Successful pitching and presentations require more than just having good ideas and knowing your facts; it also depends on a well-executed pitch deck. Today’s business sphere demands crafting a strong pitch and also knowing how to present it in various situations.
If you need to present your idea, you’ll need to know not only what data to include but also how to create a visually appealing deck and present it effectively. In this article, we’ll talk about the best presentation apps and tools for those looking for better options than Microsoft PowerPoint.
What to look for in a presentation app?
A great presentation app should have a range of advanced features to take their presentations to the next level. So before you get started reviewing these tools, let’s have a look at what makes great presentation software:
- It should allow you to easily customize the design and layout of slides, including the use of different themes, fonts, colors, and graphics.
- The app should also support the integration of various multimedia elements and formats, such as images, videos, and audio files. This is to enhance the overall message of the presentation.
- The best presentation software should have intuitive navigation and a user-friendly interface so that the users can easily create and edit slides without feeling overwhelmed.
- It should offer seamless sharing and collaboration options, enabling users to share their presentations with others and work together on the same document in real-time.
- The ability to embed external content, such as live data and social media feeds, is a plus.
- It should allow users to fine-tune their presentations with precision and control, such as the ability to adjust the size and position of images, tweak the formatting of text, and add annotations and comments.
- Finally, a great presentation app should be accessible across multiple devices and platforms to ensure users can create and access their presentations from anywhere, at any time.
All these features combined empower you to effectively communicate your ideas and stories in a clear and engaging way.
1. Polymer
Polymer is an AI-powered tool designed specifically for data presentation.
Instead of static PowerPoint slides with graphs/charts on them, Polymer offers a more powerful way to showcase your data. All you need to do is to take a spreadsheet and upload it onto Polymer, and the tool’s AI will transform the spreadsheet into an intelligible, interactive website.
Pros
- Polymer make data beautiful, interactive, and searchable.
- They are aesthetically professional.
- Only takes a few seconds to create a Polymer Site.
- Uses AI presentation.
- Sharable through a URL.
- Free to use and create presentations.
Cons
- Designed primarily for presenting data and is not ideal for presenting information.
- There are also a few limitations, such as 5000 rows of data and a limited number of visualizations.
2. Visme
Visme is one of the best presentation apps and a valid alternative to Prezi and PowerPoint. It is not only suitable for presentations but also for other visual content creation needs. With it, you can create flyers, reports, interactive ebooks, learning resources, survey results, charts, and graphs. Additionally, it comes with a full library of illustrations and characters.
Visme is cloud-based, so you can use it anywhere with an internet-connected computer. This is why 93% of customers using Visme said they are likely to recommend it to other professionals.
Pros
- Suitable for any skill level with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.
- Has hundreds of different beautiful templates and built-on presentation slides that enable you to create stunning presentations.
- Allows taking your presentation offline or online. All you need is to create an online link for the presentation or download it as an offline HTML5 file.
- Suitable for creating infographics, social media graphics, and interactive online content.
- Offers advanced graphic design software to make your presentations data-based and informative.
- Offers lots of free images you can use in your presentations and infographics.
Cons
- Significant learning curve because of its robustness.
- Difficult to change, clone, and move sections in Visme.
- It lacks photo elements on transparent backgrounds.
3. Prezi
Prezi is one of the best apps for interactive presentations. It uses a unique User Interface (ZUI) that allows users to zoom in and out of presentations. It allows you to create interesting and engaging visuals quickly, record the presentation, and share it later or go live with your videoconferencing tools.
Prezi works with other tools such as Zoom Webinar, GoToWebinar, GoToWebinar simulated live, and Google Meet. Take a look at LeadsBridge’s most popular integrations for Zoom Webinar, GoToWebinar, and GoToWebinar Simulated Live.
If you’d like to look for specific integrations with Zoom Webinar, GoToWebinar, or GoToWebinar Simulated Live, you can easily do so yourself by typing your desired source below.
