An added bonus: Google Slides integrates with Zapier , so you can do things like update charts based on form responses or new spreadsheet rows, or even customize a template when you win a new deal in your CMS. Google Slides Price: Free. Canva offers one of the most robust free plans of all the presentation apps we tested.
The app delays account creation until after you've created your first design, so you can get started building your presentation in seconds. Choose from an almost overwhelming number of beautiful templates nearly all available for free , including those designed specifically for education or business use cases.
Anyone who's accidentally scrolled too far and been bumped to the next slide will appreciate Canva's editor interface, which eliminates that problem altogether with a smooth scroll that doesn't jump around.
Choose from a handful of preset animations to add life to your presentations, or browse the library of audio and video files available to add. Present directly from Canva and let audience members submit their questions via Canva Live.
Once you share a link to invite audience members to your presentation, they can send questions for you to answer. As the presenter, you'll see them pop up in your presenter view window, so you can keep the audience engaged and your presentation clear. Ludus Web. Ludus is for creative folks who find presentation apps to be limiting and want their slideshow to be a work of art. Ludus really shines with its third-party integrations. Graphic designers will especially love Ludus. You can edit and break apart SVG files, upload your own font files, or even copy and paste files from Sketch and Adobe Illustrator.
There are also some pretty advanced features that any web designer or illustrator would be familiar with, like gradients and code blocks, making this a good choice for graphic designers, art directors, UX designers, and the like. But you don't have to be a Photoshop pro to use these features; Ludus starts new users off with a guided tutorial, which gently introduces some of its more complex features.
Paid plans allow you to password-protect your presentations, use a remote control, share and collaborate as a team, and even embed on Medium and Notion. If you're like me, editing granular spacing issues is the absolute worst part of building a presentation. Look at the GIF above as an example: when you drag an element toward a specific area of the slide, it'll automatically drop it into place for you.
The editor is a little different from most presentation apps, but it's still intuitive—and you'll start off with a quick two-minute tutorial. When creating a new slide, scroll through "inspiration slides" to find a layout you like; once you choose, the app will pull the layout and automatically adapt it to match the design of the rest of your presentation. With 10 themes, several templated slides, over 40 fully-designed templates, and 23 different color palettes to choose from, Beautiful.
While traditional collaboration features are limited on the free plan, paid plans are reasonably priced and offer sharing and collaboration options that rival collab-focused apps like Google Slides. And speaking of Google, you can connect Beautiful.
Struggling to squeeze information into a basic, linear presentation? Give Prezi a try. Unlike nearly all other presentation apps on the market, Prezi Present doesn't restrict the structure of your presentation to a straight line.
The editor focuses on topics and subtopics and allows you to arrange them any way you want, so you can create a more conversational flow of information. With the structural flexibility, you still get all the same customization features you expect from top presentation software, including fully-editable templates.
Prezi Video helps you take remote presentations to a new level. Using the desktop app, you can record a video where the presentation elements are displayed right over your webcam feed.
Record and save the video to share later, or connect with your video conferencing tool of choice including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and more to present live.
Powtoon Web, iOS, Android. Powtoon makes it easy to create engaging videos by orienting the editor around a slide deck. Editing a Powtoon feels just like editing a presentation, but by the time you finish, you have a professional video. You can edit your slides at any time, and when you hit play, a video plays through your deck—the feel is almost like an animated explainer video. Each slide includes the animations you choose and takes up as much time as is needed based on the content on the slide.
Powtoon figures the timing automatically, and you can see in the bottom-right of the editor how much time is used on your current slide versus the total presentation. If you ever want to present as a slide deck, just toggle between Slideshow and Movie. You'll likely need to subscribe to a paid plan to get the most out of Powtoon—like creating videos longer than three minutes, downloading them as MP4 files, and whitelabeling your presentations—but doing so won't break the bank.
Plus, you'll unlock tons of templates complete with animations and soundtracks. One of our favorite Powtoon features is the ability to orient your video: you can choose horizontal orientation like a normal presentation or opt for vertical for mobile or square for social media.
When your presentation is ready, you can publish straight to YouTube, Wistia, Facebook Ads, and any number of other locations. Genially Web. While many presentation apps are built for presenter-led decks, Genially 's interactive features and animated templates make it easy to build a self-led presentation. A variety of interactive buttons enable you to show viewers additional context on hover, skip to any page of your deck, and navigate to external links.
