a program that acts as an add-on to Microsoft PowerPoint. It capitalizes on what PowerPoint can do already, and provides several added features, such as quizzing, narration, and other interactive features Advantages – Supercharges the existing functionality in PowerPoint; narration syncs easily to screen animation; functionality is super intuitive Disadvantages – Content positioning is imprecise, takes ages to publish the content, Published files are BIG Perfect For – Educators; Individuals Windows Movie Maker Summary – freeware video editing software by Microsoft. It is a part of Windows Essentials software suite and offers the ability to create and edit videos as well as to publish them on OneDrive, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr.
Instead of building presentations from scratch, users can compile pre-approved slides (individual or multiple) into a customized PowerPoint presentation that suits their needs. Users can construct presentations from a selection of approved slides and even add personalization and customization where allowed by site administrators. Reviews – NCH Software NCH Software allows you to easily design effective slideshow presentations with this free software. Present ideas and arguments to persuade an audience. Free alternative for Microsoft® PowerPoint.
presentations. Visually support speeches and oral presentations Enhance any presentation with visuals and multimedia examples of the information, ideas and arguments you are presenting. Panopto At Panopto, the company believes that video can have a transformative effect on learning. So they built a video platform that helps businesses and universities improve the way that they train, teach, and share knowledge. Panapto acts as a video presentation software package that allows consumers to manage, live stream, record, and share videos across your organization. Reviews –, Genial.ly Genially is a helpful tool for creating visual media, such as presentations, infographics, mind maps, and more. The focus with Genially is interactivity, and nearly everything created with this tool can include interactivity.
It also includes real-time collaboration and animation. In addition, statistics help you measure whether your presentation is effective. Reviews – FlowVella FlowVella is another presentation app with several benefits and features including it being mobile first, offering privacy and security, analytics, autoplay videos, and a vast array of collaboration tools. FlowVella has native apps for Mac, iPhone & iPad, yet presentations can be viewed via any web browser. FlowVella is great for for sales presentations, training, kiosks, digital brochures, portfolios, product guides, formal and informal education, and much more. Reviews –, Slide Bureau (NOTE: CLOSED) Summary – Slide Bureau is an interesting software device.
It is mainly used for iPads, but it does allow for people to create presentations that are more customized than your traditional powerpoint slide. The interface is centered on pre-made templates but they are categorized to fit the profession and overall need of the slide. Advantages – Easy to use this presentation platform Disadvantages – Limited to only iPads; cannot truly brand and create presentations more customized than the templates that are given Perfect For – Educators; Individual Professionals Other Sources –; There are probably an additional 50 – 80 presentation software tools we missed on this list. We know there are others we likely left out, so we look forward to your comments and other powerpoint alternatives that can be useful for presenting or organizing/delivering presentations.
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I realize this is a little tl;dr, but bear with me. Some of this is venting, but it describes my requirements, what I've managed to dredge up so far, and to steer people away from some of my mistakes. Recently, I made the grave error of buying a with the intent to stream some PS2 gameplay. After a nightmarish install process trying to get even the installer to run without croaking, I discovered that I, and apparently thousands of others, have delay problems, and the problem is not necessarily with the unit itself, but with trying to fit even SD video down the tiny pipe USB 2.0 presents. On top of this is the fact that Jim only plans to support Hauppauge devices in the rewritten OBS which appears to have stalled due to those pesky, but unavoidable, real life issues. So, I'm packing this thing back into a box and getting it ready for RMA. However, I still would like to eventually be able to stream old games from my PS2, more modern consoles, and, assuming that moisture hasn't gotten to it, my Sega Genesis/SegaCD that's still packed away in the garage.
So, bare minimum, I need composite/component video input support. Hindsight is 20/20, and I've found that trying to stream even low-res video over a USB 2.0 interface is like trying to cram an elephant through a straw. While trying to stream even Crash Bandicoot (an old PSX game), I would eventually build up lag of over a minute, making commentary completely impossible.
I know that it isn't my connection, as this would also occur while just keeping an eye on the Hauppauge Capture preview while playing through the monitor, with both xsplit and OBS closed. So, no USB, I should stick with PCIe. Unfortunately, the world has moved on from old analog video transmission methods, so very few companies even offer systems capable of encoding analog video signals: Hauppauge, AverMedia, ElGato, and BlackMagic. Hauppauge offers quite a line of both internal and external cards. Sadly for them, I already have a taste of what's to come.
