is presentation software used for

Best presentation software of 2024

Make perfect slides for speeches and talks

Best overall

Best for branding, best for marketing, best for themes, best for media, best unique.

How we test

The best presentation software makes it simple and easy to create, manage, and share slideshow presentations.

A person setting up files to import into Powerpoint.

1. Best overall 2. Best for branding 3. Best for marketing 4. Best for themes 5. Best for media 6. Best unique 7. FAQs 8. How we test

Presentation software runs at the heart of business sales, management, and development, so it's important to ensure you have the best presentation software for your needs. This is especially when looking to share ideas, concepts, and workflows, and the ability to present these in a simple and understandable way is essential.

However, while presentation software has been traditionally limited to text and images, it has widened its ability to work with different media such as video and audio .

Therefore it's important for the best presentation software to not simply be easy and simple to use, but also be able to support additional media so that presentations can be more engaging, lively, and ultimately serve their purpose in educating and updating their intended audience.

Below we've listed the best presentation software currently on the market.

We've also listed the best free presentation software .

The best office software in the world is: Microsoft 365

<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=92X363&xcust=hawk-custom-tracking&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fproducts.office.com%2Fen-us%2Fcompare-all-microsoft-office-products%3Ftab%3D2&sref" data-link-merchant="SkimLinks - office.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> The best office software in the world is: Microsoft 365 There are many different office software suites out there, but Microsoft Office remains the original and best, offering an unsurpassed range of features and functionality that rivals just can't match.

Even better, <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=92X363&xcust=hawk-custom-tracking&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fproducts.office.com%2Fen-us%2Fcompare-all-microsoft-office-products%3Ftab%3D2&sref" data-link-merchant="SkimLinks - office.com"" data-link-merchant="SkimLinks - office.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Microsoft 365 - previously branded as Office 365 - is a cloud-based solution which means you can use it on any computer, mobile device, or smartphone, without having to worry about compatibility. All your files are saved in the cloud and synced between devices, so you can begin work on a document at home or in the office, then continue working on it on the go.

<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=92X363&xcust=hawk-custom-tracking&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fproducts.office.com%2Fen-us%2Fcompare-all-microsoft-office-products%3Ftab%3D2&sref" data-link-merchant="SkimLinks - office.com"" data-link-merchant="SkimLinks - office.com"" data-link-merchant="SkimLinks - office.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> You can sign up to Microsoft 365 here .

The best presentation software of 2024 in full:

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1. PowerPoint

Our expert review:

Reasons to buy

For most people, Microsoft 's PowerPoint remains the original and best of all the presentation software platforms out there. While other companies have managed to catch up and offer rival products worthy of consideration, the fact is that PowerPoint's familiar interface and ubiquitous availability means it remains a favorite for the majority of people.

On the one hand, it's long been a staple of the hugely popular Microsoft Office suite, meaning that for most users this is going to be the first - and last - presentation software they are going to need to use.

Additionally, Microsoft has made PowerPoint, along with their other office products, available as free apps (with limited functionality) on both iOS and Android for mobile use, meaning it's even harder to avoid them. And this is before we even consider the inclusion of PowerPoint in Microsoft's cloud-based Microsoft 365.

It does everything necessary that you'd expect of presentation software, allowing you to add text and media to a series of slides, to accompany a talk and other presentations. There are easy-to-use templates included to help spice things up a little, but even a general user with little experience of it is likely to find themselves able to use PowerPoint without much trouble at all.

Overall, it's hard to go wrong with PowerPoint, and although Microsoft 365 has a nominal cost, the apps are free to use even if they do have more limited functionality.

Read our full Microsoft PowerPoint review .

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2. CustomShow

Reasons to avoid.

Branding says a lot about a business, and it’s something firms need to get right from day one – from a good logo to a suitable font. CustomShow is business presentation software that puts all these elements of branding first.

Using the system, you can design and present customized, branded presentations that reflect your company and the products you offer, featuring the aforementioned logo and custom fonts. As well as this, you get a slide library and analytics to ensure your presentations are a success.

What’s more, you can import presentations into the software, and use it to tweak them further. There’s also integration with SalesForce , and because the platform is cloud-based, you can access your presentations on computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Considering the focus on branding, this offering could be good for marketing and sales teams, and it's used by major companies such as HBO and CBS Interactive.

3. ClearSlide

Just like CustomShow, ClearSlide has a niche focus for companies. The platform is targeted at firms looking to generate successful marketing campaigns, pushing sales via presentations (and more), not least through a range of analytics and metrics to work for sales and marketing.

With the product, you can upload a range of files, including PowerPoint, Keynote, PDF, and Excel. ClearSlide is integrated with other platforms, including Google Drive, Dropbox, and Salesforce.

This system is pretty complex and may offer too many irrelevant features for some businesses, but you can create customized content that reflects your company and the message you’re trying to get out to customers. There are also some good metrics and analysis features, and you can sign up for a free trial before making any decisions.

The real strength of ClearSlide comes from its focus on sales and marketing data, not least being able to track user engagement alongside other metrics.

4. Haiku Deck

Any presentation app will allow you to personalize your slides to at least some extent, but Haiku Deck goes one step further than the competition. It comes with a wide range of themes suited to different needs, and you also get access to 40 million free images from the Creative Commons collection.

When it comes to creating a presentation, you have the option to do so on the web, which means your presentation is accessible across a range of mobile devices as well as desktops. Regardless of the device used, you’re able to select from a variety of different fonts, layouts, and filters to make the perfect presentation.

The great thing about these various customization options is that they’re categorized into different industries and use cases. For instance, you’ll find themes for teaching, cooking, real estate, and startups. Most of the features require you to be online, but hopefully, you’ll have a sturdy net connection wherever you go.

5. SlideDog

It’s all too easy to end up creating a presentation that’s unappealing, and the last thing you want to do is make the audience fall asleep. SlideDog lets you combine almost any type of media to create a rich presentation that’s sure to keep the viewers’ peepers open, avoiding the ‘cookie cutter’ look that makes presentations seem dull.

Marketed as a web-based multimedia presentation tool, it gives you the ability to combine PowerPoint presentations, graphics, PDF files, Prezi presentations, web pages, pictures, videos, and movie clips. You can drag these into custom playlists and display them to your audience with ease.

You’re able to remotely control your presentations and playlists from your smartphone, the web, or a secondary computer, and there’s also the option to share slides in real-time. Audience members can even view your slide from their own devices by clicking a link. That’s a handy feature if you’re looking to create an immersive presentation experience.

SlideDog is probably the cheapest of the presentation software featured, with a free account that will cover the essential features. However, for live sharing and premium support, you need to upgrade.

Read our full SlideDog review .

Prezi is one of the more unique presentation tools. Instead of presenting your graphics and text in a slide-to-slide format, you can create highly visual and interactive presentation canvases with the goal of “emphasizing the relationship between the ideas”.

Presentations can also be tailored to the specific audience, as this is a flexible platform that’s capable of skipping ahead, or veering off into a side topic, without having to flip through all the slides to get to a particular bit.

For business users, there are a variety of handy tools available. By downloading Prezi , you can build and edit presentations with your colleagues in real-time, which is perfect for companies with teams based around the globe.

When you have created a presentation you’re happy with, you can present it live (in HD) and send a direct link to viewers. There are some analysis tools here, too – you can see who’s accessed your presentation, which parts of it, and for how long. The app is available for Mac and Windows devices.

Read our full Prezi review .

Presentation software FAQs

Which presentation software is best for you.

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

How we tested the best presentation software

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

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

We've also featured the best alternatives to Microsoft Office .

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Nicholas Fearn is a freelance technology journalist and copywriter from the Welsh valleys. His work has appeared in publications such as the FT, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, The Next Web, T3, Android Central, Computer Weekly, and many others. He also happens to be a diehard Mariah Carey fan!

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The 11 Best Presentation Software to Use in 2023

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

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

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

Choose the best presentation software by weighing the pros and cons

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

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

Let’s dive in!

1. Piktochart

presentation software piktochart, best presentation software

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

An area in which Piktochart shines is crafting unique presentations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Microsoft PowerPoint

microsoft powerpoint, powerpoint presentation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Google Slides

google slides, presentation software example

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. SlideDog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Haiku Deck

haiku deck, presentation software example

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

You can avoid such an unfortunate scenario with Haiku Deck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Prezi Business

prezi business, business presentation software

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

screenshot of ludus presentation software

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. Slidebean

screenshot of slidebean presentation software

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. ClearSlide

screenshot of clearslide presentation software

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

screenshot of vyond presentation software

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best presentation software is…

…completely up to you!

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

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

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

Ease of use. Is it easy for you to understand or will it require lots of training before you can start creating presentations?
Accessibility. Can you access your presentation software from any device or are you limited to carrying your laptop to every presentation?
Real-time collaboration. Can multiple people work on the same project or do you have to keep downloading and emailing drafts?
Create design tools. Can you create presentations with dynamic design elements or are you stuck with the same kind of slide each time?
Template availability. Is this tool only accessible to a design professional or can anyone create stunning presentations through pre-designed and updated templates?

Piktochart , for example, would be a fantastic presentation software choice among the long list of PowerPoint alternatives for teams looking for a variety of eye-catching designs without requiring much technical know-how. Meanwhile, Microsoft PowerPoint might be the best presentation software for those who are just looking to play it safe.

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

Collaborate on presentations, reports, and more with Piktochart.

Watch this free demo to learn how your team can collaborate on visual content projects more effectively with Piktochart.

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

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Presentation Software Definition and Examples

Presentation software brings complex ideas to life, one slide at a time

Brock University

Klaus Vedfelt / Getty Images

Many software suites offer a program designed to accompany a speaker when he or she delivers a presentation. The specific presentation program in this suite of programs is usually (but not always) in the form of a slide show. This category of program is well-established; it doesn't change much, and it supports not only online visual display but also, generally, the printing of related handouts and speaker notes.

Benefits of Presentation Software

These programs make it simple and often fun to create a presentation for your audience. They contain a text editor to add your written content; they support charts and graphic images such as photographs, clip art or other objects to enliven your slideshow and get your point across crisply.

For a deeper dive into some of the leading applications in this software category, check out:

Microsoft Sway

Besides PowerPoint, Microsoft also offers Sway, which is a presentation and newsletter designer that supports simpler and more image-focused designs along a familiar linear flow path.

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12 Best Presentation Software for 2024

By Krystle Wong , Jan 12, 2024

Whether you’re a student, professional or entrepreneur, having access to the right presentation tools can make all the difference.

When you craft a well-executed presentation , your message becomes more memorable. You’re not just sharing information; you’re weaving a story, painting a picture and leaving a lasting impact on your audience’s minds.

