what is a template in presentation software

Understand the difference between PowerPoint templates and themes

Themes and templates help you create content that looks attractive and consistent while avoiding lots of manual formatting.

In this article:

What is a theme?   |   What is a template?

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What is a PowerPoint theme?

A theme is a predefined set of colors, fonts, and visual effects that you apply to your slides for a unified, professional look.

Using a theme gives your presentation a harmonious appearance with minimal effort. For example:

When you add graphics (tables, shapes, and so on) to your slides, PowerPoint applies theme colors that are compatible with other slide elements.

Dark-colored text is shown on a light background (and vice versa), so that contrast is strong for ease of reading.

Here are four different themes applied to the same slide:

The preset Dividend theme

To choose a theme for your presentation

PowerPoint offers several preset themes. They are on the Design tab of the Ribbon on the left side.

Open a slide. On the Design tab, point at a Theme thumbnail to get a preview of how it would affect the look of your slide.

To see the full gallery of themes, click the More button:

Click the 'More' button

When you find a theme you want, click its thumbnail to apply it to all slides in your presentation.

To customize a theme, see Create your own theme in PowerPoint .

What is a PowerPoint template?

A template is a theme plus some content for a specific purpose—such as a sales presentation, a business plan, or a classroom lesson.

So a template has design elements that work together (colors, fonts, backgrounds, effects) along with sample slides and boilerplate content that you augment to tell your story.

You can create your own custom templates and store them, reuse them, and share them with others. See Create and save a PowerPoint template .

You can also find hundreds of different types of free templates for PowerPoint that you can apply to your presentation:

  Get pre-built PowerPoint templates at create.microsoft.com   

Create.Microsoft.com also has templates for other Office apps. Here are some examples of the free templates available there:

Here is an example of a one-slide template for an award certificate:

A template like this can include:

1 Subject-specific content, such as "Certificate of Achievement," "Soccer," and the soccer ball image. Generally this text or content is only editable from the slide master.

2 Background formatting, such as pictures, texture, gradient or solid fill color, and transparency. This example shows the light blue solid fill background.

3 Color, fonts, effects (3-D, lines, fills, shadows, etc.), and theme design elements (such as the color and gradient effects inside the word Soccer).

4 Text placeholders that allow people to enter unique information to customize the slide for their needs, such as "Player's name," "Name of coach," "Date of presentation," and any variable, such as the year.

Download free, pre-built templates

Create your own theme in PowerPoint

Create and save a PowerPoint template

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What is Presentation Software Anyway? A Complete Guide to Essential Features and Why Your Team Needs Them

What is Presentation Software Anyway? A Complete Guide to Essential Features and Why Your Team Needs Them

It’s estimated that 30 million PowerPoint presentations are created on any given day— and those numbers have likely spiked even higher given our new norm of virtual communication and remote work. Between startup pitches, business plans, all-hands meetings, and school presentations, everyone has a different story to tell. Regardless of who you are and what you do, we’d be willing to bet that you’ve created a deck or two in your day. But having a handful of presentations under your belt doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an expert. 

In fact, it’s very likely that the majority of those presentations created on a daily basis are cobbled together the night before the deadline. The result? A poorly executed deck (or frankendeck, as we like to call them) that doesn’t support your overarching purpose. In fact, 79% of people think that most presentations today suck. Your content means nothing if it gets lost in transition, and a bad deck can derail your entire presentation in the blink of an eye. Luckily, presentation software can help you create something brilliant in a fraction of the time— with no design experience required. 

Sounds great, right? But what is presentation software , anyway? Let us tell you. 

What is presentation software?

Presentation software is the deck designer you’ve been looking for, without actually having to hire a designer. At its core it’s a platform or software that enables you to create visual presentations. Everyone knows the household names like PowerPoint , Keynote , and Google Slides , but there are plenty of PowerPoint alternatives out there making presentation design simpler and more innovative. Alternative software, like Beautiful.ai, offers unique features that are not available in the dated software like PowerPoint. 

What features should you look for?

Depending on whether you work for a small business, startup or larger enterprise, finding a good presentation software program is a must. There are many different softwares to choose from, but these are the key features that you should consider when choosing your app or platform. 

A lot of inexperienced designers might dread starting a presentation from scratch (can you blame them?). A big selling point for a lot of PowerPoint alternatives is that they offer pre-built templates to help get you started. But even still, presentation design can be a big undertaking if you don’t know how to structure your story. Beautiful.ai offers a free gallery of pre-built presentation templates by our resident designer to help you start inspired. Each template is fully customizable so you can make it your own, while using our layouts to spark your own creativity.

If you’re not a designer by trade, a presentation software with artificial intelligence is smart (literally, and figuratively). Beautiful.ai’s smart slides take on the burden of design for you so that you can focus on what’s really important: your message. With smart slide templates , we apply principles of good design to each slide restraint so that it’s nearly impossible to create something that doesn’t look good. Simply add your content and watch the slides adjust without having to worry about aligning text boxes, configuring charts, or resizing text. 

Some presentation softwares do animations better than others (no, we aren’t going to name any names). Your animations should be subtle, but effective. The last thing you want is your animations to give the audience motion sickness. But when done correctly, dynamic animations build in a way that directs the audience’s attention back to your slides.

We may be biased, but Beautiful.ai’s animations bring your slides to life without overwhelming viewers. We give you the power to decide how your animations will build on each slide. You control the speed, the order, and whether they build automatically or advance with a click. You can create a custom timeline, which is a manual control of your animation build. And you can also customize the animation timing and style to choose overlapping, simultaneous, sequential, or no animation at all. Depending on your content, and talking points, you may select a slow, normal, or fast animation speed— it’s all up to you. 

Collaboration

We can all agree that working in the cloud is better than working without it. Eliminating lengthy email chains and attachments from your workflow can save a lot of time. Especially when you’re working in tandem with colleagues or clients, the cloud ensures that you are always working in the most updated version. Collaborating in presentations means that you can work on building a deck in unison with your team, which is something that’s critical in a work-from-home environment. 

With Beautiful.ai, not only can you collaborate with teammates— internal and external— in real-time, but you can also comment on slides to provide feedback or questions. Each collaborator on the presentation will receive a notification via email and within the product when a comment or edit is made on the slide so nothing falls through the cracks. 

Shareability

Shareability is something that older presentation software— like PowerPoint— lacks. Instead of having to send a file attachment with every update, newer presentation software will allow links for simplified sharing. This also helps teams with version history and content management. 

In Beautiful.ai, it’s easy to share your link out via email, social media, or embed it on a webpage. Because everything is saved on the cloud, you can edit your presentations on the fly and it will be updated immediately without having to resend a new link to your colleagues or clients. This is a game changer for board meetings, pitches, or sales proposals when a piece of information might come in at the last minute but you have already sent a link out to the deck.

Analytics is an essential tool for any business. With analytics you can see which slides performed well, and which slides your audience skipped altogether. This allows you to evaluate which information is resonating well with your audience and what might be getting lost in transition. As a business, this can help you understand your final call-to-action, and how you need to pivot to encourage a more favorable outcome. 

Beautiful.ai’s analytics shows you time spent on the presentation, total views, when the presentation was last viewed, and completion rate all within the product. 

Jordan Turner

Jordan Turner

Jordan is a Bay Area writer, social media manager, and content strategist.

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PowerPoint Templates: What They Are and Why You Need One

  • PowerPoint Tutorials
  • March 6, 2018

In this post you’ll learn everything you need to know about PowerPoint templates.

Properly built templates are a great way to make building and editing your PowerPoint presentations easy and effortless. That said, if your template is not built correctly, it can make working in PowerPoint extremely difficult.

Example of a custom PowerPoint template

Time Saving Tip: If you are building a template, you can save yourself a TON of time by first buying a professional template online, and then tweaking it to meet your needs. To see the 4 best places I recommend finding professional PowerPoint templates  (and why I like them), read my template guide here .

What are PowerPoint templates?

According to Microsoft Office, a PowerPoint template “is a pattern or blueprint of a slide or group of slides that you save as a .potx file. Templates can contain layouts, theme colors, theme fonts, theme effects, background styles, and even content.”

Example of the custom PowerPoint template in the Slide Master View.

In simpler terms, it’s the formatting backbone of your PowerPoint presentation. It’s what ensures formatting consistency across your entire presentation as you build your slides.

The key is, making sure that your template is set up correctly, which a lot of templates don’t have. They are instead what we call fake PowerPoint template.

To learn more about what a template is and isn’t (and how to spot fake ones),  click here .

The benefits of PowerPoint templates

PowerPoint templates are a shortcut to more engaging, colorful, and creative presentations.

They are the very bedrock of your presentations – whether you use a custom one or generic one – and they influence absolutely EVERYTHING:

  • How your fonts, colors, and branding displays…
  • Whether the slides you copy and paste into your presentation convert properly…
  • How your content displays on screen (and prints
  • Can you edit content without detonating hidden landmines that derail your workflow

A well-designed template makes your slides and overall presentation look good. On top of that, it makes the process of building and editing your slides MUCH easier.

That’s because it pre-populates all your company information, corporate formatting, default slides, etc. This ensures that everything stays consistent in your presentation, regardless of how much stuff you add to your presentation.

Example of a blank PowerPoint template versus a formatted PowerPoint template

Note:  If you use PowerPoint on a daily basis, and want to create your own PowerPoint template from scratch,  read my step-by-step guide here .

What can you use a template for?

You can use templates to jump-start your presentation and start building slides that are consistent in appearance and easy to replicate.

PowerPoint templates can be used by anyone, anywhere and for multiple purposes.

From the educator to the sales team, the project manager and the executive assistants, a PowerPoint template can be built to fit just about any scenario.

Here are a few situations you could use PowerPoint templates for:

  • Board meetings
  • Education settings and class lessons
  • Creating a document for printing

Here is an example of a custom-built template that would be good for a webinar or a printed document:

Example of a title slide in PowerPoint about building a beautiful template

Just keep in mind that while PowerPoint templates can be flexible, they still have limitations. You will never be able to please all people for all situations with your template (that’s just life).

Microsoft PowerPoint templates

As we just mentioned, Microsoft has a library of ready-made PowerPoint templates and PowerPoint themes you can choose from.

When you open PowerPoint, click ‘New’ and you’ll see the search bar, suggested search topics, plus a number of template options.

Examples of the features Microsoft PowerPoint templates when you click the New button in the file tab

How to choose the right PowerPoint template

The first step is to know what you’re talking about and do brainstorm how you will need to put that into slides.

We recommend sketching out some slide layouts onto a piece of paper to get a sense of the overall design.

