Google slides UI on laptop and mobile

6 online presentation tools that’ll engage your audience

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Meghan Ryan April 09, 2021

Online presentations are more common in the workplace than ever before. Maybe you just launched a new product and you need to create a product demo for a remote client. Or maybe you want to do online sales training for your employees. Presentations like these are really different online than they are in person, and many things that helped you stand out and engage your audiences in the office won’t help you when you present online. It helps to have all the virtual presentation tools at your disposal to make your presentations stand out and get people’s attention online . 

a girl making online presentation

What we look for in online presentation tools  

A free version to try.

Free trials and free basic plans allow you to try out the platform and decide whether you like it before you make a purchase. You don’t want to spend a lot of money buying the product and then realize you’re not going to use it. 

Ease of use

Good online presentation tools should be easy to learn and easy to use. Learning how to use a new tool takes a little time and effort, so you should choose a virtual presentation tool that has clear instructions, intuitive design, and starting blocks like templates and color schemes to help make designing presentations easier. 

Audience engagement

It’s tempting for online audiences to multitask or tune-out during a presentation, so your online presentation tools should help you grab their attention and keep them engaged. . Use virtual presentation tools that allow you to add interactive multimedia elements, such as moving text, audio, images, GIFs, and videos to your presentations. Something as simple as a unique slide animation can help your presentation stand out. 

Cloud storage and access

With cloud storage and access, you don’t need to carry your computer around to edit or use your presentations in different places. Your online presentation tools should have online access, so you can work on your presentation anywhere, anytime as long as there is an internet connection.

Team collaboration features

Got a project you need to work on with your teammates? It’s very inefficient if only one person can work on a project at a time, especially in a remote work environment. Find a web presentation tool that allows multiple people to edit at the same time. Real-time teamwork and collaboration leads to better productivity and communication. 

Prezi's team collaboration feature

What online presentation tool could possibly cover all of those requirements? Keep reading to discover our top online presentation tools for 2022:

1. Prezi Video

Prezi Video is a video presentation tool that lets you bring text, video, images, and GIFs onto the screen with you, resulting in a professional-looking presentation that’s more engaging for your audience. At the same time, your audience can react with unlimited on-screen responses using Prezi Video. Creating a presentation is easy with Prezi’s free video templates or by reusing slides from a past presentation. You can sign up for a free trial or get your whole team using Prezi with our business solutions . Reach out for more details.

Presenters love the ability to make unique presentations that help them stay connected to their virtual audiences. Try out Prezi Video for your next training, sales pitch, webinar, online class, team update, and more.

Otter is a note-taking tool that can transcribe audio to text. Run Otter in an online meeting to record the conversation and create a written record of what was said. Afterward, Otter will provide an automatic summary of the most commonly said phrases and generate a nifty word cloud.

Virtual audiences can use it to capture information without breaking focus during a presentation or an event, and presenters can rely on it to connect with more audiences. Check out Otter to learn more about using it for your virtual events .

note-taking

3. Creatopy

Creatopy lets you create animated GIFs for slideshows, emails, banners, and presentations. You can use one of their pre-designed templates and customize it with your own text, or start from scratch and make a GIF with your own imagery and content. Either way, you’ll create animations that’ll pop on screen.

Creating a GIF is easy with Creatopy’s drag-and-drop editor, so you can create professional designs in minutes. Get started and learn more at Creatopy.

Grain is a tool for recording and sharing highlights from virtual meetings. It’s great for record-keeping and recapping for your teams. Instead of reading or listening to the summary of a presentation, your team can just watch the best moments themselves.

Grain is a useful addition to the virtual presentation toolbox, especially in the post-event phase of a presentation. Send attendees highlights of the most important parts and avoid diluting your message through different media. Check out Grain to learn more.  

Docket is a workspace for collaboratively building meeting agendas and creating reminders so no items go undiscussed. Since it’s a shared workspace, it helps keep your team aligned and up to date on learnings. Use it to organize a virtual presentation with a client or stakeholder and to store notes on the presentation post-facto. 

Integration is currently available on several platforms , including Google and Zoom. Check out Docket to learn how it can help your team.

meeting agenda

Krisp is a noise cancelling tool that can be used to improve audio quality on any conferencing, voice messaging, and communication app. Turn it on and remove background noise from yourself and other people on the call. It’s quick to set up and works with a wide range of headsets and microphones. 

Krisp is a crucial online presentation tool whenever you’re presenting from a shared space. Try it during your next call or presentation.

See these tools in action and explore the best virtual presentations on Prezi when you visit the Video Gallery . Or get started today and make your own virtual presentation on Prezi Video.

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The best presentation software

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 been using 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 the top presentation software solutions out there to bring you the best of the best.

Beautiful.ai for AI-powered design

Prezi for non-linear, conversational presentations

Powtoon for video presentations

Genially for interactive, presenter-less presentations

Pitch for collaborating with your team on presentations

Zoho Show for a simple presentation app

Gamma 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 UI. 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 many apps now offer AI features in one way or another, I found many of these features to be lacking still—they're often slow, struggle to pull in relevant imagery, and yield wildly inconsistent designs. For that reason, I opted not to make AI features a strict requirement (for now!), and I've still included apps that don't offer AI. (Of course, if you opt for one of those, you can still easily get AI-generated images 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. (And I opted not to test any brand new apps that are still in beta, since there are so many established options out there.)

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, interactive content, and more. 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 Magic Design AI tool is still inconsistent and not super impressive

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.

Canvas has added a number of AI-powered tools , but I wasn't super impressed by them yet. When I asked the Magic Design tool to generate a presentation from scratch, for example, the result was a bunch of unrelated images, inconsistent design, and surface-level copy. 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 $119.99/year for 1 user and include additional features like Brand Kit, premium templates and stock assets, and additional AI-powered design tools.

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

Generative AI features aren't great yet

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 UX 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 23 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 did test the newly released generative AI feature (called DesignerBot) and felt it wasn't much to write home about. 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 generate a quality presentation from scratch.

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 AI design help that you can toggle on or off for each slide. 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 starts at $228/year.

The best presentation app for conversational presentations

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

Prezi interface

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 pricing: Free 14-day trial and a free plan that includes up to 5 visual projects; paid plans start at $5/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 $20/month and include white-labeling, priority support, additional storage, and more.

The best presentation app for interactive presentations

Genially (web).

Genially, our pick for the best presentation app for interactive presentations

Genially pros:

Don't need a presenter (it's interactive)

You can set universal branding guidelines

Unlimited creations on the free plan

Genially cons:

Free plan has some limitations worth looking into (e.g., can only make public presentations)

While many presentation apps are built for presenter-led decks, Genially 's interactive features and animated templates make it easy to build a self-led presentation. A variety of interactive buttons allow you to show viewers additional context on hover, have them skip to any page of your deck, and let them navigate to external links.

This presentation program offers a bunch of searchable templates, including some for business proposals, reports, social media presentations, and more (though most of those are available on premium plans only). Genially also includes Smart blocks —templated blocks of content for elements like data visualizations and image galleries.

My favorite feature is the brand settings. Premium users can set universal branding guidelines that include your logo, color scheme, fonts, images, and backgrounds, among other options. Think of them like a custom template, created and customized by you, that the whole team can use. Once set, your team can easily create on-brand presentations that automatically apply your brand settings, without even thinking about it.

Plus, Genially supports additional content like training materials, infographics, and interactive images—all subject to your brand presets.

Genially pricing: Free plan available with unlimited creations and views and access to templates; paid plans start at $7.49/month and include additional download options, privacy controls, offline viewing, premium templates, 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

Start live video calls straight from decks

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, react, 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.

The "Go live" feature is a personal favorite—with just a click on the camera icon in the top-right, you can start a live video call. Any team members who open the presentation can hop in and collaborate in real-time. 

Pitch pricing: Free plan offers unlimited presentations, custom templates, and live video collaboration; paid plans start at $8/user/month for additional workspace features, presentation analytics, and more.

The best simple presentation app

Zoho show (web, ios, android, chrome).

Zoho Show, our pick for the best simple presentation app

Zoho Show pros:

Simple and easy to use

Version history and ability to lock slides

Completely free

Zoho Show cons:

Templates are pretty basic

If you're looking for a simple, yet capable presentation app that's a step up from Google Slides, Zoho Show is a great option. It's completely free to use, offers a clean, intuitive editor, and includes a number of great templates.

While the handful of "Themes" offered are on the basic side, Zoho templates boast a more modern and professional design than much of what Google Slides or PowerPoint offer. And I love that you can set the font and color scheme for the whole template, right from the start.

The app doesn't skimp on collaboration or shareability either. You can invite collaborators via email or shareable link, and comments and version history make it easy to work together on presentations. Once you're ready to share, you can even broadcast your presentation to a remote audience right from within Zoho. Plus, you can one-click lock slides to prevent any more editing or hide individual slides to customize your presentation for different audiences.

You can even connect Zoho Show to Zapier , so you can do things like automatically create a presentation when something happens in one of the other apps you use most.

Zapier is the leader in workflow automation—integrating with 6,000+ apps from partners like Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft. Use interfaces, data tables, and logic to build secure, automated systems for your business-critical workflows across your organization's technology stack. Learn more .

Zoho Show pricing: Free

The best presentation app for generative AI

Gamma (web).

Gamma, our pick for the best presentation app for generative AI

Gamma pros:

Creates fully fleshed-out presentations from a prompt

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 generative 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 produced the most useful jumping-off point of all the AI presentation apps I tested. 

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, 1 custom theme, 400 AI deck credits, and basic view analytics; upgrade to the Pro plan ("coming soon," as of this writing) for $10/user/month to get additional AI credits, advanced view analytics, custom fonts, 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 been widely released to the public yet. Rest assured, I'm watching this space, and the next time we update this article, I'll retest tools like PowerPoint and Google Slides to see what new features are 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.

Related reading:

8 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 May 2023.

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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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25 Tools for Creating and Delivering Amazing Presentations

Fergal Glynn

Updated: August 10, 2022

Published: November 10, 2020

If you're in business, you need to know how to create captivating presentations. Whether you're trying to convince your boss to support a new campaign, talking with a prospect to close a deal, or building a new piece of marketing collateral, you need to know how craft a presentation that won't put people to sleep.

virtual presentation tools

The best (and easiest) way to do that? Use the right tools to create and deliver your presentation.

→ Free Download: 10 PowerPoint Presentation Templates [Access Now]

If you're not sure which tools to use, look no further than this blog post. We’ve compiled our list of the top presentation tools for sales and marketing professionals. They’re listed below, in no particular order. But first ...

Why You Should Use Business Presentation Templates

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Best Presentation Tools

best presentation software: canva

Canva makes design easy -- even for marketers and salespeople who feel like they're design-challenged. The platform gives you a bunch of presentation templates to use right away, and it's very easy to customize them to your organization and presentation objective. Plus, a variety of apps that integrate with Google Drive, Instagram, and YouTube, to name a few.

Pricing : Free; Pro, $12.95/month for up to five people; Enterprise, $30/month per person

best presentation software: powtoon

Often, being different is what attracts prospects, and Powtoon can help you do that in your presentations. Powtoon’s animation software lets you easily create videos with props, characters, and more -- which can help you differentiate your company when talking with prospects.

Pricing : Pro, $19/month; Pro+ $49/month; Agency, $89/month

3. PowerPoint

best presentation software: powerpoint

For years, PowerPoint has been the standard in presentation software, but it hasn’t remained static. PowerPoint is full of features to make sales and marketing presentations dynamic and engaging. ( Here are just a few ways you can do that .)

Pricing : Business Basic, $5/user/month; Business Standard, $12.50/user/month; Business Premium, $20/user/month

4. Slidesgo

virtual presentation tools

Slidesgo is your creative companion in the world of presentation design. This website specializes in crafting visually stunning Google Slides and PowerPoint templates that breathe life into your ideas, making them shine on any screen. With a wide variety of templates ranging from business and marketing to medicine and education, Slidesgo empowers presenters of all backgrounds to engage, educate, and inspire their audiences.

Pricing: Free plan, $0; Premium, $4.99; Education, $2.99

best presentation software: oomfo

A PowerPoint add-in, Oomfo helps sales and marketing pros create those oh-so-important interactive charts for presentations. Specialized charts, live charts from multiple files, data from cloud applications, interactive options, one-click conversions -- it’s all possible, and more, with Oomfo.

Pricing: Free

best presentation software: keynote

Apple’s Keynote allows users to work between their Mac and iOS devices, as well as with people who use Microsoft PowerPoint. With easy-to-use visual tools, drag and drop functionality, interactive charts, and more, Keynote is a popular choice among sales and marketing professionals.

Pricing : Free

7. SlideModel

best presentation software: slidemodel

SlideModel contains thousands of ready-made and 100% editable presentation templates to help any presenter save time creating engaging and aesthetically pleasing presentations. Their collection of presentation templates covers a variety of business purposes and even gets updated periodically to add new business and education templates. You can find a collection of visually appealing slides on the site including dashboards, creative infographics, editable Maps, funnels, timelines, mindmaps, and presentation slides depending on the need of your presentation. Their slides templates are easy to edit and are compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides.

Pricing :  Free plan, $0; One-Day Access, $24.50; Annual Unlimited, $199.90/year

8. Beautiful.ai

best presentation software: beautiful.ai

Create beautiful slides, pitches, and proposals without a team of designers. AI applies design rules in real time, and a library of free photos and icons are at your fingertips.

Pricing : Basic, $0; Pro, $12/month; Team, $38/user/month

9. Haiku Deck

best presentation software: haiku deck

Available for the web or iPad, Haiku Deck has become a favorite of sales and marketing pros. With Haiku Deck, professionals can quickly create presentations that can be "easily projected, shared, posted, embedded on a website or blog, or viewed on any web-enabled device." Though it's another tool that helps you create presentations from scratch, its ease-of-use sets it apart from the rest.

Pricing : Pro, $9.99 - $19.99/month; Premium, $29.99/month

best presentation software: vyond

Vyond is an online animation software that allows you to create animated videos for marketing campaigns, sales enablement, or even human resources. Use their library of customizable templates or create your own from scratch.

Pricing : Essential, $229/year; Premium, $649/year; Professional, $999/user/year; Enterprise, contact for pricing

11. Storydoc

best presentation software: storydoc

With templates for all the most popular business use cases, Storydoc is an interactive presentation maker built to help sales teams and marketing professionals engage more prospects and boost conversion rates. 

