If you ever had to make a business presentation, host a webinar, or do anything public
speaking-related, chances are you made slideshows to go along with your presentation. These days, the software you use to create a presentation is just as critical as your public-speaking skills. The good news: many of the presentation software available today offer significant improvements on the old standbys you’re used to.
The last presentations software gave made it easier than ever to build professional-looking
slideshows and format slides without exuding the “this is a template” vibe. Even alternatives like Google Slides have updated key features to make it simple to create presentations and collaborate conveniently, so you can spend more time preparing for your actual presentation.
What makes a great presentation app?
When looking at presentation apps, you also want to make sure you’re going to come out with something for just about everything, from product launches to pitch decks. With that said, here’s what you should look for:
• Pre-designed templates:
Presentation apps should have attractive, professional-looking templates to build a presentation in the shortest time possible.
• Collaboration and sharing options:
More employees are working remotely. Whether you want to collaborate with a team member on a presentation or share your webinar slides later, sharing files and collaborating in real-time should be convenient.
• Flexibility and customization options:
When it comes to presentation apps, you need to be able to customize just about everything – giving you the freedom & flexibility to build exactly what you need.
• Affordability:
Your budget is the first to come to mind when creating compelling presentations. But that
doesn’t necessarily mean you need to boost your budget to make it happen. With advanced free tools on the market, affordability is a top consideration.
1. SlideDog
This app presents your files professionally and seamlessly to the audience at meetings, sales, events, conferences, and lectures. It was designed by Preseria and enables you to seamlessly switch between presentation tools like PDF Chef, PowerPoints, and pictures and video files.
SlideDog detects the type of software you have installed on your device and uses the best
available programs to launch various media files. All this happens in the background and only using the SlideDog user interface, making it seem like the app itself is playing and switching between different presentation files, when in fact, the files are being played back by appropriate file-viewers.
With SlideDog, you can simply create and organize your files according to your presentation or event. The app, at your command, can present files on full screen to the audience and switch between them with fading transitions without exposing your icon cluttered desktop.
During sales presentations and webinars, you often want to show different file types such as web pages, slides, videos, and images professionally and seamlessly. The good news?
SlideDog will support and switch between all common formats without showing your desktop or application-specific loading screens.
2. Google Slides
Part of the Google Workspace family of apps, Google Slides, is a traditional app designed to
support your collaborations. Its format is similar to PowerPoint and other presentation apps
you’re familiar with, only Google Slides runs in your browser for free.
How does it work? All you need to do is to select a theme for your slideshow, add standard slide layouts, insert text, graphics, and slide transition from the menus.
When it comes to collaboration, Google Slide is king. Share links of your presentation and
anyone you want to work with can add presentation notes, details, and anything else you want in your presentation. To share feedback, you can add comments similar to Google Docs, and if you want to track changes, you can use Google Slides’ detailed revision log, so you don’t have to worry about someone messing with your work.
3. Canva
Canva’s vast library of resources allows you to either choose a ready-made template or go
ahead and create your own. This template will form the basis of your whole presentation so that design remains a minimum throughout the process.
Whether your purpose is to educate, inform, persuade or motivate, make sure that it flows
properly. If you get the layout right from the first scroll, it will be even easier to make interactive.
Anyone who’s randomly scrolled too much and been drawn to the next slide will love working with Canva’s editor interface, which reduces the issue altogether with an easy scroll that doesn’t move around. Choose from a variety of present animations to add life to your presentation, or browse the library of video and audio files available to add.
Canva will allow you to present directly from the app and even allow your audience members to submit their questions via Canva Live. Once you share links to invite audience partakers to your presentation, they can send questions for you to answer.
4. Slidebean
Ready to nail your next business presentation? Slidebean got you covered.
The app allows you to input your written content in a more visual format which you can tweak to fit your needs (add logos, pictures and change the color theme).
Slid bean’s idea is to rely on you to enter your content (i.e., text) and then use its “magic beans” to turn your boring text into a professional-looking presentation.
Similar to Canva, Slidebean is pretty much “plug and play” and really is very simple to create slides. Unlike PowerPoint, which sets you off with an empty canvas and many tools, this app walks you through all the steps using its intuitive interface.
To start a presentation, all you need is a curated text, images, and videos you want to add.
Then, pick a theme, and Slidebean will create a presentation for you, complete without
formatting. However, with Slidebean, you’re not spoilt for choice when it comes to slide design options, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on your existing experience and what you’re looking for.
