9 Powerful PowerPoint Alternatives for Presentations

Microsoft PowerPoint is an ubiquitous presentation tool that comes free with MS Office and can be downloaded to a Mac, PC or mobile device. It’s long been the favorite option for presentations that people share in classrooms, boardrooms and anywhere else a visual element is needed to summary and share information. Microsoft subscribers can save the file to OneDrive and access presentations from your cloud on any tablet, computer or phone.

PowerPoint lets users seamlessly go from the presentation platform to MS Word and Excel, which can embed PowerPoint elements and vice versa. Real-time co-authoring with comments gets input to the rest of the team quickly. Plus, it allows presenters to save, present and edit in the cloud for access anywhere, anytime and from any device.

Unfortunately, the program has been so overused that it’s become a bit staid, with few new templates offered with new version of the MS Office package. Also, it can be fussy and difficult to work with or prone to crashes at inopportune times.

Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives to explore. Let’s take a look at 9 of them.

Top PowerPoint Alternatives

To help you understand your options, we’ve summarized the best alternatives and their feature below. The next time you need a presentation fast and PowerPoint lets you down, you’ll have a backup plan.

1. Visme

Website: https://www.visme.co/

Visme is a drag-and-drop presentation tool based on cloud technology. It offers presenters the ability to make innovative presentations, as well as reports, product demos, infographics and even resumes. Its professional-level templates provide a welcome relief to the overexposed PowerPoint themes that never seem to change.

It has a more robust image library than PowerPoint, so creators choose from millions of shape icons, graph styling tools and images. There are hundreds of fonts in the package and a freestyle design area that lets users come up with any kind of design imaginable.

What it can do:

• Add animation, interactivity to any item. Users can insert surveys, quizzes, call-to-action buttons and videos.
• Analytics: Present combined project views in one place.
• Create highly visual slides via drag-and-drop content with visual figures, maps, stats and pictographs.
• HTML5-based, making it compatible with any browser or device.
• Ability to import PowerPoint slides and files.
• User decides who can access projects.
• Present offline as an image, PDF or HTML5.
• Publish and share URL or embed it into your site.
• Search capability at slide level via a library with 900+ layouts
• Searchable libraries include countless images and thousands of vector icons
• Encourages collaboration with content management tools.

Pros: Extremely versatile and surpasses PowerPoint on the number of images and file stability.

Cons: Due to numerous options, it takes some time to fun all of its features.

Ideal for: Entrepreneurs, educators, marketers and individuals or corporate teams

2. Haiku Deck

Website: https://www.haikudeck.com/

Haiku Deck is a cloud-based presentation solution typically used as a mobile alternative for PowerPoint and Prezi. The simple but powerful interface includes 27 templates and 35 million publish-ready photos.

Busy users love that they can create presentations on the fly as well as access and edit presentations from their PC, iPad, iPhone, Mac or Chromebook. The templates have big bold text and strong visuals.

What it can do:

• Includes Getty Images and graph creators for professional quality presentations.
• Dynamic templates with bold text and strong visuals help make an impact.
• Private talking points and transcripts can be published with the slides.
• Export capability to Keynote PD or PowerPoint.
• iPhone remote: View and edit decks from your mobile device.
• View slide galleries with sample decks for inspiration.

Pros: Strong visuals

Cons: Customization is limited.

Ideal for: Traveling sales and business professionals

3. Emaze

Website: https://www.emaze.com/

This easy-to-use tool uses HTML5, so it’s available on any browser or device, such as Chromebooks and tablets. This is for users who want to create presentations within minutes, Emaze features professional 2D and 3D templates, and the ability to create video presentations accessible from anywhere online.

What it can do:

• Create presentations in minutes with easy templates.
• Share presentations all over the world via an included translation tool.
• Access decks anywhere thanks to its cloud-based software.
• View and edit presentations from laptops, including tablets, smartphones and PCs.

Pros: Makes elegant visualizations with little effort, easier to use than PowerPoint

Cons: Not compatible with older devices, resource intensive and tends to monopolize memory

Ideal for: Users seeking easy-to-use 3D templates

4. Prezi

Website: https://prezi.com/

Another cloud-based tool, Prezi is known for its nonlinear presentations. Presenters can pan and zoom without the visual effect of moving to a new slide.

What it can do:

• Download for offline use.

• Manage privacy setting.

• Share for collaborating with others.
• Store presentations in the cloud.
• Advanced editing options for images.

• Edit presentations from all your devices.