You can create amazing and engaging decks where you can embed video and social media content to tell your story the right way. Then, integrate your CRM into Storydoc decks, as well as calendars, sign-up forms, and other solutions that will make your presentation. Additionally, you have access to Storydoc's tracking analytics which shows who viewed your presentation and which components they interacted with the most. 

Pricing :  Free trial 14 days); Starter Plan, $40/month

best presentation software: emaze

Busy sales and marketing pros choose emaze because it makes creating amazing presentations quick and easy. The options abound with emaze: Choose a professionally designed template and then create a slideshow, video presentation , or 3D presentation.

Pricing : Business Plan, contact for pricing; Executive Plan, $40/month; Pro Plan, $13/month

13. Camtasia

best presentation software: camtasia

TechSmith’s Camtasia is an amazing tool that helps you create professional videos. You can record screen movements, import HD video from another source, customize and edit the video, and then share the completed video presentation on practically any device. 

Pricing : Individual, $249.99/user/year; Business $249.99/user/year; Education, $169.99/user/year; Government and Non-Profit, $223.99/user/year

14. SlideShare

best presentation software: slideshare

SlideShare is a popular choice for sales and marketing professionals looking for a way to share their content publicly. Because it already has a built-in audience, you can easily distribute your presentation out to lots of people -- and those people can embed your SlideShares on websites and blogs, or share them on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

15. SlideDog

best presentation software: slidedog

Sometimes, sales and marketing professionals need to be able to move between presentation tools, but it’s not always possible because of their technical limitations. SlideDog is the solution, as it enables users to switch between PowerPoint, Prezi, PDF, web pages and others.

Pricing : Free; Pro, $99/year; Pro Event, $49 for one-time payment

16. Presentation Assistant

best presentation software: presentation assistant

Presentation Assistant lives up to its name: It assists professionals by enabling them to annotate, zoom, and more during a presentation. Sales and marketing professionals can clarify and emphasize points more clearly to their audience with Presentation Assistant.

Pricing : Presentation Pointer, $29.95; Presentation Screen Master, $29.95

17. authorSTREAM

best presentation software: authorstream

Sales and marketing pros choose authorSTREAM to make their presentations dynamic and engaging. authorSTREAM allows users to share their PowerPoint presentations publicly or privately, broadcast them, convert them to video, communicate and collaborate about them, and more.

Pricing: Free or paid plans start at $4.20/month

18. Zentation

best presentation software: zentation

With Zentation, salespeople and marketers combine video and slides into a simulated live experience. Presentations created with Zentation become webinars, webcasts, and virtual events for prospects and customers -- all great collateral for marketing and sales.

Pricing : Free; Premium, $10 - $45/month; White-Label, contact for pricing

best presentation software: prezi

Sales and marketing professionals love Prezi because it is cloud-based. Prezi makes creating, editing, and presenting from your browser, desktop, iPad, or iPhone possible anywhere, any time.

Pricing : Standard, $5/month; Plus, $15/month; Premium, $59/month

20. Brainshark

best presentation software: brainshark

Sales reps and marketers often choose Brainshark, a cloud-based presentation tool, because it allows them to create and deliver presentations live or on-demand (even using their iPad or iPhone), use on-demand video content, polls, or surveys for increased engagement, and embed presentations in websites and blogs.

Pricing : Contact for pricing

best presentation software: vcasmo

Vcasmo is a unique presentation tool -- it's a multimedia solution that enables users to synchronize a video and slideshow, side by side. Sales and marketing pros love Vcasmo because it supports playback in three forms: browser, mobile, and iPad. 

Pricing : Free; Standard, $10.99/month; Professional, $16.99/month

22. ViewletBuilder

best presentation software: viewlet builder

ViewletBuilder is a different presentation tool; it captures critical screen updates and cursor position changes so sales and marketing pros can create presentations detailing how their product or sites work. With a plethora of features, ViewletBuilder allows for editing and enhancing and includes a variety of publishing and sharing options, too.

Pricing : Pro, $399; Enterprise, $599

23. Zoho Show

best presentation software: Zoho show

Zoho Show is a top pick for sales and marketing pros because it lives online, making it possible to create, access, present, and more from anywhere, any time. The simple, intuitive interface and collaboration features are just two of its beloved benefits.

24. AhaSlides

best presentation software: ahaslides

Pricing : Free; Essential, $4.95/month; Pro, $15.95/month; Annual, Monthly & One-time plans available.

Visme is an all-in-one content creation platform with a vast library of professionally designed presentation templates, each tailored to your industry and specific proposal needs. Its beginner-friendly design platform allows you to drag and drop elements into place, use dynamic fields to update all your content in one place instantaneously and integrate your tools like Hubspot or Salesforce, and more to personalize each presentation.

Pricing: Free, Starter: $12.25/month, billed yearly, Pro: $30/month, billed yearly, Visme for Teams & Enterprises.

What are you waiting for? Pick a tool and start creating. Your prospects are waiting.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated for freshness and comprehensiveness.

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Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

What’s it for?

Make interactive presentations

Create show-stopping presentations and clickable slide decks with Genially’s free online presentation builder. Leave boring behind and tell a story that’s interactive, animated, and beautifully engaging.

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INTERACTIVE CONTENT

A presentation that works like a website

Engage your audience with interactive slides that they can click on and explore. Add music, video, hotspots, popup windows, quiz games and interactive data visualizations in a couple of clicks. No coding required!

NO-CODE ANIMATION

Make your slides pop with animation

Bring a touch of movie magic to the screen with incredible visual effects and animated page transitions. Add click-trigger and timed animations to make any topic easy to understand and captivating to watch.

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INTEGRATIONS

Live from the world wide web

Embed online content directly in your slides for a media-rich interactive experience. From YouTube and Spotify to Google Maps and Sheets, Genially works seamlessly with over 100 popular apps and websites.

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TEMPLATES & TOOLKIT

Genius design tools

With Genially, anyone can create a polished and professional presentation. Choose from over 2000 pre-built templates, or create your own design using the drag-and-drop resources, color palettes, icons, maps and vector graphics.

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ONLINE PLATFORM

Safe and sound in the cloud

Because Genially is online, you can relax knowing that your slides are always up-to-date. There’s no risk of forgetting to save changes or accessing the wrong file. Log in from anywhere, collaborate with your team, and make edits in real time.

All-in-one interactive presentation maker

Real-time collaboration.

Co-edit slide decks with others in real time and organize all of your team projects in shared spaces.

Multi format

Present live, share the link, or download as an interactive PDF, MP4 video, JPG, HTML, or SCORM package.

Engagement Analytics

See how many people have viewed and clicked on your slides and keep tabs on learner progress with User Tracking.

Import from PPTX

Give your old decks a new lease of life by importing PowerPoint slides and transforming them with a little Genially magic.

Keep content on-brand with your logo, fonts, colors, brand assets, and team templates at your fingertips.

Quiz & Survey Builder

Use the Interactive Questions feature to add a fun quiz to your slides or gather feedback from your audience.

Beautiful templates

Make your next deck in a flash with Genially’s ready-to-use slides.

Interactive OKR Presentation template

OKR Presentation

Interactive School Notebook Presentation template

School Notebook Presentation

Interactive Animated Sketch Presentation template

Animated Sketch Presentation

Interactive Minimal presentation template

Minimal presentation

Interactive Land Of Magic Presentation template

Land Of Magic Presentation

Interactive Onboarding presentation template

Onboarding presentation

Interactive Visual Presentation template

Visual Presentation

Interactive Animated chalkboard presentation template

Animated chalkboard presentation

Interactive Online Education Guide template

Online Education Guide

Interactive Terrazzo presentation template

Terrazzo presentation

Interactive Startup pitch template

Startup pitch

Interactive Historical presentation template

Historical presentation

THEMES FOR EVERYONE

Interactive presentation ideas

From classroom materials to business pitches, make an impact every day with Genially.

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Education presentations

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Pitch decks

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Business presentations

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Thesis defense

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Share anywhere

Present live

From the front of the room or behind a screen, you’ll wow your audience with Genially. Heading off grid? Download in HTML to present dynamic slides without WiFi.

Share the link

Every Genially slide deck has its own unique url, just like a website! Share the link so that others can explore at their own pace, or download an MP4 video slideshow or PDF.

Post online

Embed the slides on your website or post them on social media. Upload to Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, Moodle or any other platform.

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The benefits of interactive slides

🗣️ Active participation An interactive slide deck gives your audience cool things to click on and discover, boosting learning and engagement.

👂 Multi-sensory experience Audio, video, animations, and mouse interactions make your content immersive, entertaining and accessible.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 People-friendly format Pop-ups and embeds condense more material into fewer slides so you can break information down into digestible chunks.


🎮 Gamification Games, quizzes and puzzles make information more memorable and enable you to gather feedback and check understanding.

How to make an interactive presentation

With Genially’s easy-to-use presentation platform, anyone can make incredible visual content in moments.

Choose a template or a blank canvas

Create content starting from a Genially template

Get stunning results in less time with a ready-made template. Feeling creative? Design your own slides from scratch.

Customize the design

Add animations and interactions

Resources to become a pro presentation creator

Image showing the interactivity of the Genially tool

How to create an interactive presentation: Get started in Genially.

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How to present data without sending your audience to sleep.

Image showing how the Genially tool is no-code

No-code animation: Bring your slides to life with cinematic visual effects.

Neon image talking about storytelling in Genially

The art of digital storytelling: Engage and thrill on screen.

Genially in a nutshell

How do I make a presentation interactive and how does Genially work? Find the answers to all of your slide-related questions here!

What’s an interactive presentation?

Interactive slides contain clickable hotspots, links, buttons, and animations that are activated at the touch of a button. Instead of reading or watching passively, your audience can actively interact with the content.  

Genially’s interaction presentation software allows you to combine text, photos, video clips, audio and other content in one deck. It’s a great way to condense more information into fewer slides. 

If you’re a teacher, you can share multiple materials in one single learning resource. Students can create their own projects using digital media and online maps. For business or training, try embedding spreadsheet data, PDFs, and online content directly in your slides. 

An interactive slide deck is more user-friendly than a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation or Google Slides document. That’s because you can break information down into chunks with pop-ups, labels, voiceovers and annotated infographics.  

The other benefit of interactive content is increased engagement. It’s easier to keep your audience’s attention when they’re actively participating. Try Genially’s presentation software and free slideshow maker to see how it’s better than other presentation websites. You won’t go back to standard presentation apps!

How do you make a clickable slide?

The best way to make slides clickable is to use Genially’s free interactive presentation program. Design your slide then apply an interaction. In a couple of clicks, you can add popup windows, hyperlinks, close-up images, games, animations, multimedia and other content. 

Choose from the library of hotspot buttons and icons to show people what to click on. Go to Presenter View to get a preview and see how your content will appear to your audience.

How do I create presentations that look professional?

You’ve got a deadline looming and you’re staring at the screen with a blank presentation. We’ve all been there! Starting a presentation design from scratch is tricky, especially if you’re short on time. 

Genially’s free online presentation maker has over 2000 ready-to-use templates for professional slide presentations, photos slideshows, and more. Each slide design has been created by our team of top graphic designers. No need to worry about fonts, centering images, or designing a matching color scheme. It’s all done for you. 

Start by browsing our layouts and themes for education, business and then customize with your own text and images.

How do I share or download my slides?

Because Genially is a cloud based presentation software, you can simply share the link to your slides. Like other online presentation tools, there are no files to download or store on your computer. Everything is saved online.  

When you publish your slide deck, it gets its own unique url, just like a website. Share the link with others to let them explore the content in their own time. If you’re presenting live, just click the Present button. 

You can also embed your presentation on your website, company wiki, or social media. Genially is compatible with WordPress, Moodle, Google Classroom, and other platforms. If you use an LMS, you can also download your interactive design slides in SCORM format.

For slideshow videos and slideshows with music, share online or download as an MP4 video. Check out our free slideshow templates for ideas.

Can I make a free presentation in Genially?

You bet! Genially is an easy-to-use slide maker, with a free version and paid plans. The free plan allows you to create unlimited slides with interactions and animations. Subscribe to one of our paid plans for more advanced features.

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Discover a world of interactive content

Join the 25 million people designing incredible interactive experiences with Genially.

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The Ultimate Guide to Giving Virtual Presentations on Zoom

Part 1: an introduction to giving virtual presentations on zoom.

PART I Introduction 1 – Cool Zoom Features 2 – Virtual Presentation Do’s 3 – Virtual Presentation Don’ts PART II 4 – Presentation Purpose 5 – Structure & Flow 6 – Slide Design PART III 7 – Connect with the audience 8 – Audience Participation 9 – Sharing Content PART IV 10 – Video & Audio Recordings 11 – Post-production 12 – Your Phone as a Webcam PART V 13 – When Things Go Wrong 14 – How to Ground Yourself PART VI 15 – Advanced Techniques 16 – Zoom Webinars vs Meetings 17 – 23 Essential Settings

There are three things I hate about Zoom…

#1 the super awkward must-click-two-buttons-to-leave-the-meeting debacle.

You say goodbye, search the bottom-right corner of the screen for the red button, click the red button, continue to stare awkwardly at the corner of the screen because the call is still open and you need to click a second red button.

the awkward attempt to leave a zoom meeting

Never fear, this can be turned off. In General Preferences simply uncheck the “Ask me to confirm when I leave a meeting” setting and poof! One-click exits. You’re welcome.

How to exit a Zoom meeting without clicking two buttons.

#2 Inviting someone and never knowing what the difference is between these two options: “Copy invite link” and “Copy invitation”.

I can sense you nodding along with me.

How to automatically copy a Zoom invite link.

Just remember that it’s “invite link” you want 99% of the time vs “invitation”, and you can set an option that copies the link to your clipboard as soon as you start a meeting.

#3 The dropdown to change video settings is part of the “Stop Video” button. What the actual?!

Are you trying to make me screw up my presentation?

Why is the Zoom video settings dropdown part of the Stop Video button?!

I also love Zoom.

Why? Because it works.

A year into our forced isolation, Zoom fatigue has set in. We’re avoiding calls and talking about concepts like Zoom holidays, just to get a break.

But the answer isn’t fewer Zoom calls, it’s better Zoom calls. Almost every Zoom presentation is boring, ugly, terribly structured, poorly executed, and designed to make you fall asleep.

In this guide I’ll show you

  • How to create beautiful slides that communicate with clarity and class
  • Unknown and awesome features of Zoom that you can use to your advantage
  • How to overcome your nerves and survive technical problems
  • And how to look like a total pro every time you give a presentation—or run a meeting—on the platform we all love to hate.