We’re living in the age of information overload, where attention spans are shorter than ever. A good presentation slide takes this into account, breaking down complex information into bite-sized chunks. It guides your audience through a logical flow, allowing them to digest information effortlessly and retain key points without feeling overwhelmed.

To help you stay ahead of the game, I’ve compiled a list of the 12 best software for presentations. These PowerPoint alternatives offer a combination of user-friendly interfaces, stunning visuals, collaboration features and innovative functionalities that will take your presentations to the next level.

Let’s dive in and explore these top presentation software picks!

1. Venngage

Allow me to be a little bit biased here but my top pick is none other than, you guessed it — Venngage! Venngage goes beyond just presentations to focus on data visualization and transforming complex information into visually appealing and engaging visuals.

One of the standout features of Venngage as a presentation software is the extensive library of infographic elements. Gain access to a wide range of pre-designed elements such as icons, charts, maps as well as illustrations to simplify the process of creating data-driven and visually appealing presentations.

You don’t have to be a pro when designing with Venngage. Venngage’s drag-and-drop interface allows you to customize your presentations by simply dragging and dropping elements onto the canvas. You can tweak sizes, colors and layouts with ease, making your presentations visually cohesive and personalized, even if you’re not a design wizard.

Just so you know, some of our features and templates are free to use and some require a small monthly fee. Sign-up is completely free, as is access to Venngage’s online drag-and-drop editor. Here’s how Venngage’s presentation maker can become your secret weapon in the quest for presentation success.

Vast selection of templates

Venngage boasts an extensive library of professionally designed templates, catering to a wide range of industries and presentation purposes. Whether you’re creating a marketing report, educational presentation or business pitch, Venngage’s presentation tool offers templates that provide a solid foundation for your designs.

Save 20+ hours of designing with Venngage’s fully customizable, pre-designed infographic templates. These presentation templates provide a good foundation with well-structured layouts and visually appealing aesthetics.

Data visualization made easy

Venngage simplifies the process of data visualization, making it accessible to users of all backgrounds. With a few clicks, you can transform dull statistics into visually engaging charts and graphs that tell a compelling story.

Seamless real-time in-editor collaboration tools

Venngage brings teamwork to the next level with our seamless collaboration tools designed to foster collaboration across teams, departments and the entire organization. Whether you’re in the same room or across the globe, Venngage enables real-time collaboration that makes working together becomes a breeze.

Consistently brand your designs with smart Autobrand features

Effortlessly infuse your presentation slides with your brand’s colors, fonts and logos with Venngage’s My Brand Kit . Upload your brand assets and create engaging presentations by applying your branding to any template you create on Venngage.

Who is it for

Marketers, designers, educators and businesses that require data-driven and visually appealing presentations.

Key features

Infographic elements, data visualization tools, collaboration options, customizable templates.

Create your first 5 designs with Venngage for free and upgrade to a premium or business plan for $10 USD/month per user and $24 USD/month per user to enjoy premium features. For larger teams who need extra support, controls and security, the enterprise plan starts from $499 USD/month for 10+ seats.

Additionally, there are also plans available for classrooms priced at $99 USD/year for up to 35 students per instructor. Non profit organizations can also apply for a nonprofit discount to any Venngage plan.

2. Microsoft PowerPoint

Source: Screenshot from Microsoft PowerPoint

Even with dozens of presentation software and tools out there, PowerPoint presentations have stood the test of time as one of the best presentation software. In fact, 89% of people still use PowerPoint presentations over competitor services .

Whether you’re a student, teacher, business professional or just a creative soul, PowerPoint’s user-friendly interface allows both beginners and experienced users to create presentations with ease.

PowerPoint delivers captivating and engaging presentations through its advanced animation and transition effects. You can create interactive PowerPoint presentations by captivating your audience and guiding them through your content with seamless transitions and eye-catching animations.

Seamless integration with other Microsoft Office tools is another significant advantage of PowerPoint as a presentation software. As part of the Microsoft Office suite, PowerPoint effortlessly integrates with other familiar applications such as Word and Excel. This integration allows you to incorporate charts, graphs and written content from these tools directly into your presentation.

However, collaboration features in PowerPoint can be somewhat limited compared to dedicated collaboration platforms. While you can share and co-edit presentations with others, the collaboration options may not be as robust as those offered by specialized presentation tools.

Suitable for individuals, students, educators and businesses of all sizes.

Customizable templates, multimedia support, extensive slide editing options, robust animations and transitions.

You can subscribe to PowerPoint as part of your Microsoft 365 subscription with various plans tailored for businesses, ranging from $6 to $22 USD/month. Additionally, there is also the option to purchase an unbundled PowerPoint account separately, priced at $159.99 USD.

3. Google Slides

Source: Screenshot from Google Slides

Unlike PowerPoint which requires file sharing and manual syncing for teamwork, Google Slides enables real-time collaboration and easy access from any device with an internet connection.

Google Slides shines in its seamless collaboration capabilities. Multiple users can work on the same presentation simultaneously, enabling real-time editing and fostering efficient teamwork. The integrated commenting feature on Google Slides allows for shared feedback and discussions, enhancing collaboration even further.

Google Slides’ cloud-based storage and auto-saving feature ensures that your work is constantly saved, minimizing the risk of losing progress or important changes. No more panicking over unsaved slides and changes.

But that also means that Google Slides heavily relies on an internet connection for full functionality and access is more limited compared to desktop-based software. Although an offline mode is available, Google Slides has certain limitations and may not provide the same level of functionality as when connected to the internet.

Templates and customization features-wise, Google Slides also have fewer design options compared to other presentation tools. This may limit the level of visual creativity and flexibility for those seeking intricate designs or specialized effects.

Ideal for remote teams, educators, students and anyone looking for easy collaboration and access from any device.

Real-time collaboration, shared commenting, offline mode and built-in sharing options.

Google Slides is accessible to all individuals with a Google account at no cost, providing all users with access to its full range of features. However, for businesses and teams looking for additional organizational capabilities, there are subscription plans available ranging from $6 to $18 USD/month.

4. Keynote (for Mac users)

Source: Screenshot from Keynote

For Apple users, Keynote is a presentation tool designed exclusively for your Apple devices and is available on macOS, iOS and iPadOS. Keynote is known for its sleek and intuitive interface, reflecting Apple’s design aesthetics.

It offers visually appealing templates, animations, and transitions, allowing users to create polished and modern-looking presentations. Keynote users can seamlessly incorporate images, videos, audio files and interactive elements into their presentations. The presentation software also includes a wide range of animations and transitions, enabling smooth and cinematic effects that bring slides to life.

Keynote presentations is known for its seamless integration within the Apple ecosystem. It works effortlessly with other Apple applications, allowing users to combine different elements and data from various sources. Presentations created in Keynote can be easily shared and accessed across Apple devices, ensuring a consistent experience for both the presenter and the audience.

Additionally, Keynote as a presentation software offers collaborative editing capabilities, enabling multiple users to work on the same presentation simultaneously. Users can share their presentations with others, who can then provide feedback, make edits and contribute to the project in real-time.

That said, since Keynote is exclusively designed for Apple devices, it may not be accessible or fully compatible with non-Apple platforms. Hence, sharing presentations created in Keynote with users on different platforms may require exporting or converting the files to a compatible format, which can lead to potential formatting issues or loss of certain features.

Mac users, creatives, professionals, educators and anyone who wants visually stunning presentations.

Elegant templates, advanced multimedia options, cinematic transitions and collaborative editing.

Keynote is available for free on Apple devices, including macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. As it comes pre-installed with these devices, users can access and use Keynote without any additional cost.

Source: Screenshot from Prezi

Known for its distinctive zooming presentation style, Prezi revolutionizes the way you create presentations by offering a visually engaging and non-linear approach.

One of Prezi’s renowned features is its unique zooming and transition effects, allowing presenters to navigate through a virtual canvas seamlessly. This dynamic presentation style enhances engagement by creating a sense of movement and spatial relationship between ideas.

Moreover, Prezi offers cloud-based collaboration, making it easy for multiple users to collaborate on a presentation in real-time. This feature facilitates seamless teamwork, enabling users to collectively develop and refine their presentations regardless of their physical locations.

Prezi presentations also include interactive elements, such as embedded videos, images and hyperlinks. Utilizing these elements would allow presenters to create interactive presentations and engage their audience on a deeper level.

However, Prezi has a steeper learning curve compared to more traditional presentation tools. Users may require some time and practice to become proficient in navigating the canvas, creating smooth transitions and effectively utilizing all of Prezi’s features.

Creative professionals, educators and individuals who want to create visually captivating and non-linear presentations.

Zooming presentation style, interactive elements, cloud-based collaboration and reusable templates.

For individuals & business professionals

Basics: Create and share up to 5 visual projects for free

Standard: Starting at $5 USD/month

Plus: Starting at $12 USD/month

Premium: Starting at $16 USD/month

Teams: Starting at $19 USD/month per user (billed annually)

For Students & Educators

EDU Plus: Starting at $3/month

EDU Pro: Starting at $4/month

EDU Teams: Enquiry required with Prezi sales team

Source: Screenshot from Canva

One of the great things about Canva as a presentation tool is its user-friendly interface, which makes it super easy to use even if you’re not a design pro. You can simply drag and drop elements to create your presentation slides without breaking a sweat.

Canva’s vast collection of pre-designed templates caters to various purposes and occasions. The availability of these templates allows users to jumpstart their design projects with professional-looking layouts, saving valuable time and effort.

For businesses or educational institutions working on group projects or marketing campaigns, Canva also offers collaboration features that enhance teamwork and co-creation. Users can invite team members or clients to collaborate on a design project, enabling real-time feedback and efficient design processes.

While Canva does offer some basic slide transition effects, the range and customization options for transitions may be limited compared to dedicated presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote.

Individuals, students, small businesses and startups seeking professional-looking marketing materials and presentations.

Extensive template options, intuitive drag-and-drop interface, ability to share presentations as downloadable files or online links and built-in multimedia support for adding videos , images, and audio to slides.

The free version of Canva provides a wide range of features and resources, with the only limitations being the use of premium resources that can be acquired either through separate purchases or by subscribing to the Canva Pro plan. The Canva Pro plan is available for $12.99 USD per month or $119.99 USD per year.

For collaborative purposes, Canva Teams is available at a price of $14.99 USD per month, with an additional charge of $14.99 USD per month for every team member beyond the initial five.

7. Adobe Express

Source: Screenshot from Adobe Express

As part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, Adobe Express is a presentation software that offers a simplified and user-friendly interface. With its intuitive interface, Adobe Express allows users to create visually stunning presentations with ease. Users can access both design professionals and individuals without extensive design experience.