Pros
- The zoom feature in Prezi makes it stand out.
- Easy interface, such as allowing users to zoom out with a mouse click and zoom in on a specific topic in any part of the presentation.
- A non-linear software, implemented using Python and Django technologies; this makes Prezi one of the best-known Django application examples.
- It’s cloud-based, so you can access your presentation by logging into your account on an internet-connected computer.
- The presentations on Prezi are embeddable on a website or blog.
Cons
- Complex learning curve.
- Not free for businesses.
- To use your presentation offline, you need to buy the Prezi desktop, which is rather expensive.
- In Prezi, you cannot edit the templates.
Prezi free alternatives
There are apps like Prezi available for free, that you can consider for your presentations.
Canva
Canva is one of the free alternatives to Prezi that allows you to create beautiful presentations.
All you need to do is select the images, fonts, and colors to make your presentations pop. It allows users to create presentations in just a few minutes, using ready-made frames, shapes, illustrations, and grids.
Pros
- Offers hundreds of presentation templates on different topics.
- Provides stock library photos you can add to your presentation to enhance its look and feel.
- Allows uploading your own photos into Canva to create your presentation.
- It lets you make your presentation branded using your company logo, colors, and fonts.
- Allows team collaboration by selecting the people to collaborate with, and inviting them to the presentation. They can also leave comments and work on suggestions from the Canva editor.
- It is a web-based platform, so you can access your presentation anywhere.
- Enables downloading your presentation in PowerPoint format.
- It’s free.
Cons
- Not all the features are available when using the free tier.
- Not suitable for advanced presentation designers.
Beautiful.ai
Beautiful.ai is a smart ai-powered presentation software that visual designers love. It’s free, easy to use, and a great app for creating beautiful presentations. It offers over 50 smart presentation templates that help you create presentations with a few clicks.
Pros
- Accessible anywhere because it lives in the cloud, so you don’t have to store your presentations on a hard disk or external drive.
- Beautiful.ai offers collaborations in the workplace. Team members can send, receive, edit, and view projects at any time.
- Uses AI presentation.
- Allows you to customize your presentations to your brand. This means you can use your brand’s logo, font, and color schemes.
- It’s free.
Cons
- The app has layout limitations, non-editable export, and a lack of integration.
Powtoon
Powtoon is a powerful presentation and video creation tool you can use to create professional presentations and videos, images, characters, or animations.
Powtoon presentation is great for enterprises, education, government marketing agencies, and small businesses. If your business falls under any of these sectors, check out these industry-specific automation solutions by LeadsBridge:
Pros
- Allows team collaboration and sharing of presentations on marketing platforms.
- Highly elaborate for teaching and creating storytelling presentations. It offers different selections of school-friendly footage, animations, scenes, characters, fonts, and music to help create presentations that will engage students.
- Useful for creating visual marketing for brand awareness and explainer videos to share reports and marketing plans.
- It’s free.
Cons
- The free version of Powtoon has watermarks
- It has limited timing on the animation (set to 1/2 seconds).
4. Storydoc
Storydoc is an interactive presentation maker, perfect for sales and marketing collateral creation. Because it was designed as a present-day business alternative to PDF presentations or static slides, Storydoc presentations are proven to engage more viewers than conventional presentations with their amazing interface and advanced data visualization options.
Pros
- Comes with integrations with CRMs and other sales tools that will perfectly include your collateral in your sales process.
- Delivers an array of templates for all the most popular business cases – pitch decks, sales decks, one-pagers, business proposals, and many more.
- Offers tracking analytics that opens your presentation and when, making it easy to take the next steps toward closing new deals or gaining investors.
Cons
- It has complex functionalities and requires the above basic skill sets to create presentations and use the full extent of the editor’s capabilities.
5. SlideModel
SlideModel is a platform that gives individuals and businesses ready-made slides and editable templates for their PowerPoint presentations. Designed with an easy-to-use approach, the platform lets you prepare presentations faster and simpler.
