Microsoft PowerPoint is a fantastic tool for delivering powerful ideas on slides. However, PowerPoint isn’t a free tool that everyone can get their hands on. Furthermore, its utility has somewhat declined today as the interactivity and creativity needed to incorporate viral elements into it such as live tweets is missing. If you want to add more buzz to your presentations, here are some alternative PowerPoint tools you can consider trying.
Top 10 PowerPoint Alternatives to Creating Stunning Presentations
Haiku Deck
Haiku Deck’s standout feature is its ability to pick stunning creative content images to go with your slide content. You can also add your own images from Dropbox, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and other cloud platforms that are integrated with the tool.
There are a handful of templates or themes to choose from and three types of charts to enhance complex data. Haiku Deck emphasizes on presenting minimum text with big bold headlines and is a great tool if you need to create presentations on the fly from your iPad. Haiku Deck is free to use but can also buy premium images to add to your slides.
While I did not particularly like the crowded interface, I was impressed with the ease with which I could search and discover images to complement my content. If you are on the lookout for an alternative PowerPoint option, Haiku Deck is definitely one of the best contenders.
Bunkr
Bunkr is a web app that is currently in beta. You need to sign up with an email address or a social account to get started. The interface of the tool itself is bland with just one option; to create a new presentation. Once you make your choice of slide design, you can start working on it by adding text, images, audio and video files, charts and such.
What is simply brilliant about Bunkr is that it integrates with a whole lot of services like YouTube, EverNote, Instagram, Pinterest, Spotify, Mashable, BBC, Twitter, LinkedIn, Codepen and so on. That means you get to add blog articles, tweets, codes, maps, links to Google Play Stores and more in attractive and interesting ways.
Bunkr also lets you add your own background images and offers options to pull them from cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Flickr, Instagram and other platforms.
While Bunkr scores on the web front, it does lack many good features such as transitions and animation effects, themes, and fonts. It is nevertheless a tool that can easily help you create highly interactive slides.
Powtoon
This impressive alternative PowerPoint tool features some exciting templates in its gallery with a brief description indicating what each of the templates work best for. Powtoon emphasizes more on storytelling that just presentation of facts. What’s even more awesome about this is the fact that you can convert your PowerPoint presentation into a snazzy animation video to share on your blog or sites like YouTube.
The Powtoon Studio is a powerful tool where you can select styles and pick from a range of characters, props, transitions, and transitions.A timeline at the bottom of the screen displays when your objects will appear on the slide and you can reorder and change the duration they stay onscreen. The best way to use Powtoon is to prepare a script, record it using the SoundManager and add some cool images to accompany the voice recording.
Prezi
Prezi takes flight with a series of good looking templates to jump ahead in your presentations and I love the creative look and feel of the tool. You can insert images, symbols, clip art, videos from YouTube and background music without moving away from your file. Prezi is like a canvas where all your ideas and creativity can be painted like a piece of brilliant artwork. There is an ease with which you can zoom in and out and move elements around the screen. Unlike the usual static slides we are used to, Prezi probably works best for those with a creative eye but users may not enjoy the whirls and swirls of the presentation.
Prezi comes with a variety of subscription options. The free version lets you create publicly viewable presentations while the premium plans offer more benefits from $6 a month to $14 a month.
Keynote
If PowerPoint is to Windows, the Keynote is to Mac. It uses Apple’s iCloud platform to sync presentations across iOS devices and is also compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint, allowing users to team up with those working on PowerPoint . Keynote’s creative tools let you add pictures, videos, charts and cinematic transitions to give your presentations a graphically rich, polished and professional look. Apart from its design, charting, and editing functionality, you can also share presentations via third party services such as Gmail or Dropbox or over WiFi via Airdrop with other nearby Apple users. The single most striking thing about Keynote is that is is template driven.
CustomShow
CustomShow is an ideal platform for business professionals to deliver sales and marketing related presentations. It helps businesses and companies build custom branded presentations with its standardized fonts, video colors and graphics that give it a professional look. It is a cloud based platform, which means any changes you make to the presentation is instantly available across the world, making it a powerful tool to use when you want to collaborate in real time.
ClearSlide
ClearSlide is another powerful PowerPoint alternative for sales and marketing organizations. It offers a smart Live Pitch feature that lets you present remotely to potential leads using screen share functionality. Its highly versatile menu lets you quickly jump into any slide, be audible ready and access other collaterals while still getting back to where you left off in your original presentation, all the while offering a seamless customer experience. It also offers security tools to keep conversations and presentations private. Apart from its drawing tools it also offers webcam integration, instant messaging, and audio and recording functionality that can help better engage customers and deliver successful business results.
SlideDog
SlideDog is a presentation platform where you can upload your photos, videos, documents, PowerPoint files and create a playlist that can be delivered seamlessly as one single presentation. SlideDog presentations can be live streamed to audiences anywhere in the world and shared across multiple devices as well. It also allows for live interactions with audiences with its Live Poll and Live Chat features. The only downside to SlideDog is that you cannot create presentations from scratch like you could in PowerPoint, but it scores well when it comes to presenting.
Projeqt
PowerPoint presentations are great to showcase facts but alternatives like Projeqt make it look rather lame. Capturing the audiences' attention when you're talking about a drab topic is not easy. Projeqt goes the extra mile to make sure that you can pull in live tweets, blog feeds, interactive maps, audio notes and streaming videos to bring any old presentation to life. It lets you create infinite layered presentations so you can connect as many presentations as you like and its user friendly dashboard makes all that dynamic work easy to accomplish. Plus it optimizes for any device as well.
Slides
Slides is a cloud based presentation software that lets you create, present, and share decks.The Slides editor opens up in your web browser making it easy for you to start creating your presentations from a familiar interface. Since everything is in the cloud, you don't have to download anything and your work will always reside securely in the cloud, making it accessible for you any time of the day. It allows for easy collaboration, embedding on websites, conversion into PDFs and if necessary, downloadable for offline access as well. Other features include the ability to remote control presentations from any mobile device, broadcast live, and integrate with Google Analytics to see how your content is performing.
In my research for top free alternative PowerPoint tools, I found these options to be the most eye catching ones. If you plan to do a presentation, make sure you try one of these awesome tools, and be sure to let us know your experience. If you know of any tool that deserves a place in this post, do let us know in the comments section.
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