One of the notable advantages of Adobe Express is its seamless integration with other Adobe products, such as Photoshop and Illustrator. This integration enables users to leverage the power of these industry-standard design tools within their presentations, providing access to advanced design features and a vast library of high-quality assets.

Adobe Express is also great for creating interactive presentations. Its extensive multimedia support, allowing users to incorporate videos, audio files and interactive elements to keep your audience engaged.

That being said, some of its advanced features may require familiarity with other Adobe tools, which can be challenging for beginners who are not already familiar with the Adobe Creative Cloud ecosystem.

Designers, creative professionals, individuals and businesses seeking professional-grade presentation design.

Professional design options, multimedia support, easy integration with other Adobe products and cloud-based collaboration.

While the free version for Adobe Express includes all the core features, users can gain access to premium templates and features when they upgrade to the Premium subscription for $9.99 USD/month.

For businesses and teams, Adobe provides tailored plans that include additional features like collaboration tools, centralized license management and enterprise-level support. The pricing for these plans depends on the number of licenses and the specific needs of the organization. It’s best to consult with Adobe or their authorized resellers to get accurate pricing information for business plans.

8. Haiku Deck

Source: Haiku Deck

Haiku Deck is all about visual storytelling, offering a simple and minimalist approach to designing presentations. With its clean and minimalist templates, Haiku Deck makes it a breeze to create presentations that focus on eye-catching images.

Haiku Deck is a user-friendly presentation software that offers a straightforward and intuitive interface. It’s designed to be easily accessible on both computers and mobile devices, giving you the flexibility to create quick and practical presentations on the go.

Plus, the presentation tool seamlessly integrates with image search engines, making it a piece of cake to find and add high-quality visuals that enhance the overall look and feel of your presentation.

However,if you’re looking for advanced features like complex animations or interactive elements, you might not find them here. While the clean and minimalist templates are gorgeous, they don’t offer as much flexibility for customization.

Educators, individuals and professionals who appreciate the power of visual storytelling and minimalist design.

Image-focused templates, easy-to-use interface, cloud-based collaboration and seamless image search integration.

Haiku Deck offers a free trial that allows you to experience the software with one presentation. If you decide to upgrade, they have different pricing plans available. Additionally, Haiku Deck also offers special pricing to qualifying nonprofit organizations, students and educators.

The Pro plans are available at $9.99 per month with annual billing or $19.99 per month with monthly billing. For those seeking advanced features, the Premium plans are priced at $29.99 per month.

Source: Screenshot from Ludus

Ludus brings together the best of both worlds by offering the traditional slide deck format along with interactive and multimedia elements that take presentations to a whole new level.

The presentation software is rich in multimedia capabilities, allowing users to seamlessly integrate videos, audio and elements to create interactive presentations that captivate the audience.

Ludus offers unique presentation tools that enable users to incorporate interactive elements like clickable buttons, hover effects and embedded web content, enabling a more dynamic and engaging presentation experience.

This makes Ludus a great choice for designers, creatives, marketing professionals, and anyone who wants to create interactive and visually appealing presentations that leave a lasting impression. Collaboration is another area where Ludus excels. The software offers collaborative editing, allowing multiple users to edit presentations simultaneously.

However, it’s worth mentioning that Ludus has relatively limited templates compared to some other presentation software options. While the customization options are vast, users might find themselves starting from scratch or investing more time in creating the initial design. Additionally, for individuals new to the platform, there might be a learning curve involved in fully harnessing all of Ludus’ features and capabilities.

Designers, creatives, marketing professionals and anyone looking for interactive and visually appealing presentations.

Interactive and multimedia elements, collaborative editing, extensive design customization, real-time comments and feedback.

Ludus offers a starting price of $14.99 USD/month per user for teams consisting of 1-15 members with all features included. For larger teams requiring additional licenses, Ludus encourages reaching out for more information on pricing. It’s worth noting that Ludus provides a 30-day free trial, allowing users to explore the platform and its features before committing to a subscription.

10. Slidebean

Source: Screenshot from Slidebean

Slidebean offers a unique approach to slide design by automating the process and simplifying the creation of well-designed presentations. With its automation features, Slidebean streamlines the design process, saving users valuable time and effort.

The highlight of Slidebean is its automated slide design functionality. Using artificial intelligence (AI), the software generates visually appealing slide layouts based on the content provided. Slidebean also offers collaboration options, allowing multiple team members to work on a presentation simultaneously.

Another advantage of Slidebean is its AI-powered content suggestions. The software intelligently analyzes the presentation content and provides helpful suggestions for improving the messaging and overall flow. This feature ensures that users can effectively communicate their ideas and engage their audience.

Unlike Ludus, Slidebean may not cater to users who prefer extensive customization and control over their slide layouts. Certain advanced features are only available in premium plans, which may require an upgrade for those seeking more advanced functionality.

Startups, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and individuals who want to create polished presentations quickly.

Automated design, content suggestions, collaboration tools and pitch deck-specific templates.

The free version offers limited functionalities, but it provides a sufficient opportunity to experience Slidebean’s capabilities and understand its workflow. However, to export your presentation and access advanced features, upgrading to a higher plan is necessary.

The all-access plan is available at $228 USD/year, while additional services such as startup expert consultations and pitch deck and financial model services are available for separate purchase.

11. Beautiful.ai

Source: Screenshot from Beautiful.ai

Beautiful.ai aims to simplify the process of creating visually stunning and professional-looking slides with minimal effort. One of the notable strengths of the presentation software is its collection of smart templates and design suggestions.

Their templates are intelligently designed to provide visually appealing layouts, saving users valuable time and effort in creating presentations. Unlike other types of presentation software, the platform leverages AI-powered technology to offer layout optimization, ensuring that slide elements are positioned optimally for maximum impact.

Beautiful.ai also offers time-saving features that streamline the presentation creation process. The software automatically adjusts the layout and formatting as users add or modify content, eliminating the need for manual adjustments.

As the software provides smart templates and design suggestions, customization options may be somewhat limited. Users may find that certain design elements or layout adjustments are not as flexible as they would like.

Individuals, startups and professionals who want visually impressive presentations without extensive design skills.

Smart templates, automated design suggestions, AI-powered layout optimization and easy slide customization.

Beautiful.ai provides two subscription options for users. The Pro plan is available at a monthly cost of $12 USD /month, while the Team plan is priced at $40 USD/month. Both plans are billed annually. You can also subscribe to the monthly subscription for ad hoc projects and gain access to all pro features for $45 USD/month (billed monthly).

There is a 14-day free trial period that allows users to thoroughly test and explore the features and capabilities of the tool before committing to a subscription.

Source: Screenshot from Pitch

Pitch is a modern video presentation maker that stands out with its collaborative and iterative approach to presentation creation.

One of the key strengths of Pitch lies in its collaborative features. The presentation software provides robust collaboration tools that allow team members to work together in real-time. This makes it easy for users to collaborate on presentation content, provide feedback and make revisions collectively.

Pitch boasts an extensive slide library, offering a wide range of professionally designed templates to choose from. These templates serve as a foundation for creating visually stunning presentations while providing a starting point that saves time and ensures a polished look.

The availability of diverse templates caters to different industries, topics and presentation styles, allowing users to create presentations for their needs.

Seamless integration with project management tools is another advantage of Pitch. The software integrates well with popular project management platforms, enabling users to streamline their workflow by syncing tasks, deadlines and other project-related information with their presentations.

For teams, startups and businesses that value collaboration, feedback and the ability to iterate on their presentations

Collaboration tools, version control, project management integration and template library.

Users can create unlimited presentations and enjoy the starter plan for free or upgrade to Pro for $8 USD/month, billed annually.

There you have it — the top 12 best presentation tools for the year! Whether you value simplicity, collaboration, automation, design versatility or data visualization, these presentation software examples have a solution out there for your future presentations.

Got your mind set on your to-go presentation software? Great! Now it’s time to start creating your slides and ace that presentation.

The best presentation software

These powerpoint alternatives go beyond the basics..

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

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 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 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 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 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.

Improve your productivity automatically. Use Zapier to get your apps working together.

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

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

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

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

What is presentation software?

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

What features should you look for?

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

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

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

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

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

Collaboration

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

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

Shareability

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

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

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

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

Jordan Turner

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

The 10 Best Presentation Software for 2023: Complete Guide

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

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

What is a presentation software?

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

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

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

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

Related Read: What Makes Up the Best Presentation Templates?

What makes a good presentation tool?

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

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

Ease of use: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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

Customization: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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

Final result: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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

Best PowerPoint Alternatives (Death by Power Point)

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

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

What presentation software is better than PowerPoint?

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

Best 10 presentation software alternative list for 2023

(Updated December 2022)

Keynote presentation
Google Slides

1- SLIDEBEAN PRESENTATION SOFTWARE

Ease of use: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - Fantastic!

Customization: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Good

Final result: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - Fantastic!

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

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

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

You can sign up free for Slidebean here

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2- apple keynote.

Ease of use: ★ ★ ★ - OK

Customization: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - Fantastic!

Final result: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Good

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

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

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

More info about Apple Keynote is available here

Final result: ★ ★ ★ - OK

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

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

You can read more about them here . ‍

4- GOOGLE SLIDES

Customization: ★ ★ - Passable

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

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

You can find a more detailed review here .

5- FLOWVELLA

Ease of use: ★ ★ - Passable

Customization: ★ ★ ★ - OK

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

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

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

You can find more details here .

Customization: ★ ★ ★ -

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

You can find more information about them here .

Final result: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Good!

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

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

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

8- HAIKU DECK

Ease of use: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Good

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some more info about them here .

Ease of use: ★ - Bad

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

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

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

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

More information about them here .

‍Which one to pick?

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

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

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

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

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

Try Slidebean

Presentation Outline Example and Template

The Real Numbers Behind Shark Tank

Let’s move your company to the next stage 🚀

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

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

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

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What is Presentation Software?

Why a great presentation software is crucial to the success of organization

Any experienced salesperson knows that words can only get you so far. You can articulate the features and benefits of your product or service to perfection. But eventually, the prospect will want to see it for themselves.

This is especially true in the world of software. Where users spend hours navigating apps, sites, and programs as part of their daily responsibilities.

According to research gathered by 3M (known for their invention of the Post-It Note) visuals are processed by the human brain 60,000 times faster than text.

Presentations can truly make or break a prospect’s experience with your brand. A great presentation is engaging and conveys value through visuals. And it helps prospects visualize themselves as beneficiaries of your product or service.

What is presentation software?