Their software is absolutely terrible, and this opinion has been derived on very recent driver and software updates (one came out yesterday, in fact). Installers frequently fail to run and refuse to find a device that is plugged in, even when that device's lights indicate a connection. You may have to start and stop Hauppauge capture just to get your computer to recognise the device, and even that is a crapshoot.
Even xSplit fails to find the device half the time, and after yesterday's driver update, it couldn't find it whatsoever. So, I'll be back to Hauppauge after I find a ten foot pole that works over Amazon. Next down the list is AverMedia, who are apparently in the middle of changing over to a new line of systems, as Amazon and Newegg list most of their devices out of stock. According to their clunky website, however, only a couple devices support component. One of them is over USB (I've already learned my lesson with that), and the other (C127) is quickly running low on stock on Amazon and doesn't support audio capture. However, the C127 is on my shortlist since it is compatible and within my budget.
BlackMagic was next. They are apparently top-of-the-line, supplying broadcast-quality equipment all over the world. Their Intensity Pro was intriguing, but apparently, I need to be very cautious when buying because there's no backsies with them.
If I screw up, there is no return policy. Plus, there's apparently some problems with i7s, so I'm going to steer clear of this. I'm still digging, but in short, I need a good PCIe capture card capable of streaming standard definition video and audio from device hooked up with composite or component video (and, hopefully, audio). I would also like to have something compatible with OBS, of course. My budget is fairly small for this market, around $200 maximum, although that's negotiable. My PC runs on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and has an Intel Core i7 2600 at its disposal, plus 16GB of RAM and 2TB of storage (which I don't intend to use for recordings). I'm not going to need something with superb quality since I can only stream in SD due to connection problems.
(Avoid Frontier Communications like the plague.) However, as always, something with lots of bang for the buck would be excellent. Video capture and editing isn't my expertise.
I am but a humble programmer who occasionally gets nagged by friends to stream myself getting mad at video games. Expert guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Even Hauppauge's internal card, the Colossus, uses encoded video for whatever reason and thus can not be used directly in OBS, I can't recommend this card in any way. As far as AVerMedia goes, I would personally recommend the AVerMedia C027 over the C127 for the capture scenarios you describe, the card is still available on Amazon here: Supports composite, s-video, component and HDMI, you can even use composite or s-video and component or HDMI at the same time due to the card appearing as two separate devices in Windows. Please be aware that this card can not take a 240p signal over component, not many cards do. For something like that (for instance if you want to do PS1 over component on a PS2) you would need a Startech PEXHDCAP, which does not support composite or s-video.
BlackMagic is. It has terrible drivers and does not support low resolution signals of any kind, so no NES or PS1 or etc.
Advertisement Microsoft PowerPoint is fantastic. There’s a reason why it’s the standard presentation tool used in schools and businesses all across the country: it’s good, it’s easy, it works, and it has Nobody benefits from a boring PowerPoint presentation. Use these tips to make sure your efforts always grab their audience. But there are also reasons why you might not want to use it, the main reason being that Should you buy the standalone package version of Office 2016? We present our case why we think you shouldn't and show you what you can do instead. It’d be smarter to Office 365 is a subscription based package that offers access to the latest desktop Office suite, Office Online, cloud storage, and premium mobile apps. Does Office 365 provide enough value to be worth the money?, but that will still cost you.
Why shell out cash when free alternatives exist? Mind you, none of these are as good as PowerPoint, but many of them are more than good enough. And if you’re in any kind of non-business setting, “good enough” should certainly be good enough. LibreOffice is the highest quality alternative to Microsoft Office that you’ll currently find. It has improved a lot over the years, putting it LibreOffice is the king of free office suites.
It's unlikely to replace Microsoft Office in a business environment, but it's an excellent alternative for casual users. Here's what's new in LibreOffice 5.1. — and the best part is that it’s 100% free, open source, and cross platform, which also makes it a Go beyond LibreOffice Impress, go beyond PowerPoint! Linux has many options for presentations, and these lesser-known desktop apps are lightweight, powerful, and will certainly surprise you with what they can do. You can also look into, which is the original codebase that was used to create LibreOffice Impress. OpenOffice is currently under Apache management, and while development is slower than LibreOffice, it’s still a valid alternative.
Zoho is another office suite in the line of Microsoft and LibreOffice, but it is more of an in-between for the two. Dvr software pc. It’s not 100% free and open source, like LibreOffice is, but it does come with a free option. If you want to unlock advanced features, you’ll have to subscribe, like with Office 365. Zoho Show is the presentation tool in this suite and it’s a web app, so it’s most similar to You can collaborate easily in real-time with PowerPoint Online. Take your PowerPoint experience to the web browser with these tips for better presentations. The beauty of it is that you can create, edit, and manage your presentations from anywhere with internet access, and you can collaborate in real-time too.
