PowerPoint is a good application, and it has some great apps that integrate with it (Windows feature only). That said, it having been the go-to tool for creating presentations for over a decade now, it’s gotten a bit stale. And unlike several years ago there are plenty of alternative apps to create dynamic presentations with more being developed every day.

Besides making it easier to create stunning presentations, another benefit of using one of these alternative apps is that it will likely wow your audience, as these alternatives offer some great features including great design tools, dynamic presentation, cleaner templates, and asset libraries, just to name a few.

Also, to the eLearning creators out there, almost all of these tools allow you to export your presentation for embedding into your eLearning module for a better learning experience and can aid in the creation of some terrific and unique courses.

It is clear on this trends chart that PowerPoint has had a steady decline over the past decade as so many of these other tools have emerged.

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Depending on your topic and the material you intend to present a certain tool may be a better option than another depending on its features and presentation design type.

So, the next time you have a big presentation to give, consider using one of these amazing PowerPoint alternatives to wow your audience, and look like a rock star!

Amazing PowerPoint Alternatives:

Prezi

Prezi is a great alternative to PPT for business presentations. You can use it individually, or to collaborate in real-time with teams on a presentation. Because it’s web-based, it will work on both PC and Mac. Prezi recently updated their application, so upon creating an account, you have the ability to use “Prezi Classic” or “Prezi Next”.

Unlike slides, Prezi’s single, interactive canvas encourages conversation and collaboration, making your overall presentation more engaging, persuasive, and memorable. (Prezi)

Generally, Prezi works by creating slides and “frames”, and importing your own content and choosing pan-and-zoom paths for your presentation. According to a Harvard Research Study, “Participants evaluated Prezi presentations as more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective than both PPT and oral presentations.”

Canva

Canva makes it easy for anyone to be a designer and its list of features is incredibly robust. Whether you want to create a presentation, infographic, logo, flyer, resume, newsletter, edit a photo, or create a graph, you can can do all of this with Canva, and much more. Canva sports a collection of over 1 million images, photo filters, and tons of free icons and shapes.

This is my absolute go-to web app for creating all kinds of great looking media. I’ve designed magazine covers with it, My LinkedIn banner… you name it.

Lear More about Canva and it’s awesome features!

Full List of Available Features:

 

Visme

Visme is another web-based tool, predicated on easy creation of presentations, infographics, resumes, banners/ads, etc. which can be shared online, or published to a variety of different formats including HTML5. It gives you the ability to completely customize your infographics, and the HTML5 output allows for creating web content. You can also add interaction and animation to your content, and it features team collaboration, as well as a large library of assets. You can start with a template, or custom frame, edit your material, and then publish for download, embed, online sharing, or HTML5. The paid version also offers analytics if you’re in marketing or would just like to see usage of your material.

Learn more about Visme from this Case Study in Using Visme for Creating Interactive Content.

emaze

Emaze is cloud-based, and allows you to create and share presentations, websites, blogs, ecards, and photo albums. With an emphasis on HTML5 and CSS, Emaze makes use of clean graphics and movements in its templates, including pan-and-zoom effects, 3D transitions, and video background that will impress your audience. Content created with Emaze is easily sharable, and with a paid plan, one can collect viewing analytics. With clean templates and automated design, Emaze makes it easy to create unique presentations anywhere, from any device, and quickly distribute the material to your audience.

infogr.am

Infogr.am has been spreading across the internet quickly, It’s likely you’ve seen something created with this tool, particularly in online articles where they present statistics. They were also recently acquired by one of our favorite companies, Prezi. As with the other apps listed, it is a WYSIWYG editor, but is predominately a “web-based data visualization company”, used for presenting information in the form of interactive charts, infographs, maps, etc., which can be embedded on sites or shared as-is.  It is excellent at making statistics and charts more interesting and interactive.

“Prezi was inspired to unite with Infogr.am because of our shared mission to help people make better decisions by providing more effective tools for visual communication,” said  “If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the data that backs it up makes it credible. And without a story, data falls flat in effectiveness.” Peter Arvai, Prezi’s CEO and co-founder. (Source Article)

Slide Dog

Slide Dog allows you to combine different kinds of media into one seamless presentation. This is a great way to take advantage of different tools and media, and present them seamlessly in what they call “presentation playlists”. This is particularly useful if you would be planning on switching between a presentation, website, video, pdf, etc. throughout your presentation. Instead of needing to shuffle through your different materials, Slide Dog allows you to compose these into one seamless presentation, and it integrates with a wide programs and online tools.

Snagit

Snagit is a well-known application by TechSmith, the makers of Camtasia. It’s an excellent tool for creating, organizing, and editing screen captures. If you use screen captures on a regular basis, ditch “snip-it” or “snipping tool” for this feature-packed, but affordable application. It allows you to take both screen captures, and recording, and offers a robust set of editing features. If you frequently take screen captures, give Snagit a shot—they offer a free trial, and likely once you get your hands on the robust features this little application offers you will wonder how you ever lived without it.

TechSmith offers a robust library of effective 2-5 minute training videos that will quickly have you up and running like a pro.

Camtasia

Camtasia is an excellent “light-weight” video editor, as well as a screen recording application. It comes with a decent library of effects like motion graphics, backgrounds, lower-thirds, etc. and you can buy additional assets directly from TechSmith, or other partners, like eLearning Brothers. Whether you’re looking to do some quick, intuitive video editing with its drag-and-drop workflow, create a training video, or record a PowerPoint, Camtasia is very robust when it comes to those who often work with videos in their presentations, or as their main method for presenting their material. You can even include interactive elements, like quizzes and hotspots, and publish your material to SCORM, or directly to your favorite hosting service.