A presentation software (sometimes called a presentation program) is a digital tool. It utilizes sequences of graphics, text, audio, and video to accompany a spoken presentation. These sequences, often called slides, are consolidated in virtual files called “slide decks.”

Presentation software across the web vary greatly in their capabilities, but they must offer at least three essential features:

A text editor with custom formatting
A means of inserting, editing, and resizing digital graphic
A slideshow system for displaying these visuals sequentially

Some presentation programs, like Microsoft PowerPoint, must be downloaded onto a computer’s hard drive before they can be used. Others, like Google Slides and Prezi, can be accessed from an internet browser.

Why is a Good Presentation Software Important?

Oftentimes, if a prospect agrees to view a presentation, you’ve at least piqued their interest.

You’ve likely spent some time on the phone or exchanged a few emails. Perhaps the prospect has visited your website a couple times. They’re likely not sold on you and actively forming their opinion of your brand.

This is why it’s imperative that your first presentation is a slam dunk. When a prospect sees you, your brand, and your product on display, you want them to leave excited for the benefits you can offer them.

A great presentation software gives you the tools and functionality you need to create a winning presentation. And create it quickly and easily.

In addition to usability, below are more benefits a good presentation software can bring to your organization.

Consolidation of information

A great slide deck combined with quality content is often one of the best single sources of sales information in your company.

Most sales decks contain a complete pitch all the way from pain point identification to feature/benefit pairings. Testimonials, best practices, and case studies are often scattered throughout.

This means you have a single file you can hand off to new sales reps for training. Or, if you need to pull a testimonial from a happy customer, you can find it in the slide deck. This one-stop shop for valuable sales information is made possible by a good presentation software.

Mobility for reps on the go

If your sales reps are doing a lot of physical site visits, having a mobile sales presentation that they can carry around in their pockets is a whole lot easier than lugging around a laptop. Almost every modern presentation software offers robust mobile functionality.

Having the consolidated information mentioned in the last point available at all times is a powerful asset for the rep doing on-site visits or demos.

For an example of how impactful a mobile presentation can be, check The Real Problem of Humanity as it pertains to technology by Tristan Harris.

Consistency across the team

Most presentation solutions allow for the creation of custom templates. This, combined with a “master slide deck” means that you can ensure greater alignment across your sales reps. This, with a content management platform , means your content is version-controlled and up-to-date. Which is important as its being presented to prospects.

Rapid content personalization

Let’s say you’re about to hop on a presentation call with a prospect. Right before the call, you receive an email from him letting you know his boss will be on the call as well. As it turns out, she’s particularly interested in one specific feature of your product.

With a great presentation tool, you can edit slides immediately (often from your mobile device, if needed). You can also delete, append, or customize information. This allows you to quickly tailor your messaging and visuals to fit the needs of a particular prospect or market segment.

Firsthand feedback from prospects

There are a lot of advantages of making sales presentations a two-way conversation as opposed to a monologue. Even if you can’t meet in person, real-time verbal feedback from prospects is incredibly valuable information.

A good sales rep will listen closely for clues that certain slides are holding the attention of the audience. These are moments that likely deserve to be highlighted or more deeply articulated.

A great presentation software will allow you to add slides, write copy, and format visuals immediately after the prospect hangs up. All while the information is fresh in the presenter’s mind. That way you can elevate their points of interest.

Thus, an easy-to-use presentation software is key to a sales team’s ability to quickly iterate on and improve effective content.

Getting the Most Out of Your Presentation Software

Vastly more important than your tool of choice is how you use it. Modern presentation software can produce razor-sharp, engaging presentations that convert prospects to sales. But they’re also capable of producing abominations that no prospect should ever see.

Abide by the following guidelines and you’ll be on the right track. Not only to avoid common presentation pitfalls, but also to help your message stick.

Utilize your Notes section

While a more conversational tone is obviously the goal, hitting all the important beats of a sales presentation from memory can be tough. This is where presentation notes come in handy.

Whether it’s a word-for-word script or bullet points, every presentation software offers the ability to write formatted notes associated with your slide decks.

When you present, these notes will be visible to you alone. This is especially useful when delivering presentations remotely over the web. If you’re going to read a word-for-word script, be sure to add some inflection and natural pauses to avoid sounding robotic.

Utilize grids when formatting visuals

Pixelated graphics and misaligned visuals in slide decks can make you look like an amateur. Which is not the message you want to send to your audience.

It’s safe to say that most sales reps are not also trained graphic designers. It’s all the more important that we rely on grids to line up our images in an aesthetically-pleasing way.

All modern presentation tools offer some sort of grid for optimal image placement. Cross-referencing your visuals against the grid takes mere minutes. But it could potentially save you embarrassment and help build credibility with your prospect.

Tell a story

Real-life stories are what captivate and unite humans. It’s been neurologically proven that stories engage more areas of the brain than the parts that store and recall facts. In fact, science shows us that our brains don’t distinguish between hearing a story and actually experiencing it.

That means your prospect will tune out if you’re reciting a laundry list of features and benefits. They’re more likely to stay engaged if you tell a real story of how your product helped a real person.

This also means that when you describe a real-life pain point of someone in a similar position, the odds are high that your prospect will feel that pain. It follows that they’ll also feel a greater urgency for whatever you’re offering.

The Hero’s Journey is a popular storytelling framework that’s been used ever since humans could communicate with drawings on cave walls. Using this template is one of the most effective ways to integrate storytelling into your presentations. So, try making them the hero, not your product.

Keep it simple

Keep the amount of information you give the prospect down to a few important things. Don’t burry the resources they need to see with lots of little insignificant things. Don’t get bogged down in feature explanations. Keep things brief and high-level. If you have to ask yourself if you should cut a section, the answer is yes.

Avoid animations (unless they’re custom)

As a general rule, when animations in presentations are good, they’re really good. When they’re bad, though, they’re really bad. I have seen some beautiful animations done in PowerPoint for large-scale conference presentations. Important note: they were created by a trained graphic designer with weeks of prep time and years of experience.

If you don’t have time or expertise to make your animations great, keep them simple and minimal. Or avoid them altogether. The animation presets in modern presentation tools are guaranteed to make your content look cheap.

The occasional fade-in can be tasteful. But beyond that, it’s probably wise to stay away from any distracting spins, swipes, or bounces.

Rehearse on your target machine

This tip is more about technology than technique. I can’t count how many times I’ve been in the audience of a presentation where the presenter advances to a broken or unformatted slide. “Whoa,” they say. “That’s so weird. That worked on my computer.”

Perhaps you’ve experienced the same thing. It’s definitely not something you want your prospect experiencing as they’re forming their opinion of your brand.

So, if you’re building a presentation on your home PC to transfer to your work laptop, make sure you test it on your work laptop before unveiling to the world. It seems obvious, but it takes mere minutes to troubleshoot and could save you a sale and a stressful situation.

Start with a template

A great way to ensure aesthetic consistency and alignment is a custom template. One that’s designed with your organization’s branding. If you don’t have an in-house designer, there will be an initial investment. But it’s well worth it considering it may be the first impression a prospect gets of your brand. As well as, how many eyeballs will be on your slides over time.

This will help you avoid the distraction of mismatched fonts and colors. But this will also help you ensure that every prospect gets a consistent experience, regardless of the presenter. Nothing is left up to chance.

Almost every modern presentation software has a “New from Template” or equivalent option. These save time during the start of each slide deck as well. Branded templates mean you’re never left wondering if your team has the right content.

Speaking of saving time, Accent Connect keeps all of your presentation decks neatly organized and updated. Your sales reps can access them from any device, anywhere, at any time.

To learn more about how we can help you optimize your presentation workflow and sell more effectively, reach out to our team today for a live demo .

By Accent Technologies

12th june 2020.

There's more to discover

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The Top-Rated Presentation Software for Teachers

Andrew Conrad

Google slides, microsoft powerpoint, the last thing teachers have time for is fussing with finicky presentation software. these four tools are effective and easy to use..

Top-Presentation-Software-for-Teachers-withouttext-880-440

As a teacher, you need presentation software to keep your students engaged, and you need to be able to use it both online and in the classroom. Between remote classes, a busy schedule, and limited resources, you shouldn’t settle for presentation software that is difficult to set up and use.

That’s why we put together this list of presentation software options.

So what is presentation software?

Presentation software helps users organize information in a slideshow format and present that slideshow to an audience. It comes with tools and templates to add information in the form of text, images, audio, video, and graphs. Presentation software can help educators bring their lessons to life.

To find out which presentation products are right for your business, we curated a list of the most highly-rated products on Capterra based only on reviews from people in the education industry ( read our full methodology below ). All of these options have a free, web-based version. They are listed below in alphabetical order.

top-4-presentation-software-tools-for-teachers

Trial/Free Version

Free Version

Device compatibility

Overall user rating from education industry: 4.69 out of 5 (1156 reviews)

Notable features: Collaboration, cloud sync, Google Drive storage

Google Slides for teaching ( Source )

If you’ve ever used Gmail, Google Drive, or any other Google Workspace tools, you’re probably already familiar with Google Slides. Google’s signature simplicity of design and user friendliness makes Google Slides an ideal choice for educational professionals.

Like the other Google tools, Google Slides is web-based, meaning that teachers can access it from any device with an internet browser (though this also means that you’ll have limited functionality without an internet connection). Google Slides is also completely free and allows users to import, edit, and export Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

Visit our reviews page to see what real users think of Google Slides, along with pros and cons.

Microsoft Powe...

Overall user rating from education industry: 4.73 out of 5 (1311 reviews)

Notable features: Preformatted layouts, slide morphing, smartphone laser pointer

PowerPoint tips for teachers ( Source )

Microsoft’s signature presentation software, PowerPoint, has become a name synonymous with computer presentations since the software was first launched in 1987. While the name might elicit thoughts of business presentations full of dry bar charts, PowerPoint is also highly rated by educators. Many schools are equipped with machines powered by Microsoft Windows, and users who are familiar with the Windows OS should feel right at home navigating PowerPoint. Microsoft has been iterating and improving PowerPoint for three decades now, so it is one of the most feature-rich presentation tools available.

Visit our reviews page to see what real users think of PowerPoint, along with pros and cons.

Overall user rating from education industry: 4.65 out of 5 (151 reviews)

Notable features: Conversational presenting, animations, video conferencing integration

Getting started with Prezi Video for teachers ( Source )

Prezi was launched in Budapest in 2009 with the tall task of earning market share in a presentation software market that already included popular products from Google and Microsoft. Now, Prezi claims more than 100 million users worldwide with more than 360 million presentations created. It has been translated into nine different languages and has been used in every country across the globe. Prezi is popular among educators because it is free, it easily incorporates video, and it can be used seamlessly online or in-person, according to users .