You should also consider brainstorming on the look & feel you want your presentation to have. That would include things like the fonts, colors and backgrounds.

The key things to consider are:

  • Was the template built properly in the Slide Master (otherwise, it’s a ‘fake template’)?
  • Is the template using the proper theme elements (fonts, colors, etc.)?
  • Does it have suitable slides for your titles, content sections, a mix of image slides, text-only and mixed media slides?
  • Is the branding, theme, or topic consistent with your company branding?

Whether you choose from ready-made ones or build your own, you’ll want to set the template’s theme up with your own company fonts and theme colors. You can learn more about PowerPoint themes  here .

Note: To see my 4 favorite places for finding professional PowerPoint templates online,  read my template guide here .

Here are a few of the default Microsoft PowerPoint templates we like:

Example of the Ion Boardroom PowerPoint template

And here are a few great professional PowerPoint template options from sites that we trust:

The title slide of the Reem Template

To see my full review of the Reem PowerPoint  template by SlideCow, read my review here .

The title slide of the business casual template by slidecow

To see my full review of the  Business Casual template  by SlideCow (and why I like it),  read my review here .

Example of the corporate template by inspiradesign

To see my full review of the  Corporate template by inspiradesign,  read my review here .

Where to download PowerPoint templates online

If you’re not creating your own templates or using the ready-made Office templates, you can always consider downloading some from the web.

When you download a template, make sure it’s in the .potx file format. If it is not a .potx file format, then it’s not really a template. It’s just similar looking slides.

There are several places where you can find and download templates online. Most of them are paid, but there are a few decent websites that offer free PowerPoint templates.

The Best PowerPoint Templates: To read more about my 4 favorite places for finding templates online (and why I like them so much), read my article here .

How to customize your template

If you use a ready-made PowerPoint template, there is a chance that it won’t be 100% exactly what you need. That means that even if you buy one, you’ll still need to customize it.

To customize your template, you’ll want to start by adjusting the theme, including the colors and fonts. You can change those easily under the Design tab and Variants .

If you want to create your own custom colors and font combinations (rather than choosing from the pre-built ones) you can learn about creating your own custom PowerPoint theme here .

From the Design tab, open the more variants to get access to the colors, fonts, effects and background styles of your PowerPoint template

Next, you’ll want to go into the Slide Master and make changes first to the Parent Layout, so that they reflect in all the Child Layouts. To open your slide master, simply:

  • Click the View tab
  • Select Slide Master

Example of the Parent Slide and Child Slide layouts on the PowerPoint slide master

And once those are formatted, you’ll want to make sure you look at the Handout Master and the Notes Master too.

  • View tab, select Handout Master
  • View tab, select Notes Master

Customizing your template the right way is a lot trickier than it seems and requires the same amount of effort to build one.  So, make sure that you’re careful as just one or two mistakes can ruin your template for good.

To expand your knowledge and learn how to format and use the Notes Page view for your speaker notes in PowerPoint, read our guide here .

Practical tips for your templates

Whether you use a default Microsoft template, or buy one online, there are a few not so intuitive things you’ll want to nail down.

This is especially true if you get a template from a third party site as most of them are not real templates. That’s why it’s important to know what you’re looking for before you buy one.

Once you know what you are looking for, you can then download and work with the free templates you find online, or build your own from scratch ( details here if you need help ).

Keep in mind that when building your own custom template, not only is there a recommended order for building it, but there are also critical steps to take when sharing your template with others.

Make sure you don’t skip these steps and end up shooting yourself in the foot.

Common template problems and how to fix them

Now once you’ve got your template, you may find that it’s behaving strangely or that some things in your PowerPoint template aren’t working like they should.

There are a few key tricks to solving nagging issues that inevitably come up when working with templates in PowerPoint.

A few of these tricks include making your default titles All Caps and understanding why you should not delete the default layouts from your slide master ( click here to learn more ).

Another thing to note about working with templates is that they are often confused with the PowerPoint themes and PowerPoint slide masters.

These three elements of a presentation are connected, they are all different and were designed with slightly different purposes in mind.

A PowerPoint template is simply a set of guidelines for the design of your slides. Basically, where text, charts, and images should go on each slide.

On top of that, a properly built template includes a properly set up Slide Master and a PowerPoint theme (they are not one in the same thing).

Simply understanding this will put you light years ahead of most PowerPoint users.

To learn more about our training courses and other PowerPoint resources,  visit us here .

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Captivate your audience with stylish, professional presentations.

Design effective slide decks that help you make a lasting impression with {{adobe-indesign}}.

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Tell a visual story to create engaging presentations.

Stick to a visual theme., keep it simple., find the right tools for every job., incorporate video, audio, or animations..

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Do more with tools from Adobe Creative Cloud.

Access other Creative Cloud tools that make InDesign an even more effective presentation maker.

Choose unique fonts.

Pick from over 17,000 high-quality fonts from Adobe Fonts to make your information organized and easy to read. User-friendly font styles make slides simpler to digest.

Start with Adobe Stock.

Find inspiration with Stock assets. Use Stock photos for stunning background images or transitional slides, and use Stock to find a presentation template as a basis for your custom design.

How to design a presentation from scratch.

With some creativity, and these simple steps, you can create a custom presentation with InDesign.

  • Find the right page size. Whether you’re presenting a keynote on a massive screen or creating for mobile devices, start by selecting the dimensions you’ll use for your presentation.
  • Choose your background. Pick a striking background image that works with text overlay. The deck’s title can also become part of the background.
  • Create paragraph styles. Create no more than three text styles so you can keep the title font, body font, and footnote font consistent throughout the presentation. Set paragraph styles to change font and size with a click of a button.
  • Set up master pages. Create a few master pages to help ensure your presentation looks professional and well designed. Add image and text frames to the master pages so you can drop your content in later without having to overthink the layout.
  • Add images and text. Drag and drop Photoshop (PSD) files, PDFs, Illustrator (AI) files, JPEGs, PNGs, or GIFs into the image frames. To add text, just copy and paste text files or select the Type tool from the toolbar and type directly into the text frame.
  • Add page numbers. Insert page numbers to keep you and your audience on the same page. InDesign can automatically number the slides.
  • Add finishing touches. From movies and sound clips to hyperlinks, cross references, and page transitions, you’ve got plenty of interactive options to make your story more compelling.
  • Export your slide deck. The final step is to export your presentation in a format that can be projected or distributed in any presentation program. Exporting as Adobe PDF (Interactive) lets you play or click through interactive content in real time during the presentation.

Discover more presentation design skills.

Explore these tutorials to start mastering design tools and techniques to help you create beautiful presentations with InDesign.

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Learn how to design slide layouts with text and graphics that will effectively deliver information and impress your audience in projected or online presentations.

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Keep it organized.

Enhance your slideshows with tables that clearly display information and can be adjusted to different sizes with ease.

Enhance your slideshows with tables

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The best presentation software in 2024

These powerpoint alternatives go beyond the basics..

Hero image with logos of the best presentation software

The latest presentation apps have made it easier than ever to format slides and create professional-looking slideshows without giving off a "this is a template" vibe. Even standard PowerPoint alternatives have updated key features to make it easier than ever to collaborate and create presentations quickly, so you can spend more time prepping for your actual presentation.

If, like me, you've used Google Slides unquestioningly for years, it's a whole new world out there. The newest crop of online presentation tools go way beyond the classic slideshow experience, with new features to keep your audience's attention, streamline the creation process with AI, and turn slide decks into videos and interactive conversations.

I've been testing these apps for the past few years, and this time, I spent several days tinkering with 25 of the top presentation software solutions out there to bring you the best of the best.

The best presentation software

Beautiful.ai for AI-powered design

Prezi for non-linear, conversational presentations

Powtoon for video presentations

Pitch for collaborating with your team on presentations

Gamma for conversational AI features

Mentimeter for audience engagement

Tome for generative AI features

What makes the best presentation app?

How we evaluate and test apps.

Our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog .

When looking for the best presentation apps, I wanted utility players. After all, slideshows are used for just about everything, from pitch decks and product launches to class lectures and church sermons. With that in mind, here's what I was looking for:

Pre-built templates. The best presentation tools should have attractive, professional-looking templates to build presentations in a hurry.

Sharing and collaboration options. Whether you plan to share your webinar slides later, or you just want to collaborate with a coworker on a presentation, it should be easy to share files and collaborate in real-time.

Flexibility and customization options. Templates are great, but top presentation apps should enable you to customize just about everything—giving you the flexibility to build exactly what you need.

Affordability. Creating compelling presentations is important, but you shouldn't have to bust your budget to make it happen. With capable free tools on the market, affordability is a top consideration.

Standalone functionality. There's no reason to use multiple tools when one can do it all, so I didn't test any apps that require and work on top of another presentation app like PowerPoint or Google Slides.

Familiar, deck-based interface. For our purposes here, I only tested software that uses slides, with the familiar deck-based editor you expect from a "presentation" tool (versus, for example, a video creation app).

While most apps now offer AI features in one way or another, it isn't a universal feature yet—and some apps' AI features leave a lot to be desired. For that reason, I opted not to make AI features a strict must-have for this year (though it probably will be a requirement next time I update the article). That means I've still included some apps that don't offer AI—if you opt for one of those, you can still easily get AI-generated images and text from a separate tool and copy them into your presentation app of choice.

Beyond that, I also looked for presentation apps that brought something unique to the table—features above and beyond what you can get for free from a legacy solution like PowerPoint or Google Slides.

Here's what my testing workflow looked like:

I went through any onboarding or guided tutorials.

I created a new deck, scanning through all available templates, noting how well-designed they were (and which were free versus paid).

I added new slides, deleted slides, edited text and images, and played around with other content types.

I changed presentation design settings, like color schemes and background images.

I reviewed and tested the sharing and collaboration options.

I tested out presenter view (when available).

After my first round of testing, I went back into the top performers to test any unique or niche features, like AI, brand settings, and interactive content. With that, these are the best presentation apps I found—each one really brings something different or radically easy to the table.

The best presentation software at a glance

The best free presentation software, canva (web, windows, mac, android, ios).

Canva, our pick for the best free presentation app

Canva pros:

Excellent free plan

Tons of amazing templates for all use cases

Feature-rich

Canva cons:

The AI tools aren't groundbreakingly useful

Canva offers one of the most robust free plans of all the presentation apps I tested. The app delays account creation until after you've created your first design, so you can get started building your presentation in seconds. Choose from an almost overwhelming number of beautiful templates (nearly all available for free), including those designed specifically for education or business use cases.

