If we talk about Powerpoint, we have to talk about the application veteran in the world of computing to create presentations, an application created by the company Forethought Inc, initially baptized as Present and aimed at the Mac platform. At the end of 1987 Microsoft bought it, adapted it to Windows, changed its name to Powerpoint and integrated into Office as we know it today.
Powerpoint is widely used both in the business sector, in education and in the private sphere. It came to the market to fill the deficiencies that Word presented for making presentations and since then it has become a benchmark thanks to its ease of use and the large number of functions such as the possibility of add animated texts and images, videos, graphics, hyperlinks ...
One of the strengths that Powerpoint offers us is the integration with Office 365, the set of Microsoft applications where we also find Word, Excel, Outlook, Access and which is available both as a desktop application and via the web. Office 365 works under subscription and it is not possible to buy the applications independently or together, which means that you have to pay every month.
Microsoft puts at our disposal different plans, both for individuals and companies and little about 7 euros per month, 59 euros the annual plan, we can enjoy all the Office 365 applications from our computer or through a browser, in addition to enjoying 1 TB of cloud storage ... If you regularly use any of these applications in a not official, you should consider the subscription to be able to enjoy all the advantages that it offers us.
But if your use of Powerpoint is sporadic, like that of Word or Excel, obviously a subscription does not compensate you, no matter how cheap it is. If this is your case, then we will show you which are the best free alternatives to Powerpoint.
Google Presentations
If you regularly use Google, chances are you've come across Google's suite of applications for office automation called Google Suite. This suite of applications formatted by Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides, is integrated into Google Drive y allows us to create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations completely free through a browser (if it is Chrome better).
Google Presentations allows us to quickly and easily create presentations (forgive the redundancy) making use of the images and videos that we have stored in Google Photos. The main problem that Google Presentations offers us are the options, since their number is very small and only offers very basic functions, but enough for most home users.
To create a presentation using this service, we just have to access our Google Drive account, click on New, select Google Presentations and start adding the text, images and videos that we want to show. Google Slides format is not supported neither with Powerpoint nor with any other application that allows us to create presentations.
Keynote
iWork is the Office for macOS, the Mac operating system, but unlike Microsoft's solution, this one is completely free. iWork is formatted by Pages (Word), Numbers (Excel) and Keynote (Powerpoint). Keynote, which translated into the language of Cervantes means Presentation, offers us a very complete tool to create presentations of all kinds, where we can add from images to videos as well as graphics, animated texts ...
Keynote, like the rest of the applications available within iWork, is available as an app for macOS, iOS, and also via icloud.com, Apple's cloud service. If you are not an Apple user, but you want to try this application, you can do it through its website, it is only necessary to have one Apple ID.
The format of the presentations that we create in Keynote is only compatible with this application, however, and unlike Google Presentations, allows us to export our work to .pptx format, the format used by Powerpoint.
Impress
An alternative completely free In the form of an application, we find it in the set of office automation applications that LibreOffice makes available to us. Libre Office is formatted by Writer (Word), Calc (Excel), Impress (Powerpoint), Base (Access) as well as a formula editor and diagram generator.
Impress is a fairly complete solution which requires the installation of the application suite, we cannot install it independently. The design is very similar to Powerpoint, so if we are used to using this Microsoft application, we will not miss it.
Regarding available options, Impress has nothing to envy to any other application, since it allows us to add texts (we can format it in a thousand ways), videos, images, diagrams, tables, graphics ..., as well as allowing us to build and control 3D scenes thanks to the large number of pre-designed elements available.
Impress is compatible with Powerpoint, not only when opening files with the .pptx extension, but also when exporting the work we create. An option that we must take into account since the native LibreOffice format is not compatible with Powerpoint or with any other of the applications offered by Office 365.
Natively, it makes a large number of templates available to us. If those templates don't fit our needs, we can download more templates from the LibreOffice template repository.
LibreOffice is available both Windows as for macOS and Linux. In order to use the application in Spanish, we have to download the application first and right after (it offers us the option), download the language pack, a package that we have to install just after we have installed LibreOffice.
ZohoShow
ZohoShow is an excellent free alternative to Powerpoint for a number of reasons. On the one hand, instead of being forced to work via the web like most of the alternatives that I show you in this article, this fUnciona through a Chrome extension (we can also use Edge Chromium).
Another positive point that we find in Zoho is that it allows us make our presentations through Apple TV, Android TV, iPhone, iPad, Android or Chromecast, which will save us from having to struggle with cables, configurations and connections.
Zoho supports Powerpoint, and allows us to import files from this application to work collaboratively with other people. As for the options it offers, Zoho allows us to add text (we can format it in a thousand ways), images, a large number of shapes (boxes, triangles, crosses, cubes ...), tables, graphics and even audio and video files from YouTube.
With Zoho, we can also edit the images once we have added them to the presentation, a function that speeds up the work by avoiding having to pass the images that we want to use through an editor. Animations are also one of the strengths that Zoho offers us, animations with which we can highlight key points, create stories ...
Slidebean
If you are looking for templates with specific themes, the solution that Slidebean offers us may be the one you are looking for. Slidebean offers us free access to the basic version, a version that includes access to a large number of templates organized by theme, which will allow us to create our presentations in a much simpler way than starting from scratch or based on simple templates.
Unlike other websites that allow us to create presentations, Slidebean gives us access to all multimedia content that it offers in the paid versions, so the limit when creating presentations is in your imagination and the time you have to be able to check the gigantic amount of multimedia elements that it offers us.
Canva
Canva is a few alternatives to Powerpoint via the web that we have at our disposal. Although it has plans for companies, the version for home users is completely free and puts at our disposal more than 8000 templates, 100 types of design and hundreds of thousands of photos and graphic elements that we can add to our presentations.
The presentations that allow us to make a web page, we can export in PDF, JPG, PNG format and in presentation mode to share on social networks. It also allows us to work together on the same document with other people, add comments and even 1 GB of storage for our presentations.
Canva not only allows us presentations, but also allows us to create album or book covers, banners, certificates, letterheads, newsletters, curricula, school yearbooks, business cards, event programs, identification cards, storyboards, brochures, flyers, calendars ...
Swipe
Swipe is an interesting free alternative to Powerpoint for home users. Like Canvas, it allows us to work together on the same document with other people, share the presentation through a link via the web protecting access with a password, export the project in PDF format ...
This alternative is designed to interact with the people who view it, inviting them to select questions and by virtue of the answers, show different results in addition to allowing you to create personalized surveys, being ideal in business and student environments.