Visit our reviews page to see what real users think of Prezi, along with pros and cons.

Overall user rating from education industry: 4.76 out of 5 (70)

Notable features: Infographics, social media templates, video editor

Visme 101: How to quickly get started ( Source )

Visme is a Maryland-based online visual design tool designed to handle everything from animations to infographics, and of course, presentations. It is entirely browser-based, so educators can use it from any internet-connected device, from smartphones to tablets. Teachers find Visme versatile and easy to use , and also appreciate the responsiveness of the support team when they have a question.

Visit our reviews page to see what real users think of Visme, along with pros and cons.

Presentation software for education should be effective and easy to use

There is a common thread that runs through all of the presentation tools featured in this article based on their high ratings by educators: They are effective and easy to use. As a teacher, you don’t have time to waste with a complicated setup process. You also don’t want to waste your energy on an overly simple presentation tool that isn’t capable of delivering engaging presentations.

Find more presentation tools

We hope that one of the tools included here strikes the right balance for you and your students, but if you still want to browse more tools after reading this article, check out our presentation software directory .

You can use the directory to find free options , sort by highest rated , and even read a buyers guide to help you better understand the market.

Methodology

The four products with the highest ratings from education industry reviewers are featured in this article.

To be considered for this article, products must:

Meet the market definition for presentation software: “Presentation software helps salespeople, marketing employees, and other professionals with creating and conducting presentations.”

Offer the following core features: Animations and transitions, media library

Have at least 20 reviews from education industry reviewers in the past two years

Only reviews from users in the education industry were evaluated to select the products featured in this article.

Was this article helpful?

About the author.

Andrew Conrad is a senior content writer at Capterra, covering business intelligence, retail, and construction, among other markets. As a seven-time award winner in the Maryland, Delaware, D.C. and Suburban Newspapers of America editorial contests, Andrew’s work has been featured in the Baltimore Sun and PSFK. He lives in Austin with his wife, son, and their rescue dog, Piper.

15 software used for mac presentation, 6 online presentation software for mac, does mac have presentation software, how do you create a presentation on mac, is there a mac version of powerpoint, is powerpoint better than keynote, let your presentation talk, related articles, 15 best presentation software for mac [reviewed & ranked].

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Updated on: February 08, 2024

Presentations are integral to any design: how else would you explain your idea to your client or team? People tend to leave presentations as the last possible step of their process and don’t give them as much time and attention as they need.

If you are a designer, architect, artist, businessman, or any other person that regularly makes subpar presentations, take your game to the next level with some of the best presentation software for mac !

You don’t want to download or install any App? Then check these 6 online presentation software for mac .

Here is some of the best presentation software for Mac that you can use to make your ideas and design extraordinary:

Keynote - Best Presentation Software For Mac

Price: Free Best for: Mac users

Keynote is one of the top presentation software for Mac and comes included with most Apple devices.

With its stunning features and powerful tools, you can bring your slides to life and create the most effective presentations for your clients or your boss.

Best in-built presentation software for Mac
Simple and intuitive
Poor compatibility with windows presentation software
Presentations can take too much storage
Does not have as many editing tools as PowerPoint

2. FlowVella

Price: Free (limited version) or $10/month Best for: Mac users

This presentation software is excellent to combine words, images, videos, links, PDFs, and other media into a presentation.

This way, having an interactive presentation is easy.

It’s oriented towards marketing, HR professionals, and sales teams.

Great Drag & Drop Feature
Dozens of free templates
You have to buy the software to use all the features and tools

3. Prezi for Mac

Price: Free (limited version) or starting at $10/month Best for: Mac users

Prezi for Mac is another great Mac presentation software that lets you create dynamic presentations. It has a trial version of 14 days.

The bad thing about making presentations is choosing a video or image to put into it. But not with Prezi.

Prezi is a leader in the video presentation movement and allows you to make the most interactive slides for your presentation.

Great User Interface
Zoom and overview feature
Integration with Zoom Software
It takes time and practice to learn how to work on Prezi.
Not easy for beginners.

Deckset - Trial presentation Software For mac

Price: Starting at $35 Best for: Mac users

Deckset is a unique presentation software that lets you put your ideas and thoughts into it and makes the slides for you.

This is great for people that want to spend less time and energy making slides for their presentation but is only for text-based presentations.

It includes a trial version to try before purchasing the complete presentation software.

It designs your slides for you, taking off most of the pressure of creating a presentation
Trial Version
It is a very costly software to buy

5. PowerPoint

Price: Free (With a Microsoft 365 subscription) Best for: Mac users

PowerPoint for Mac is old but gold.

It is one of the oldest presentation software and allows you to create beautiful slides with multiple templates of your choice.

This software has many tools and features that make the presentation process fun and easy.

Easy and simple to use
Multiple free templates
Lack of creativity in the included templates
Display Compatibility issues

6. LibreOffice’s Impress

In this software for Mac, multiple editing and viewing modes make the process of editing and creating slides versatile and interactive.

This software is great for presentations that are mostly text-based.

Free software
It does not put a lot of strain on your system
Not very good user interface
Lack of integration with other presentation software

7. iSkySoft Slideshow Maker

Price: $59.95 Lifetime Best for: Mac users

iSkyDoft Slideshow Maker has to be one of the best presentation software for Mac.

It allows the user to add text, photos, and videos to the slides and music, which makes the entire experience of watching a presentation even better.

This presentation software can be used to beautifully commemorate an event, activity, design process, or team activity in one file.

Moreover, the software also has a ton of features and aftereffects that can be added to make the presentation even better.

Easy-to-use interface with a ton of incredible features
It has a steep subscription fee that might not be good for beginners or one-time users

8. Focusky 3D

Price: starting at $9.9 Best for: Mac users

If you want to make a presentation on your desktop but also want it to work on other devices, such as your phone or tablet, Focusky is the perfect software for you.

Focusky is a powerful 3D presentation software for Mac with a wide range of tools that allows you to customize your presentation according to your taste.

to customize your presentation according to your taste.

It works great offline and doesn’t require any internet
Powerful export functionality (slides into gift/flash)
Unexciting slide visual effects
It requires a bit of learning before you can successfully use it

9. TouchCast Pitch

TouchCast Pitch - Presentation Software Mac

TouchCast Pitch is one of the presentation software that you automatically gravitate towards when you want to make a meaningful, impactful, and interactive presentation.

Pitch turns boring presentations into winning experiences that make it hard to forget.

It has a huge library of tools and interesting features for your use
A bit hard to learn and teach students

Software Used for Mac Presentation - Canva

If you’re trying to make a presentation in less time with the least effort and still hoping it will come out beautiful, Canva is the perfect software to use.

With its extensive features and tools, the software allows you to edit, customize, and create your slides for presentation in record time.

It is free, simple, and has a good user interface.
It allows you to create stunning designs in mere minutes
It is not a specific software for presentations.
It does not have as many interesting features as other presentation software

Software Used for Mac Presentation - Pitch

Price: Free or $8/month Best for: Mac users

If the presentations that Pitch lets you make are half as interactive and fun as their website, there is no better software for Mac to do presentations.

It has multiple great tools, effects, templates, and designs available for you to use for your presentation or get inspired to create your own.

Team Collaboration feature
Great Support Team
It has a bit of a learning curve, especially for a beginner
A limited selection of templates

12. WPS Office for Mac

Price: Free (limited version) or $ 25.21 / year Best for: Mac users

WPS Office must be the essential software on your desktop, whether it is Windows or Mac.

The WPS Office for Mac has all the features and tools that let you document your process and create some of the simplest and easiest presentations for your work meetings and project discussions.

It allows for collaboration
Easy documentation
It doesn’t have a lot of tools for PDF editing or grammar-check for text

13. Premast Plus

Premast - Mac Software For Presentations

Price: Free or $5.99/month Best for: Mac users

If you are a designer, or any other creative folk, looking for beautiful graphic presentation software, there is none better than Premast Plus.

It gives you a wide range of tools, templates, illustrations, and icons to use for your presentation to make it the best you can!

Very simple
Wide Range of rich templates
A lot of the tools and features of this software are available only after you purchase a subscription
A bit unstable.

14. Movavi Slideshow Maker

Price: Free Trial or $37 Best for: Mac users

Movavi Slideshow Maker is great for unconventional presentations as it lets you add images, videos, text, music, transitions, and effects to your file.

It allows you to create a movie out of your work, making the entire presentation fun and engaging.

It has great and simple user-interface
It lacks a lot of features and does not have the tools for professional editing and presentation-making

15. Propresenter – Church Presentations

Propresenter ChurchPresentation Software For Mac

Price: starting at $399 Best for: Mac users

Propresenter is a church presentation software for Mac that allows you to create a beautiful presentation for a sermon.

It can include worship lyrics, sermon notes, videos, images, etc., to create an impactful and powerful presentation.

The best thing about this software is that it is excellent for beginners.

Perfect presentation software for church
It has all the tools that you might need to add music, lyrics, sermon, and text.
Very expensive software and only best for professionals

1. Slidesbean

Slidesbean - Online presentation for mac

Slidesbean is an innovative online presentation software for Mac that does most of the heavy lifting while making the presentation.

It has great features and interactive tools that offer everything you need to build the perfect pitch for your presentation!

Great for entrepreneurs who want to create a beautiful pitch deck.

Great analytics
The templates look great
The result looks very professional
Videos have to be uploaded to third-party platforms
The AI feature is not too helpful
Export for PowerPoint only exports as image

2. Renderforest

Renderforest - Online Presentation For Mac

Looking for a great online presentation software for Mac that allows you to create stunning videos, animations, branding, mockups, presentations, and more?

Renderforest is the perfect site for beginners and professionals.

High quality & professional looking templates
Mind-blowing animations
Video templates look great
Free version available
Limited customization
Can be a bit pricy
No iOS or Android app
Video render time can take long

3. Zoho Show

The great thing about this online presentation software for Mac is that it allows for a group/team to collaborate on the process of creating a presentation.

It is a clean, simple, and easy software that makes creating presentations seamless and simple.

Includes infographics
Supports real-time collaboration
It has good template designs
It has a Chrome web browser extension that makes it easier to work on the slides.
It allows broadcasting presentations
Easy-to-use transitions
Interface can be a bit slow on low-end devices
Interface could be better
No desktop App available

Visme is a fan favorite for brands, big and small, to create stunning presentations.

It has numerous templates and color pallets to choose from that make the entire process of making a presentation easy.

Allows you to create a brand identity with “My brand” feature
Disk capacity and usage limit can be low on basic and free plans
No support for collaborators
Learning curve
Free version is way too limited
The interface could be better

5. Google Slides

Google Slides is the most popular online presentation software that is used by millions worldwide.