The app offers a bunch of searchable templates, including some for business proposals, reports, social media presentations, and more though most of those are available on premium plans only. Genially also includes Smart blocks —templated blocks of content for elements like data visualizations, image galleries, and more. Our favorite feature is the brand settings. Premium users can set universal branding guidelines that include your logo, color scheme, fonts, images, backgrounds, and more.
Think of them like a custom template, created and customized by you, that the whole team can use. Once set, your team can easily create on-brand presentations that automatically apply your brand settings, without even thinking about it. Plus, Genially supports additional content like training materials, infographics, interactive images, and more—all subject to your brand presets. Full transparency: Microsoft PowerPoint wouldn't make the cut for this list on its own.
But for those who can access it for free on their Microsoft devices or with an existing Microsoft subscription, it's a perfectly capable option.
The OG of presentation software, PowerPoint enables you to do just about anything you need to build a basic presentation. You can choose from about a dozen templates, with more advanced designs available with Premium subscriptions.
Check out Design Ideas after adding your content to see layout and formatting options for the slide, recommended by "Office intelligent services. You can also add temporary markups to slides as you present: your audience will see them, but they won't be permanently added to the slide. Microsoft subscriptions include access to both the desktop and web versions of PowerPoint, so you can create anywhere, with or without a download.
The desktop version is included for free on Microsoft devices. This post was originally published in October and has since been updated with contributions from Danny Schreiber, Matthew Guay, Andrew Kunesh, and Krystina Martinez.
Located in Boston, MA, she loves cinnamon coffee and a good baseball game. Catch up with her on Twitter Kieraabbamonte. Why Zapier? How Zapier works. SlideDog is probably the cheapest of the presentation software featured, with a free account that will cover the essential features.
However, for live sharing and premium support you need to upgrade. Prezi is one of the more unique presentation tools. For business users, there are a variety of handy tools available. By downloading Prezi , you can build and edit presentations with your colleagues in real-time, which is perfect for companies with teams based around the globe. The app is available for Mac and Windows devices. It may seem a little limited by comparison to PowerPoint, but as it's browser-based that means cross-platform compatibility.
Additionally, it allows for collaborative work, and Google Slides really works well here. On top of the fact that it integrates with the rest of the Google Workspace apps, not least Google Drive, and you have a contender. Read our full Google Slides review. Zoho Show is another of the many, many tools and apps that Zoho have made available for business use.
It also operates in the cloud so it's accessible to any device with a browser, and it also allows for collaborative work. You can also easily share the link for users to download, or provide a live presentation online. The updated version has a simpler and easier to use interface, and comes with a free version and a paid-for one with expanded features. Slides comes with a lot of features in an easy to use interface, and involves setting up presentations using drag and drop into an existing grid.
It's also internet-based so there's no software to download, and it only requires a browser to use and access. Evernote is normally thought of as just note-taking software, but it does provide the option to create a presentation you can share online or with an audience.
In that regard it's a little more limited than the other options in not being dedicated presentation software. However, as an easy and handy way to pull together a presentation quickly it could serve as a back-up or last-minute option, especially if Evernote is already being commonly used by you.
LibreOffice Impress is part of the open-source suite offered as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, and comes with a powerful array of tool and editing options for your presentation, not least working with 3D images. It's supported by a large community, so its easy to find an array of additional templates.
If there is a limitation it's that it's software you download and install rather than web-based, but any presentations created should be easily portable to the web if needed.
Adobe Spark does things a bit differently, as rather than just use images its geared toward video as well. This makes for potentially more powerful multimedia presentations, especially as Adobe also have a big selection of photos and images available for its users. There is a free tier for core features, but requires a subscription for custom branding, personalized themes, and support. We've also featured the best alternatives to Microsoft Office. Nicholas Fearn is a freelance technology journalist and copywriter from the Welsh valleys.
He also happens to be a diehard Mariah Carey fan! North America. The best presentation software makes it simple and easy to create, manage, and share slideshow presentations. The best office software in the world is: Microsoft Reasons to avoid - No free trial.
Haiku Deck. Reasons to avoid - Not as well-featured as some rivals. Reasons to avoid - Will be too basic for some. Nicholas Fearn. Euphoria season 2 is exactly what HBO Max needed in Microsoft Teams update will level the playing field for all users.
0コメント