Let's say you have a whole bunch of information, and you need to convey it to a group of people. Maybe those people are in your office or classroom, in the boardroom of a company you're going to visit, or scattered throughout the world, connected by the internet. Presentation apps can handle the whole process. First, they let you put your material into a format that's right for sharing with others, usually—but not always—a slideshow. Then, they enable you to present the material, whether that's using a projector and screen onsite; or offsite with a portable projector; or online in real time; or even online but asynchronously, at the leisure of each audience member. A few of the very best apps even have tools for taking questions from the audience and tracking how many people online watched your presentation.
The term "presentation app" used to be synonymous with Microsoft PowerPoint, a part of the Microsoft Office suite. While PowerPoint is still one of the strongest players in the field, many other apps have entered the space, bringing with them innovative ways for changing how we format and present information. This subclass of productivity apps, which used to be best known for inducing snoring during meetings, has grown tremendously to give presentation creators new ways of making their information more palatable, easily digestible, and sometimes downright entertaining.
The Best Slideshow Creation Apps
The slideshow format is the classic presentation option, and the best two apps in this category are Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote, which is a part of the former Apple iWork suite (the apps are now only available separately). Both are Editors' Choice apps.
PowerPoint has by far the most, well, everything. It has the most effects, transitions, supported formats, and so forth. You can use it as a desktop app or in a web browser. It supports real-time collaboration, though with some limitations, as I'll explain later. PowerPoint has a lot of features, even a few that help people who are bad at laying out slides do it better.
PowerPoint, for all its glory, has a few weaknesses, and price is a big one. Apple Keynote is an excellent alternative for Mac users, and one that costs a lot less. In fact, it comes preinstalled on new Macs purchased on or after October 1, 2013, meaning most users pay nothing extra for it. If you have an older Mac and do need to buy it, the price is a low one-time fee of $19.99—less than a fifth of the cost of PowerPoint's $109.99.
The Most Innovative Presentation App
PowerPoint and Keynote are slideshow apps, and some people find that format inherently limiting. They pigeonhole you, the argument goes, into thinking about the information you have to present in a linear way. In fact, many people can't imagine a presentation that isn't a linear slideshow. But that's not your only choice.
The best alternative for getting you thinking differently is Prezi, another Editors' Choice among presentation apps. It's by far the most innovative presentation tool. Prezi is a cloud-based service that completely ditches the idea of sequential slides. Instead, what you create with Prezi is a giant canvas of ideas and information. You present your work by zooming in and out on different areas of the canvas, as if directing a camera. The effect is surprisingly dynamic and engaging, and its price is reasonable, at $10 per month.
Prezi also doubles as a collaborative brainstorming space. One alternative use for this app is to have multiple people share their ideas in real time on the canvas. Whether the final results ever have to be shown to anyone else is entirely up to you.
Another app that throws slide decks to the wind is PowToon. Instead of slides, you create animated scenes so that the final product looks more like a video than a standard presentation. You don't have to have any high-tech animation skills to use it, though you do need deep pockets, as it is expensive, at $89 per month. There's a free version, but it's very limited.
The Best Free Presentation App
While PowerPoint has a limited free version and Keynote is often free for Mac owners, there's a free presentation app that I like perhaps even more: Google Slides. Google Slides, a third of the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides suite of office apps (which is in turn part of Google Drive), is free for anyone with a Google account. It's only available as a Web app, but it's stable and quick, nonetheless. One feature I especially like in Google Slides is the ability to generate a link where audience members can submit questions to a presenter in real-time. It adds a wonderful interactive component to your pitches.
Best Collaborative Presentation App
The aforementioned Google Slides is only available as a Web app, and, partly for that reason, it handles collaboration better than other presentation apps. Because your Google Slides presentations are always saved to Google Drive by default, they're always available to share. That's not the case with PowerPoint and Keynote, two apps that also support collaboration (Keynote's collaborative features are in beta as of this writing). With those apps, you have to make sure you take the extra step to save your presentation to a cloud storage space, such as Microsoft OneDrive or Apple iCloud Drive, for the collaborative features to work. It can get confusing if you've been saving the file locally with the desktop app and now have to make a copy to share.
Collaboration in Google Slides works the same as it does in other G Suite apps. The familiar interface is there. When two or more people simultaneously edit a file, you'll see your collaborators' cursors on screen, color-coded to their name and picture (or initials) in the upper right corner. Prezi is also one of the best presentation apps for collaboration, largely because it mimics the G Suite implementation and design.
PowerPoint and Beyond
Presentation apps are a critical piece of any office suite, and there's a good chance that most anyone who needs to convey information to a group of people—whether it's other employees, potential customers or clients, a university class, or any other group of people—will need to give the occasional presentation. Whether you love standing up and giving a live talk, or you'd prefer to let people consume your prerecorded wisdom via the internet, there's a tool for you. There's no denying that PowerPoint is the king of the hill, but that doesn't mean it's your only choice.
Check out the table above, read the capsule reviews below and click through to the full reviews to learn more about your choices for presentation apps. Do you have a strong opinion about one of the apps listed here (or one that we missed)? Let us know in the comments.
Featured in This Roundup
Microsoft PowerPoint 2016
$109.99
%displayPrice% at %seller% PowerPoint is a powerhouse among presentation apps. With real-time co-authoring, new design suggestions, and other tools for supporting slideshow creators, it remains the best in its class. Read the full review ››-
Apple Keynote (for Mac)
$19.99
%displayPrice% at %seller% Keynote is a powerful app for building and delivering beautiful presentations. Gorgeous templates and tight integration with other Apple apps make it an Editors' Choice for Mac users. Read the full review ›› -
Prezi
$10.00
%displayPrice% at %seller% Unique and dynamic, Prezi is free-form presentation software that's terrific for informal and unstructured information. But if you're looking for a slide-based alternative to PowerPoint, this isn't it. Read the full review ›› -
Google Slides
$0.00
%displayPrice% at %seller% Google Slides is a reliable and free presentation app. It has strong collaboration capabilities, including the option to take audience questions as you present, but is missing a few features found in PowerPoint. Read the full review ›› -
PowToon
$89.00
%displayPrice% at %seller% With PowToon, anyone can make video animations instead of drab slide decks to use for presentations, training, and more. You don't have to be an expert in video editing, but you do need deep pockets. Read the full review ››