It provides the basic tools and features necessary to create a striking presentation.

Fast and easy to use
Includes real-time collaborative mode
It’s free
Connected with Google services like Google Drive
It doesn’t support non-Google-based fonts
Limited templates
Limited transitions and animations
It won’t provide support for audio imports

Slides - Online Software For Presentations

Slides are one of the online presentation software that makes your presentation look extremely sleek and professional.

It is a must for all designers and project managers!

If you need to bring project management to the next level, then you must check out the best project management software for Mac .

Supports custom HTML and CSS
Supports two directions (vertical & horizontal)
Smooth and fast interface
Supports LaTeX
It doesn’t provide templates
It doesn’t support PowerPoint exports

Mac has a presentation software already preinstalled in all Apple devices called Keynote. It is completely free and it allows you to create stunning presentations for school projects, your business, your office, etc. It is available for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and even for PCs.

Keynote includes real-time collaboration with your team, which is an essential feature now that everything is done online.

You can create a presentation on Mac with the help of Keynote. To create a keynote presentation follow these 3 steps:

Choose a theme.
Add your content to the placeholder images and texts.
Create a presentation from the slides.

Yes. Microsoft PowerPoint is available for download on Mac and your phone, tablet, or PC, but you would need a Microsoft 365 subscription on your device to use it on Mac. The software isn’t identical to the Windows one but is quite similar with only a few minor differences in menu and layout.

Where PowerPoint is the most common presentation software for everyone worldwide, Keynote has been declared a better presentation software for Mac users, especially for professionals.

But if you are looking for a variety of editing tools, features, and templates for your presentation, there is nothing that trumps PowerPoint.

Creating a powerful presentation is an essential part of your strategy, whether you are a businessman, a designer, an architect, or a project manager.

It would be best if you had a presentation that doesn’t bore your audience and manages to convey all the key information in the best possible way.

All the software mentioned above are some of the most extraordinary presentation software for Mac and can help you create a memorable presentation.

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Juwairiah Zia

Juwairiah Zia is a seasoned professional, a full stack developer and writer in her free time. She’s deeply immersed in various tech domains such as web and mobile application development and mentorship.

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InfoQ Homepage Presentations How Netflix Really Uses Java

How Netflix Really Uses Java

Paul Bakker discusses Netflix’s use of Java, emphasizing the use of microservices, RxJava, Hystrix and Spring Cloud.

Paul Bakker is a Java Champion and developer in the Java Platform team at Netflix. At Netflix he works on evolving the Java tech stack and developer tooling. He is also one of the original authors of the DGS Framework (GraphQL) and co-authored two Java modularity books published by O’Reilly.

About the conference

Software is changing the world. QCon empowers software development by facilitating the spread of knowledge and innovation in the developer community. A practitioner-driven conference, QCon is designed for technical team leads, architects, engineering directors, and project managers who influence innovation in their teams.

Bakker: I'm going to talk about how Netflix is really using Java. You probably know that Netflix is really just about RxJava microservices, with Hystrix and Spring Cloud. Really, Chaos Monkeys are just running the show. I'm only half getting here because a few years ago, this was actually mostly true, maybe except the Chaos Monkeys. This stack was something that we were building on in the last several years. Things have changed. Quite often, I have conversations with people at conferences like this one, where they're like, yes, we were using the Netflix stack. Like, which stack exactly are you talking about? It's almost never the stack that we're actually using. These are just things that people associate with Netflix, because we've been talking about our technology for so many years, but things might have changed a little bit. We're going to bust some myths. We're going to take a look at what we're actually doing with Java. Things are ever-evolving. Things are literally just changing all the time.

My name is Paul. I'm in the Java Platform at Netflix. Java Platform is responsible for the libraries, frameworks, and tooling that we built around Java, so that all our Java developers have a good time developing Java applications. I'm also a Java champion. I have been in the Java space for quite a long time. In the past, I wrote two books about Java modularity. I'm also one of the first authors of the DGS framework, that's the GraphQL framework we use for Java. We'll talk quite a bit about DGS, and how that all fits in the architecture.

Evolving Architecture

Before we start diving into JVMs and how we use Java, and the framework that we're using, we have to understand a little bit better how our architecture has been evolving. That explains why we did things in a certain way with Java several years ago, and we're doing things quite differently today. What you should understand about Java at Netflix is that we have a lot of Java. We are basically a Java shop, and every backend at Netflix is basically a Java app. We have many applications. At the size of Netflix, there's lots of internal applications to just keep track of things. We're also one of the largest film studios in the world. There's a lot of software being developed just to produce films, basically, again, all Java. Then of course, we have what we call the streaming app, which is basically the Netflix app, as you probably know it. That is what we're looking at here. This screen here is what we call the LOLOMO, the list of list of movies. That is just one example of an application that is backed by Java. You have to understand that pretty much everything that I'm talking about, that is true for basically every backend in Java. We use the same architecture now for pretty much all our different systems, both internal and consumer facing, and we use the same tech stack everywhere. Although I'm giving that example, because it's just a large example to play with, it's much more universal than that.

The Groovy Era

When I joined Netflix almost seven years ago, we were in what I call the Groovy era. What you probably know about Netflix, and this is still true, is that Netflix has a microservices ecosystem. Basically, every piece of functionality and every piece of data is owned by a specific microservice. There's many of them, literally thousands of them. On the slide here, I just made it up, because it makes sense in my head. It's a much-simplified version of what we actually have in production. Think about this LOLOMO screen, this list of list of movies that we just looked at, at a previous slide, you're probably familiar with that screen, that to render that screen, we would have to fetch data from many different microservices. Maybe there's like a top 10 service that we need, because we need a top 10 list of movies. That's backed by a specific service. Then there's an artwork service that gives us the images as we show in the LOLOMO, and these are all personalized as well. There's probably a movie metadata service, which gives us movie titles and actors and descriptions of movies. There's probably a LOLOMO service which is actually giving us what lists to actually render, which again is personalized. I say that we have maybe 10 services to call out to. It will be usually inefficient if your device, let's say, your TV, or your iOS device will just do 10 network calls to these different microservices. It will just not scale at all. You would have a very bad customer experience. It would feel like using the Disney app. It's just not ideal. Instead, we need a single front door for the API where your device is calling out to. From there, we do a fanout to all the different microservices, because now we are in our network, we are on a very fast network. Now we can do that fanout without performance implications. We have another problem to solve, because all these different devices, in subtle ways, they're all a little bit different. We try to make the UI look and behave similar on every different device. All these different devices, like a TV versus an iOS device have very different limitations when it comes to memory, network bandwidth. They actually load data in subtly different ways.

Think about, how would you create an API that would work for all these different devices? Let's say you create a REST API. We're probably going to get either too little or too much data. If we create one REST API to rule them all, it's going to be a bad experience for all these different devices, because we always waste some data, or we have to do multiple network calls, which is also bad. To fix that problem, what we did is we used what we call a backend for frontend pattern. Basically, every frontend, every UI gets its own mini backend. That mini backend is then responsible for doing the fanout and get the data that that UI exactly needs at that specific point. They used to be backed by a Groovy script. That mini backend was basically a Groovy script for a specific screen on a specific device, or actually a version of a specific device. These scripts would be written by UI developers, because they are the only ones who actually know what data exactly they need to render a specific screen. This Groovy script would just live in an API server, which is a giant Java app, basically. It would do a fanout to all these different microservices by just calling Java client libraries. These client libraries are just basically wrappers for either a gRPC service, or a REST client.

Now, here we started seeing an interesting problem, because, how do you take care of such a fanout in Java? That's actually really not trivial. Because if you will do this the traditional way, you create a bunch of threads, and you start to manage that fanout with just minimal thread management, that gets very hairy very quickly, because it's not just managing a bunch of threads, it is also taking care of fault tolerance. What if one of those services are not responding quickly enough? What if it is just failing? Now we have to clean up threads and make sure that everything comes together nicely again. Again, not trivial at all. This is where RxJava and reactive programming really came in. Because reactive programming gives you a much better way to do such fanouts. It will take care of all the thread management and stuff like that you need to do. Exactly because of this fanout behavior, that is why we went so deep into the reactive programming space, and we were partly responsible for making RxJava a big thing many years ago. On top of RxJava, we created Hystrix, which is a fault tolerant library, which takes care of failover and bulkheading, and all these things. This made a lot of sense seven years ago when I joined. This was the big architecture that was serving most traffic. Actually, it is still a big part of our architecture, because depending on what device you're using, if it's a slightly older device, you probably still get served by this API, because we don't have just the one architecture we have many architectures, because it is nicer that way.

Limitations

There are some limitations, although this obviously works really well, because we have been able to grow our member base based on this architecture primarily. One downside is that there's a script for each endpoint. Because, again, we need an API for each of these different UIs. There are just a lot of scripts to maintain and manage. Another problem is that because the UI developers have to create all the mini backends because they are the ones who know what data they need, they have to write those. Now they are in the Groovy Java space and using RxJava. Although they're very capable of doing so, it's probably not a primary language that they are using on a daily basis. The main problem is really that reactive is just really hard. Speaking for myself, I've been doing reactive programming for at least 10 years. I used to be extremely excited about it, and tell everyone about how great it all is. It is actually hard, because even if with that experience, look at a non-trivial piece of reactive code, I have no clue what's going on. It takes me quite a bit of time to actually wrap my head around, ok, this is actually what's happening. These are the operations that are supposed to happen. This is the fallback behavior. It's hard.

GraphQL Federation

Slowly, we have been migrating to a completely new architecture, and that is, we're putting things to a different perspective. That's all based on GraphQL Federation. Comparing GraphQL to REST, one very important aspect of GraphQL is that with GraphQL, you always have a schema. In your schema, you put all your operations, so your queries and your mutations, and you define them, and you tell it exactly which fields are available from the types that you're returning from your queries. Here we have a shows query, which returns a show type, and a show as a title, and it has reviews. Reviews again is another type that we define. Then we can send a query to our API, which is on the right-hand side of the slide. What we have to do there, and this is, again, really important, we have to be explicit about our field selection. We can't just ask for shows and get old data from shows. Now we have to say specifically that you want to get a title and the star score on reviews on a show. If we're not asking for a field, we're not getting a field. It is super important because again, compared with REST, very basically, you get whatever the REST service decides to send you. You're just getting the data that you're explicitly asking for. It's more work if you specify your query, but it solves the whole problem of over-fetching, where you get much more data than you actually need. This makes it much easier to create one API that serves all the different UIs. Typically, when you send a GraphQL query, you will just get the result back encoded as JSON.