Note: for the sake of brevity, unless I’m talking about Zoom-specific functionality, these tips are applicable to any platform that offers meeting and presentation software such as GotoMeeting, Google Meet, Webinar Jam etc.

There are instructional videos throughout the guide to demonstrate the best parts in more depth. You can binge watch the videos on the “Presenting on Zoom” video channel here , or read on for the word and pictures.

If you want to stand out from your peers it’s good to understand the full power of the platform and know the features most people don’t know about.

#1 Set up your own configurable ‘personal meeting room’

It can be really distracting to hear a bunch of people talking over one another when you kick off a meeting. A good solution is to use what’s called a Personal Meeting ID (PID) which gives you control of the Zoom environment right from the start.

Zoom Virtual Meeting Personal Meeting Room ID (PMI) Feature

Features of your PID include:

  • Using the same invite ID and URL whenever you start a meeting, bypassing the need to repeatedly check the settings. Note: because it’s a permanent URL,you should uncheck the “Allow participants to join anytime” setting to prevent randoms dropping in unannounced.
  • Placing participants into a “waiting room” which lets them in when you are ready to begin– either individually or all at once.
  • Automatically recording your meetings on your computer. Having a video of your presentation is always a good idea so you can re-use your content.

#2 Press the ‘spacebar to temporarily un-mute yourself’

You can help to ensure a quality audio recording by placing everyone on mute by default. And while this feature is more appropriate for meetings vs. presentations, it’s a great thing to know about – and to tell your audience about. It’s easy to use, hold down the spacebar to un-mute yourself and let it go to turn your audio off again. It prevents people from forgetting to re-mute when they walk off to do something else forcing you to listen to their snoring dog or screaming baby.

Temporarily unmute yourself on Zoom by holding the spacebar

Even if it doesn’t get used during your presentation (unless it’s a workshop you won’t want people to randomly chime in), many of your audience will thank you for learning this tip.

Note: You may need to enable it in your Zoom Preferences.

#3 Record ‘separate audio files’ for each speaker, host, or panelist in the presentation

If you have a host or a co-presenter there will be content in the session that’s not yours. Having separate audio recordings lets you use only the audio that was from your part of the presentation.

You can enable this in Preferences > Recording.

Zoom lets you record separate audio files when you have multiple speakers.

#4 Enable the ‘non-verbal feedback’ feature to allow audience interactions

Cool zoom feature #4 – enable non-verbal feedback.

To make your presentations interactive you can enable the non-verbal feedback feature. This allows participants to express reactions to your presentation.

This is not to be confused with ‘meeting reaction emojis’ which are temporary reactions that disappear after 5 seconds. To be honest, it’s hard not to be confused when there are two sets of interactions with different names.

Non-verbal feedback is for direct feedback to the speaker or host that others can agree with by clicking the same icon. The result is that the speaker can see how many people are expressing the feedback.

The options for non-verbal feedback are shown in the image below:

Zoom non-verbal feedback feature lets your audience react to your presentation

An example of how this would be used in a presentation is to ask the speaker to speed up or slow down. This might seem like a weird thing to be told during your talk, and if it’s just one person asking you’d most likely ignore it. But if 50 people are saying to slow down, that’s a pretty good indication that your current presentation style isn’t working for them.

It provides a pretty amazing insight – something I wish I’d had that feedback during an on-stage talk.

You can also use it to ask binary questions to the audience that they can respond yes or no to – a great way to segment the audience so you can tailor your content based on their responses.

Combine this feature with a QTINTA audience participation question for a really engaging experience. You’ll have to watch the video to know what QTINTA means.

#5 Use the Zoom ‘beauty mode’ to soften your appearance

Zoom includes a “Touch up my appearance” filter in the “Preferences > Video” settings, which gives your skin a softer appearance. There’s a slider that lets you control how much it applies the effect. It can look weird if you crank it too much, but having just a little can really help – especially if you’re looking a big bedraggled.

Settings are maintained when you quit so you can expect to look the same way every time.

#6 Use Zoom ‘video filters’ to add a cinematic high-contrast appearance

We’re all familiar with Zoom backgrounds, but a more impressive feature in my mind are the video filters. You can access them via the “Stop Video” dropdown arrow. Yes, there are some silly ones which can be funny when in a meeting, but for presenting stick to the non-silly ones. They can help improve the quality of your on-camera look. I particularly like the first option “Boost” which kicks your contrast up a notch removing any bland washed out lighting, it also removed some warmer tones which I like as it reduces the redness I often have in my skin.

Zoom video filters can add some nice contrast to your webcam view.

You can see that it increases the contrast but also cuts down on the redness in my face.

Unlike the “Touch up my appearance” feature, your video filter settings are not maintained between sessions, which is a frustrating extra step each time if you found a setting you like.

#7 Encourage attendees to use ‘side-by-side mode’ to view you and your slides

This can be a good setting if you want to make your talk feel more personal. It shows your camera video beside your slides, and viewers can resize the videos as they see fit.

Zoom side-by-side mode allows attendees to control the size of you and the slides.

It can be a good idea to point this out as not everyone will know.

E.g. “You should be viewing this presentation in side by side mode so you see me and the slides. If you want to make the slides bigger (or smaller) you can resize them by dragging the slider between my video and the slides.”

#8 Use Zoom ‘annotations’ to mark up your slides live, or a ‘whiteboard’ for a blank canvas

A really cool feature of Zoom is Annotations. This lets you write or draw on top of the screen you are sharing. Once the feature is activated , you can access it from the menu at the top when you are sharing your screen.

The Zoom annotation feature lets you mark up your slides.

This is really helpful when you have a complex slide and you want to focus people’s attention on different areas of the screen as you talk. When presenting live on a stage you can gesture towards a particular area, but it’s not as easy in a virtual presentation which is why it’s handy.

There is also a Whiteboard feature that gives you, well, a whiteboard. This could be useful if you find that you need to dig into a point you’re making in a more detailed way or discover during your talk that you need a different way to explain it.

You might want to take a quick screenshot when you’re done if you happened to get some interesting ideas marked up.

The Zoom whiteboard feature gives you a blank canvas whiteboard to sketch on for your audience.

Rock open a whiteboard and sketch a diagram. Having a tablet and pen would be very helpful for this, versus trying to draw with a mouse. It might be wise to use the non-verbal feedback feature to get folks to say “Yes” to a “Let me know if you’re ready to move on” question.

Note, this is a screen sharing feature, so in order to get to the whiteboard, you need to stop sharing your screen, then share once more but choose Whiteboard as the option. Then you’ll have to stop sharing and share your slides again. Make sure you’ve practiced this if you think you’ll be using it.

#9 Use ‘closed captions’ to increase the accessibility of your virtual presentation and video recording

Zoom has transcription features that let you add closed captions to your session. You can do it manually for free, but that means someone will have to type them live, which is a pretty specific skill to have, and requires someone to do it for you.

If you have a paid Zoom account (roughly $20/month) live transcriptions are included. An alternative is to integrate with a platform like Otter.ai, to add closed captions in real time. You can also use Otter for transcribing any other audio or video files you have which makes it a much better value.

There are several reasons why closed captions are a good thing to do.

  • No headphones: if an attendee doesn’t have or forgot their headphones and they’re in an environment where they can’t have the volume on, closed captions are a life saver that could be the difference between them staying or leaving.
  • Accessibility: Captions allow meetings to be accessible to all. For the deaf, hard of hearing, or non-native speakers, they are an absolute necessity to understand what’s going on.
  • Attention and recall: closed captioning can increase the amount of your content that an attendee comprehends and remembers. This is because they are getting it using two senses, and you have to focus more intently when you are reading.

You can check out Otter here to set up live captions.

#10 Use Zoom ‘breakout rooms’ to split workshop participants into groups

Without question, one of the most popular Zoom features is Breakout Rooms. They are exactly as they sound, allowing you to break out attendees into separate rooms. This could be for hosting a multi-track event where there is a speaker in each breakout room, or more commonly it is to allow groups to work together away from the “Main Room” and then come back in to rejoin you as the speaker.

This is a wonderful feature if you are running workshops that require groups to work through some of your worksheets or tasks for example.

There’s a good demo of how to use Zoom breakout rooms here.

#11 Use a Zoom ‘waiting room’ to hold attendees before you let them in at the same time

Nobody shows up at the same time to a presentation, and you don’t always want to start until an acceptable threshold of attendees have arrived. Particularly if the beginning of your talk is fundamental to your big idea.

The waiting room is basically a holding area where attendees are listed as they show up. They get to see a simple welcome screen (annoyingly simple really – I’d much prefer to have the options to have a fully custom slide in there), and you can admit them one by one, or all at once, when you are ready to begin.

It also allows you to block people from entering, although for the most part there’s not much reason to do this when you are presenting to a large audience. Useful if someone becomes disruptive for any reason.

Caution: it’s very easy to forget about the waiting room and have people sitting around unable to get in after you’ve started. I recommend assigning this task to your co-host.

Cool Zoom Feature to Avoid – ‘Present with your PowerPoint or Keynote slides as a virtual background’.

This is an interesting feature that’s worth discussing both for why it’s cool and why it’s uncool.

What it does

Instead of a regular screen share, it takes your slide deck and sets it as the background much like any other Zoom background. As such it places a ‘mini you’ floating on top of the slides in cutout mode which is kinda fun. Kinda.

To access the feature (beta at time of writing) click the “Advanced” tab in the “Share Screen” popup, and select “Slides as Virtual Background”.

This is what it looks like from the attendee’s perspective. And yes, you appear twice on the screen. Once on top of your slides, and again beside them. Silly.

Image showing how to use Zoom's slides as background feature.

Note: you must download a local copy of your slide deck to your computer as it doesn’t connect to cloud-based slides.

If you have audio and video in your slides, checking the “Share Sound” option at the bottom-left of the share popup should make that transmit to the audience. However, it doesn’t. In fact I couldn’t get any video or audio to play at all.

There’s also a second “Split Video from Slides” option which kinda defeats the purpose. As you can see below, you are back with your regular background in a separate window, and you are only on the screen once.

With the split setting in place, it would be a fair to wonder why you’d use this feature as it looks just the same as the regular view.

There are however, a few key differences.

The major difference is that you don’t need to have your slides in fullscreen mode on your computer. In the screenshot below you’ll see that I’m looking at a Zoom window with my slides inside it. I can now move through my slides while having other windows open such as the chat and participant windows. This is actually pretty great as the audience doesn’t see your layout, they see what they would normally see.

A nice side effect of this setting is the audience won’t see the awkward moment at the start of your talk where your whole screen is visible until you start the slides.

Zoom panels popped out to the side in slides as background mode.

Looking at the main window, you can clean up the view a bit by having attendee video off by un-checking “More > Allow Participants to Start Video” in the Participants panel, and then selecting “Hide non-video participants” from the “…” menu on one of the participant video boxes.

You can take it a step further if you select “Hide self view” from the … on your video thumbnail. This will give you a view of just your slides. As much as the layout annoys me (I’d rather pop the self view out to the side with the chat), it can be important to see yourself to make sure you’re not moving out of frame – particularly if you are speaking standing up.

However, at this point in the beta it’s just not usable enough to be a serious and professional solution because of a few technical failings:

  • It’s buggy like most beta features are
  • It doesn’t show any animations or slide transitions
  • If you are recording the screen, the merge view while fun, is a little unprofessional looking
  • Audio and video didn’t work at all for me, despite there being a setting to allow slide audio to work. I think this might be because the videos didn’t play.
  • When you start the share it has to process the slides before it starts which causes a delay if you aren’t expecting it.

Overall, it’s a feature with some exciting elements, although to be perfectly honest, the good aspects are nothing to do with the feature itself, but are side effects. I’d prefer to see a new feature that allows you to avoid presenting in fullscreen to allow a much greater degree of presenter screen setup.

The chapter title says it all. Do these things and your virtual presentations will be better. If you don’t, your presentation won’t be better than the last one you did, missing an important opportunity grow your skills as a virtual presenter.

Seriously. Do these things.

#1 Test your slides from the ‘attendee perspective’ using another laptop or tablet

Your slides might look amazing on your retina laptop or 5K monitor, but not all screens are alike, and your super-detailed tiny-text “revolutionary new marketing method” process diagram might look more like a dot-matrix printout to someone with a lesser screen.

Viewing your slides on a smaller or alternative screen isn’t enough. You also need to view them on Zoom on that screen, because virtual presentation software tends to change things you wouldn’t expect.

The golden rule of presentation QA is to run through every slide on the platform you’re going to be delivering on (Zoom, GotoWebinar, etc.) watching out for the things below:

  • Any virtual presentation platform will add small visual artifacts to the video stream—they’re imperfect degenerative medium where some quality will be lost in transmission. As a result, your slides will never be quite as sharp as directly viewing your slides.
  • If you have audio in your slides, check that the audio levels are balanced and not too loud or quiet. Remember to also test it with headphones on as that’s a common listening scenario for your audience.
  • If you have video in your slides it may not come across well when presenting virtually. There’s usually some lag or choppiness that makes it skip frames. This can make the audio look out of sync.
  • If you have multiple slides with audio, set them at the exact same level so people don’t get deafened. A common problem in that scenario is that the attendees will turn down their audio if you blast them, and then the next time you have audio it’s too quiet to hear properly. Your presentation software will have a setting for the audio or video volume. The best way to make sure they are the same is to move your slides to be one after the other (you can reorder them afterwards), then step through them to gauge the balance.
  • If you have complex animations or transitions, they may render more slowly or less smoothly when piped through Zoom and a wifi connection. If they don’t work the way you want them to, consider simplifying them (fewer animations) or removing them altogether – replacing them with static slides. You can still use a technique like the Progressive Reveal to create a pseudo animation effect.

To prevent an audio feedback loop when testing your audio and video slides, have your partner/friend/colleague be on the viewer/attendee side in another room.

Whatever your specific case is, there’s a good chance that on the viewer’s side it’s not as perfect. So double, triple, and quadruple check.

I guess you should also single check. Why does nobody say that?

“You should single check your work to make sure it’s awesome.”

The best way to QA is to record some video of it from the viewer’s perspective. Have your QA buddy record their screen (with audio). If you don’t have anyone to help you, just set up your extra laptop (hopefully you have one somewhere) in another room and record the screen from there. If you’re using a Mac, Quicktime is an easy way to get a recording. On a PC, you can use PowerPoint to do a screen recording (more on that later), or find some free screen recording software for a test.

If you do have a helper, you can also reverse roles where they present and you observe on their machine. This will give you the truest sense of what might need to be fixed. It’ll no doubt be quite hilarious to watch, unless they turn out to be better at it than you.