The slides can be fully edited on Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote, and OpenOffice. Users can readily customize the size, color, and layout of advanced editing objects with no design skills.
Pros
- Comes with a broad range of templates in various categories for different professional profiles.
- Offers completely customizable templates to download and modify according to your business or brand’s requirements.
- Allows altering colors and applying special effects.
- Offers an impressive collection of graphs, diagrams, and tables, which you can fill and customize to present statistics.
- It’s free.
Cons
- Its free templates lag behind paid options.
6. Depositphotos
If you already have a favorite tool to compose presentations and your main difficulties are related to high-quality visual content for them, Depositphotos is for you. It hosts one of the largest libraries of stock content globally (263 million files!), which includes photos, vectors, static and dynamic graphic templates, videos, and music.
You can even use the library of free content on Depositphotos. This library is updated with on-trend files every week and kept up to expectations by the platform’s content curators.
Pros
- Comes with an AI-powered search engine that saves you time searching for presentation visual or audio content.
- The website has a section with astonishing curated collections on various topics.
- Over 5 million new files are added to the platform by the community of Depositphotos contributors on a monthly basis.
- All material that becomes available to you is quality tested, making it a reliable source of any type of stock content on any topic.
- Offers ready-made design templates, including those for presentations.
Cons
- Depositphotos is not a presentation app but a reliable source of stock files to design almost any presentation.
- It has long started building infrastructure for creatives based on its powerful library. For example, you can use the VistaCreate (available under subscription) to create presentations based on files from Depositphotos.
- While 70,000 free files are put together on the free library page, all 263 million files are available to users with paid plans.
7. Google Slides
Google Slides is something that many people flock toward because we all know Google. If you already use Google Docs and Google Sheets, it makes sense to use Google Slides. It’s free software, and easy to use.
You can even open PowerPoint content in Google Slides, so it’s an obvious choice for people looking for the best PowerPoint alternatives. It makes the transition between the two platforms much easier. You can start using it straight away because there’s nothing particularly complicated about the platform’s interface. There are many online resources offering a diverse selection of Google Slides templates to choose from, enabling you to craft captivating presentations quickly and easily.
Pros
- Extremely easy to jump in and start using Google Slides right away with no particular knowledge.
- It’s free.
- It offers features similar to the best presentation apps, even compared to the ones you have to pay for.
- Many online resources provide free google slides pitch deck templates and presentations.
Cons
- Needs to be connected to the internet for it to function properly.
- A limited number of themes.
8. Slidebean
There are lots of unique features that Slidebean can offer, and it is regarded as one of the best PowerPoint alternatives out there. The images and GIFs available to use on the platform make it fun to play around with and potentially the best presentation app available.
There are plenty of customization options so you can make your presentation exactly how you want it to be.
Pros
- Offers flexibility and elaborate modification abilities.
- If you have to include data and analytics in your presentation, this could be the best presentation app for you.
Cons
- Nothing specific.
9. Keynote
Keynote is Apple’s very own alternative to PowerPoint and is just about everything you would expect from an Apple product: sleek, sophisticated, and intuitive.
It presents incredibly robust features – such as the ability to create interactive charts, and add reflections and picture frames – making it easy to create presentations with cinematic-like transitions between slides.
Presentations are then stored in the cloud and available on all devices.
Pros
- Free for all Mac users.
- Access to over 100 cinematic effects for text and objects.
- Helps create interactive and animated charts.
- Allows viewing and editing your presentations directly from your iPad or iPhone.
- Enables easy sharing and collaboration with the rest of your team.
- Keynote is compatible with PowerPoint, and allows importing and editing PowerPoint files.
Cons
- Lacks a slide library.
- Exclusively accessible only to Apple users.
10. Slides
Slides is a cloud-based presentation app that offers a solid and user-friendly alternative to PowerPoint. Its sleek editor workspace allows you to add background images, use a variety of designs and themes, collaborate easily with others, and customize any of the 10 default slide templates.