Pros: Conceptualization tool that creates nonlinear presentations

Cons: Not 100 percent customizable, solely creates non-linear presentations, causes motion sickness for some viewers

Ideal for: Speakers, students, educators, companies

5. Keynote

Website: https://www.apple.com/keynote/

Mac users rejoiced when this Apple alternative to PowerPoint came out. Keynote is sophisticated, sleek and intuitive. It lets users create interactive charts, add reflections and picture frames and produce presentations with cinematic transitions between slides. It doesn’t have the interactive capability of PowerPoint, which may not be ideal for business users.

What it can do:

• Access 30 cinematic effects for objects and texts.
• Access 30 polished templates.
• Easily share for collaboration.
• Import or edit PowerPoint decks or save Keynote decks as PowerPoint files.
• Make animated charts.
• View and edit from an iPad or iPhone.

Pros: PowerPoint compatible and great alternative for Apple fans

Cons: Desktop software in not available online; contains no slide library

Ideal for: Mac aficionados

6. Google Slides

Website: https://www.google.com/slides/about/

Google’s offering in the presentation sphere is called Google Slides. This software is a user-friendly alternative to the more complex and resource intensive PowerPoint.
The slick editor workspace lets creators add background images, has many designs and themes, and facilitate easy collaboration via 10 default slides. Google fans like this tool because it’s easy to use for those familiar with other Google tools.

Slides ability to display math formulas, which makes it attractive to teachers, students and academics.

What can it do:

• Access to analytics and revision history.
• Display math formulas.

• Edit, access presentations from any device.
• Fork presentations.
• Manage privacy.
• Ability to present offline.
• Define a theme with the CSS editor.

Pros: User-friendly with beginner’s tutorial

Cons: Creates only linear presentations with limited interactivity and fewer templates than PowerPoint

Ideal for: Students, teachers, individuals

7. Slidedog

Website: https://slidedog.com/

If you’ve ever had to go back and forth between a slide deck, website, PDF file of video player during a presentation, then you might want to check out this software. It could actually make you like giving multimedia dog and pony shows and exceeds PowerPoint on this point. With Slidedog, the audience doesn’t have to watch as you return to the desktop to access websites and other media.  This saves time and lets you come across as the most polished presenter in the room.

This multimedia presentation plat form lets you make seamless slideshows and gives you the ability to incorporate movie clips, PDF files, website, Prezi decks and PowerPoint elements in a playlist for your presentation.

What it can do:

• Add polls during your presentation to promote and record attendee feedback.
• Remote control your slides from a PC, tablet or smartphone.
• Make custom presentation playlists to avoid constantly returning to the desktop to launch various tools.
• Engage with participants via live chat or connect with all participates via the discussion tool.
• Share slides real-time from anywhere.
• View a separate presenter screen where you can take notes and view the slide thumbnails for a smoother presentation.

Pros: Creates seamless presentations using multiple media platforms

Cons: Doesn’t include a way to design slide content

Ideal for: Presenters working with many media formats where a smooth presentation is a priority: salespeople, trainers, software demonstrators

8. Slidebean

Website: https://slidebean.com/

This tool is easier to user than PowerPoint, mainly because you don’t have to design slides from scratch. Instead, it comes with premade slides you copy content into hassle-free. It’s designed so that users just add their content and then the software does its magic and designs and formats the presentation.

This is a great feature for finance and business professionals called on to do a last-minute presentation of information that’s only available shortly before a meeting.

What it can do:

• Provides access to thousands of icons
• Access the actions of viewers during each presentation
• Choose from several color palettes
• Content templates for unique to business, marketing and startups
• Stores past CSV data for chart use
• Search for and insert images from an expansive gallery within the software
• Share and collaborate presentation
• Use chat feature to talk to individuals or the group

Pros: Ability to focus on content

Cons: No animation, no opportunity to design from the ground up

Ideal for: Last-minute presenters, those with little or no time

9. Zoho Show

Website: https://www.zoho.com/

Zoho Show gives users a traditional presentation tool they access online. Like the other choices, Zoho lets users to create and access decks from any browser or device as long as they’re connected to the internet. The old-school product appeals to those who aren’t ready to spend considerable time learning new software.

What it can do:

• Apply eye-catching animation.

• Embed live YouTube videos, tweets and Flickr images.
• Publish slideshow on websites and blogs.
• Import multiple file types, including .odp, .pptx, .ppt,.pps, .ppsx, and .sxi.
• Use collaborative tools for others to edit and comment on your content.

Pros: It imports many file types and has a conferencing option

Cons: Limited animations and presentation functionality

Perfect for: Students, business users, educators