#2 Remove all hashtags from your slides

My typical advice regarding hashtags is to make sure you update them to use the current event’s hashtag if you’ve used this slide deck before. If you don’t it looks awful to the audience and makes them feel like you didn’t put in the effort to make a presentation just for them.

However, the main goal of this entire guide —primarily covered in chapters 10 and 11— is to ensure you create a professional-grade recording of your virtual presentation that you can repurpose over and over for multiple virtual events.

If you leave event hashtags in your slides they will be forever embedded in your recording, rendering it useless for re-use. And trust me, once you’ve created a high-resolution awesomely edited recording of your talk, you will feel amazing about it.

It may feel counterintuitive, but you should delete all the hashtags from your slides.

If the event mentions it and asks you why or asks you to include them, just politely let them know your rationale. I’ve found that many virtual events have interactive chat in the interface they use which tends to dilute the number of people hanging out on a Twitter hashtag anyway.

#3 Have a wired Internet connection

If attendees have a poor connection they can always leave and download the video and slides later on.

But the presenter is the one person who absolutely must have a great Internet connection, and the best way to do that is to have directly wired Ethernet.

A side benefit of this is that it will help you end the endless debate over who’s connection is causing the problem. I’m sure you’ve been in a meeting where someone suggests your Internet is slow, and you say yours is fine, and they say that theirs has been working brilliantly all week.

Just say “Yeah, but I have a hardwired Ethernet connection.” End of conversation.

If you don’t have a wired connection, work on getting one set up, and in the meantime tell your eager tech wannabe roommates NOT to reset the ******* wifi while you’re presenting.

#4 Have a backup audio input device

“Is this mic on? Can you hear me at the back?”

Sometimes your mic will stop working, and it’s one of the most uncomfortable panic-ridden things that can happen to a speaker (see When Things Go Wrong ). It could be a dead battery issue, or your headphone cable could be old and the internal wiring failed.

Apple earpods cheap virtual presentation microphone

Whatever the cause, you need to have a way to deal with the problem.

If you are using a posh external mic that stops working, ditching it for the internal microphone of your laptop will likely degrade the audio quality significantly, but it’s better than nothing.

In a later chapter I do a deep dive comparison video about microphone options for virtual presenting .

Probably the simplest backup is another set of headphones. The classic Apple headphones are only $25 now. Make sure you get the ones with the 3.5mm jack, and not the lightning cable, (especially if you’re not an Apple person) as that’s only useful for your iPhone. And if you aren’t an Apple person, there are a million other options on Amazon.

However, be warned that these headphones are rife with audio problems such as noisy cables (you’ll need to sit still which sucks), and they should only be used on Zoom. When using them with any other audio recording software they have a horrific background hiss that destroys your audio, but Zoom’s noise removal feature (on by default) actually does a fantastic job of removing it, making them a viable last minute solution. Hopefully, you’ll never need to use them.

#5 Have a slide dedicated to encouraging non-verbal feedback

The non-verbal feedback feature of Zoom is a great way to make your talk more dynamic. But you don’t want to try and explain it in the middle of your talk as it’ll break the flow and screw up the fluidity of your recording.

Instead, consider which aspects of the feature you want to use, and have a slide at the start of your presentation (slide 2 for example) that focuses on this. You can quickly walk people through how it works, and tell them how you’ll be using it throughout.

#6 Have everyone muted by default

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. You don’t want attendees, whether it’s 5 or 500, to be chatting before or during your presentation. So this one is simple. Make sure you mute everyone. If you’re using your Personal Meeting ID you might have this already set up.

You can mute everyone in the Participants sidebar, or as a global default setting in the web portal administration settings “Settings > Schedule Meeting > Mute all participants when they join a meeting”.

Mute zoom participants by default for virtual presentations

#7 Wear confidence clothes

Just because you can present in your PJs it doesn’t mean you should present in your PJs. Treat it like an on-stage talk and get ready in your mojo outfit. You’ll gain confidence and look more professional.

Something I like to do when I’m on the road presenting, is lay out my clothes the night before. It helps me get in the right mindset and also saves time the next day when you might be stressing out.

#8 Close all of your other software to prevent your machine slowing down

Take a look at your computer right now and count A) how many different apps are running, and B) how many tabs you have open in your browser.

Here’s a screenshot of mine, for reference.

Having a lot of browser tabs and apps open can slow your computer when doing virtual presentations

Tabs open in Chrome? 39. Apps open? 20

You need to be concerned about two things, the amount of memory and processing power being hogged by all the apps you have open, and the number of ways you might receive a notification during your talk.

For PCs running Windows 10, there’s a built-in function to silence notifications when presenting . But if you’re a Mac user the settings for this are horrendous (slightly better in Big Sur). Fortunately there’s a free app called Muzzle that silences all of your notifications as soon as you share your screen.

Turn off all MacOS notifications using the Muzzle app when giving a virtual prtesentation

#9 Have two pre-made slides ready for Q&A at the end of your virtual presentation

It’s common for your host to ask questions that the audience has submitted in the chat window (or the Q&A window for Zoom Webinars) at the end of your session. The best way to utilize this opportunity—if you’re still in control of the screen—is to have two slides prepared.

The first slide should simply have Q&A written on it, really big.

The second slide should be a promo slide with a special offer you have.

I like to leave up the Q&A slide until the questions start, then flip it to the promo slide so it can sit there for the next 5-10 minutes. It’s a great way to have it visible for a long period of time without actually having to be salesy in your presentation.

It’s fairly common that an event organizer will ask you if you have something to promote, but if they don’t, ask them if it’s okay that you use a slide at the end like this.

#10 Build a background set to make your virtual presentations look professional

If you spend a lot of time on Zoom, instead of using a Zoom background, start thinking about how you can built a bit of a set where you do your presentations. Not only will it look more professional, but it will fill you with confidence and make you feel like you’re in presentation mode when you’re there.

I’m fortunate to have a space for my office/studio, and I’ve seen and felt the difference a well-designed environment makes when I show up to work. It took me months to get it right, so don’t think you have to suddenly have something perfect. Just chip away at it over time, turning on your webcam every day and giving a little thought as to how you can make the space more special. Small shelves with plants or books can work great, and Pinterest is definitely your friend for this type of thing.

Many folks won’t have a dedicated workspace to claim as your “stage”, but I’m pretty sure your significant other won’t complain if you make your home that little bit nicer.

Speaking of “stages”, I actually built a stage in my studio—almost burning down the house in the process —but that’s a story for another time. Like I said, it took months to get to this stage. I keep saying stage.

Build a background set to make your virtual presentations and webinars look more professional

#11 Reboot your computer the night before your virtual presentation

Restarting your computer can help speed it up a bit, especially if you haven’t done it in ages. Any little performance advantage you can get is valuable for a live presentation. It will help clear out any processes that are stuck or hogging the CPU.

However, it’s best not to do this right before your talk, as you risk it doing some weird software updates that take hours to complete.

#12 Do a test Zoom meeting to check your camera angles and lighting

As Springsteen said in Dancing in the Dark—”I check my look in the mirror, I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face.”—you should always check how you look on camera before the presentation starts. Adjust the angle of the camera for your most flattering look and the best view of your background, which of course is a well-decorated wall, and not a zoom background of a beach or mountaintop.

Make sure to turn on the lights you’ll be using to light your lovely face, wick away any sweat using blotting wipes, and apply some simple makeup to remove shiny reflections from your head. More details on those techniques in the lighting section .

Here’s the smart part, record your test meeting and play it back to make sure there are no weird things in the background, it’s often easier to analyze a recording as opposed to your webcam view.

#13 Double-check your audio for background noise

At the same time as your camera check, watch your test recording and listen very carefully for any noise in the background. You’ll be surprised at how oblivious you can be to background noise when you’re busy and/or nervous.

Sounds to watch out for:

  • Laundry sounds: Depending on where your washer/dryer are it may not be an issue, but the low hum can travel far. Start a Zoom recording, making sure to use which ever audio (mic) input you plan on using, go turn on your washer or dryer or dishwasher, then come back and replay the recording to see if it’s discernible. Crank the volume to make sure. There is NOTHING worse than doing a badass presentation then finding out the recording is ruined by a persistent hum in the background, or the sound of someone’s hoody zip clattering round and round in the dryer.
  • Tube lights: If you have any tube lights where you are recording, or even in a nearby room, turn them off. They can be soooo noisy. Then put in the effort to replace them with silent LED tube bulbs when you have time. It does require some rewiring, but it’s not that hard—I did it recently and I made sure to choose bulbs with the same colour temperature as the lights I’ll be using to light me up in the video–more on that in the A/V chapter .
  • Ceiling fans: Another subtle and repetitive sound. Turn ’em off unless the resulting heat will make you sweat to the point of scaring the audience.
  • Heating: Not all heating is noisy, but many houses in North America use what’s called forced air. It’s noisy. A low hum, yes, but it’s an audio killer.
  • Noisy clothes: Your clothes can cause bad scratching sounds—even if you use a shotgun microphone that’s not attached to your clothes—which is an audio killer. What happens is that any loose clothing rubs against you when you gesticulate with your arms. Tighter clothes like a t-shirt are the solution to this. I go into more depth including a comparison video in What to do When Noisy Clothes Ruin Your Audio .
  • Noisy shoes: if you’re wearing any kind of heels, they will cause irritating sounds if you shuffle your feet (while presenting standing up, which you should do). The simplest solution is to take them off and present in your socks (or bare feet).
  • Analog watches: I’m kidding.

And make sure everyone in the house knows not to bother you while you’re presenting. If you are in a room with a door, hang a sign on it with the time of your event, and say not to disturb you until you take the sign off the door.

Guess what? Not every thing you can do as a virtual presenter is something you should be doing—I’m talking about you, speaker who likes to take a bathroom break while mic’d up, two minutes before the session starts.

Similarly, not every feature of Zoom has a positive impact on the audience or speaker experience. In this short and not-so-sweet chapter I’ll give you some tips about things to avoid so your talks go more smoothly.

#1 Don’t use a free Zoom account for your presentation

If you’re running the show yourself this is an important one. The free Zoom plan allows up to 100 attendees which is great, and more than enough for a small event, however there is also a 40-minute time limit, which would be very embarrassing if you didn’t know that and all of a sudden everyone gets kicked out of your virtual event.

#2 Try to avoid saying “Can you hear me?”

This is a classic intro statement that nervous presenters ask, but it makes you sound unprofessional. Instead, make a subtle change to how you position it, like this:

“Thanks {host name}, let’s get started, and let us know in the chat window if you have any issues hearing my audio.”

#3 Don’t use your laptop’s microphone if your webcam is sitting on an external monitor

When you do this, the laptop will be off to one side and your audio will be really quiet and sound like you’re in a different room.

#4 Don’t use stock photos in your slides

Just as you shouldn’t use a stock photo as the header background on your website, you shouldn’t use them in your presentations. To illustrate my point, it’s way too common for software companies to think it’s cool to use an overhead shot of a laptop and a coffee cup. It’s actually hilarious how prevalent it is. I recommend entering the URL of any image you’re considering using into tineye.com which will tell you how many times it’s been used.

How to use Tineye to see how many times a stock photo has been used online

If you absolutely have to use one, try hard to find one that’s not so widely used. Unsplash.com is a good resource for free photography that’s typically got less of a stock feel to it.

But all in all, the best way to avoid using stock photos is to develop an original content mindset (in chapter 6) .

#5 Don’t use a Zoom background. You heard me.

Zoom backgrounds can be fun in meetings, but when you’re presenting it can look unprofessional and can be really distracting. It can also make some of your head/hair disappear and speaking for myself, I need all the hair I can get.

#6 Don’t record the call without permission

This is a big no-no on certain types of call. For a presentation you can make a statement that it’s being recorded, as this is always helpful information for attendees to know (no permission needed) but if it’s a meeting with a client, customer, or coworker, you should be explicit that you are recording and why: “If it’s okay with you I’d like to record the call so I don’t miss any of the details.” This is important when you are a guest in an interview too. Asking for permission will add a level of trust and respect in the eyes of who you are asking – and in the very rare occasion that they say no, be graceful and say okay no worries. Then follow up with,”I may be taking notes throughout so bare with me if I’m scribbling”.

Also be aware, that if you  are recording the session, everyone on the other side will see a blinking “recording” signal in the top-left corner, so there’s no creeping allowed.

To recap, remember these rules when it comes to recordings:

  • Meetings: Ask for permission, and don’t record if your guest is uncomfortable with it.
  • Presentations: Let people know that it’s being recorded and that you will be making it available after. Ideally after some post-production enhancements in chapter 11.

#7 Don’t be the host if you might leave early

This is a nightmare as the other participants are suddenly without a meeting and they might not know why. Then they have to re-coordinate to set up a new meeting, which is always a chore and often involves Slack or text messages or even worse, emails.

Intro Introduction to Virtual Presentations on Zoom

Chapter 1 18 Cool Zoom Features You Should Know About

Chapter 2 12 Things You Should Do in Your Zoom Presentation

Chapter 3 8 Things You Shouldn’t Do in Your Zoom Presentation

Chapter 4 Defining Your Presentation’s Purpose

Chapter 5 How to Define Your Talk’s Structure, Story, & Flow

Chapter 6 41 Slide Design Tips for Virtual Presentations

Chapter 7 6 Ways to Make Eye Contact With an Invisible Audience

Chapter 8 How to do Audience Participation in a Virtual Presentation

Chapter 9 How to Share Content during a Zoom Presentation

Chapter 10 How to Create a Stunning Video and Audio Recording

Chapter 11 Using Post-Production to Add Value to Your Zoom Recording

Chapter 12 How to Use Your Phone as a Beautiful Webcam

Chapter 13 What to Do When Things go Wrong in Your Presentation

Chapter 14 How to Ground Yourself and Get Ready to Present

Chapter 15 Advanced & Creative Zoom Presentation Techniques

Chapter 16 The Difference Between Zoom Meetings and Zoom Webinars

Chapter 17 23 Zoom Settings to Enable or Disable for a Smooth Presentation

14 Best Virtual Meeting Tools (that we actually use!)

virtual presentation tools

Virtual meetings have become the lifeblood of modern work and collaboration. Whether you're hosting a team meeting, conducting a client presentation, or facilitating a workshop, the right virtual meeting tools can make all the difference in productivity, engagement, and overall success. 

In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the 14 best virtual meeting tools for 2023, each offering unique features to enhance your online interactions and run more productive online meetings.

