The best presentation software in 2024
hese PowerPoint alternatives go beyond the basics.
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.
The best presentation software
Canva for a free presentation app
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?
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.
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 presentation app now offer A1 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.