Anyone who's accidentally scrolled too far and been bumped to the next slide will appreciate Canva's editor interface, which eliminates that problem altogether with a smooth scroll that doesn't jump around. Choose from a handful of preset animations to add life to your presentations, or browse the library of audio and video files available to add. And Canva also has a number of options for sharing your presentation, including adding collaborators to your team, sharing directly to social media, and even via QR code.

Present directly from Canva, and let audience members submit their questions via Canva Live. Once you share a link to invite audience members to your presentation, they can send questions for you to answer. As the presenter, you'll see them pop up in your presenter view window, so you can keep the audience engaged and your presentation clear. Alternatively, record a presentation with a talking head bubble—you can even use an AI presenter here—to share remotely.

Canva has added a number of AI-powered tools , but I wasn't super impressed by them yet. The Magic Design tool, for example, isn't much more useful than the many pre-designed templates already available, while Magic Write is basically just white-labeled ChatGPT. These features will likely improve in time, but for now, you're better off starting from one of Canva's many great templates.

Canva pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $120/year for 1 user and include additional features like Brand Kit, premium templates and stock assets, and additional AI-powered design tools.

If you're looking for a capable free presentation tool with a more affordable upgrade, Zoho Show is worth a look. It's completely free for most features, offers a clean, intuitive editor, and includes a number of great templates. Plus, you can automate Zoho Show by connecting it with Zapier .

The best presentation app for AI-powered design

Beautiful.ai (web, mac, windows).

Beautiful.ai pros:

True AI design

No fussing around with alignment

Still allows for customization

Beautiful.ai cons:

No free plan

If you're like me, editing granular spacing issues is the absolute worst part of building a presentation. Beautiful.ai uses artificial intelligence to take a lot of the hassle and granular design requirements out of the presentation process, so you can focus on the content of a presentation without sacrificing professional design. If I needed to make presentations on a regular basis, this is the app I'd use.

Many apps have recently added AI design features, but Beautiful.ai has been doing it for years—and they've perfected the experience of AI design, ensuring the tool's reign as the most streamlined and user-friendly option for AI design.

The editor is a little different from most presentation apps, but it's still intuitive—and you'll start off with a quick two-minute tutorial. When creating a new slide, scroll through "inspiration slides" to find a layout you like; once you choose, the app will pull the layout and automatically adapt it to match the design of the rest of your presentation.

With 10 themes, several templated slides, over 40 fully-designed templates, and more than 20 different color palettes to choose from, Beautiful.ai strikes a perfect balance between automation and customization.

While Beautiful.ai doesn't offer a free plan, paid plans are reasonably priced and offer sharing and collaboration options that rival collab-focused apps like Google Slides. And speaking of Google, you can connect Beautiful.ai with Google Drive to save all your presentations there.

Note: I re-tested the generative AI feature (called DesignerBot) this year. It's great for adding individual slides to an existing presentation—automatically choosing the best layout and matching the design to the rest of the deck—but as with most other apps, it struggled to pull in relevant images.

Beautiful.ai pricing: Plans start at $12/month for unlimited slides, AI content generation, viewer analytics, and more. Upgrade to a Team plan for $40/user/month to get extra collaboration and workspace features and custom brand controls.

If you're a founder looking for an AI presentation tool for your pitch deck, Slidebean is a great Beautiful.ai alternative for startups. The app offers a number of templates; a unique, content-first outline editor; and a generative AI tool that builds a whole pitch deck based on your website. I didn't include it on the list mainly because of the price: the free plan is quite limited, and the paid all-access plan can only be billed annually.

The best presentation app for conversational presentations

Prezi (web, mac, windows, ios, android).

Prezi pros:

Doesn't restrict you to standard presentation structure

Lots of customization options

Prezi Video lets you display a presentation right over your webcam video

Prezi cons:

Steep learning curve

Struggling to squeeze information into a basic, linear presentation? Give Prezi a try. Unlike nearly all other presentation apps on the market, Prezi Present doesn't restrict the structure of your presentation to a straight line. The editor focuses on topics and subtopics and allows you to arrange them any way you want, so you can create a more conversational flow of information.

With the structural flexibility, you still get all the same customization features you expect from top presentation software, including fully-editable templates. There's a learning curve if you're unfamiliar with non-linear presentations, but templates offer a great jumping-off point, and Prezi's editor does a good job of making the process more approachable.

Plus, Prezi comes with two other apps: Prezi Design and Prezi Video. Prezi Video helps you take remote presentations to a new level. You can record a video where the presentation elements are displayed right over your webcam feed. Record and save the video to share later, or connect with your video conferencing tool of choice (including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet) to present live.

Prezi's generative AI feature works ok, but it's more useful as a wireframe. When I asked it to create a presentation about the Stanley Cup Playoffs, for example, the resulting content read a lot like a student writing a term paper in the broadest strokes possible to avoid doing any actual research.

Prezi pricing: Free 14-day trial and a free plan that includes up to 5 visual projects; paid plans start at $7/month and include additional features like private presentations and Prezi Present.

The best presentation app for video presentations

Powtoon (web, ios, android).

Powtoon pros:

Timing automatically changes based on the content on the slide

Can toggle between slideshow and video

Can orient presentation as horizontal, vertical, or square

Powtoon cons:

Limited free plan

Powtoon makes it easy to create engaging videos by orienting the editor around a slide deck. Editing a Powtoon feels just like editing a presentation, but by the time you finish, you have a professional video. 

You can edit your slides at any time, and when you hit play, a video plays through your deck—the feel is almost like an animated explainer video. Each slide includes the animations you choose and takes up as much time as is needed based on the content on the slide. Powtoon figures the timing automatically, and you can see in the bottom-right of the editor how much time is used on your current slide versus the total presentation. If you ever want to present as a slide deck, just toggle between Slideshow and Movie.

You'll likely need to subscribe to a paid plan to get the most out of Powtoon—like creating videos longer than three minutes, downloading them as MP4 files, and white-labeling your presentations—but doing so won't break the bank. Plus, you'll unlock tons of templates complete with animations and soundtracks.

One of my favorite Powtoon features is the ability to orient your video: you can choose horizontal orientation (like a normal presentation) or opt for vertical (for mobile) or square (for social media). When your presentation is ready, you can publish straight to YouTube, Wistia, Facebook Ads, and any number of other locations.

Powtoon pricing: Limited free plan available; paid plans start at $15/month and include white-labeling, priority support, additional storage, and more.

The best presentation app for collaborating with your team

Pitch (web, mac, windows, ios, android).

Pitch, our pick for the best presentation software for collaborating with your team

Pitch pros:

Google levels of collaboration

Assign slides to specific team members

Excellent generative AI feature

Pitch cons:

User interface is a little different than you're used to

Need to collaborate on presentations with your team? Pitch is a Google Slides alternative that gets the job done. As far as decks go, Pitch includes all the beautifully-designed templates, customizability, and ease of use you expect from a top-notch presentation tool. But the app really shines when you add your team.

The right-hand sidebar is all about project management and collaboration: you can set and update the status of your deck, assign entire presentations or individual slides to team members, plus comment or add notes. Save custom templates to make future presentations even easier and faster.

You can also invite collaborators from outside your company to work with you on individual decks. And if you opt for a paid plan, Pitch introduces workspace roles, shared private folders, and version history.

Pitch also offers one of the most impressive generative AI features on this list. It still struggles to pull in relevant images, but I found the AI-generated written content and design to be top-notch.

Pitch pricing: Free plan offers unlimited presentations, custom templates, and live video collaboration; paid plans start at $22/month for 2 users with additional workspace features, presentation analytics, and more.

The best presentation app for conversational AI

Gamma (web).

Gamma pros:

Creates fully fleshed-out presentations from a prompt

Conversational chatbot-like experience

Can still manually edit the presentation

Gamma cons:

Not as much granular customization

I tested a lot of apps claiming to use AI to up your presentation game, and Gamma's conversational AI features were head and shoulders above the crowd.

Simply give the app a topic—or upload an outline, notes, or any other document or article—approve the outline, and pick a theme. The app will take it from there and create a fully fleshed-out presentation. It's far from perfect, but Gamma produces a very useful jumping-off point. (Last year, it was by far the best, but this year, other apps are catching up.)

Here's the key: Gamma is much more geared toward the iterative, chatbot experience familiar to ChatGPT users. Click on the Edit with AI button at the top of the right-hand menu to open the chat, and you'll see suggested prompts—or you can type in your own requests for how Gamma should alter the presentation.

Once you've done all you can with prompts, simply close the chat box to manually add the finishing touches. While you do sacrifice some granular customizability in exchange for the AI features, you can still choose your visual theme, change slide layouts, format text, and add any images, videos, or even app and web content.

Gamma pricing: Free plan includes unlimited users, 400 AI deck credits, and basic view analytics; upgrade to the Plus plan for $8/user/month to get unlimited AI credits, remove Gamma branding, and more.

The best presentation app for audience engagement

Mentimeter (web).

Mentimeter, our pick for the best presentation software for audience engagement

Mentimeter pros:

Tons of audience engagement features

Simple for participants to interact

Mentimeter cons:

Less granular customizability

Bit of a learning curve

If you need to engage with an audience during your presentation, Mentimeter makes that easy. The app is designed around interactive elements like quizzes, surveys, Q&As, sliders, and more (even a Miro whiteboard!).

Each of these is included in a number of different, professional-looking templates, so you can build a fully interactive presentation super quickly.

When it's time to present, your audience members can scan the QR code with their phone cameras or type in the URL and access code to participate. There's one code per presentation (so they won't have to do this on every slide), which gives access to each slide as you move through the presentation.

There are two main drawbacks to this one, though. First, there's a bit of a learning curve and less familiar editing interface (but I found it pretty easy to learn with some practice). The other drawback is that you can't get as granular with the visual customization as you can with many other presentation tools.

Mentimeter pricing: Free plan includes 50 participants per month and 34 different slide types; upgrade to the Basic plan for $11.99/presenter/month to get unlimited participants and slide types, private presentations, and more.

The best presentation app for generative AI

Tome, our pick for the best presentation software for generative AI

Top-tier generative AI features

Simple, customizable templates

Intuitive doc-style editor

There's definitely a learning curve

Tome is one of the new additions to this list that I'm most excited about. If you're looking for generative AI that just genuinely works , it's definitely worth a look. The editor is a bit more stripped down than most presentation apps but intuitive nonetheless—it's almost a cross between your standard deck editor and a Notion-style doc.

To generate an AI deck, click Generate with AI in the top right, and either write your own prompt or choose from the example prompts that cover a handful of common use cases, like sales enablement and company pitches. Edit or approve the suggested outline, then generate the full presentation.