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In a remotely distributed, always-online world, virtual meetings are the norm. On a typical week, more than 50% of employees spend between one and three hours in virtual meetings. That’s a lot of time spent looking at cameras and screens! 

An effective online meeting can help teams get aligned, plan tasks and feel connected in less than an hour. The right tools help facilitate this process and help improve productivity too.

In this guide, we’ll share some of our favourite online meeting tools that we use across our teams at SessionLab. Here, you won’t find a recommendation that we haven’t used ourselves! 

Looking for free online meeting tools ? All but one of these tools has a free option! We’ll share some insight about price and how we’ve used each app so you can easily decide what to bring to your next virtual meeting without needing to worry about pricing.

SessionLab: Your Meeting Design Ally

Best meeting design tool

virtual presentation tools

Key Features:

  • Fast, effective agenda design.
  • Drag & Drop agenda builder.
  • Automatic timing calculation.
  • Real-time collaboration.
  • Beautiful printouts.
  • Templates and reusable agendas.

SessionLab is more than just a virtual meeting tool; it’s your secret weapon for designing, facilitating, and documenting effective meetings and workshops . Whether you’re a professional facilitator, a trainer, or a team leader, SessionLab empowers you to plan and run engaging virtual sessions with ease.

Simple, effective agenda design: SessionLab provides a comprehensive platform for designing workshops, meetings, and training sessions. The intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes designing your agenda a breeze. Add blocks to easily create your meeting structure and build from there.

Stay in control of time: Add clear timing to every activity and create a minute-perfect agenda. Use Time Tracker to help you stay on time while running the meeting. When you need to make changes, your timing will update automatically. Save time on manual adjustments so you can focus on running an effective session. 

Session Templates and Reusable agendas: SessionLab simplifies the meeting planning process with pre-designed templates and reusable agendas. Ensure that your meetings and workshops follow a structured format across your entire organization. Save time by reusing and adapting your recurring meeting agenda. 

Does it have a free version? Yes. You can design up to 10 meeting agendas in SessionLab for free!

Zoom: The Video Conferencing Giant

Best video conferencing tool

  • High-quality video and audio.
  • Screen sharing and annotation.
  • Breakout rooms for group discussions.
  • Robust mobile app.
  • Integration with third-party apps.

Zoom almost needs no introduction. Renowned for its reliability, ease of use, and comprehensive feature set, Zoom is a top choice for video conferencing, webinars, and more.

Whether it’s for internal meetings or running events in our community, we’ve found that Zoom offers a solid, reliable platform for video calls. It’s easy to do screen sharing with participants, set-up breakout rooms for group work and control the flow of the meeting. It’s also a good choice when we want to record sessions or invite external collaborators to meet. 

Zoom’s integrations are also a massive boon when it comes to collaboration. We often pair Zoom with an online whiteboard such as Miro or Mural and have our SessionLab agenda on the second screen to keep everything running smoothly.   

At this stage in the game, Zoom is a great choice of online meeting tool because everyone is so familiar with it. Your meeting attendees are likely to know how to navigate between chat channels, jump into breakouts and send emoji reactions. This means they can focus on the content of the meeting, rather than fumbling with controls.  

Does it have a free version? On Zoom’s free plan, you can run an online meeting with up to 100 attendees for up to 40 minutes.

Miro: Unleash Creativity in Virtual Sessions

Best online whiteboard tool

virtual presentation tools

  • Online whiteboard and collaboration platform.
  • Visual thinking tools for brainstorming.
  • Pre-built templates for workshops.
  • Integration with popular apps.

Miro is a powerful digital whiteboard for encouraging creativity and collaboration in virtual workshops and meetings. It’s a versatile tool for visual thinking and ideation and we use it in many of our more involved workshops and meetings. 

Collaborating in real-time on a shared digital canvas with notes, ideas and other resources is a great way of making a virtual meeting more interactive. We often use Miro’s voting features to help us sort and prioritorize ideas during many of our sessions. The extra features available to the meeting host are really helpful when it comes to facilitating more complex sessions.

Miro is also great to use before and after a meeting. We’ll often add ideas or topics to a Miro board ahead of a meeting and use it as a continuing workspace for remote team members afterwards. 

Visual thinkers will be immediately at home in Miro. It includes many visual tools including sticky notes, flowcharts, and mind maps, to facilitate brainstorming and idea generation. We love being able to add images and GIFs to a board too! 

Does it have a free version? Miro’s free plan is enough to get started, with a single workspace and 3 editable boards.

Calendly: Simplified Scheduling for Online Meetings

Best meeting scheduling tool 

  • Automated scheduling and appointment booking.
  • Personalized meeting availability.
  • Integration with calendar apps.
  • Customizable meeting types and durations.
  • Meeting reminders and notifications.

Calendly is an efficient scheduling and appointment booking tool that streamlines the process of arranging meetings, consultations, and appointments. It simplifies scheduling by allowing users to share their availability and book appointments effortlessly.

With Calendly, you can automate the scheduling process, eliminating the back-and-forth emails to find suitable meeting times. Share your Calendly link, and participants can book appointments based on your availability.

At SessionLab, we use Calendly extensively when arranging external virtual meetings, whether that be user interviews or partner meetings. It’s simple, easy to set-up and takes a lot of hassle out of arranging meetings. The integration with Google Calendar is a particular benefit here!

Calendly also sends automated reminders and notifications to participants, reducing the likelihood of no-shows and ensuring that everyone is prepared for the meeting.

Does it have a free version? Calendly’s free plan you to have unlimited meetings of a single event type, and we’ve found it plenty to get started with!

SpatialChat: a Space for Virtual Networking

Best tool for virtual offices

virtual presentation tools

  • 3D spatial audio for natural conversations.
  • Virtual spaces for events and meetings.
  • Networking features for social interaction.
  • Customizable virtual environments.

SpatialChat brings a fresh approach to online meetings by creating immersive, 3D audio-based virtual spaces for events and meetings. If you’re looking to create a shared office feel or create a space where spontaneous conversation can occur, SpatialChat is a great option in a crowded video conferencing market.

In SpatialChat, you and your team can create virtual spaces for events, conferences, or team meetings, complete with customizable environments and layouts. Coupled with proximity-based chat, it can create a space where participants can network and socialize naturally. At SessionLab, our product team uses their space to engage in spontaneous conversations during the workday and have made it their own! 

Does it have a free version? SpatialChat offers video conferencing for up to 5 users for 2 hours a day on its free plan.

Otter.ai: Transform Virtual Meetings into Searchable Content

Best tool for meeting transcription

  • Automatic transcription of meetings.
  • Searchable and shareable meeting notes.
  • Integrations with popular conferencing tools.
  • AI-powered summarization.
  • Real-time transcription.

Otter.ai is an intelligent assistant for turning spoken words into searchable, shareable, and actionable meeting notes. It’s been very useful for creating meeting transcripts, particularly during customer interviews or discussions. 

Otter.ai transcribes your meetings in real-time, capturing every spoken word with  accuracy. The transcriptions are searchable, making it easy to find specific discussions or topics. You can also share these notes with team members for reference.

While not every virtual meeting calls for Otter.ai, I’ve found it can be a great way to speed up the process of transcription and summarization. 

Does it have a free version? With 300 monthly transcription minutes at 30 minutes per conversation, Otter.ai’s free plan is well positioned to start supporting your online meetings.

TeamRetro: Elevate Your Retrospectives

Best tool for running team retrospectives

  • Agile retrospective and feedback platform.
  • Pre-built retrospective templates.
  • Collaboration and voting features.
  • Action item tracking.
  • Integration with project management tools.

TeamRetro is a dedicated platform for agile retrospectives and feedback gathering. It streamlines the retrospective process and empowers teams to continuously improve their work. When we’re running retrospective meetings, we often kick-off asynchronously by asking team members to add input to TeamRetro before presenting and discussing items during the session. 

While you could run an agile retrospective without it (or recreate the process in your online whiteboard) we’ve found it much more effective to use a dedicated tool. Not only does it save time, but it ensures the process is followed across our various teams. 

Team members can collaborate by adding feedback and voting on important issues, ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard. After the virtual meeting is done, we can also easily track, assign and manage action items. While you won’t bring TeamRetro to all of your virtual meetings, for retrospectives, you’ll be glad you did! 

Does it have a free version? TeamRetro does not currently have a free plan.

Google Meet: Video Conferencing with Google’s Power

Best tool for simple meetings

virtual presentation tools

  • Integration with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite).
  • Secure and reliable video meetings.
  • Screen sharing and collaborative features.
  • Calendar integration for scheduling.
  • Encrypted video meetings.

Google Meet , integrated with Google Workspace, offers a seamless video conferencing experience. If you’re already invested in Google’s suite of productivity tools, this is a natural choice. 

At SessionLab, we use Google Meet for arranging simple internal meetings. The ease of organizing a video call (and reorganizing!) with Calendar and jumping in for a chat make this a great tool for our regular virtual meetings. It’s one of our favourite free online meeting tools, with so much value being offered without needing to go anywhere near the business plan.

Google Meet features all the bells and whistles you’d expect from modern video conferencing software. With simple integrations, screen sharing, secure and reliable video meetings and more. 

The choice between this and other meeting tools often comes down to your existing ecosystem (Google or Microsoft) and whether your virtual meetings tend to be internal or external. In our case, it makes sense to primarily use Google Meet for simple meetings and Zoom for external sessions and those where we’ll be recording. If you need a simple tool for video calling, be sure to give Google Meet a go – especially with it’s native Google Calendar integration!

You can also integrate your Google Drive with SessionLab, making it easy to add your files and resources to your SessionLab agenda. 

Does it have a free version? As a standalone meeting tool, Google Meet offers video calling without limitations. When using Google Workspace on a business plan, pricing starts at $5 per user, per month.

Mentimeter: Engage Your Audience with Interactive Presentations

Best tool for meeting engagement

virtual presentation tools

  • Interactive presentation and polling tool.
  • Live audience engagement.
  • Real-time feedback and surveys.
  • Versatile question types.
  • Integration with presentation software.

Mentimeter is a go-to tool for creating engaging and interactive presentations that captivate your audience and gather real-time feedback. It was the most cited engagement tool in the State of Facilitation 2023 report and with good reason. 

Mentimeter transforms traditional presentations into interactive experiences by adding polls, quizzes, and audience engagement activities. If you’ve found your team all hands a little lacking or want to easily gather insights from your whole team during an online meeting, a tool like Mentimeter is a great way to engage your audience. It plays well with video conferencing tools and features a mobile app too!

If you’re looking for a surefire way to improve the quality of your team meetings and get your meeting participants engaged, try adding interactive elements via Mentimeter. You’ll be surprised at how much more dynamic it can make proceedings! 

Does it have a free version? Mentimeter’s free plan offers 50 participants per month.

Microsoft Teams: Collaboration in the Microsoft Ecosystem

Best tool for integrated meetings 

  • Integration with Microsoft 365.
  • Team chat and collaboration.
  • Video conferencing and screen sharing.
  • File sharing and storage.

Microsoft Teams is a comprehensive collaboration platform that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 apps and services, making it an ideal choice of online meeting tool for organizations deeply entrenched in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Whether it’s collaborating on documents within the platform or hosting video meetings and screen sharing sessions directly within Teams, everything you’d expect is here. While some of the other video conferencing software on the list is great when standing alone, Teams really comes into its own when you leverage it’s integrations and complete workspace.

Choosing between Teams and other options likely comes down to preference and what your organization is already using though when running external meetings, stay open to alternatives that might best serve your audience. 

SessionLab integrates with Microsoft Teams too, so you can easily access your files and resources and link to them in your SessionLab agenda. 

Does it have a free version? As with many desktop and mobile platforms, Microsoft Teams has a basic free plan you can use to get used to the software, but it really comes into its own once you start on even the first business plan.

Google Docs: Collaborative Document Editing

Best tool for simple collaboration and note taking

  • Real-time collaborative document editing.
  • Commenting and feedback features.
  • Version history and revision tracking.
  • Integration with Google Drive.
  • Accessible from any device.

Google Docs is a staple for collaborative document editing. While not a traditional virtual meeting tool, it’s indispensable for simple note taking, collaboration and sharing documents in real-time. 

Multiple users can edit the same document simultaneously, facilitating real-time collaboration and feedback. While you might want to use an online whiteboard for deeper visual collaboration, the simplicity of a word processor like Google Docs can ensure everyone in your meeting is able to get involved. These kinds of free online meeting tools are an indispensable part of your toolkit as a facilitator!

Google Docs automatically tracks changes and comments, allowing you to review previous versions and see who made specific edits. It’s also easy to share different access rights, meaning you can let people view a file without editing during a meeting if you wish! If you’re looking for a quick way to add simple note taking or text collaboration to your video conferencing offering, Docs is likely your best shout.

Does it offer a free version? As with the rest of Google’s suite of tools, Google Docs has an option for free Google users that only gets more powerful when integrated in a business plan.

Notion: A Comprehensive Workspace for Collaboration

Best tool for project management and meeting notes

virtual presentation tools

  • Workspace for notes, documents, and databases.
  • Real-time collaboration on content.
  • Kanban boards and project management tools.
  • Customizable workspaces.

Notion is more than just a note-taking app; it’s a comprehensive workspace for teams to collaborate, plan, and manage projects in real-time. As a online meeting tool to support our sessions and remote workflows, Notion has been wonderful for us at SessionLab. We use it as the hub for all our company documents, and so it naturally follows to keep our meeting notes there too! 

Notion combines notes, documents, and databases into a unified workspace, making it easy to organize and collaborate on content. Link items well and it’s easy to turn discussion points from your meeting into a task or a project. 

You can even add them to a database, kanban board or other project management tool to help your team plan and track their work. Notion’s power really comes into play when centralizing your documentation and enriching it with the output of your meetings. We attach our SessionLab agenda to our meeting notes so everything is well organized too! 

Does it have a free version? Notion offers unlimited content for individuals though when collaborating with your team, you’ll likely want to graduate to the basic paid plan.

Slack: Streamlined Communication and Collaboration

Best tool for messaging 

  • Team messaging and chat.
  • Channels for organized discussions.
  • Integration with various apps and services.
  • Voice and video calls.
  • File sharing and collaboration.

Slack is renowned for its team messaging and collaboration capabilities, making it a valuable addition to any toolkit for virtual meetings and communication. While we don’t use Slack during the running of the actual virtual meeting, it’s where almost all of our inter-team communication happens. Facilitating communication before and after the meeting is often as important as the meeting itself, so be sure to consider a tool for this. 

