At CustomShow, we like to think that everyone can use our presentation software to create better looking presentations, thus serving as a great powerpoint alternative to people. But that won’t always be the case. We cater to businesses greater than 10 employees and organizations that need an all-in-one presentation program. We also don’t usually promote our competitors. Shout out to Clearslide on that one. But at the end of the day, we want you to have a pick from the full list of presentation tools that are on the market and that could fit your needs.
Presentation software is great, but we know there are plenty of options to choose from. Some have their advantages and disadvantages while others are perfect for a certain audience. We’ll examine the presentation maker programs we believe would be great and even the ones that may not be but could still be another viable solution.
CustomShow – Business Presentation Software
Summary – Customshow is a presentation software program used mainly for businesses and companies with more than 25 employees. With over 40 years of rich presentation history, the software company was created out of the presentation design agency, Sales Graphics. The software allows companies and organizations to build better custom branded presentations that look light years better than your typical powerpoint presentation. We would consider ourselves a great sales enablement tool because sales professionals benefit a great deal from the software.
Advantages – Ability to create customized and branded presentations; slide library; cloud-based; analytics; ability to conduct web meetings; connects to Sales Force; ability to deliver on-line and off-line as well as via multiple devices (desktop, iPad); great with video; can upload powerpoint slides and customize to your own brand standard; import powerpoint presentations into the software
Disadvantages – More data intelligence could be added to their analytics platform
Perfect For – Sales Professionals, Marketing Professionals, CEO’s, Design Agencies
Website: www.customshow.com
ClearSlide (SlideRocket)
Summary – Clearslide purchased Sliderocket several years ago. If sales is important to you, Clearslide could be a good tool for you. There is more emphasis on the sales and tracking than the presentation creation side of the software. After going through a series C $50 million round of funding, the company is making investments into the software platform. Nonetheless, the tool is worth reviewing.
Advantages – Can upload files from Keynote, Powerpoint, PDF, Excel and other formats; Good with Video; online delivery; slide sharing
Disadvantages – Interface is complex and limited in the ability to create “better looking presentation”
Perfect For – Sales & Marketing Organizations
Prezi
Summary – The mothership of powerpoint alternatives, they’ve been around for many years. Leveraging the concept of ZOOM and transitions to new spaces on a slide, they give the effect that the presention has not moved to a new slide. Prezi provides people with creating better style and effect in their presentations. Prezi uses the concept of Pathway Points instead of slides to give the visual cinematic appeal of their presentations. These guys just raised another $50 million in November in order to compete with Microsoft.
Advantages – Present on multiple devices; can share with coworkers; can be used by practically anyone; easy to learn how to use; cost effective; can work on the presentation offline;
Disadvantages – Very template driven; cannot necessarily customize slides;
Perfect For – Educators; Keynote Speakers; Organizations; Students
Slideshark
Summary – Taken directly from the horses mouth, SlideShark is an app used by sales professionals and other presenters worldwide to present and share PowerPoints via their chosen devices. It’s features include cloud storage integration, sharing and tracking views, broadcasting or presenting over the web, creating annotations on the slides, and of course presenter mode.
Advantages – Can present powerpoint slides anywhere; cloud-based; free but paid version is known as Business pro; can be utilized for webinars
Disadvantages – unable to customize presentations; more of a delivery system (good and bad thing);
Perfect For – sales and marketing professionals; individual business owners
Haiku Deck
Summary – The presentation software is a template-based platform that allows for people to create elegant looking presentations. The software comes with 35 many templates and over 35 million stock photos that can be used within the slide templates. This platform is a step between a company like CustomShow and Powerpoint.
Advantages – easy to use; fast onboarding process
Disadvantages – cannot do offline work with the App; cannot truly Customize presentations anyway you want
Perfect For – students; educators; presenters in general
SlideDog
Summary – Known as a presentation launch pad, SlideDog mainly takes all of your documents, presentations, pictures, or video and places them into a play list that can be moved around and presented in a seamless way. You can upload just about any type of file from videos down to other presentation software devices such as Prezi.
Advantages – Make transitioning smooth; can share across multiple devices; live polling; free version
Disadvantages – Not used for creating presentations
Perfect For – People who want to present more seamlessly across multiple documents; individual presenters
Other Review Sources – FPPT Overview
Slide Bureau
Summary – Slide Bureau is an interesting software device. It is mainly used for iPads, but it does allow for people to create presentations that are more customized than your traditional powerpoint slide. The interface is centered on pre-made templates but they are categorized to fit the profession and overall need of the slide.