From there, you can edit each slide as a doc via the right-hand menu—without limits on how much information you can include. During the presentation, you simply size down any slides that take up more than the standard amount of space. It's super simple but somehow feels revolutionary in a presentation app.

Tome pricing: Free plan available for manual editing without AI; upgrade to the Professional plan for $16/user/month to use the generative AI and design tools, plus engagement analytics, branding tools, and more.

What about the old standbys?

You might notice a few major presentation players aren't on this list, including OGs Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, and Google Slides. These apps are perfectly adequate for creating basic presentations, and they're free if you have a Windows or Mac device or a Google account.

I didn't include them on the list because the presentation space has really developed in the last several years, and after testing them out, I found these behemoths haven't kept pace. If they weren't made by Microsoft/Apple/Google, I might not even be mentioning them. They're pretty basic tools, they're behind the curve when it comes to templates (both quantity and design), and they don't offer any uniquely valuable features like robust team collaboration, branding controls, video, and so on.

Some of these companies (think: Microsoft and Google) are openly working on some pretty impressive-sounding AI features, but they haven't really been focused on their respective presentation solutions just yet. Rest assured, I'm watching this space, and the next time we update this article, I'll re-test tools like Copilot for PowerPoint and Gemini for Google Slides to see what new features may be available.

In any case, if you're reading this, you're probably looking for an alternative that allows you to move away from one of the big 3, and as the presentation platforms featured above show, there's a ton to gain—in terms of features, usability, and more—when you do.

What about PowerPoint and Google Slides add-ons?

While I focused my testing on tools with full feature-sets—those that can serve as your sole presentation tool—there are a ton of add-on tools you can use atop big name tools like PowerPoint and Google Slides.

If you're looking to expand what you can do with PowerPoint or Google Slides, apps like Marq (formerly Lucidpress), Plus AI , Slidesgo , and Simplified can help you do things like access additional templates, save branded assets, and generate AI presentations from the app you're already using.

Related reading:

Canva AI tools to improve your design workflow

The best online whiteboards for collaboration

How to share a presentation on Zoom without sharing your browser tabs and address bar

This post was originally published in October 2014 and has since been updated with contributions from Danny Schreiber, Matthew Guay, Andrew Kunesh, and Krystina Martinez. The most recent update was in April 2024.

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Kiera Abbamonte picture

Kiera Abbamonte

Kiera’s a content writer who helps SaaS and eCommerce companies connect with customers and reach new audiences. Located in Boston, MA, she loves cinnamon coffee and a good baseball game. Catch up with her on Twitter @Kieraabbamonte.

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  • Presentation Design

The 10 Best Presentation Software for 2023: Complete Guide

There are literally hundreds of presentation software tools in the market today and keeping track is getting increasingly hard. Most of them have been optimized for a specific purpose or type of user from a wide range of possibilities, and it's very likely that THE ideal tool for you is actually one that you've never heard of.

We've created this best presentation software list to shed some light and to give you a comprehensive presentation software list to ensure you make the right call in the platform you select. This article is the result of several weeks of research and review of 50+ presentation tools currently available on the web.

What is a presentation software?

A presentation software is defined as an application built to display information in the form of a slide show. Any presentation tool must have three fundamental functions:

  • ‍ A text editor: to input the contents of the presentation.
  • ‍ An import function: to insert and manipulate images and other content.
  • ‍A slide-show or presenter mode: that displays the content in a nice, formatted way, sometimes synced in real time with the presenter across devices.

Slide shows often consist of a combination of text, video, images and charts. Their primary function is displaying clear, readable and summarized data to an audience.

Most presentations are shared and presented on a larger screen or through a digital projector. In rare occasions, slide presentations are printed out as a replacement for text documents, but this is a really inefficient way to review data, that Garr Reynolds calls ‘ PresDocs ’ (Garr Reynolds is the author of Presentation Zen, one of the most important go-to reference for successful presentations).

Related Read: What Makes Up the Best Presentation Templates?

What makes a good presentation tool?

The functions and results of presentation programs have evolved significantly in the past decades, since the original launch of ‘Presenter’ (the PowerPoint predecessor) in 1984. In 1987 PowerPoint 1.0 was released for the Macintosh and it started a revolution in the way we prepare and consume content in meetings.

For the purposes of this article we are going to classify all presentation tools using 3 variables that we consider extremely important:

Ease of use: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

This rating looks at the learning curve, or time required to learn to use the platform. An easy to use interface is fundamentally important to ensure that users feel confortable working with the platform and doesn’t require complex training to take advantage of its features. This also accounts for the average time it takes to build a presentation.

Customization: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The ability to customize a presentation to the smallest details. This varies depending on the number of advanced features in the platform, like the ability to set different transitions to each slide, the ability to add customized elements or to design/code the final outcome of the slides to the last font size and color code.

Final result: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

This indicator looks at the outcome of a finished presentation, assuming the user is an average person with basic design skills and intermediate knowledge on the tool itself.

Best PowerPoint Alternatives (Death by Power Point)

As we mentioned before, PowerPoint is the most used presentation builder in the market today. It is distributed by Microsoft as part of their Office Suite, which is estimated to have over 500 million users worldwide. Microsoft has also revealed that approximately 35 Million presentations are delivered every single day, that’s a staggering 400 presentations per second.

what is a template in presentation software

But still, PowerPoint’s popularity has decreased significantly in the past few years. Their boring presentation templates, the large learning curve and complexity as well as the terrible slides many users end up making have started the Death to PowerPoint movement.

What presentation software is better than PowerPoint?

For this section, we summarize the top PowerPoint alternatives and examples, that is, presentation tools that work in a fairly similar manner and that provide similar (but significantly better) results. If you are an avid PowerPoint user, then migrating to these platforms should be rather easy for you.

Best 10 presentation software alternative list for 2023

(Updated December 2022)

  • Keynote presentation
  • Google Slides

1- SLIDEBEAN PRESENTATION SOFTWARE

Ease of use: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - Fantastic!

Customization: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Good

Final result: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - Fantastic!

what is a template in presentation software

Slidebean is an online presentation tool that uses artificial intelligence to design beautiful slides. Simply add content blocks to your presentation without worrying about formatting. Slidebean’s AI finds the best possible design for every element on your slide. This level of automation allows you to create a professional looking presentation in a fraction of the time it normally takes on PowerPoint.

When comparing it to PowerPoint, Slidebean’s interface is much easier to learn and work with, and it lets you create fantastic looking presentations really fast. The platform is web based and allows you to export to both PowerPoint and PDF format. It also lets you track viewer interactions and activity from people you share your slides with!

Slidebean also has a unique advantage which is a rich gallery of presentation outline templates. These are pre-filled decks that work for numerous purposes, like business proposals, classroom decks, thesis presentations and even startup pitch decks : all you need to do is import them and fill in your content.

You can sign up free for Slidebean here

SIGN UP FREE

2- apple keynote.

Ease of use: ★ ★ ★ - OK

Customization: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - Fantastic!

Final result: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Good

what is a template in presentation software

Keynote is what PowerPoint should have been all along. Apple's version of the popular presentation tool has improved significantly in the last few years, and has recently included a cloud version that works on any browser on any computer (as long as you have at least one Apple device).

Keynote is basically an improved PowerPoint, it offers the same approach to creating slides, but offers nice and clean customizable templates, a simple interface and great details like smart guides.

The biggest issue with Keynote is the long learning process that it requires. Similar to Microsoft's tool, you'll need to sit down for a few hours to learn to use the platform, and another larger set of hours to make a professional presentation.

More info about Apple Keynote is available here

Final result: ★ ★ ★ - OK

Visme is a web based platform for building presentations. Their familiar interface is similar to PowerPoint, but they have successfully simplified a complex UI to a nicer and more understandable navigation. Still, you'll need to spend a few hours to get a good grasp of where all the customization options can be found.

what is a template in presentation software

The platform offers an interesting (but certainly limited) gallery of images, but they succeed at delivering beautiful infographic elements (which they call ‘Charts and Graphs’) that you can use to add some color and make your slides much more dynamic.

You can read more about them here . ‍

4- GOOGLE SLIDES

Customization: ★ ★ - Passable

what is a template in presentation software

Google's version of PowerPoint is hosted as part of the Google Apps suite, that you can access from Google Drive or from Google Apps for Work. Sadly, their presentation builder feels like a limited version of PowerPoint, with less features, limited fonts and very little customization options.

Still, Google's platform is available for free, has a lot of integrations and probably one of the best online collaboration systems out there. Checking it out is easy, just visit your Google Drive.

You can find a more detailed review here .

5- FLOWVELLA

Ease of use: ★ ★ - Passable

Customization: ★ ★ ★ - OK

what is a template in presentation software

Flowvella is available on the Mac App Store as a desktop application. It provides a simple interface (certainly cleaner than Microsoft PowerPoint and somewhat similar to Apple Keynote) and some very nice design templates, which set good grounds so you can start building a nice looking set of slides on top of them. This is by far their biggest strength! If you want to start from scratch, however, you might feel a little lost creating something that looks good.

We found, however, that the oversimplified interface makes some basic options hard to find, like changing the color of a shape. Also, while running as a desktop app it still requires an Internet connection to download some elements, which can lead to a slower performance than a 100% desktop tool.

Update: We also read recently that they launched a tvOS app for the new AppleTV, making them, as far as we know, the first presentation tool to leverage the new platform.

You can find more details here .

Customization: ★ ★ ★ -

what is a template in presentation software

Pitch offers an innovative solution for fast-paced teams looking to quickly create effective, stylish presentations. With a combination of productivity features and design elements, Pitch makes it easy to get professional results—quickly

You can find more information about them here .

Final result: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Good!

what is a template in presentation software

The premise of Canva is an ‘amazingly easy graphic design software'. It lets you create anything from print design to banners and presentations. They provide an easy to use interface with a huge selection of pre-built designs that you can modify to your liking.

These pre-built elements let you quickly draft a nice presentation even if you have no design skills, but it does require you to drag and drop and arrange the content of your slide, which can become time consuming.

Canva has been gaining significant popularity in the last few years, especially after they hired Guy Kawasaki as a Chief Evangelist. Their platform is beautiful, you can find more about them here .

8- HAIKU DECK

Ease of use: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Good

what is a template in presentation software

Haiku Deck launched as an iPad app in 2011. They made a big bet towards mobile productivity and came up with a solid iPad application that allowed you to create slides in less time than the then-only alternative of Keynote for iOS.

Haiku Deck has a nice set of custom templates that you can use as a guideline for your slides, and their content input system is clear and easy to learn.