Slack provides a centralized hub for team communication through channels, direct messaging, and group conversations. You can create channels for specific teams, projects, or topics, ensuring organized and focused discussions. You can also integrate channels with external tools and services, getting updates when you get a new survey response or support ticket, for example.

Slack also supports voice and video calls, allowing you to transition from text-based discussions to face-to-face meetings whenever needed. We’ve found it to be less robust than other options such as Google Meet or Zoom, but as a communication tool for day to day work is where it really shines.   

Does it have a free version? Slack’s free plan includes up to 90 days of history and support for team conversations. It’s more than enough to get started and supporting your online meetings and team collaborations!

PowerPoint: Hold Participants’ Attention with Visual Presentations

Best tool for virtual presentations

  • Create and design presentations.
  • Slides with text, images, and multimedia.
  • Animation and transition effects.
  • Presenter mode for virtual presentations.
  • Integration with collaboration tools.

Microsoft PowerPoint is a versatile presentation software that empowers users to create visually engaging and informative presentations for virtual meetings, webinars, and conferences. 

While it might not be your immediate thought for a virtual meeting tool, PowerPoint plays a crucial role in delivering compelling content during online interactions. It was one of the most mentioned tools that facilitators use in the State of Facilitation 2023. Facilitators also use PowerPoint Online as a space to collaborate in real-time, inviting participants to join them in the tool during a virtual meeting. 

Depending on the ecosystem you’re in, you might prefer Google Slides or even Canva for your visual presentations, though in our experience, PowerPoint offers a powerful toolset that you can use for a variety of purposes. 

Does it have a free version? PowerPoint Online has a version that is available for free online, though for teams and more robust needs, you may need to purchase the software or grab a subscription to Office365.

In the digital age, online meetings have become the cornerstone of collaboration and communication. Whether you’re looking to design engaging workshops, conduct video conferences, gather real-time feedback, or streamline collaboration, the right virtual meeting tools can transform your interactions and enhance your productivity.

From SessionLab’s specialized meeting design capabilities to the robust video conferencing of Zoom and the immersive collaboration of Miro, these tools cater to a wide range of needs and preferences. Consider the needs of your virtual meeting and use those tools that support your goals and the format of your sessions.

Explore these options, experiment, and discover the perfect virtual meeting toolset that works for you and your team. Remember that we’ve focused on (mostly) free online meeting tools, so you can get started without worrying about pricing.

With the right tools at your disposal, you’ll unlock new levels of efficiency, creativity, and collaboration in your virtual meetings. Want to go further? Read about how to run more effective team meetings in our guide or explore how you might develop and use facilitation skills to augment your online meeting tools!

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Best Tools for Virtual Presentations

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Virtual presentations are becoming a standard. With over 30+ billion presentations being created every day, traditional in-person presentations, which used to be the commonality, are more and more being adapted to a more frequent online presentation scenario. 

Through the recent pandemic, the video conferencing platform, Zoom, had a participant increase of 2900% with a daily meeting participant figure of 350 million people in December 2020 alone. Yet, either triggered by the lack of human interaction or technological barriers, the truth is that online presentations can still and easily feel daunting.

That doesn’t need to be the case, however! With online presentation templates for a solid base and specific tactics to keep remote audiences engaged, presenters can easily connect with people in a virtual setting for great presentation success. 

This guide to virtual presentations provides a definition of virtual presentations, common examples, and instructions on how to best present online. 

What’s a virtual presentation?

A virtual presentation is an event whereby a presenter or a group of people face an audience online to go over virtual material of common interest. In the best of scenarios, a great rendition of an online presentation is clear, meeting a specific purpose that is of its audience’s interest. 

Examples of virtual presentations

At SlideModel, each of our PowerPoint templates sets a valuable example of the kind of virtual presentation that works best for very particular settings. These go over topics in business, strategy, marketing, and SWOT Analysis templates , to name a few. There are also different themes to these on diverse virtual presentation templates; the latest to suit numerous needs. 

browser showing a presentation template by SlideModel.com

As further examples of great online presentations, here’s a Notion at Work webinar titled Manage Your Contacts and Sales Funnel. It’s highly recommended by webinar software company LiveWebinar. This presentation’s style and setup might be of special interest to business presenters as it follows regular industry standards. 

How virtual presentations happen

Virtual presentations most commonly take place via web and/or video conferencing platforms . Though numerous tools exist to allow a presenter to meet an audience exclusively online, the most famous for this purpose are currently Zoom, as we described above, as much as Google Meet, and Skype. Other virtual presentations can take advantage of video presentations , where the presenter records the presentation, save it as a video, and then stream it to the target audience using a video presentation platform.

An user taking part of a virtual conference

In general, these platforms include a screen-sharing ability to let presenters display online presentation decks . And they’ve become a great go-to resource with an augmented work-from-home (WFH) model worldwide. 

Presentation types

Internal virtual presentations (between colleagues).

We give these kinds of presentations to people within our organization. Whether it’s for the same department or team as ours or another stakeholder within our company, college, or any sort of official body with which we interact, internal presentations serve people whose interests and needs we can access first-hand via a common ground. 

Events (conferences, discussion panels, TED talks)

More public than the first item, virtual presentations can also be part of large events, whether these are public or private. Take all sorts of online conferences or talks into account. We can go online to meet worldwide communities of diverse sorts and be invited to speak at a discussion panel or conference, for example, making our presence visible to multiple computer users or over a single live broadcast on a large screen in an auditorium, for instance. 

Sales presentations with prospects

At times, pitches need to happen on-screen with potential prospects who give us a certain allotted timeframe in their schedules for us to touch base on our product or offer. Virtual sales pitch is another method to use.

Training/educational presentations

Other virtual presentations can be delivered for training purposes. Those can happen for internal and even external teams or as part of an educational program at different institutions. When we’re seeking to build talent up with new skills, our presentations require a lot of clarity with specific instructions, workflows, examples, charts, videos, and as many interactive or information-specific tools as possible. 

But how do we present online events like the above? 

How to Prepare for Virtual Presentations

Here are a few tips on how to best prepare for virtual presentations. We’ve made sure to include these steps as being well-prepared for an online meeting can significantly improve your road to success.

As usual, do your research before putting a single slide together. Reading up on what you will talk about to an audience can set an enormous difference between the knowledge you bring to a presentation and that of anyone else in the same room with you. Chances are that people listening to you as a presenter are very invested in your topic. As such, they can come from diverse backgrounds, and truly have a natural interest in what you have to say. Be valuable to your audience with high-quality content. For that, seek what interests them, how they respond to similar material, and the best ways in which you can engage them. 

Putting material together

Then, work at designing great PowerPoint slides . Keep a balance between design and content, tailoring what you present with your branding or voice in competitive, slick design that also clearly exposes your expertise. 

computer showing a slide with a pie chart

Consider your audience’s attention spans here. For that, spread content throughout several slides, if possible. Instead of packing each slide full of text or images, fill them with catchy titles, relevant sub-titles, meaningful text, and attention-grabbing visuals. Doing so will add dynamism and generate a more frequent visual change viewers are bound to appreciate. 

Add the above visual flow especially if your audience will need to spend a long time on-screen to follow you. Quicker online presentations can, on the contrary, afford concise and to-the-point material over the shortest amount of slides you can muster.  

Preparing your script

You may have all the know-how in the world on a given topic, company, subject of study, a product, or whatever is getting you to a virtual presentation need. Yet, an outline of ideas, a sequence of thoughts, and the most important areas of your presentation are all valuable tools to ensure success as you present. 

Write your thoughts out. Think of the sentences you’re verbalizing, how you’re phrasing your communications, and the order in which these will be presented. Slides don’t make up for your verbal communication. That vocal area needs preparation, too. 

Write an outline, jot down pointers, and even prepare an essay, if you must. However you feel most comfortable, a script in any form is necessary for a clear rendition of your ideas in front of an audience, whether that happens virtually or in person. 

While you’re at it, include attention-grabbers as you prepare what you’ll say. These can be as easy as saying: “Look over to our graph at the bottom right”, for example, inviting people to actually connect to what you’re presenting. These tricks are especially needed during a virtual presentation given the potential audiences have to be distracted via so many other means that are available on their computer, tablet, or cellphone. 

Practicing in front of an audience

Quite succinctly, peer feedback can do wonders for your virtual presentations. Gather whoever will connect with you to get their valuable insight on what’s coming through from your efforts. 

Sit back without judgment to listen to what business partners, friends, and even family have to say about your work.

Recording a demo

Tied to above, record that session. You can use it as your demo. 

Pushing you to be fully ready for a practice run will ensure you have thought about everything that matters for your final presentation. It will also add a level of security that can give you a more successful edge in the end. 

This practice might sound tedious, but it can also help your team, for example, if you bring people on board to your demo before you launch a product, face a client, present before a different department, face your teacher, and so much more!

Checking your online tools

Because online presentations essentially depend on technological tools, much more so than in any other kind of presentation setting, take the time to check everything works before you get started. 

Check your invitation links, log in to your meeting platform, open up relevant files, click on the presentation sharing icon, and make sure you’ve got all the privileges you need to perform any action you intend on making. Test your audio, try your mic and speakers, and hit the record button as a trial…do it all!

A demo, practice, and even setting 30 minutes ahead of your presentation can be golden for you to troubleshoot any unexpected technological failures. Go through your required steps one by one to make sure everything works!

Presenters are muted quite commonly and cannot get their volume to function, their cameras have stopped working, or they simply can’t share their screen. While no one will generally count that against anyone if the delays aren’t meaningful, this kind of setback can easily signal a lack of preparation. Because many issues can get in the way of a successful and timely virtual meeting, prepare for those challenges ahead of time. 

Concentration

Once your checklist up to here is done, remember to take some time for yourself. Seek your focus. However you concentrate best, find that mental spot where you can truly be attuned to your thoughts and the way you speak. Release any heavy emotions, such as anger, fear, anxiety, or stress. And seek to be balanced within your own self. Even three deep breaths can do the trick if time is pressing, but never forget to start presenting until you’re at your best concentration level. 

Putting yourself out there

Then go for it! Hit that record or live button, let people in your waiting room into your meeting area, say hi to anyone present, or let people know if you’re expecting anyone or waiting for someone for a few minutes. Become the host and take over as a leader, which is ultimately what presentations are about; for a specific period, all attention will be on you. Take your space, put yourself out there, and do your best. 

Establishing conversation

Virtual presentations don’t end when you’re done presenting your slides. Whenever possible, open up the space for the audience to give you feedback, ask questions, and engage in conversation with you. You can include a question and answer (Q&A) session or display frequently asked questions as a means of addressing commonly unclear areas. Also, leave room to address whatever comments come up via chat. 

By the way, just as a pointer to get your next presentation rolling, set the stage at the beginning of your online presentation in terms of when and how you’d like your audience to ask questions. Will everyone be able to stop you as you’re presenting to clear any items that come up? Or would you rather leave all questions for last? 

Commonly, addressing questions via chat or at the end of the session keeps your attendees’ focus under better control. Remember you’re directing people’s attention every time you present. This works just like a maestro would command an orchestra. Make the best of your expertise and knowledge to wow your audience with a unique presentation that gets people talking. 

Conclusions

Virtual meetings aren’t going anywhere. If anything, the use of online tools to group on a given topic is more and more common. As work-from-home leniency becomes widespread after COVID-19, especially, we can heavily rely on virtual presentations being here to stay. 

Consider using templates to help your slide quality. Templates are a great base for design as much as content. With industry or topic-specific material, templates are a great guide that can also accelerate how you create and share content in a high-paced environment. 

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Presentation Geeks

How To Ace Your Virtual Presentation: Our Top 10 Tips

Table of contents, what is a virtual presentation.

A virtual presentation is a demonstration, lecture, informational session or speech meant to inform, persuade, motivate, build goodwill , or present a new concept through a digital medium such as a web video conferencing software where the host, presenter and attendees are convening remotely.

Virtual presentations have gained popularity over the last decade due to the advancement of video web conferencing software such as Zoom and Google Meets as well as the convenience virtual presentations have afforded us. Virtual presentations have also helped break down challenges experienced in different fields of work and study.

How Are Virtual Presentations Different From Regular Presentations?

On the surface, it might seem that the only difference between a virtual, online presentation and an in-person presentation is the method in which it is delivered.

In reality, however, the two require different approaches to keep viewers engaged in the presentation. Here are two major differences between virtual and regular, in-person presentations you should consider when deciding if your next meeting should be held online or in-person:

Audience Members – Is The Audience Engaged?

Several people watching a virtual presentation

Participants viewing a virtual presentation are far more easily distracted than a typical meeting participant would be when viewing the content in the same room as the presenter. With in-office presentations, participants are typically in the conference room, which is a controlled environment with fewer distractions competing for attention, making it easier to pay attention to what the speaker is saying.

Self-surveillance is also less prominent in a virtual meeting rather than in a physical meeting. When you’re in a room with other individuals, you subconsciously start to self-regulate your behaviour thinking others are watching you. For example, you will not find yourself looking at your phone and you will maintain eye contact with the speaker.

With virtual presentations, on the other hand, the attendee has the ability to turn off their video and microphone allowing them to easily switch their attention to other distractions like their phone or carry on side conversation without anyone else ever knowing.

Scalability & Flexibility

Unlike an in-person presentation where the host, presenter and attendees are physically present at a singular location in the real world, virtual presentations allow for greater scalability which is not bound by the physical environment they are held in.

An in-person meeting would have you bound to the limitations of the room or venue space and the flexibility of other people to attend the presentation at a singular location. On the other hand, a virtual presentation allows you to present to more people at the same time, aided by group video conferencing services, which allows for hundreds of participants per meeting. With a virtual presentation, you are not restricted to the physical capacity of a venue space or the challenge of traveling distances for people.

Either virtual or in person you need a visual presentation that captures the attention of your audience before you tell your story.

Here's One We Did For SalesForce

When the most dynamic CRM sales tool in the industry reaches out for help, we couldn’t resist joining forces. We worked with their team to develop a concept that aligned with their branding and allowed their “Sales Force” to share their value proposition with potential customers in an engaging way.

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Why Are Virtual Presentations Important?

Woman presenting virtually at her desk

Virtual presentations are important because they help break down barriers when it comes to bridging time zones, connecting remote regions and keeping one another safe as we have recently seen with COVID-19.

Remote teams working in space or up north in remote regions are able to share their research and findings far more quickly and easily by being able to connect with other researchers around the world and discuss in real-time. Although it may seem like this could have been done with phone calls, fax machines or even videos, virtual presentations allow for a consolidated, streamlined process that allows for spur-of-the-moment conversations with multiple people in a live presentation format.