Other features exist, such as the ability to publish presentations on the web, as well as the availability of Zoho mobile apps and. For people who need to Do you work with a global team or from home? The ability to give a presentation in real-time is a professional need. Here are five tools to present from anywhere in the world., Google Slides has been a solid answer for several years now.
(Prior to 2012, it was known as Google Presentations.) Just as with Google Docs and Google Sheets, Google Slides is an online web app. Slides is 100% free, supports templates, allows you to create/edit/manage from anywhere with internet access, comes with mobile apps and, supports real-time collaboration and annotations, and converts flawlessly back and forth with PowerPoint.
Although it might seem like Slides has less development priority compared to Docs and Sheets, it’s far from being abandoned. In fact, some of the Google has introduced quite a few changes to many of its products over the last 4-5 months. We decided to round up some of the more useful ones that you might want to know about. Were for Slides, like saving and sharing presentations in JPG, PNG, and SVG formats. Highly recommended for anyone who’s already embedded into the Google cloud environment. In other words, Google Drive is a great service, but installing the Google Drive application and synchronizing some files is just the first step.
These tricks will help you take advantage of Google Drive, both on the desktop., you may as well use Slides, too. Maybe options like PowerPoint and Google Slides are too complex for what you need. Or maybe they’re too traditional and stuffy. SlideDog is the presentation tool for anyone who wants an alternative that’s modern, yet easy. With SlideDog, you can take all kinds of media formats — images, videos, PDFs, websites, and even PowerPoint or Prezi files — and stitch them together in a seamless way. It’s perfect for simple and straightforward image-to-image presentations.
What’s even cooler is that you can liveshare your SlideDog presentation and anyone can watch over the internet in real-time. In fact, they can ask questions, comment on slides, and even vote in polls.
It’s an awesome way to get immediate feedback on what you’ve presented. The lite version of SlideDog is free indefinitely.
Advanced features (e.g. Custom backgrounds, dual screen mode, liveshare, and audience interaction) cost $99 per year or a one-time $249 lifetime account. Visme isn’t a dedicated presentation tool, but you can certainly create presentations with it if you desire. The goal of Visme is to make it easy for you to translate ideas into engaging content — presentations, infographics, reports, and more. Visme comes with its own online editor and hundreds of templates to get you started in just minutes. You can change everything — fonts, backgrounds, colors, images — and you can publish your results on the web, offline, or even save as a PDF. The downside is that you can’t import from PowerPoint or export to PowerPoint.
Also, while anyone can publish online, free accounts can only download projects as JPG — PNG, PDF, and HTML5 are for paying customers ($7 per month for Standard, $16 per month for Complete). Sozi is a unique free tool that doesn’t use the slideshow concept that seems so fundamental to presentations. Rather, you’re given a large canvas that you can design however you want — whether by drawing or embedding content — and then you transition from area to area. It’s actually really cool once you give it a try. Is it professional grade?
You’d be better off using something like Adobe After Effects, if you wanted to do something like this on a professional scale, but for simple presentations, where dynamism is important, Sozi rocks. / / These three web tools are actually independent and unaffiliated with each other, but I’m grouping them together because they’re all alike in one way: their free versions only allow for public presentations that are published online and searchable. Obviously these aren’t the best choices for business or otherwise private projects, but if you don’t care whether or not strangers can access your presentation — or if you want strangers to see it — then these services can be quite useful. You can always unlock private presentations by upgrading to a paid account, starting at $5 per month for Haiku Deck, $5 per month for Prezi, and $6 per month for Slid.es. Which Presentation Tool Do You Like?
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to PowerPoint alternatives. LibreOffice is probably the closest real clone that you’ll find, but Zoho Show and Google Slides are both great if you prefer a cloud-based tool over a desktop tool. On the other hand, SlideDog, Visme, and Sozi are all intentionally designed to be different from traditional presentation software — and if you’ve always felt limited by options like PowerPoint, or if you’ve been looking for something more hip or modern, you’ll probably love these. So you tell us: Which one do you like the best and why? Which features do you consider most important for presentation software? Would you rather just shell out the cash for PowerPoint?
Share with us in the comments! Image Credit: by wavebreakmedia via Shutterstock.