Best & Worst PowerPoint Alternatives

Competing with Microsoft Office, and especially PowerPoint, has always been a monumental challenge. But if you have the right price, you just might make a go of it. At least that’s what five software publishers are thinking, and one or more of them may pull it off, especially if that price is basically free.

To find the best PowerPoint alternative, we looked at five similar programs--in some cases, remarkably similar. Like PowerPoint, each was part of a suite of Office-like applications. For four of these suites, the price is essentially zero, offset either by donations or the revenue from more full-featured (and slightly more expensive) versions. Even in the fifth
case, the suite costs significantly less than Microsoft Office 2007.

As usual, however, you get what you pay for. In our tests (where we created two presentations and imported and edited a PowerPoint slideshow), the free programs were somewhat slower than PowerPoint and often lacking in some of its more advanced features such as Custom Animation. On the plus side, a few of the programs have a feature or two that Microsoft’s product lacks. Here’s how the alternatives stack up.

PowerPoint Alternatives