Best Alternatives To Microsoft PowerPoint (Online And Offline)

Microsoft PowerPoint is certainly the best and the most used presentation software used on earth today. Presentation can be a great resource to share ideas, collaborate or showcase your work to the respective audience or gathering. I have been making presentations throughout my life, starting from school time where we had to present our work and prepare a presentation for it. At that time, Microsoft PowerPoint was the only solution we had and we never looked into any alternatives. However, the world has changed and we always look for software which can do our work cost and time effectively. I have a collected some of the presentation software that can be very useful for various purposes. The software are categorized into online and offline. The online software need no installation. They will open in a browser and you can easily make presentations using them. The offline software will be installed on your computer and will work even without Internet.

Best Online Alternatives to PowerPoint

Prezi

Prezi is my favorite online presentation building tool. Prezi takes a different approach than the traditional presentation software, including Microsoft PowerPoint. In Prezi, instead of the slide by slide sequential presentation, we can build a complete presentation structure on a single canvas and then zoom in and out of the parts on which we are emphasizing. This helps the audience to see the bigger picture and the core concept of the presentation remains in mind. Here is a very interesting introduction to Prezi:

There is also a Prezi Desktop version for Pro members which can create presentations offline.

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is just more than a presentation tool. In addition to presentation, SlideRocket can provide user engagement analytics. The unique feature of SlideRocket is that it can integrate content from sites like Flickr and Youtube. The plugins can also be installed expanding the features of SlideRocket. Here’s a video on introduction to SlideRocket:

Google Docs Presentation

Google has silently sneaked through what used to be Microsoft’s area of expertise – Office Suite. Now Google offers Google Docs which very much competes with Microsoft Office. Google Docs Presentation was added to Google Docs 4 years back and is an online alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint. The user interface of Google Docs is very much similar to PowerPoint but has less functions and is easier to use. If you need a traditional presentation builder which can build presentations online, Google Docs Presentation is the perfect choice for you.

Best Offline Alternatives to PowerPoint

While it is best for me to save everything on the cloud when I’m always online, there are certain times when you don’t get the Internet connection. In this situation, if you need to build a presentation on the go and you are looking for Microsoft PowerPoint alternatives, here are several free alternatives that you can consider.

OpenOffice – Impress

OpenOffice is an open source and free office suite which includes a presentation software called Impress. It provides almost all the tools that presenters generally need, including drawing, outline, slides, handouts etc. Although it has got a lot of features, it has an old user interface. If you are used to the older Microsoft Office interfaces then you will love to work with OpenOffice Impress.

LibreOffice – Impress

LibreOffice is an enhanced version of OpenOffice suite. LibreOffice also includes a presentation software called Impress. I prefer LibreOffice over OpenOffice because it gives me more features as well as I can create, edit and save my documents in more formats then in OpenOffice.

I hope this list of Microsoft PowerPoint alternatives have been useful for all the readers. Which presentation software do you use? If you are using multiple presentation software, which software do you use for what purpose?