Still, we believe their approach that focused on mobile devices could only take them so far and they've since been working on a web version of their platform that works for any computer. As we mentioned, the personal computer continues to be a much more efficient productivity platform.

what is a template in presentation software

'Slides' is a nice website that lets you create and share presentations online. Formerly slides(dot)io and slid(dot)es, they finally settled for slides(dot)com. This startup was founded by Hakim El Hattab and Owen Bossola in Stockholm, Sweden, and it makes use of the reveal.js framework that we mentioned above.

Slides has a nice web interface that encourages you to create a nice and clean presentations, however, it still depends on the user’s ability to manipulate the elements and arrange them in a nice style. Still, their pre-defined formats and their grid system help guide you to a better result.

The platform also allows for custom HTML and CSS coding, which lets experienced users with coding skills, customize their templates even further.

Some more info about them here .

Ease of use: ★ - Bad

what is a template in presentation software

Prezi has been around for years and they have had a huge head start compared to any other online presentation tool out there. Their unique zoom styling makes it immediately obvious to the audience that they are looking at a Prezi deck.

Prezi has the advantage of allowing you to create really stunning interactive presentations if you know how to leverage their zoomable, infinite canvas. However, this can become a double edge sword if users overuse the feature and come up with a presentation that is literally capable of making people dizzy.

Still, Prezi's biggest weakness is on its ease of use. There's a long learning curve towards dominating their interface and even if you do, you need to be a designer to make a great presentation on the platform.

This is a huge company that is not going away anytime soon. With 50+ million users, they have proven the world wants and needs a PowerPoint alternative, and we have huge respect for them for doing so.

More information about them here .

‍Which one to pick?

In the world of presentation software, there's a big bunch to pick from. It's kind of like a crowded market with lots of options. And guess what? The best one for you might not even be on your radar.

Our list is here to help you out. We've put together this bunch of presentation software choices after digging into over 50 of them on the internet. We're here to give you the scoop on what's out there, so you can pick the one that suits you best.

Now, remember, presentation software is like your helper to make cool slideshows. These slideshows could be for showing stuff to people, like at school or work. These helpers, or software, should be good at a few things: putting words and pictures on slides, making things look nice, and showing your stuff in a cool way on a screen.

The options we've found have different things they're good at. Some use fancy computer thinking (AI) to make your slides look great without you doing much. Others let you customize your slides a lot, which is nice if you want them to look exactly like you want. And finally, how your slides look when you're done is super important too.

Picking the right presentation tool is a bit like picking the best tool for a job. You wouldn't use a hammer to write a story, right? So, whether you want something easy, something that lets you be creative, or something that gives you good results, our list has got you covered. Your choice will help you make cool presentations that people will remember. Our recommendation is to give Slidebean a try, but is up to you to consider the options. So, pick smart and happy presenting.

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what is a template in presentation software

Check out our list of the top free presentation websites that offer unique features and design options. Discover the best platform for your next presentation now.

what is a template in presentation software

This presentation software list is the result of weeks of research of 50+ presentation tools currently available online. It'll help you compare and decide.

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This is a functional model you can use to create your own formulas and project your potential business growth. Instructions on how to use it are on the front page.

Financial Model Example

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Presentation Template

Use this Presentation Slides Template to deliver impressive presentations that resonate with your audience. Add your own text, visuals, and charts to create the perfect presentation.

Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies

About the Presentation Template

Use our customizable Presentation Template to create engaging presentations with effective, visually appealing slides. Add text , visuals , charts — whatever you need to design the perfect presentation. 

What is the Presentation Template? 

Miro’s Presentation Template design is a ready-made presentation outline. Our existing slide deck provides you with all the features you need to create a presentation that resonates. And the best part? It’s fully customizable. You can add or remove slides, use your own visuals, and create a presentation that engages your audience. 

If you’re a seasoned presentation expert, you’ll love using the Presentation Template to customize your slide deck and create a visually appealing presentation. If you’re a newbie, the template will increase your confidence as a communicator. You’ll be able to create an inspiring, memorable slide deck that leaves you feeling capable and prepared to present.

Why do we need a good Presentation Template? 

Building a presentation from scratch is no easy feat. This ready-made template is a great basis to build a winning presentation. Using this template to structure your next presentation can help:

Boost your confidence

Presenting can be a nerve-wracking experience, particularly if you’re not a presentation expert. Who wouldn’t feel overwhelmed standing in front of a crowd of people with all eyes on you?

But knowing that you have a solid presentation in place can relieve some of that pressure.With a template, you know that your presentation looks good and includes all the information you need. 

Creating a presentation is a time-consuming process. You need to think about your color schemes, formatting, and making sure everything is on-brand.

With a Presentation Template, the structure is already in place. You’re not creating your presentation from scratch, and it’s easy to add your own branding. It saves you time and allows you to focus on the most important element — the content.

How do I create a presentation template? 

Making your own presentation is easy with Miro’s digital workspace. Our professional Presentation Template allows you to create and share your presentation with your collaborators. Start by selecting this blank Presentation Template, then take the following steps to make your own.

Step 1: Brainstorm what you want to get out of your presentation

What would you like your audience to come away with? Use a brainstorming session to outline the top-level information and give your presentation some direction. Don’t worry about specifics; just write down anything that comes to mind.

Step 2: Define your audience

Defining your audience is crucial for building your professional presentation template. It’ll shape everything from the design of your slide deck to the level of detail with which you explain your topic. You can use a Target Audience Template to pinpoint who your audience will be. 

Step 3: Figure out your setting

The setting of your presentation will help you determine the specifics of your presentation. Will it be an all-hands meeting? A conference? Will it be virtual? All of this information tells you how technical the presentation should be, how long it should be, the level of formality, and much more. 

Step 4: Outline your presentation

With all the background information covered, you can now outline the content of your presentation. Start with an introduction, lay out the main points, then conclude. Include as many details as you’d like — you can always cut down your word count later.

Step 5: Add the content

Start adding the content from your outline onto the slides themselves. This could be written text, charts, links , and anything else that’s relevant — but make sure it’s a concise presentation. Too much unnecessary information will detract from the main point of the presentation. You should also make sure the slides are easy to read but don’t be afraid to have fun with them. Dress up your slide deck with photos, icons, charts, and other images. Visuals are a great way to keep your audience engaged and make a creative presentation template.

Step 6: Share your slide deck with collaborators

Get feedback from colleagues and stakeholders to make sure you haven’t missed anything. Take their feedback on board and make any necessary changes.

Step 7: Practice your presentation in front of an audience

It can be difficult to tell which aspects of the presentation are clunky or unclear unless you deliver the presentation. Jump into Presentation Mode to make your presentation full-screen and treat this practice as a dress rehearsal. Run through the slide deck as though you’re doing the real thing and ask your colleagues to give you feedback. 

Which presentation template is best?

There’s no single template that’s best for creating a presentation. The best presentation template is the one that best suits your presentation and allows customization. That way, you can create the perfect presentation for your audience. Miro’s Presentation Template is customizable, meaning that it can be used for a variety of presentation types. Turn it into a business presentation template, a keynote presentation template, and everything in between.

How do you structure a presentation?

You can structure your presentation according to your audience and what kind of information you want them to know. Depending on the purpose of your presentation, the structure of your presentation might change. For example, your presentation structure will be detailed and thorough if you’re presenting to a team of industry experts. If you’re presenting to new business owners that have just entered the industry, your structure will be simpler and easier to follow.

When should you use the Presentation Template?

As you might expect, you should use this free template whenever you need to create a presentation. If you’re short on time, it’s a great way to start creating a presentation without having to start from scratch.

Get started with this template right now.

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User Journey Mapping Template

Works best for:.

Each person's life is a unique journey filled with daily decisions and challenges. The User Journey Mapping Template is a useful tool to visually represent these individual experiences. It simplifies understanding and documenting the current state of a situation by breaking down its different parts.

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Remote Design Sprint Template

Design, Desk Research, Sprint Planning

A design sprint is an intensive process of designing, iterating, and testing a prototype over a 4 or 5 day period. Design sprints are conducted to break out of stal, work processes, find a fresh perspective, identify problems in a unique way, and rapidly develop solutions. Developed by Google, design sprints were created to enable teams to align on a specific problem, generate multiple solutions, create and test prototypes, and get feedback from users in a short period of time. This template was originally created by JustMad, a business-driven design consultancy, and has been leveraged by distributed teams worldwide.

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Value Chain Analysis Template

Leadership, Strategic Planning, Workflows

First coined by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, the value chain analysis helps your team evaluate your business activities so you can find ways to improve your competitive advantage. A value chain is a set of activities that a company performs in order to deliver a valuable product from start to finish. The analysis itself allows your team to visualize all the business activities involved in creating the product—and helps you identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and miscommunication within the process.

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App Development Canvas Template

Market Research, Product Management, User Experience

Ever noticed that building a successful app requires lots of players and moving parts? If you’re a project manager, you definitely have. Lucky for you, an app development canvas will let you own and optimize the entire process. It features 18 boxes, each one focusing on a key aspect of app development, giving you a big-picture view. That way you can fine-tune processes and get ahead of potential problems along the way—resulting in a smoother path and a better, tighter product.

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Research Template

Education, Desk Research, Product Management

Teams often need to document findings from usability testing sessions and customer interviews into a systematic, flexible user research template. Collecting everyone’s observations into a centralized location makes it easier to share insights company-wide and suggest new features based on user needs. Research templates can be used to record quantitative or qualitative data.. When it’s your job to ask questions, take notes, learn more about your user, and test iteratively, a Research Template can help you validate your assumptions, find similarities across different users, and articulate their mental models, needs, and goals.

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Meeting Reflection Template

Meetings, Brainstorming, Team Meetings

When schedules get hectic, “learning by doing” becomes the default way to learn. So make time for your team to learn in other valuable ways — by reflecting and listening. Led by “learners,” (team members who share with the rest of the team), a meeting reflection lets teammates share new information about a client’s business or an internal business initiative, offer problem-solving techniques, or even recommend books or podcasts worth checking out. Meeting reflections also encourage colleagues at all levels to engage in each other’s professional development of their teammates.

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Presentations

The 11 Best Presentation Software to Use in 2023

The ability to effectively share ideas, illustrate a concept, and convince an audience is invaluable whether you’re a student or a C-level executive. These days, the presentation software you use to create presentations is just as important as your public-speaking skills.

On top of that, most companies have transitioned to remote work recently due to the current coronavirus situation, and now need to share their stories online through a virtual conference room with their distributed teams and external audience members.

That’s why we’ve come up with a list of some of the best presentation software available right now, so you can choose a compatible and innovative presentation maker that includes the best presentation tools to suit your specific needs.