For an extra $20, you can bundle Camtasia with Snagit, and considering these two applications are both made by the same company, they pair very well together and for many can cover both your video and image editing needs. TechSmith offers a 30 day free trial, as well as education/government discounts.

Keynote

Keynote is Apple’s version of PowerPoint. For the Mac users out there, this comes pre-installed with your system as part of the iWork suite for free. Keynote presentations can be saved in order to be opened in PowerPoint, and vice-versa. Overall, it’s an easy-to-use PowerPoint alternative, where you will find many similar features. Some users find that they prefer Keynote over PowerPoint due to the clean look, great graphics and editing capabilities, and templates. Mac users may find it to be more intuitive than PowerPoint, and as part of iCloud, you can edit your work on any of your Apple devices. Apple also recently introduced a collaborative work feature, allowing you can share your project and edit it in real-time with co-creators.

Google Slides

Google slides is a web-based tool that is included with your Google/Gmail subscription. It is capable of opening PowerPoint presentations, as well as exporting Slides projects to PowerPoint. Google Slides is more simplistic than PowerPoint and Keynote. It’s strengths would be fact that it is simple, easy accessible through a web-browser, and offers collaborative work features.

Pictochart

Infographics and interactive presentations…

https://piktochart.com/product-features/

Haiku Deck

Haiku Deck’s simplicity is what makes it attractive. Instead of fancy animations and transitions. Haiku Deck focuses on simple, image based presentations, using pictures and words to tell a story. With this tool it’s all about filters, transparency, and text—making your presentation as simple as possible to tell a story your audience.

Projeqt

Projeqt is called a “storytelling” platform, and makes it simple to create interactive presentations. It features what it calls “stacks”, which allow you to create “layered experiences”; basically slides within slides, that let you dive deeper into that part of the story. It also offers the ability to share and embed your Projeqt easily.

Zoho Show

Zoho Show is similar to Google Slides in the fact that it’s web-based, and predicated on the ability to create and collaborate on any device. It allows you to import PPT and other files as the basis for your presentation. Zoho also offers “Zoho Docs”, again similar to Google Docs. Zoho Show is part of an “online office suite” focused on business use and collaboration, ease of use, and being able to share and gather analytics on your material.

Wideo

Wideo is specifically an animation creation tool, with the final output being a video. It is web-based, and targets marketers with the promise of increasing ROI, improving e-mail open rates, and social media campaigns. Also, as with other Animation makers, it also has a focus on training.

What makes this platform attractive is its ease of use, and drag and drop creation; you can use their templates and elements, or upload your own images. If your goal is creating fairly simple animations for standalone use or use alongside other material and tools, Wideo may be a worthwhile consideration.

Moovly

Moovly is a cloud-based platform that allows you to create animations and videos without being an expert. Good for marketers, corporate videos, training material, and more. It has a simple drag and drop interface with access to customizable templates, and allows for unlimited download of videos.

https://youtu.be/4h6tTqVP0kA

KnowledgeVision

KnowledgeVison, aka. Knovio is a suite of integrated tools for creating online presentations and interactive video content, as well as hosting these video, multimedia presentations and “flip decks” on an enterprise-level global distribution network. It allows you to share your material in a wide variety of ways, including email, websites, marketing systems, LMSs, CRMs, social media, and offline viewing. You can organize your media into galleries and micro-sites with the option to require registration forms and passwords for analytics and record keeping. This helps measure content performance and user engagement, and they offer “patented tracking tools and dashboards”.

SlideShark

Although this post is about PowerPoint alternatives, SlideShark is worth mentioning. It is an app with the specific purpose of delivering and sharing your PowerPoint presentation from the cloud, and on any device. Slide Shark is primarily used for its cloud storage, view tracking, and the ability to present over the web.

ClearSlide (Previously SlideRocket)

SlideRocket was a SaaS presentation platform that let users create, manage, share, and measure presentations. It was acquired by VMWare in 2011 and sold to ClearSlide. This tool is specifically focused on “sales enablement”, customer support and marketing. The platform is full web-based and provides detailed customer analytics, web conferencing and screen sharing. Other features include email tracking and analytics.

GoAnimate!

GoAnimate! is a very robust animation creation tool. You can easily use templates and create different scenarios, customize your characters and scenes, and add a voiceover that will automatically sync with the lips of your characters. It also includes a library of assets, including music. Besides animation, it also has “scribe” and other functionality. Great for eLearning and a variety of kinds of video production.

https://youtu.be/OCTXTR9gCxI

VideoScribe

VideoScribe is an easy to use scribe tool. For those of you who don’t think you know what scribe is, it’s those sped-up videos of a hand sketching out images. VideoScribe is affordable, and very easy to use. It’s also a great presentation medium that is guaranteed to wow an audience, and keep their attention (but don’t overuse it). Done right, the casual viewer will be amazed at the “amount of work it must have taken” or wonder if you hired a professional artist or animator.

Powtoon

Video animation creation software/tool.

CONCLUSION:

Get with the times, and save yourself some time by using these great tools. And, while you’re at it, impress your audience and have them thinking you’re a rock star!  These tools have a wide variety of uses, and I’ve used them all… very much solidifying my rock star reputation without breaking a sweat.

Did I Miss Anything?

Please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you regarding your favorite PPT alternative!