As globalization continues to impact our everyday lives, virtual presentations are another way we are connecting with one another around the world. With remote work on the rise , learning about virtual presentations and the nuances that come with them is an important skill to know as more companies, government agencies and cultures adopt virtual presentations and communication.

How Do You Create A Virtual Presentation?

With any other project you decide to take on, to make it excellent, knowing where to start and setting up a good foundation is key to its success. The same applies to virtual presentations. If you don’t have a solid plan in place or create a solid foundation on which to build your presentation upon, your presentation won’t be as successful as it could be.

Man planning before creating his virtual presentation

We’ve put together our top four virtual presentation tips to bring your virtual presentation to life.

1) Start with your content

First, you need to start with your content and understand what message you want to share with your audience. You need to fully understand the topic and content at hand so you’re confident in your delivery.

Start by asking yourself some questions.

  • What are the key takeaways you want everyone to leave with?
  • What is the purpose of sharing this content?
  • Is this content relevant?
  • What questions might the audience have and do I know the answer to those questions

It might help to create a story around your topic with a beginning, middle and end to help guide you and your audience through the content.

2) Think about your slides

You want your slides to be engaging. Without engaging slides, you’ll lose the interest of your audience. Remember to keep slides colorful. Use an image or a graphic to help tell the story of the slide. Don’t go overboard though. Keep it simple and follow a 1:1 ratio. One image per slide.

3) Focus on your audience

Throughout your career, you’ll be presenting material to different audiences. Not every audience is the same. For younger audiences, you’ll want to use more visuals and use more vocal energy to keep the audience’s attention. For an older demographic, you might want to keep things more succinct, to the point and talk at a slower pace. It’s one thing to know the content and create a great presentation but it’s useless if you’re not sympathetic to how your audience gathers information.

4) Be dynamic

Keep the attention of your audience by being dynamic and not static. If you’re able to present with a webcam, then do so. Take advantage of as many tools and features as the video web conferencing software you decide to use will allow. For example, some software allows you to have the audience interact with your screen and slides. Depending on the content you’re delivering, you can even have the attendees break out into smaller groups. This will keep the presentation lively, unique and encourage audience participation. Ultimately, you want to keep it fun.

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Our Top 10 Best Virtual Presentation Tips

virtual presentation tips graphic

Before you deliver your next virtual presentation , be sure to review these ten tips to help you prepare.

1) Proper Webcam & Lighting

First, check your webcam and lighting. Before you present, turn on your webcam and make sure you’re visible. Even if you think you have sufficient lighting, it’s always best to double-check as some webcams aren’t calibrated correctly. If you’re using a ring light, it may appear like a harsh, blue light is being used. Use this time to also check your microphone and audio source. You’ll be able to check the sound quality and ensure the audio pick-up levels are correct.

2) Familiarize Yourself With The Technology

If you’re not used to presenting virtually or you’re using new software, try practicing your delivery with the technology you’ll be using. If you run into any technical issues, you’ll be able to resolve them beforehand.

3) Check Internet Connection

This is absolutely critical . A virtual meeting or presentation is only possible with an internet connection. If you don’t have a proper internet connection, you won’t have a presentation. It’s also a good idea to practice presenting with all the technology you’ll be using as more software usage requires more internet bandwidth. If you plan on presenting with your webcam on, test your internet connection with your webcam on so you have an accurate measurement.

4) Talk To The Camera

When you’re delivering your message, make sure you keep eye contact with the camera . This will allow the audience who is watching your presentation to feel more connected and engaged. If you’re simply reading from a screen, it makes the presentation feel inauthentic, unpolished and it makes it seem like you’re not confident in the content you’re presenting.

Woman presenting into the camera

5) Present As You Would In-Person

If you have the ability to stand up while presenting, you should . Standing is beneficial because it allows your airways to be fully open. While you’re sitting, your core is typically tight and you might find yourself hunched over. This will restrict your diaphragm from moving to its fullest potential. If you stand, you’ll have a much clearer voice when speaking.

6) Use Body Language

Keep your presentation dynamic. Your body is a communication tool. Use hand motions to emphasize key points. Use facial expressions to deliver emotion . The combination of body language with your words will help connect the audience to your message on a much deeper level.

7) Engage Your Audience Members

Keep your audience engaged and allow them to participate. Some ways you can keep your audience engaged is by using polling software to ask the audience questions. You can host a Q&A at the end of your meeting , or you can have them play games like Kahoot! to win prizes.

8) Have A Moderator

Having a moderator helps you stay focused. A moderator can help monitor the chat and gauge audience engagement. If you’re conducting a Q&A session, depending on the software you use, a moderator can help filter questions that might be inappropriate. They will screen questions before they are made public to the rest of your audience.

9) Use Evaluation Tools & Learn

This is a tip not many presenters take advantage of that will help you stand out amongst the rest and will make your next presentation even better. At the end of your presentation, consider sending out a poll. Ask for feedback from your audience to see how well you did . You might want to ask their opinion on the visuals, see what information they retained or see how you presented as a whole. If done correctly, for your next virtual presentation, you’ll know if you need to slow down if you’re a fast talker or if you need to add more visuals.

10) Be Yourself

The most important tip of them all is to be yourself . When you’re yourself, you’ll have fun. Presenting and everything will appear natural.

Are You In Need Of A Custom Presentation? We Can Help

Now it’s about you! Are you in need of a fresh, engaging presentation that captures your audiences attention? Whether you need a clean up, a re-design or a completely custom build we have you covered. You can find our presentation packages and pricing options here . Want to speak to a geek, click the button below.

Author:  Ryan

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12 Interactive Presentation Software and Tools for 2024

virtual presentation tools

Table of Contents

When you create a presentation, you want your audience to be engaged, to learn something new, to get excited, etc. But in the era of smart toasters and mobile phones in watches (wristphones), traditional linear PowerPoint presentations have lost almost all of their effect. Luckily, progress isn’t just about making once innovative things old-fashioned, it is also (and rather) about development. In the case of presentations, the development is interactivity.

What Is an Interactive Presentation?

It’s a presentation that has some content objects that you can interact with: hotspots, navigation, pop-up boxes, animations, etc. This feature helps grab the learners’ attention and keep the audience engaged.

We’ve collected the 12 best presentation software. Choose the one that works best for you and takes your student learning experience to the next level.

Comparison Chart

1. ispring suite: “a fast authoring toolkit”.

Rating: 4.7/5 – 319 reviews ( G2 Crowd )

iSpring Suite is an interactive presentation maker that lets you design engaging courses on your own or in a team, quickly and easily. It works as a PowerPoint add-in that provides tons of robust options. To make a truly interactive presentation, you can add role-play simulations, timed quizzes , screencasts, and video lectures. The tool even allows you to create video presentations by combining slides with a presenter video. You can use an existing PowerPoint presentation as a starting point and enhance it with iSpring tools or build one from scratch.

Also read:   The Ultimate Guide to Lecture Capture

To make your learning content even more visually engaging, you can create interactions. There is a set of ready-made templates that can present your content as a timeline, cyclic process, catalog, or FAQ, as well as many other options.

To save time and effort, you can use Content Library, with its more than 89,000 eLearning assets such as backgrounds, icons, and characters, that will help bring creative ideas to life. If none of the characters in the Content Library suit you, don’t worry because you can create your own in a matter of minutes. Choose the hairstyle, clothing, and accessories, set the pose and background, and your unique character is ready to interact with learners.

iSpring Suite also has an online space for teamwork and collaboration called iSpring Cloud. With this, users can build simple courses and knowledge checks directly in a browser, and work with colleagues on eLearning content in the cloud. Just send a course link to your colleagues, and they’ll be able to edit texts and polish the appearance of the course.

iSpring Suite Max

Even if you don’t get along with computers, you’ll find iSpring Suite easy to use. Just install the program, open it, and you’ll see the iSpring Suite tab on the ribbon of the PowerPoint interface. From there, you can access all the features of the software, and you won’t have to leave PowerPoint to use one or another feature. For example, unlike some other tools, you can record a screencast and synchronize it with the slides – all in one program.

iSpring Cloud is also extremely intuitive. All you need to do to start designing content with its tools is to create an account.

The courses you build with iSpring Suite are viewed in a player with customizable color schemes and work perfectly on any device: desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile. You can either publish your presentation in HTML5, or upload it to any LMS because iSpring Suite supports all eLearning standards: SCORM 1.2/2004 , cmi5, xAPI , and AICC.

The courses you design with iSpring Cloud can be published to an LMS too. This web-based authoring tool supports SCORM and xAPI.

iSpring Suite is the best choice for small and medium businesses that need to create versatile digital learning content. It is especially great for creators who prefer teamwork and may need extended sharing options. Schools and universities might also find this tool ideal, as there are many features, such as video presentations, that make the studying process extremely engaging and effective.

Get a free trial→

How to Create an Interactive Presentation with iSpring Suite

To get started, download the iSpring Suite free trial and install it on your computer. Then, open a presentation you would like to make interactive and go to the new iSpring Suite tab in the PowerPoint ribbon. 

iSpring Suite tab

We’ll show you three ways to make your presentation more interactive with iSpring Suite and explain each one step by step.

Add an interaction

Interaction in the iSpring Suite

2. Click New Interaction in the pop-up window and select from 14 ready-made templates to present steps, timelines, and processes, or create a glossary or a FAQ. Then fill out the template with text and images.

Interaction types in iSpring Suite

3. Once your interaction is ready, click on Save and Return to Course .

1. To create an interactive quiz or a survey, select Quiz on the iSpring Suite toolbar.

Quiz in iSpring Suite

2. Click on Graded Quiz in a pop-up window if you want to create a knowledge assessment, and choose from 14 quiz templates, including multiple-choice, true or false, sequence, and fill-in-the-blanks.

Quiz templates in iSpring Suite

3. Type in your question and answer options.

iSpring QuizMaker

To make the question clearer, you can add images, audio, and video to the slide.

4. When the quiz is ready, click Save and Return to Course on the toolbar.

Create an interactive role-play

You can simulate a customer service scenario and engage your audience in an interactive role-play. For example, to improve their communication skills, you can illustrate how to behave in a particular conversation.  

1. To create a new role-play, first, click the Role-Play button on the toolbar.

Role-play in iSpring Suite

2. In a pop-up window, choose New Role-play and then click on the New Scene button.

iSpring TalkMaster interface

3. Choose a character and a background from iSpring’s Content Library.

4. Enter the character’s expressions and possible replies. Then, simply connect each reply with a new scene.

Role-play in iSpring Suite

You can also add voice-overs to make the conversation more realistic and engaging.

5. When the role-play is complete, click Save and Return to Course on the toolbar.

This is how to make a presentation interactive with iSpring. When you’ve finished the presentation, you can save it in HTML5 format to share it on the Web or as a SCORM file to upload it to any LMS.

Also read:  14 Types of Quiz Questions to Use in Your eLearning Course

                       How to Convert PowerPoint to MP4 Video on Windows & macOS

2. Nearpod: “Empowering Teachers, Inspiring Students”

Rating: 4.6/5 – 85 reviews ( G2 Crowd )

Nearpod is one of the interactive presentation tools available to teachers and the educational sphere. With this software, teachers can build an interactive slideshow for an online lesson, share it with students, and monitor learner results. There are some very nice unique features, such as the ability to insert assessments into a video and thereby save the flow of the presentation or the integration with Zoom. With the latter, you can combine your interactive slideshow with an ongoing Zoom lesson, boosting overall student engagement and the effectiveness of the educational process.

Nearpod interface screenshot

Create your educational content, then log in to the Nearpod website, upload it there, and add interactive activities such as polls, memory tests, embedded videos, or quizzes. You can share your ready-made presentation with your students by sending them an access code via email, shortlink, or social media.

Presentations for classroom, distance, and hybrid lessons.

Nearpod is the best interactive presentation tool for schools, especially for distance learning.

3. Prezi: “The Most Dynamic and Engaging Presentations Ever”

Rating: 4.2/5 – 4,879 reviews ( G2 Crowd )

Prezi is is one of the best online presentation tools around. Prezi Present lets you design animated content and present it over video footage. With Prezi Design, you can create all kinds of graphics, animate objects, filter images, and, on top of all this, edit your presentation the way you like.

Prezi interface screenshot

You can create your digital presentation from a blank canvas, or use pre-designed templates from a library. If you have some ready-made PowerPoint slides, you can import those as well. When you’ve finished editing your presentation with Prezi, you can convert it into video format and use it during your speech or a webinar on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and others.

Web-ready dynamic presentations.

Prezi is the best interactive presentation program for businesses that have a creative approach. It might also be handy for marketing or sales teams as a sales presentation platform or a pitch deck creation tool because it lets you track who views the presentation and what most interests them.

4. Mentimeter: “Everybody is Heard”

Rating: 4.5/5 – 39 reviews ( G2 Crowd )

Mentimeter  is an online presentation software. With this software, you can add quizzes and real-time voting to gather data, and add images and GIFs to make your presentation engaging.

Menimeter interface screenshot

Mentimeter is a cloud-based tool, meaning all you need to do to start working with it is sign up. Create presentations using templates and themes, quizzes with 13 question types, and insert images and GIFs from integrated free stock images and GIF libraries. Once your presentation is ready, just share a link with your audience.

Well-designed interactive online presentations with real-time response and data analysis.

Mentimeter is one of the best audience engagement tools for gathering feedback-based statistics at companies, schools, and universities.

5. ClassFlow: “Teaching With a Modern Touch”

Rating: 4/5 – 9 reviews ( Common Sense )

ClassFlow is a free cloud-based lesson delivery software that lets you design presentations and gauge your students’ knowledge. ClassFlow is useful for both in-person and distance learning.

Classflow interface screenshot

To start building lessons, designing tests, and managing your classes, you need to create an account. Once you do this, all the features, such as interactive widgets, tests, and flashcards, become more available. You can use them to create presentations and then share them with your students.

In-class, online, or hybrid presentations that provide real-time statistics and can leverage a reward and badge system.

ClassFlow is free presentation software for schools and universities that don’t have a big budget but are eager to enhance their classes and keep their students engaged.

6. SlideDog: “Freedom to Present”

Rating: 4/5 – 13 reviews ( G2 Crowd )

SlideDog is an interactive presentation tool with which you can combine PowerPoint and Prezi slides, PDF files, video files, web pages, and more, into a single seamless presentation.