Choose the best presentation software by weighing the pros and cons

You’ll see some of the most popular presentation apps: from free to paid subscription platforms, and slideshow applications to full-blown visual design presentation software with interactive features and more.

Each presentation software has its pros and cons, so it’s up to you to figure out which suits your needs best; consider the software learning curve, whether your company is made up of Mac users or Windows users and the software compatibility, if you need an enterprise account or free account, etc.

Let’s dive in!

1. Piktochart

presentation software piktochart, best presentation software

Piktochart is a presentation software that can create a variety of design visuals, from infographics to social media stories.

An area in which Piktochart shines is crafting unique presentations. 

On Piktochart, users can choose from a wide range of professionally-designed presentation templates .

These custom templates include everything from monthly marketing reports to employee onboarding templates.

This broad selection of customizable templates is especially useful for those who don’t have much design experience or know-how but need to create a visually stunning unique presentation in a pinch. 

Piktochart’s presentation maker also makes it easy to edit presentations and include design elements such as lists, timelines, comparisons, graphs, and different types of charts through drag-and-drop tools.

You can even make visual maps and interactive charts to keep your audience engaged throughout your presentation. 

And if your company uses a Piktochart TEAM plan , you can enjoy the platform’s ability to store brand assets , color schemes, and bespoke templates. Here, replicating company-branded visuals is a breeze. 

Piktochart comes with a free version but with certain limitations. Active visuals are capped at five per month and published visuals have a Piktochart watermark.

If you want features such as team template collaboration, project sharing, and annotated commenting, you’ll have to get a Team account. To sum it up:

  • Lots of professionally-designed templates 
  • Good for both design professionals and non-professionals 
  • Easy to store brand assets and bespoke templates for future presentations
  • Access presentation tools from anywhere via a web browser
  • Free presentation app version available
  • Might take some getting used to if you’re used to PowerPoint presentations

Present and collaborate with ease using Piktochart’s presentation templates.

You don’t have to worry about how your presentation will look like. Piktochart’s easy-to-edit templates will take care of the visual aspect for you.

visual content maker, online presentation maker, slideshow online with Piktochart

2. Microsoft PowerPoint

microsoft powerpoint, powerpoint presentation

Microsoft PowerPoint is often the first presentation software that comes to mind.

Once considered the “O.G.” and best presentation software available, it is still widely used and has a familiar interface—which means most users are comfortable with it. 

This presentation app has everything you need to create a presentation: from animated transitions for interactive presentations to pre-installed fonts and graphic elements.

Users can also upload their own fonts, graphics, and images into their finished presentation.

Lastly, it’s available as part of the Microsoft Office software package; and you can work on your presentations via the web and mobile devices, for offline viewing as well as online. 

However, PowerPoint is no longer considered the best presentation software, as it has very few templates to choose from, and these tend to fall quite flat compared to modern apps and software.

It’s easy to fall back into boring slideshow PowerPoint files if you don’t know what you’re doing.

And because most people use PowerPoint, you’re likely using the same template as the next guy. 

As standalone presentation software, PowerPoint is pricey at US$139.99—and accessible through only one device unless you upgrade your package.

And while PowerPoint is primarily a slideshow application and presentation maker, its strengths are limited to this category. 

So if you’re looking for the best presentation software, and bang for your buck for a robust presentation tool, you might want to look elsewhere. 

  • Market leader in slideshow applications to create slides
  • Widely used and familiar interface for the presentation process
  • Reliable and usable on most devices as well as being a desktop app
  • Flat templates
  • Limitations with its standalone-presentation software price

3. Google Slides

google slides, presentation software example

Google Slides is a slideshow application that is very similar to PowerPoint.  But there are three main differences: it’s fully online (while also allowing for offline viewing), collaborative, and free. 

The great thing about Google Slides (besides the fact that it’s completely free for anyone with a Google account) is that you can log on via your browser or through its official app. 

You can access all Google Slides presentations from any device (mobile, tablet, and desktop), and share them with other people so you can collaborate in real-time. 

Google Drive allows all your presentations to live on the cloud, accessible to all marketing and sales teams, with unparalleled ease of use.

And there’s no need to worry about disruptions as all changes are saved as they happen, as long as you have an active internet connection. 

Additionally, anyone familiar with PowerPoint will be comfortable using Google’s iteration and likely be delighted by Google Drive and the slide library available. 

It’s also a lot simpler, so even those new to presentation-making will find it easy to navigate. 

However, some might find Google Slides too simple as it lacks the wealth of features available on PowerPoint. 

These include embedding videos from sources other than YouTube, plus adding audio tracks and sound effects, limiting the ability to create unique interactive presentations. 

Some users also encounter issues with downloading and exporting to different formats, including PowerPoint. 

Some slides may even turn out completely different from the original version. 

All in all, Google Slides is a great option for those who are looking for a free application and only need to create simple presentations. 

  • The free plan supports professional presentations
  • Web-based and collaborative to create presentations
  • Simple and familiar interface for an online presentation software
  • Too simple for advanced presentation making
  • Difficult to export to other formats
  • Limited templates and customization options for interactive content

keynote, keynote presentations

You could say Keynote is Apple’s version of PowerPoint. It’s also a slideshow application—but in typical Apple fashion, it comes with a sleek, minimalist interface and is considered one of the best presentation apps on the market. 

There are 30 different themes to choose from, which serve as templates for those who need a quick fix. And it can do most of what PowerPoint can. 

Keynote’s main perk is that it’s part of the Apple ecosystem. 

That means it has built-in iCloud and Apple Watch support so users can control their presentation from their mobile device or even their wrists with just a click. 

This presentation app comes pre-installed on most Mac devices. Otherwise, you can purchase it from the Apple store for just US$9.99 for mobile and US$19.99 for OS X. 

The big downside is that Keynote is exclusive to Mac OS. 

Non-Apple users can create, upload, and sync their own Keynote presentations through their iCloud Drive, but this presentation app is only truly helpful only for those who use multiple Apple devices. 

And if you’re used to working on PowerPoint, you might find Keynote a bit confusing in the beginning, especially when editing presentations. 

  • Sleek, minimalist interface 
  • Free with most Apple devices
  • No access for PC and Android devices except through iCloud

5. SlideDog

Sliding away from straightforward slideshow applications and other presentation apps, SlideDog is a web-based multimedia presentation tool that lets users combine different types of media to create and edit presentations. 

This includes everything from PowerPoint decks to videos and even PDFs that can all be played side by side without any awkward transitions. 

It’s also extremely easy to customize a SlideDog presentation. 

You just need to upload the files into the SlideDog web browser application, and then drag and drop them according to the order in which you want them to play. 

You can control your presentations and playlists from another device, and audience members can view your slideshow on their devices by clicking a link. 

SlideDog has a free presentation app version that provides all of the basic features. 

However, live sharing and premium support are only available with a Pro account that costs US$99 per year, and not via the free version alone.

While SlideDog is technically considered presentation software, you can’t actually create presentations on it. 

You can simply stitch together different pre-made presentations in various formats into what is essentially a playlist. 

Lastly, SlideDog supports only Windows devices, so Apple and Linux users can’t use it. 

  • Supports a lot of different media
  • Provides live-sharing
  • More dynamic compared to the usual slideshow presentation
  • Only collates media; doesn’t create them

6. Haiku Deck 

haiku deck, presentation software example

Ever come across presentations with size-eight fonts and blocks of indecipherable paragraphs on each slide? 

You can avoid such an unfortunate scenario with Haiku Deck. 

HaikuDeck is a web and mobile application that favors images over text. 

It works by limiting the number of words users can put on each slide, and allowing them to search for images on their platform related to the slide’s main idea. 

This makes it ideal for those who want to simplify their thoughts and let the images do all the talking. 

Users have over 40 million royalty-free photos to choose from, plus dozens of simple slide layouts on the platform itself. 

While this certainly simplifies the process of creating a visually rich presentation, it can be limiting for those who need to include more information into their slides. 

It’s a great option for someone giving a TED Talk, for example.

But for others who need to pass on more facts and figures, having a built-in word limit might be too restrictive.  

  • Simple and easy to use 
  • Access to millions of royalty-free stock images
  • May be too simple for some
  • No Android support
  • Limited features

7. Prezi Business

prezi business, business presentation software

Among the other presentation software on this list, Prezi Business might be one of the most unique presentation tools. 

Rather than offering a regular slideshow format, Prezi looks more like a 3D interactive mind map where viewers jump dynamically from one idea to the next. 

You can zoom in on one “slide” and then zoom out for the next. 

Prezi has over 100 templates to choose from and comes with a very simple interface and a drag-and-drop style of editing. 

It’s compatible with both Mac and PC desktops as well as smartphones. 

It’s also similar to a regular PowerPoint deck in that you can jump back and forth from one “slide” to the next. 

And like SlideDog, you can send viewers the link to the presentation as you’re presenting. 

Also, up to 10 people can work on a Prezi presentation at the same time, one of its main selling points. 

This is great for collaboration, but having so many hands-on deck at once can get messy. 

  • Dynamic and immersive presentations
  • Highly visual
  • Easy to use
  • May not be appropriate for all types of presentations

screenshot of ludus presentation software

In a world of slides and presentations, standing out is the key. Ludus brings the flair of graphic design into the world of presentations.

At its core, Ludus is the bridge between presentation tools and design software. It enables users to infuse their slides with the kind of design elements you’d typically find in advanced design platforms.

Not only can you import assets from design giants like Adobe, but its seamless integration with tools like Unsplash and Giphy makes sourcing visuals a breeze.

It’s a fairly affordable tool for all its features compared to the other paid options in this list, as users pay 12.49 euros monthly (if billed annually).

However, while Ludus’ robust design capabilities can elevate the look of your presentation, those unfamiliar with design tools might find there’s a learning curve.

  • Merges presentation creation with advanced design tools.
  • Seamless integration with popular design platforms and visual databases.
  • Offers a unique edge in presentation aesthetics.
  • Might be a tad overwhelming for non-designers
  • Can have a steeper learning curve for those used to more straightforward platforms

9. Slidebean

screenshot of slidebean presentation software

Crafting a compelling presentation demands not only compelling content but also a design that can captivate your audience. Enter Slidebean.

Slidebean offers an intelligent design solution, using AI to transform raw content into professionally styled presentations. This platform streamlines the design process, allowing you to focus on the message rather than fretting over aesthetics.

The basic plan is free and allows you to create a presentation. But if you want to share or download your presentations, as well as unlock the full suite of features, you’ll need to sign up for the All-Access plan priced at $199 per year.