Advantages – Easy to use this presentation platform
Disadvantages – Limited to only iPads; cannot truly brand and create presentations more customized than the templates that are given
Perfect For – Educators; Individual Professionals
Powtoon – Animation Presentation Software
Summary – Probably one of the leaders in the DIY presentation animation space, Powtoon allows consumers to create presentations and videos that are animated, interesting, and engaging. It is not difficult to learn how to use and the software is a breath of fresh air to those looking to create presentations that are different and engaging.
Advantages – Ease Of Use; Truly Customizable Animated Presentations
Disadvantages – Not suitable to live presentations (but that’s OK)
Perfect For – Educators (Check out their new app for educators); businesses that want to create a service/product video; small business professionals; trainers
Keynote – Powerpoint Alternative
Summary – One of the standard bearers in the presentation software space, Keynote is meant to allow presenters to create customizable presentations. it comes with 30 themes that you can start with and pre stock photos.
Advantages – Present on multiple devices (Apple owned); easy to share; powerpoint friendly; inexpensive ; allows for animations.
Disadvantages – Can only be used for MAC (ios systems); fairly template driven; no slide library
Perfect For – Business owners and individuals
MediaShout
Summary – To switch things up a bit MediaShout is a presentation software tool for religious institutions and churches. It is a powerful platform that can be utilized by churches of all size and combines. The software works well with the team that is managing the media and productions during any religious service but particularly during the sermon.
Advantages – Stage mirroring; announcement deck; great with video; add scripture from 65 different bibles; include sermon points; sound and music enabled
Disadvantages – Hmmm…we’re not going there.
Perfect For – Religious institutions and churches
Other Sources: Gavin Courtney From Church App
Kineticast
Summary – Built mainly for B2B sales people, Kineticast is a cool presentation tool that enables sales people to be more effective in their sales and marketing. Their process includes creating the presentation (uploading files), emailing to your list of contacts, and then tracking the results. The purpose of this tool is to create customized messages with slides that are meant for specific prospects.
Advantages – Enables sales professionals to improve effectiveness
Disadvantages – Cannot create customized presentations (wasn’t built for that anyway though).
Perfect For – B2B Sales Professionals; Possibly Marketers
Other Sources – Rich Bohn of SellMoreNow
KnowledgeVision
Summary – Knowledge Vision is one of the newest players on the block when it comes to creating better looking presentations that are customizable. The company has a collection of software tools that are combined into 1 that companies can use. You can also creative videos within the software package.
Advantages – Complete Package of Production Tools; Cloud-Based; Analytics; Live Webcasting
Disadvantages – Maybe ooo many tools; Could be challenging to learn
Perfect For – Business; Producers; Digital Agencies
GoAnimate – Video Presentation Software
Summary – One of Powtoon’s biggest competitors, GoAnimate is all about animated video presentations. You can create DIY professional animated videos without having to hire a video producer. It integrated with other software sales apps and is a solution that can be interesting for the budget busting video animation companies. Of course there are other whiteboard animation companies, but GoAnimate does showcase another alternative.
Advantages – Great For Video; Cost Effective; Think Product Videos
Disadvantages – Only Video Centered (Not a real disadvantage though)
Perfect For – Business; Producers; Digital Agencies
Wink – Powerpoint Alternative
Summary – Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.
Advantages – Free; multilingual; good support
Disadvantages – No ‘undo’ feature, audio compatibility issues
Perfect For – Individuals and small businesses who just need to create simple animated tutorials and software demonstrations.
SnagIt
Summary – Offers advanced features and extra tools for organizing, simplifying, and editing screen captures. If you produce Windows screen shots on a regular basis, SnagIt is a great tool for that.
Advantages – Easy-to-use screen capture program,
Disadvantages – Windows only
Perfect For – Window’s screen shot-ers
Camtasia
Summary – Camtasia Studio is an integrated suite of applications for producing professional videos of on-screen activity.
Advantages – 5 applications provide solutions for end to end video production, multiple output options
Disadvantages – Costly for the value; for windows only
Perfect For – Creating Video demonstrations for customer support, employee training, and product presentations.
Other Sources – Daniel And Sally Grotta of PCWorld
Camstudio – Video Presentation Software
Summary – Free and simple, straightforward program to record screen activity to AVI or SWF format.