We're not just doing GraphQL, we're actually doing GraphQL Federation to fit it back into our microservices architecture. In this picture, we still have our microservices, but now we call them DGSs. They're just a term that we at Netflix came up with. It's a domain graph service. Basically, it's just a GraphQL service. There's really nothing special about it, but we call them DGSs. A DGS is just a Java microservice, but it has a GraphQL endpoint. It has a GraphQL API. That also means it has a schema, because we said that for GraphQL, you always have a schema. The interesting thing is that we have, of course, many different DGSs, many different microservices. From the perspective of a device, so from the perspective of your TV, for example, there's just one big GraphQL schema. The GraphQL schema contains all the possible data that we have to render, let's say a LOLOMO. Your device doesn't care that there might be a whole bunch of different microservices in the backend, and that these different microservices might provide part of that schema. On the other side of the story on the microservices sides, in this example, our LOLOMO DGS is defining a type show, with just a title. The images DGS can extend that type show and add an artwork URL to it. These two different DGSs don't know anything about each other than the fact that there is a show type. It can both contribute parts of that schema, even on the same types. All they need to do is publish their schema to the federated gateway. Now the federated gateway knows how to talk to a DGS because they all have a /GraphQL endpoint. That's it. It knows these different parts of the schema, so if a query comes in where we ask for both title and artwork URL, it knows that it has to call out to these different DGSs, and fetch the data that it needs. On a very high level, not that different from what you previously had, but there's a lot of differences in the details.

I'll also change our story here. First of all, we don't have any API duplication anymore. We don't need a backend for frontend anymore because GraphQL as an API is flexible enough, because of field selection that we don't really need to create those device specific APIs anymore. It also means we don't have server-side development for UI engineers anymore. That's great. We do get a schema to collaborate on. That's a big deal, because now we have closed the gap between UI developers and backend engineers, because now they can collaborate on a schema and figure out, ok, what data do we need in what format? Very importantly, we don't have any client libraries in Java anymore, because the federated gateway just knows how to talk to a generic GraphQL service. It doesn't need specific code to call out to the specific API. It's all just GraphQL. All it needs to know, how to talk to a GraphQL service. That's all. It's all based on the GraphQL specification. We don't need specific code to call to a specific microservice anymore.

What Does that Mean for Our Java Stack?

Now we get into, how does that change our Java stack? There's really no place anymore where we need Rx, or Hystrix, or such things, because previously, we needed this because we needed that specific code to call out, ok, I want to call this microservice and then this microservice, and at the same time, this other microservice. We needed an API for that. We don't need it anymore, because that's now taken care of by the GraphQL Federation specification. That's not completely true, because the federated gateway itself is actually still using a web client to call the different DGSs, and that is still reactive. However, it is not using any specific code for this microservice anymore. It's actually a very straightforward piece of web client code where it knows, ok, I have to call these three services, just go do it. It's all GraphQL, so it's very simple. All the DGSs and the other microservices in the backend, they're all just normal Java apps. There's not really anything specific about them. They don't need to do any reactive style of programming pretty much anywhere.

The Micro in Microservices

Before we dive deep into the rest of our Java stack, I want to speak a little bit about the micro in microservices, because it's another thing that people seem to be confused about how it actually works in practice. It is true that a microservice owns a specific functionality or dataset. More importantly that such microservices are owned by a single team. That is a really important part about microservices. It is all even more true with this GraphQL federated architecture, because it's now even easier to just split things out in different microservices and make it all work very nicely. However, don't be fooled by the size of those microservices, because a lot of those so-called microservices at Netflix are a lot larger, just looking at the code base, than the big monoliths that I've worked at, at many other companies. Some of these systems are really big. There's a lot of code there. Of course, when they get deployed, they might be deployed on clusters of thousands of AWS instances. There's really nothing small about them. That also answers the question, should I do microservices? It depends on your team size. Do you have like the one team that takes care of everything, and it's just a small team? If you would add microservices there, you're just adding complexity at that point for no good reason. If you want to split your team into smaller teams, basically, and just because of team size, then it also makes sense to split up your larger system into smaller pieces so that each team can own and operate one or more of those services.

Java at Netflix

Time to actually really get into the Java side of things. We now know, on a higher level, how and where we're using Java. Now we talk about how it actually looks like. We are now mostly on Java 17. It is about time. We are already also actively testing and rolling out with Java 21. Java 21 just came out officially. We're just using a regular Azul Zulu JVM. It's just an OpenJDK build. We are not building our own JVM, we don't have any plans to build our own JVM. Although there was a very interesting Reddit thread claiming that we do. We really don't, and have no interest in doing so. OpenJDK is really great. We have about 2800 Java applications. These are mostly all microservices of a variety of sizes. Then about 1500 internal libraries. Some of them are actual libraries, and many of them are just client libraries, which is basically just sitting in front of a gRPC or REST service. For our build system, we use Gradle, and on top of Gradle we have Nebula, that's a set of open sourced Gradle plugins. The most important aspect of Nebula, and I highly recommend looking into this, is, first in resolution of libraries. As you know, Java has a flat classpath. You can only have the one version of the library at a given time, if you have more than one version, interesting things happen. To prevent these interesting things from happening, you really want to just pick one, basically, and Nebula takes care of that. The next thing that Nebula does is version locking. Basically, you will get reproducible builds that you always build with the same set of versions of libraries until you explicitly upgrade. That makes it all very reproducible. We're pretty much exclusively using IntelliJ as our IDE. In the last few years, we have also invested a lot of effort in actually developing IntelliJ plugins, to help developers doing the right thing.

The Java 17 Upgrade

We are mostly on Java 17. That is actually a big deal, because this is embarrassing, but at the beginning of the year, we were mostly on Java 8. Java 8 is old. Why were we still on Java 8? Because we had Java 11, and then Java 17 available for a very long time already. Somehow, we just didn't move. One of the reasons is that until about a year ago, about half of our microservices, especially the bigger ones, were still on our old application stack. It was not Spring. It was a homegrown thing based on Guice, and a lot of old Java EE APIs, lots of old libraries that were no longer maintained. At the very beginning when we started upgrading to Java 11 initially, a lot of these older libraries were just not compatible. Then developers just got the impression that this upgrade is hard, and it breaks things, and I should probably just not do it. On the other hand, there was also very limited perceived benefits for developers, because if you compare Java 8 to Java 17, there's definitely some nice language features. Text blocks alone are enough reason for me to upgrade, but it's not that big of a deal. The differences between 8 and 17 is nice, but it's not like changing your life that much. There was more excitement about moving to Kotlin than we did in just upgrading to JDK.

When we finally did start pushing on updating to Java 17, we saw something really interesting. We saw about 20% better CPU usage on 17 versus Java 8, without any code changes. It was all just because of improvements in G1, the garbage collector that we are mostly using. Twenty-percent better CPU is a big deal at the scale that we're running. That's a lot of money, potentially. Speaking about G1, G1 is the garbage collector that we use for most of our workloads, at the moment. We've tested with all the different garbage collectors available. G1 is generally where we got the best balance of tradeoffs. There are some exceptions, for example, Zuul, which is our proxy. It runs on Shenandoah, that's the low pause time garbage collector. For most workloads, Shenandoah doesn't work as well as G1 does. Although G1 isn't that exciting anymore, it is still just really good.

Now that we have finally made a big push to Java 17, and we've got most services just upgraded, we also have Java 21 available. We've been testing with that for quite a few months already. Now things really get exciting. The first exciting thing is that if you're on Java 17, upgrading to Java 21 is almost a no-op. It's just super easy. You don't have the problems that we had from Java 8 to newer versions. There's also just a lot more interesting features. The first obvious one that I'm super excited about is virtual threads. This is just copy-paste, it's from the JEP, the specification from Java 21 of virtual threads. It's supposed to enable server applications written in a simple thread-per-request style to scale at near optimal hardware utilization. It sounds pretty good. This thread-per-request style, if you're using something that's based on servlets, so Spring Web MVC, or any other framework based on servlets, thread-per-request is basically what you get. A request comes in, Tomcat or whatever server you're using gives it a thread. That thread is basically where all the work happens, or starts happening for the specific request, and stays through that request until the request is done. That is a very simple style and easy to understand style of programming, and all the frameworks are based on that. It has some scalability limitations, because you can only have so many threads effectively running in a system. If you have a lot of requests coming in, which we obviously have, then the number of threads is just a limiting factor in how you can scale your systems. Changing that model is really important. The alternative to that is, of course, doing reactive again, so do something like WebFlux. That also gets you in reactive programming, again, with all the complexities that we already talked about.

Now, I think that virtual threads is probably the most exciting Java feature since probably lambdas. I think that down the line, it is really going to change the way we write and scale our Java code. I think that, in the end, it is probably going to further reduce reactive code, because there's just not really any need for it anymore. It just takes away that complexity. We have already been running virtual threads in production for the last month or so, experimenting with it a little bit. I'll get back to that in more detail. Then the other interesting feature in Java 21 is the new garbage collector or the updated garbage collector, because ZGZ is not new. That was already available in previous versions. They now made it generational, and that makes it give more benefits over G1 as a garbage collector has. That will make ZGC a better fit for a broader variety of workloads. It's still focused on low pause times, but it will just work in a broader variety of use cases. It's a little bit early to tell because we haven't done enough testing with this yet, but we are expecting that ZGC is now going to be a really good performance upgrade, basically, for a lot of our workloads and a lot of our services. Again, these things are a really big deal, where we could save a lot of money on resources. Shenandoah is also now generational, but that is still in preview. Again, we're going to just run with that and see what happens. Garbage collection is really just too complex of a topic to just know that, drop in this garbage collector with this flex, and it's all going to be magic and super-fast. Just doesn't work that way. It's a business where you just try things out and then you tweak it a bit, and you try it again, and then you find the optimal state. We're not quite there yet. We are expecting to see some very interesting things there. Then, finally, in Java 21, you just also have a lot of nice language features. We get this concept of data-oriented programming now in the Java language. It is really nice. It's the combination of records and pattern matching and things like that. Java is pretty nice right now.