While it provides a quick and efficient method to produce polished slides, it also offers features for sharing, collaboration, and viewer analytics, adding an edge to your presentation strategy.

However, for professionals who prioritize granular design control, the automated design might feel limiting at times.

  • AI-driven design ensures visually appealing presentations.
  • Features for collaboration and viewer insights.
  • Efficient design process reduces time and effort.
  • Might not offer the detailed design customization some users desire.
  • Automated choices may not always align with specific branding or style preferences.

10. ClearSlide

screenshot of clearslide presentation software

Having great visuals to drive your point home can be the difference between getting a sale across the line or customers walking away. ClearSlide stands out in this area as a presentation tool for businesses laser-focused on boosting their sales and marketing game.

At its core, ClearSlide is all about leveling up business presentations. Whether you’re marketing a new product or tracking client engagement, it’s got tools that cater to every need.

Whether it’s a PowerPoint, a PDF, or something from Google Drive or Dropbox, ClearSlide makes it simple to upload and work with these files.

The unique edge? ClearSlide’s virtual meeting space pops open with just a click. It’s all about seamless, professional presentations without the hassle.

Beyond just slides, the platform dives deep into metrics and analytics, ensuring every presentation is backed by data-driven insights. And the tool is available for $35 per month, which isn’t too pricey for medium-sized businesses.

However, its complexity isn’t for everyone. For some, the variety of features might seem a tad overwhelming, and its focus on metrics might be a bit much for those just wanting a basic presentation tool.

  • Seamless virtual meetings and presentations
  • Integrates with popular platforms
  • Offers insightful analytics for sales and marketing
  • Might feel complex for some users
  • Limited transition and design effects
  • Mobile experience could be better

screenshot of vyond presentation software

Stepping into the world of animation, Vyond, once known as GoAnimate, allows users to turn their narratives into professional animated videos. For those looking to elevate their content without diving deep into animation complexities, Vyond can be the go-to tool.

This platform is more than just drag-and-drop animations. It integrates AI capabilities with Vyond Go, which transforms text prompts into rough-cut videos.

Fancy a quick draft for your upcoming project? This AI assistant is up for the task. And if perfection is your game, take it to Vyond Studio, filled with an array of characters, templates, and backgrounds.

The Essential Plan at $25 per month is suitable for individuals on a budget. However, if you want to export videos at 1080p and above, have collaboration tools, or different export options, you’ll need to sign up for the Professional Plan at $92 per month.

As robust as the tool is, there are still some kinks to iron out. AI voiceovers might still need some tweaks, and detailed color customizations can be a bit tricky, but the tool’s strengths, especially for businesses, are undeniable.

  • Hassle-free video creation for beginners to experts
  • Generous library of pre-made assets
  • AI-powered video and script creation with Vyond Go
  • AI voiceovers might feel a bit robotic
  • Some customization limitations for specific props and scenes

The best presentation software is…

 …completely up to you! 

When it comes to presentation software, the world is your oyster. 

Each of these tools either has a free or trial version for you to check out, so you don’t have to commit just yet. 

When it’s time to choose, consider the following aspects to find the right presentation software for you: 

  • Ease of use. Is it easy for you to understand or will it require lots of training before you can start creating presentations? 
  • Accessibility. Can you access your presentation software from any device or are you limited to carrying your laptop to every presentation? 
  • Real-time collaboration. Can multiple people work on the same project or do you have to keep downloading and emailing drafts? 
  • Create design tools. Can you create presentations with dynamic design elements or are you stuck with the same kind of slide each time? 
  • Template availability. Is this tool only accessible to a design professional or can anyone create stunning presentations through pre-designed and updated templates? 
Piktochart , for example, would be a fantastic presentation software choice among the long list of PowerPoint alternatives for teams looking for a variety of eye-catching designs without requiring much technical know-how. Meanwhile, Microsoft PowerPoint might be the best presentation software for those who are just looking to play it safe. 

Hopefully, this best presentation software list sheds some light on the tools at your disposal. Choose wisely! 

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Robin Geuens is a writer turned SEO specialist. When he's not wondering what Google is up to next he's either reading, taking courses, playing video games, or wondering where to travel to next.

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Turn your presentation into a conversation and involve your audience. Prezi Present’s one-of-a-kind open canvas lets you navigate freely between topics and dive into details on anything your audience wants. Reveal key data and findings by hovering your mouse over interactive graphs, tables, and infographics, all of which can be made with Prezi Design and easily incorporated into any presentation.

Make any video meeting immersive and interactive with Prezi Video and Prezi Present. Create your presentation with Prezi Present, then take it to your virtual meeting and bring it with you on screen. Features like name tags and virtual backgrounds enhance your video feed for more professional and interactive presentations, anywhere.

Interactive presentation templates

There’s no need to start from scratch. Prezi provides hundreds of templates to help you create interactive presentations. Get started with one of our professionally designed presentation templates, then customize it with your own content, plus your branding if you’re a Teams customer.

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  • Sign up for Prezi by exploring our plans and pricing options. Contact us for more to learn about our plans for businesses and teams.
  • Open Prezi Present in your dashboard.
  • To create an interactive presentation, create from a template, start from scratch, or convert an existing PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation to Prezi.
  • Upload your own images, GIFs, and videos, or select visuals from Unsplash and Giphy directly within Prezi.
  • Add custom elements, such as tables, graphs, and maps with subtle effects that add an extra layer of interactivity to your presentation with Prezi Design .
  • Add your presenter notes to keep track of main ideas and speaking points.
  • Share your presentation by presenting live and in person, through a shareable link, or by using Prezi Video to present on a video call.

Make an interactive presentation

Get inspired by the top presenters in the biz

Some of the most interactive presentations out there are available on Prezi. Look through our gallery of presentation examples, curated by Prezi’s editors, for some of our favorites. You can take notes, get inspired, and you can even re-use an existing presentation for your own purposes. Just look for the green symbol, then customize the presentation with your own content.

Flashcard template

Explore interactive presentation examples

More features that make Prezi presentations great

what is a template in presentation software

You’re in the driver’s seat

License management Add or remove team members, and transfer licenses with ease.

Content ownership Keep control of your team’s content, even when someone leaves.

Privacy control Publishing settings and overviews let you manage who sees what.

MSI Installation Remote software deployment gets everyone the latest versions fast.

what is a template in presentation software

We’re your biggest supporters

Phone and chat support Our customer support experts are standing by to help.

Dedicated success manager Let your personal guide get your team up and running.

Branded templates Get your own template with your fonts, logo, and colors.

Advanced training* Get personalized trainings and webinars, plus the option to get Prezi-certified. *Available with software commitment minimum

what is a template in presentation software

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Continuous monitoring We constantly scan and test our infrastructure and application.

Cross-team integration Our security, engineering, and product teams partner with each other closely. Learn more about our security measures

More resources to help you make interactive presentations

Flashcard template

Frequently asked questions

What is an interactive presentation.

An interactive presentation is precisely what you might guess – a presentation you can interact with. They often use features like clicks and movement, and weave in activities like questions, polls, and games throughout the presentation to get the audience involved. An interactive presentation is fundamentally different than a traditional presentation in that the audience is an essential part of the content. Their involvement creates more conversational, authentic experiences that benefit everyone involved.

Can I create an interactive presentation on Prezi for free?

Yes. You can sign up for Prezi for free and start creating an interactive presentation immediately, and explore even more features and team options when you try one of our premium plans with a free trial.

How can I make a virtual presentation interactive?

With cameras off and microphones muted, it can be difficult to make an interactive presentation online, but not impossible. The trap that many virtual presenters fall into is sharing their screen and delivering their presentation more like a lecture. The audience recognizes the one-way nature of it and goes into passive mode. Use Prezi Present to create a presentation that feels more like conversation rather than a rehearsed deck of slides, and take it on screen with you with Prezi Video . This allows more face-to-face interaction with your audience and makes your presentation much more engaging.

Can I use an existing Powerpoint or Google Slides deck to make an interactive presentation on Prezi?

Yes, you can convert Powerpoint and Google Slides decks by importing them into Prezi. You can also take these presentations with you on screen to any virtual meeting, making for more immersive and interactive presentations than before.

Does Prezi’s interactive presentation software work with tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams?

It sure does. Connect an interactive presentation to any video meeting with Prezi Video. Just make sure to select “Prezi Camera” from the camera list to see your content.

Get interactive presentation tools and more for your team

Use Prezi’s interactive presentation software to create engaging presentations that stand out online, plus so much more when you get Prezi for your team. Get access to additional interactive presentation tools, branding solutions, and more with Prezi’s business solutions.

Best free presentation software of 2024

Find an alternative to PowerPoint

Best overall

Best for speed, best for functionality, best for collaboration, best user interface.

  • How we test

The best free presentation software makes it simple and easy to create presentations as an alternative to subscribing to Microsoft PowerPoint.

A person doing a presentation on a whiteboard.

1. Best overall 2. Best for speed 3. Best for functionality 4. Best for collaboration 5. Best user interface 6. FAQs 7. How we test

While PowerPoint is the market leader when it comes to presentation software, some people may be unwilling to subscribe to a Microsoft 365 subscription, especially if they don't expect to need to use it very often.

However, there are plenty of great alternatives to PowerPoint available for free that you can use. While these won't have the same advanced features as PowerPoint, they still offer a very competent platform to design most any presentation that you need.

To help you choose, we've listed below the best free presentation software currently available.

Add images to your presentations using the best free photo editor .

Google Apps

Google Workspace : Collaboration + productivity apps There are many different presentation software packages but Google Workspace formerly known as G Suite remains the original cloud office software and one of the best business office suites, offering a huge range of features and functionality that rivals can't match, especially when it comes to presentation software. Try it free for 14 days .

The best free presentation software of 2024 in full:

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Prezi website screenshot

Our expert review:

Reasons to buy

Reasons to avoid.

Prezi turns the traditional approach to presentations on its head. Instead of creating slide after slide, this presentation software gives you a single giant canvas. You can add blocks of text or images, or even create miniature slides. During your presentation, you can seamlessly fly around the canvas and zoom in to look at individual chunks of content.

For how complex Prezi seems, it’s impressively simple to use the platform. The only major divergence from Microsoft PowerPoint is that you need to add animated paths from one part of the canvas to another. The tools for this are fairly straightforward, especially if you’ve ever used an animation or video editing software.

Of course, this type of presentation structure isn’t always ideal. Prezi makes it hard to visualize structured data like financials, which can make it difficult to use in business applications. Some viewers also might not appreciate the fly-around animation style that’s inherent to the presentation software.

Read our full Prezi review .