Advantages – Free
Disadvantages – no movie editing, hard to use annotation tools
Perfect For – Recording basic activity for webinars and basic presentations
Articulate Presenter
Summary – Articulate Presenter is a program that acts as an add-on to Microsoft PowerPoint. It capitalizes on what PowerPoint can do already, and provides several added features, such as quizzing, narration, and other interactive features
Advantages – Supercharges the existing functionality in PowerPoint; narration syncs easily to screen animation; functionality is super intuitive
Disadvantages – Content positioning is imprecise, takes ages to publish the content, Published files are BIG
Perfect For – Educators; Individuals
Windows Movie Maker
Summary – freeware video editing software by Microsoft. It is a part of Windows Essentials software suite and offers the ability to create and edit videos as well as to publish them on OneDrive, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr.
Advantages – Free, simple to use for beginners, great for photo slideshows
Disadvantages – Only one video track, freezes and crashes randomly, lots of versions that aren’t compatible with each other
Perfect For – Essentially Anyone; Video Production
Slideshare
Summary – Allows easy sharing of presentations between businesses and consumers
Advantages – Easy embedding in websites, great for sharing audio and video, custom privacy settings
Disadvantages – Must use other programs to create and edit material, atypical transitions, cannot track views
Perfect For – Students, teachers, small and large businesses
Other Sources – Tanya Lewis of PR Week US
VisualBee
Summary – Automatic graphic designer for PowerPoint’s presentations that designs a Showcase automatically with just some clicks
Advantages – Easy to Use, Fast, User Friendly UI, Attractive Templates
Disadvantages – Getting appropriate images requires some selection by hand. Some features redundant to PowerPoint’s own.
Perfect For – Individuals
Projeqt
Summary – Projeqt gives creatives the ability to weave together stories dripping with style and personality from Flickr photos, RSS feeds, tweets, YouTube or Vimeo videos, and any media stored on your own computer.
Advantages – freemium model, create professional-looking, branded, shareable, and embeddful presentations without much fuss
Disadvantages – very few layout options
Perfect For – students, creative industry
Emaze
Summary – The Emaze user can easily build sophisticated presentations with little effort. The company’s vision was to free up users from having to spend time studying and preparing the presentation tool, so that they can better spend their time concentrating on the actual content of the presentation
Advantages – Cheap, designed for ordinary users,
Disadvantages – Will not work smoothly on older computers with low computing power
Perfect For – Basic user base, current PowerPoint users wanting better visualization
Preseria
Summary – Now we’re in the world of conferences. Preseria is all about presenters uploading their presentations and organizing your conferences. This can be a nifty tool if you’re managing large conferences where you have several presenters.
Advantages – Great for Sharing; can Organize and gather content seamlessly
Disadvantages – Can’t create custom presentations.
Perfect For – Event Coordinators; Conference Leaders
Proclaim – Church Presentation Software
Summary – Now we’re in the world of churches. Proclaim is all about pastors and assistants uploading their presentations and having the functionality to make many changes to it in order to provide a experience to people listening and watching the sermon.
Advantages – Incredible software for sharing and collaborating with teams of people who are working on the presentation; Organize and gather content seamlessly; Comes with a remote app that can be controlled by your ipad.
Disadvantages – Can’t create super customized presentations, but they can be fairly unique.
Perfect For – Churches; religious institutions
Reallusion
Summary – Moving back into animation, this software is pretty nifty. You can create animated figures for your presentation in a shorter period of time. Great for presenters to quickly add animated avatars and comic effects into PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Doc and other presentation software
Advantages – Full editing capabilities; well categorized content libraries; added to other presentations
Disadvantages – Can’t create presentations within the software, however Reallusion does have other software in its suite that can do this.
Perfect For – Individuals; Business; Keynote Speakers; Designers
Slides
Summary – To finish off the list, slides.com is a cloud based presentation software that allows for easy collaboration,
Advantages – Full editing capabilities; can present from anywhere; cloud based; comes with analytics; incorporate html and css in the presentations
Disadvantages – May not have as much functionality as CustomShow but is great for individuals
Perfect For – Individuals; students; teachers
There are probably an additional 50 – 80 presentation software tools we missed on this list. We know there are others we likely left out, so we look forward to your comments and other powerpoint alternatives that can be useful for presenting or organizing/delivering presentations. If presentation ideas and design is something else important to you, visitwww.salesgraphics.com.
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