You can even take other people’s presentations and use them as a template. Slides is especially suited for startups, students, teachers, and individuals.
Pros
- Allows editing and accessing presentations from any device.
- Helps define your own theme with a custom CSS editor, and add GIFs from Giphy and images from Unsplash to make it more personal.
- Offers access to analytics and revision history.
- No need for an internet connection to present.
- Extremely user-friendly (with beginners’ tutorials).
- The paid plans are affordable, starting at $5/month per user, billed annually.
Cons
- Permits creating only linear presentations.
- Limited design options.
- Graphs and infographic widgets are not available.
11. Zoho Show
Zoho Show is a cloud-based presentation app to create, edit, and share presentations. You can get started by signing up for a Zoho Show account to create a new presentation or work on an existing one. Then, it lets you add slides, text, images, charts, and other media to customize your content.
Additionally, this presentation software is highly team-oriented; you and your team can also leave comments and feedback on each other’s work, making it easy to collaborate and share ideas.
Pros
- A cloud-based presentation app allowing you to access your presentations from anywhere, anytime
- It offers customizable themes, layouts, and design elements.
- Supports a variety of file formats, including PPT, PPTX, ODP, and PDF.
- Multiple users can work on the same presentation at the same time, and changes are automatically saved and synced in real-time.
- Offers advanced features like animation, transitions, and slide shows.
- Available on desktop and mobile devices.
- Easy to navigate and use, even for beginners.
- It’s free.
Cons
- May not have as many advanced features as some other presentation apps, such as PowerPoint or Google Slides.
- Issues with compatibility when exporting to other apps.
- Some of the advanced features and collaboration options are only available in the paid versions.
- Needs an internet connection to work.
Best practices & creative presentation ideas without PowerPoint
Before diving head first into assembling your slides, there are a series of creative best practices and presentation ideas that will help you get started without PowerPoint. Here are a few of them:
- We remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we listen to, and look at 70% of what we say and 90% of what we do. So, if you really want to be unforgettable, you have to make your audience take action.
- Data and statistics can help you build trust and credibility, sure, but emotional communication is what will really ensure engagement.
- Rely on videos, gifs, interactive infographics, external content, and interactivity with pop-up windows to give movement and dynamism to your slides.
- It has been demonstrated that our brain lights up like a Christmas tree when we’re listening to stories. Leverage this in your presentation by using more storytelling.
- It’s ok to be creative, but when it comes to fonts, it’s better to pick an elegant, simple, and readable font. Avoid handwritten or script typefaces and go for something that everybody can read without getting a headache.
- Remember: One slide, one idea, one sentence. Avoid long paragraphs and texts with small fonts because if your audience is focused on reading, they won’t be able to listen to what you’re saying.
- Fantasy and textured backgrounds are cool, but they’re also the greatest enemies of easy reading. Instead, go for white or solid color backgrounds.
- Apply the 5x7x7 rule. Titles shall be no longer than 5 words. Paragraphs shall not use more than 7 lines. Lines shall not be constituted by more than 7 words.
- Numbered lists are more likely to catch your audience’s attention than regular bullet points.
- You are the number 1 visual element of your presentation.
When you have all this figured out, you can go ahead and start drafting your presentation!
If you are thinking of ways to improve your organization, check out these posts for optimized small business management:
- Marketing automation for small businesses
- The best free marketing software tools you should be using
- Marketing budget for startups
Final thoughts
Above are 11 of the best presentation apps. Each one of these apps could turn out to be the best presentation app for your business. These examples cover the best PowerPoint and Prezi free alternatives available on the market right now, and they can really help you hit the mark when it comes to making your point in a presentation scenario. So make the most of these ideas and try them all to see which you regard as the best presentation app.
Do you want to improve your productivity? Discover LeadsBridge integrations and start automating your marketing stack now!