  • ^ Back to the top

Canva website screenshot

Canva is perfect for making speedy presentations right in your web browser. This software offers a handful of free layouts to help you get your slideshow started, and it’s easy to customize the templates to fit your needs. There isn’t a huge variety of content elements to add to your presentation, but Canva makes up for this with a searchable library of more than 1 million images you can use.

Your Canva presentations live online, which makes it extremely easy to collaborate. You can invite colleagues to edit your slideshow (although simultaneous editing is not supported) or seamlessly share your finished presentation. However, beware that Canva can’t import presentations from Microsoft Powerpoint or export finished work to a Powerpoint-editable format.

Read our full Canva review .

LibreOffice website screenshot

3. LibreOffice

LibreOffice is a free alternative to Microsoft Office, and it includes a Powerpoint equivalent called Impress with nearly all of the same functionality. The only big difference you’ll find between the two slideshow creation tools is the LibreOffice lacks some modern features like built-in collaboration and integration with Microsoft OneDrive.

However, Impress does have a few advantages of its own. The software can import files from Keynote, the default presentation software on Mac computers. Plus, there are hundreds of free templates that you can download for free. Even better, there’s no limit on what fonts you can use with Impress, so it’s easy to change the look of your presentation from what Powerpoint typically allows.

On the whole, LibreOffice Impress is about as close as it gets to simply replicating Microsoft Powerpoint for free.

Read our full LibreOffice review .

Google Slides website screenshot

4. Google Slides

Google Slides is part of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), and it does a nice job of matching a number of PowerPoint’s capabilities. This free presentation software supports embedding videos, creating diagrams, and adding animations to your slides. While the selection of templates is somewhat limited, you can easily import hundreds of additional templates for free or create your own.

Even better, Google Slides supports the collaboration tools users have come to expect from Google. Multiple people can work on a slideshow simultaneously, and there’s a built-in group chat so you can keep track of what everyone is doing. It’s also nice that you can play your presentation in presenter mode, which allows you to preview how it will look to your audience and rehearse timing.

The only downside to Google Slides is that bloated slideshows can experience some loading delays. Also beware that while you can move between Slides and Powerpoint, the conversion often messes with the layout of your slides.

Read our full Google Slides review .

WPS Office Free website screenshot

5. WPS Office Free

WPS Office Free is a Microsoft Office look-alike that fully support PowerPoint files without any layout issues during import. The WPS Presentation tool has all of the same capabilities of PowerPoint, including tons of animations, slide transitions, content effects, and video embedding. The selection of included presentation templates is also very impressive for a free software.

One of the best things about this presentation software is that the user interface will feel incredibly familiar if you’re coming from Microsoft. All of the tools are displayed in a top ribbon, with your slides shown on the left side of the screen for easy navigation. It’s simple to display your presentation right from WPS Presentation, which means there’s no unexpected troubleshooting when it’s time to show off your work.

There’s not much to dislike about WPS Presentation. However, keep in mind that the software is supported by ads. Some users find the ads annoying, but they’re not overly in the way.

Read our full WPS Office Free review .

We've also featured the best free office software .

Best free presentation software FAQs

Which alternative to powerpoint is best for you.

When deciding which alternative to PowerPoint to download and use, first consider what your actual needs are, as sometimes free platforms may only provide basic options, so if you need to use advanced tools you may find a paid platform is much more worthwhile. Additionally, free and budget software options can sometimes prove limited when it comes to the variety of tools available, while higher-end software can really cater for every need, so do ensure you have a good idea of which features you think you may require.

How we test the best free presentation software

To test for the best free presentation software we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, whether as a download or as an online service. We then tested the service to see how the software could be used for different purposes and in different situations. The aim was to push each software platform to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools.

Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar .  

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Michael Graw

Michael Graw is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Bellingham, Washington. His interests span a wide range from business technology to finance to creative media, with a focus on new technology and emerging trends. Michael's work has been published in TechRadar, Tom's Guide, Business Insider, Fast Company, Salon, and Harvard Business Review. 

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Software refers to a set of instructions or programs that tell a computer what tasks to perform. it includes all of the programs, applications, and operating systems that run on computers, smartphones, and other electronic devices. do you have a console that uses discs alright, those discs are software (and the console would be hardware). if you wish to give a presentation about software development, for example, these google slides themes and powerpoint templates might come in handy.

Software Development Business Plan presentation template

Software Development Business Plan

People in the IT sector will be glad to know that Slidesgo has created a new template especially for them! Describe in these slides your software development business plan and try to convince possible partners of the viability of your idea. The palette is composed of cool colors, which are...

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Software Development School Center

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Software Testing Types Minitheme presentation template

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Software Testing Types Minitheme

A good piece of software should run like a well-oiled machine—and that means thorough testing is absolutely necessary. Different types of testing can identify anything from bugs to usability issues, making them essential pieces of any robust development process. Many future testers may benefit from an informative slideshow about software...

Design Software Interface CV presentation template

Design Software Interface CV

Do you need to renew the design of your CV? Check out this proposal from Slidesgo. It has a modern design, in green color, with gradients, and is very visual. We have included icons and text boxes with white background to make it stand out even more against the background....

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Engineering Software Pitch Deck presentation template

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Software Engineering Business Plan presentation template

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Contract Management Software Pitch Deck presentation template

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Software Company Consulting presentation template

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“Sorry, we're unable to fetch the presentation themes right now”, error

It's already the second day since I can't export to word documents into PowerPoint presentations using Word online. I am continuously getting: “Sorry, we're unable to fetch the presentation themes right now”, error.

Is it on Microsoft side or my side? I have tried all supported browsers (Firefox, Edge, Chrome) and also different desktop and laptop computers, but with no avail.

I would like to know shall I wait, meantime doing, other stuff or the fix will not be any soon?

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  • Microsoft Agent |

Hi! EduardTibichi, 

Welcome to the Microsoft Community! 

I realize that you've encountered a problem with   u nable to convert Word document to PowerPoint Presentation using Word Online   and I understand how you feel. 

I just ran a test on your question and did not have the same problem in my test environment, my test steps are: click on the link Login | Microsoft 365 (office.com) and log in to your Microsoft account > create a Word document, enter a first level header, second level header, and body text > click on File > click on Export > click on Export as PowerPoint Presentation.

what is a template in presentation software

Therefore, your problem may be specific to an individual account. For the time being I suggest you try a different Microsoft account and perform the same steps to see if you are able to export PowerPoint Presentation properly.

In order to be able to provide you with more appropriate assistance, I kindly suggest that you provide me with specific screenshots of the reported error via private message so that I can better localize the problem.

This problem may also be due to your document settings, I cordially invite you to provide me with the Word file you are having problems with by private message so that I can do further testing. Please click File > Save As > Download Copy in Word Online, save a copy of the file to your local disk, and then provide it to me via private message at: Please click on the avatar logo in the upper right corner of the page && nbsp;>  Click on the three dots in the lower right corner of the username in the popup  >  Click to view private message  

   

what is a template in presentation software

Thank you for your understanding and patience and I look forward to hearing from you. 

Best Regards  

Eddy - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist  

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Thanks for your feedback.

Thank you for all your replays and suggestions!

I did... looked that the problem was on the Microsoft side, office for web apps...

different browsers (except Safari that is not compatible)

different account

different PC

different network setting

different ISP provider (I have two providers with two separate lines)

different Word documents (even those documents that worked a couple of days before the error)

therefore, I concluded that it wasn't "me", moreover this morning it worked again as previously with no issues...

Thanks very much for your reply!

At this time, based on your situation, I determine that it may be related to the regional network and the connection between servers. Since your problem is relatively rare, I sincerely invite you to make the following notes:

You mentioned that you sometimes have no problems with this feature, so please make a note of the time period when the feature is available, as sometimes the connection to the server may fluctuate due to peaks in network traffic during different time periods. I realize this will take some time, but in order to find out the cause of the problem, I invite you to join us in documenting and troubleshooting the possibilities.

If you have legitimate VPN software, at this time I would recommend trying to use your VPN software to change your network region to another country or region and then see if the feature works consistently.

As OneDrive has recently been undergoing a UI update as well as a migration, this may have some impact on the servers, and this issue may improve after the OneDrive update is complete.

Thank you again for your support of Microsoft products. And I apologize for the inconvenience, and I will work with you to investigate what may be causing this issue, thank you for your understanding and patience!

Has anyone found a solution to this? We are still not able to export from word to powerpoint. Best Regards Robert

1 person found this reply helpful

I have a similar issue. Changed the location using Opera GX's built in VPN feature, connected to NA, that did not help. Different accounts also didn't do the magic.

It seems that the solution hasn't been found yet... a couple of days ago it worked, last night it worked, today it didn't...

So, whatever it is, I'm sure it's not a user related error. Even the error itself seems to say: : "It's not you it's us!" :)

what is a template in presentation software

2 people found this reply helpful

I'm having the same problem, highly frustrating. Tried every combination of computers, browsers, files, etc to no avail. Maybe I'll just wait and see if it magically works tonight since that seems to be the pattern.

I have gone mad trying to figure this out until I found this form. Thanks for the info, hopefully resolves itself fast.

Hi, It seems that something is wrong with the service today. So far I have tried:

Another PC.

Another account.

Different ISP.

I did all of that and got the same bad result,

I am having the same issues when trying to export a word doc into powerpoint. I have tried different logins and different hardware but always the same error.

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COMMENTS

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  2. Understand the difference between PowerPoint templates and themes

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  10. Five tips for choosing the right PowerPoint template

    Ensuring your template and message aligns strengthens your presentation's storytelling. 5. Consider the length of your presentation. The duration of your presentation should be incorporated in your template decision making. Longer presentations may benefit from a clean and organized template that aids in maintaining audience attention.

  11. Best presentation software of 2024

    LibreOffice Impress is part of the open-source suite offered as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, and comes with a powerful array of tools and editing options for your presentation, not ...

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    Making your own presentation is easy with Miro's digital workspace. Our professional Presentation Template allows you to create and share your presentation with your collaborators. Start by selecting this blank Presentation Template, then take the following steps to make your own. Step 1: Brainstorm what you want to get out of your presentation.

  14. Best Free Online Presentation Software

    Create beautiful presentations, faster. Visme is the best presentation software for teams who need real-time collaboration and individuals who need advanced features. and customization for interactive presentations. Create beautiful presentations in minutes, not hours. "Frequently, members of the lead team need to give presentations and ...

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    These days, the presentation software you use to create presentations is just as important as your public-speaking skills. ... Easy to store brand assets and bespoke templates for future presentations; Access presentation tools from anywhere via a web browser; Free presentation app version available;

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