SlideDog interface screenshot

To create a multimedia presentation, the first thing you need to do is to drag files into a playlist pane. This will be your playback order. SlideDog doesn’t just let you combine files from other programs but also offers some interactions such as questionnaires or live chat with the audience. You can create them with this presentation software, add them to the playlist, and share your presentation.

A quality presentation that includes files in their original formats.

SlideDog is the best presentation software for people who organize meetings, conferences, and other events that involve several speakers with individual materials of different formats.

7. FlowVella: “Apple Application Creation Made Easy”

Rating: 4/5 – 4 reviews ( G2 Crowd )

FlowVella is a presentation tool for Apple devices. This software enables you to have a video, an image, text, and more, all together on one slide. FlowVella urges the user to leave traditional linear slides in the past and helps to build an engaging interactive user experience.

Flowvella interface screenshot

Download this presentation app, open it, and either start building your presentation from scratch or choose one of the ready-made templates. Easily add files of different formats with a drag-and-drop interface. Once your project is ready, save it on your device. When you need to share the presentation, upload it to the cloud and send its unique URL to your audience.

Interactive online presentations that support smart gestures such as tapping, swiping, and zooming objects.

FlowVella is one of the best interactive presentation apps for exhibitors who need to create content to arrange iPad-based kiosks for events.

8. IntuiFace: “Create Amazing Multi-Touch Applications”

Rating: 4.7/5 – 23 reviews ( Capterra )

Intuiface is a powerful tool that converts all your media into interactive content for mobile devices and multi-touch displays. Being a really complex and multifunctional program, Intuiface is an easy-to-use option for people with any level of coding skills, because it is not you who does all the mathematical job of implementing interactivity in your presentation, but the program itself.

IntuiFace interface screenshot

You can start creating your presentation using pre-built templates, by importing from PowerPoint, or from a blank canvas. Perhaps, it’s better to start with a pre-built template to understand all the basics. Just choose the appropriate template, drag content objects and drop them onto the scene, and try interacting with the project. Once you get to know all the features that Intuiface provides, it will be simple to create a quality presentation using advanced options that can add even more interactivity to your content.

Presentations with media are automatically responsive to tap, swipe, and other touchscreen gestures that are available on any device.

Intuiface is the best interactive presentation software for those who want to create a “wow effect” on a multi-touch screen at exhibitions, conferences, and other events.

9. Visme: “Translate boring data into beautiful visuals”

Rating: 4.6/5 – 157 reviews ( G2 Crowd )

Visme is a cloud-based tool that allows you to create interactive presentations, visualize data, and design infographics, reports, charts, and banners for websites and social media.

Visme interface screenshot

There are a good number of ready-made customizable templates that are divided into 4 categories: Presentations, Infographics, Banner, and Custom projects. Choose the appropriate category and select any of the templates you wish. Add interactivity by embedding polls, quizzes, video files, and more. The ready-made presentation can be shared via a link, embedded into a website, or downloaded as a picture or a PDF document.

Visually beautiful interactive presentations that can be created with minimal effort and shared both online and offline.

This is one of the best tools for educators, presenters, and communicators, especially those who prefer using ready-made templates to reduce creation time. It’s also perfect for those who usually work in a team because Visme lets you organize the project data into folders and provide role-based permissions.

10. Pear Deck

Rating: 4.4/5 – 28 reviews ( G2 Crowd )

Pear Deck is a tool that helps you create incredibly beautiful and interactive PowerPoint presentations (or Google Slides) for your students, track their progress in real time, and let them answer questions anonymously so they won’t be afraid to give an incorrect answer and appear silly.

Pear Deck

Download and then open the add-in for PowerPoint Online or for Google Slides. Create your interactive lesson from a blank canvas, or use one of the templates provided. You can add different assessments, questions with draggable answers, audio, images, videos, and more. Once the presentation is ready, launch it with Pear Deck.

A high-quality interactive presentation with lots of features to engage your students and to have them feel safe during your lessons.

This is the best interactive presentation software for schools, and educators working with children as it makes the creation of presentations simple, thanks to ready-to-go templates.

11. Genially

Rating: 4.8/5 – 16 reviews ( G2 Crowd )

Genially is an online platform that lets you convert presentations on any topic and for any audience into extremely interactive and animated content.

Genially

Choose one of thousands of templates, or start from a blank canvas. You can fully customize all the templates, add files, add interactivity, and animate objects. The animation in templates is provided automatically, but if you feel like changing it, you can do so freely. When you finish your presentation, you can present it with Genially, or download it in HTML, PDF, and JPEG formats.

Highly interactive and animated presentations that can be embedded to your website, or presented in any way you desire.

Genially is one of the best interactive presentation tools for people from different professional areas who want to achieve audience engagement by presenting content dynamically, beautifully, and in a highly interactive manner.

12. Beautiful.ai

Rating: 4.8/5 – 78 reviews ( G2 Crowd )

Beautiful.ai is an online presentation maker. Although interactive features are limited to just three, Beautiful.ai’s main advantage is the fact that the designing process itself is interactive: you place an image and the software automatically sets the right width and height, so the entire slide looks beautiful. It makes it extremely easy to create and edit presentations, letting you focus on revising your speech instead of fixing the image size, number of charts, etc.

Beautiful.ai

Choose the appropriate template and customize it with your images, audio, texts, and other content objects. Try working in a team and see how simple and entertaining it is on this platform. Share your presentation via a link, or export it to PPT.

Effective good-looking presentations that are easy and fun to create.

This is one of the best software for people who create or edit presentations often and want to spend less time doing that, while maintaining their work at a high level of quality. Beautiful.ai might be too limited for educational purposes, as you are not able to add assessments to your presentations with it, but if you need to pitch or show a strategy, or even teach a lesson without evaluating learners’ progress, Beautiful.ai proves effective.

How We Tested the Best Interactive Presentation Software

To provide you with reliable information on interactive presentation programs, we read through related articles, compared ratings, and signed up for the free versions of presentation makers to test-drive them. We also read customer reviews to see if our impressions of using the specific software align with the experiences of others. In our search for the best presentation software, we focused on identifying the category of users who would benefit most from a specific software solution.

FAQ on Using Interactive Presentation Software

After choosing a suitable software solution from numerous presentation platforms, you might have some practical questions about creating interactive presentations for different uses. In this case, check out a couple of frequently asked questions in that regard.

1. How can I make my presentation interactive?

Whichever interactive presentation software you use, work on them at the levels of text, visuals, and what learners can do with your presentation (such as navigating through slides and triggering certain animations).

Don’t overuse texts and make sure to supplement them with pictures, characters, and backgrounds. If possible, put large texts into a script and record a voice-over for your presentation.

2. How do I make an interactive PowerPoint presentation for eLearning?

A great way to make your presentation interactive and stimulate the audience participation is to use triggered animations. Below are the three examples of triggered animation types that you can make in standard PowerPoint.

  • a hidden-object game 
  • a jeopardy game
  • interactive flashcards

The fastest and most robust way to make an online course out of your presentation is to convert it into one of the eLearning formats, such as SCORM, which will enable you to track how learners take your course and answer quizzes. You can make it in the abovementioned iSpring Suite, in the same PowerPoint interface.

3. What are some other popular PowerPoint alternatives for creating interactive presentations online?

Some popular PowerPoint alternatives that weren’t mentioned in our list are Haiku Deck, Google Slides, and Apple Keynote. These platforms offer great features and templates that will allow you to engage audiences and make presentations more dynamic.

4. How does Google Slides compare to PowerPoint as a presentation tool?

Google Slides is a widely used cloud-based presentation tool that offers many features that are similar to PowerPoint. It allows collaboration in real time, offers a wide range of templates, and supports the insertion of various media elements. One advantage of Google Slides is its seamless integration with other Google services, such as Google Drive. Additionally, Google Slides allows the creation of presentations online — they can be accessed and edited from any device with an internet connection, making it a convenient choice for remote or collaborative work.

Final Thoughts

We hope you found this article helpful and discovered at least one interactive presentation software that you can’t wait to try. If you need to create professional-looking courses containing slides, scenarios, screencasts, and assessments without spending time on training, start with an iSpring Suite 14-day trial and explore all of its features right now.

Fast course authoring toolkit

Create online courses and assessments in record time.

Fast course authoring toolkit

Content creator:

Helga Kolinski

iSpring editor and boots-on-the-ground author. She’s always ready to share in-depth insights on the most hardcore eLearning topics with her readers.

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AI presentation maker

When lack of inspiration or time constraints are something you’re worried about, it’s a good idea to seek help. Slidesgo comes to the rescue with its latest functionality—the AI presentation maker! With a few clicks, you’ll have wonderful slideshows that suit your own needs . And it’s totally free!

virtual presentation tools

Generate presentations in minutes

We humans make the world move, but we need to sleep, rest and so on. What if there were someone available 24/7 for you? It’s time to get out of your comfort zone and ask the AI presentation maker to give you a hand. The possibilities are endless : you choose the topic, the tone and the style, and the AI will do the rest. Now we’re talking!

Customize your AI-generated presentation online

Alright, your robotic pal has generated a presentation for you. But, for the time being, AIs can’t read minds, so it’s likely that you’ll want to modify the slides. Please do! We didn’t forget about those time constraints you’re facing, so thanks to the editing tools provided by one of our sister projects —shoutouts to Wepik — you can make changes on the fly without resorting to other programs or software. Add text, choose your own colors, rearrange elements, it’s up to you! Oh, and since we are a big family, you’ll be able to access many resources from big names, that is, Freepik and Flaticon . That means having a lot of images and icons at your disposal!

virtual presentation tools

How does it work?

Think of your topic.

First things first, you’ll be talking about something in particular, right? A business meeting, a new medical breakthrough, the weather, your favorite songs, a basketball game, a pink elephant you saw last Sunday—you name it. Just type it out and let the AI know what the topic is.

Choose your preferred style and tone

They say that variety is the spice of life. That’s why we let you choose between different design styles, including doodle, simple, abstract, geometric, and elegant . What about the tone? Several of them: fun, creative, casual, professional, and formal. Each one will give you something unique, so which way of impressing your audience will it be this time? Mix and match!

Make any desired changes

You’ve got freshly generated slides. Oh, you wish they were in a different color? That text box would look better if it were placed on the right side? Run the online editor and use the tools to have the slides exactly your way.

Download the final result for free

Yes, just as envisioned those slides deserve to be on your storage device at once! You can export the presentation in .pdf format and download it for free . Can’t wait to show it to your best friend because you think they will love it? Generate a shareable link!

What is an AI-generated presentation?

It’s exactly “what it says on the cover”. AIs, or artificial intelligences, are in constant evolution, and they are now able to generate presentations in a short time, based on inputs from the user. This technology allows you to get a satisfactory presentation much faster by doing a big chunk of the work.

Can I customize the presentation generated by the AI?

Of course! That’s the point! Slidesgo is all for customization since day one, so you’ll be able to make any changes to presentations generated by the AI. We humans are irreplaceable, after all! Thanks to the online editor, you can do whatever modifications you may need, without having to install any software. Colors, text, images, icons, placement, the final decision concerning all of the elements is up to you.

Can I add my own images?

Absolutely. That’s a basic function, and we made sure to have it available. Would it make sense to have a portfolio template generated by an AI without a single picture of your own work? In any case, we also offer the possibility of asking the AI to generate images for you via prompts. Additionally, you can also check out the integrated gallery of images from Freepik and use them. If making an impression is your goal, you’ll have an easy time!

Is this new functionality free? As in “free of charge”? Do you mean it?

Yes, it is, and we mean it. We even asked our buddies at Wepik, who are the ones hosting this AI presentation maker, and they told us “yup, it’s on the house”.

Are there more presentation designs available?

From time to time, we’ll be adding more designs. The cool thing is that you’ll have at your disposal a lot of content from Freepik and Flaticon when using the AI presentation maker. Oh, and just as a reminder, if you feel like you want to do things yourself and don’t want to rely on an AI, you’re on Slidesgo, the leading website when it comes to presentation templates. We have thousands of them, and counting!.

How can I download my presentation?

The easiest way is to click on “Download” to get your presentation in .pdf format. But there are other options! You can click on “Present” to enter the presenter view and start presenting right away! There’s also the “Share” option, which gives you a shareable link. This way, any friend, relative, colleague—anyone, really—will be able to access your presentation in a moment.

Discover more content

This is just the beginning! Slidesgo has thousands of customizable templates for Google Slides and PowerPoint. Our designers have created them with much care and love, and the variety of topics, themes and styles is, how to put it, immense! We also have a blog, in which we post articles for those who want to find inspiration or need to learn a bit more about Google Slides or PowerPoint. Do you have kids? We’ve got a section dedicated to printable coloring pages! Have a look around and make the most of our site!

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    A virtual presentation is a demonstration, lecture, informational session or speech meant to inform, persuade, motivate, build goodwill, or present a new concept through a digital medium such as a web video conferencing software where the host, presenter and attendees are convening remotely.

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    iSpring Suite is an interactive presentation maker that lets you design engaging courses on your own or in a team, quickly and easily. It works as a PowerPoint add-in that provides tons of robust options. To make a truly interactive presentation, you can add role-play simulations, timed quizzes, screencasts, and video lectures.

  21. Free AI Presentation Maker

    AI Presentation Maker. When lack of inspiration or time constraints are something you're worried about, it's a good idea to seek help. Slidesgo comes to the rescue with its latest functionality—the AI Presentation Maker! With a few clicks, you'll have wonderful slideshows that suit your own needs. And it's totally free! Get started.

  22. How to Give an Engaging Virtual Presentation

    Standing up during a meeting boosts your energy and gives your posture a more professional look, a true win-win. 5. Make the Most of Online Tools. In recent years, modern meeting solutions have added a number of helpful features to further enhance the virtual presentation experience.

  23. Watts Water Technologies Announces Webcast of its Virtual Presentation

    Watts Water Technologies Announces Webcast of its Virtual Presentation in Gabelli Funds 34(th) Annual Pump, Valve & Water Systems Symposium Feb 19, 2024, 2:28 pm EST Share

  24. Citi 2024 Virtual Oncology Leadership Summit

    Webcast Presentation. Webcast Link. Event Details. Title. Citi 2024 Virtual Oncology Leadership Summit. Date / Time. Feb 21, 2024 at 1:00 PM EST. Add to Outlook. Add to Google Calendar.

  25. Mattel

    Mattel Announces 2024 Virtual Investor Presentation. EL SEGUNDO, Calif.-- (BUSINESS WIRE)-- Mattel, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAT) today announced that it will host a Virtual Investor Presentation to provide a strategic business update and its plans for 2024. The event will be webcast on Thursday, March 7, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.