Virtual Threads

Back to virtual threads. Although I said that this is a big deal, and is probably going to change the way we write our code and scale our code, it is also not a free lunch. It's not just that you enable Java 21 on your instances, and now by the magic of virtual threads, everything runs faster. It doesn't work that way. First of all, we have to change our framework library, and to some extent application code to actually start leveraging virtual threads, so step one. There are a few obvious places where we can do that and already started experimenting, so the Tomcat connection pool. Again, these are the pool of threads where it gives threads-per-request. That seems a fairly obvious place where we can just use virtual threads instead. Instead of using a thread pool, you use virtual threads. Before you enable that, you are already running some big services in production with virtual threads enabled. It doesn't automatically make things a lot faster, because you need to do other things as well to really leverage it. It also doesn't make things worse. If you can just safely enable this basically, sometimes get some benefits out of it, sometimes it doesn't really change it because it wasn't a limiting factor. That's something that you should probably start with. Async task execution in Spring that is, again, just a thread pool, and very often you get blocking code for other network calls there anyway. It seems to be a good candidate for virtual threads, so we enabled it there. Then a really big one that we haven't really gotten into yet, but I expect that will be game changing is how we do GraphQL query execution. Potentially with GraphQL, every field can be fetched in parallel. It makes a lot of sense that we would actually do that on virtual threads because, again, this is often work in code where you do more network calls and things like that. Virtual threads just make a lot of sense there, but we have to implement this and test it out, and it'll probably take a little bit of time before we get the optimal model there.

Then we have some other places that seemed obvious. For example, we have a thread worker pool for gRPC clients where the gRPC calls to outgoing services happen. It seemed like such an obvious place like, let's drop in virtual threads there. Then we saw that we actually decreased performance by a few percent. It turns out that these gRPC client worker pools are very CPU intensive. If you then drop in virtual threads, you actually make things worse. That's not a bad thing, necessarily. This is just something that we had to learn. It does show that this is not a free lunch. We actually have to figure out, where does it make sense, where does it not make sense, and implement virtual threads at the right points, basically. The good news is this is mostly all framework work at this point. We can do it as a platform team, and we can do it in open source libraries that we're using. Then our developers will just get faster apps, basically. It's good. In Spring 6.1, or Spring Boot 3.2, there's a lot of work being done to leverage virtual threads out of the box, that will come out next month. We will probably adopt that somewhere early next year. Then there's a really interesting discussion going on on GitHub, in GraphQL Java, about changing the GraphQL query execution, or potentially even rewriting it to fully leverage virtual threads. That is not figured out yet. It's a discussion going on. If you're in that space, that's definitely something to contribute to, I think. Then for the user code, because all this other stuff is mostly framework code, for user code, I think structured concurrency is the other place that we're going to see a lot of replacement of reactive code. Because structured concurrency is finally giving us the API to deal with things like fanouts, and then bringing everything together again. Structured concurrency is still in preview in Java 21. It seems very close to final, so I think it's at least safe to start experimenting with this and try things out. Then a little bit further down the line, we also get scoped values, which is another new specification coming out related to virtual threads. That is going to give us a way to basically get rid of ThreadLocal. This is again mostly framework related work. It's just a much nicer and more efficient way of something similar to ThreadLocal.

Spring Boot Netflix

I've already mentioned a little bit that we use Spring Boot. Since about a year or so we have completely standardized on Spring Boot. Up until a year ago, about 50% of our applications were still on our own homegrown, not maintained at all, Java stack based on Guice, and a bunch of very outdated Java EE libraries. We didn't really make a good push in getting everything on Spring Boot. All the new applications were based on Spring Boot already. That became very messy, especially because that old homegrown framework just wasn't maintained very well. We made a really big effort to just get all the services migrated to Spring Boot. That migration was mostly just a lot of blood, sweat, and tears of a lot of teams. It's just not easy to go from one programming model to another one. As platform teams, we did provide a lot of tooling, for example, IntelliJ plugins to take care of, where possible, the code migrations and configuration migrations and things like that. Still, it was just a lot of work. Pretty painful. Now that we are on Spring Boot, though, we have like the one framework that everyone is using that makes things a lot nicer for everyone. We are trying to mostly just use the latest version of OSS Spring Boot. We're going to be using 3.1, and try to stay as close as possible to the open source community because that's where we get the most benefit. On top of that, we need a lot of integration with our Netflix ecosystem and the infrastructure that we have. That is what we call Spring Boot Netflix, and is basically just a whole set of modules which we build on top of Spring Boot. That's basically just developed in the same way as Spring Boot itself is built, so lots of auto-configurations. That's where we add things like gRPC client and server support that's very integrated with our SSO stack, for AuthZ and AuthN. You get observability, so tracing, metrics, and distributed logging. We have a whole bunch of HTTP clients that take care of mTLS and again observability and integration with the security stack. We deploy all these applications with embedded Tomcat, which is pretty standard for a Spring Boot application.

To give an idea of the features, how that looks like. We have, for example, a gRPC Spring client. This looks very Spring-like, but it is something that we added. Basically, this is referencing a property file, which describes the gRPC service, it tells where the service lives. It configures failover behavior. That way, you can just use a Java API with an extra annotation to call another gRPC service. With that, you also get things like observability completely for free. For any request, either gRPC or HTTP, you get observability for free with tracing, and metrics, and all these things available. Another example is maybe integrate with Spring security, so we can get our SSO color. You get the user basically, that's called your service, even if there were many services in between in a cold chain. As I said, we integrated with Spring Security to also do role-based authentication based on our own authentication models.

Why Spring Boot?

You might be wondering, why are we using Spring Boot, why not some other more fancy framework? Because, of course, there's been a lot of innovation in the Java space in the last few years with other frameworks available. Spring Boot is really the most popular Java framework, that doesn't necessarily make it better, but it does give a lot of leverage when it comes to using the open source community, which is really big, of course, for Spring Boot, and accessing documentation, training, and all these things. More importantly, I think, is just looking at the Spring framework, it has been just so well maintained over the years. I think I started using the Spring framework 15 years ago. It is quite amazing, actually, that that framework has been so stable and so well-evolved, basically, over time, because it's not the same thing as it was 15 years ago, but a lot of the concepts are still there. It gives us a lot of trust, basically in the Spring team that also in the future, this will be a very good place to be basically.

The Road to Spring Boot 3

Almost a year ago, Spring Boot 3 came out, and that was a big deal, because Spring Boot 3 really just involves the Java ecosystem, I think, because the Java ecosystem was a little bit stuck in two different ways. The first reason is that if you look at the open source ecosystem in Java, it was stuck on Java 8, because a lot of companies were stuck on Java 8, and no one wanted to be the first one who would break that basically. Companies didn't upgrade because everything just worked fine on Java 8 anyway. Now, finally, the Spring team has said, we are done with Java 8, Java 17 is your new baseline. Now we force the whole community basically, to say, ok, fine, we'll do Java 17, and everything can start moving again. Now we can start leveraging those new language features. It also makes it possible that although it's just baseline on Java 17, we can actually also start using Java 21 with virtual threads under the hood. That's exactly what they're doing. The second part is the whole mess around Javax to Jakarta, thanks to Oracle. This is just a simple namespace change, but it is extremely complex for a library ecosystem, because a library can either use Javax or Jakarta, and that makes it either compatible with one but not the other. That's super painful now, because the Spring team is now saying, ok, if you're just doing Jakarta, now the whole ecosystem can start moving because it had such a big impact. We finally get past that point that they were stuck on. It is a big change to get on these new things still, so moving to Spring Boot 3 isn't fulfilled, and we've done a lot of tooling work to make that happen. Probably the most interesting one there is we open sourced a Gradle plugin that does bytecode transformation at artifact resolution time. When you download an artifact, a JAR file, it will do bytecode translation if you're on Spring Boot 3 from Javax to Jakarta, so it basically just fixes that whole namespace problem on the fly, and you don't have to change your library. That gets us unstuck.

DGS Framework

Then I talked quite a bit about DGS. DGS is not some concept, GraphQL Federation is the concept. The DGS framework is just a framework that that we use to build our GraphQL services in Java. About three or four years ago, when we started the journey on to GraphQL and GraphQL Federation, there really wasn't any good Java framework out there, that was mature enough for us to use it at our scale. There was GraphQL Java, which is a lower level GraphQL library. That library is great, and we are building on top of it. This is completely crucial for us, but it's too low level to use directly in an application, at least in my opinion. With v1 that is a GraphQL framework for Spring Boot, and basically giving a programming model based on annotation as you are used to in Spring Boot. We needed things like code generation for schema types, and support for federation and all these things. That's exactly what you're getting with the DGS framework. About, I think it's almost three years ago, we decided to open source the DGS framework. It's on GitHub. There's a really large community. There's lots of companies using it now. It's also exactly the version that we were using at Netflix, so we're not using a fork or anything like that. It's really evolved really nicely over the last few years.

You might be wondering if you are actually in the GraphQL and Spring space, you probably have seen that in Spring Boot 3, the Spring team also added GraphQL support, which they called Spring GraphQL. That was not ideal for the larger community, because now the community would have to choose between, ok, do I bet on the DGS framework, or do I go with Spring GraphQL? Both seem interesting, both seem great. Both have an interesting feature set, but a different feature set. What do I bet on? I could go and sell you the DGS framework, how that's better and better evolves, and faster, and all these things which are right now probably true, because we've been around for a little bit longer. That's really not the point, the point is that you shouldn't have to choose. In the last few months, we have been working with the Spring team to get full integration between those two frameworks. What you basically get with that is that you can combine the DGS and Spring GraphQL programming models and its features in the same app, and it will just happily live together. That's possible because we're both using GraphQL Java as the low-level library. That's how it all fits together. We just integrated the framework really deeply. We're still finishing that, and that is probably going to be released early 2024. At least that gives you that idea. It doesn't really matter if you would pick the DGS framework today. It doesn't get you stuck in there and not be able to leverage features coming from Spring team, because very soon you will just be able to combine both very nicely.

Questions and Answers

Participant 1: Are you guys still using Zuul?

Bakker: We are, yes. Zuul is sitting in front of literally every request. Zuul is just a proxy. It's doing a lot of traffic control, basically. It's not the API server that we talked about earlier. Zuul sits in front of either the DGS federated architecture or like the old architecture.

Participant 2: You talked about the upgrade for Java having a limited perceived value there. I think that's interesting. I think a lot of enterprises tend to have this mindset of if it isn't broke, don't fix it, [inaudible 00:44:02]. What did you do to change that perception, or was it just the Spring upgrade that kicked your guys about to do the upgrade?

Bakker: No, actually, the main story was the performance benefit. The fact that we could say that, you get 20% better performance. It depends a little bit on the service, how that number actually looks like and what it actually means. The number is real. The fact that you could say that, that made a lot of service owners more interested in it, but it also gave leadership higher up just to push like, this is going to save money, go do it. That was actually the most helpful thing. The Spring Boot upgrade came later, and also forces the issue, but it was after the fact.

Participant 3: A lot of advancements to OpenJDK, so from 8 to 17, did it directly go from 8 to 17?

Bakker: We had services running on Java 11 because the plan was 8, 11, 17. Java 11, we had services running there, it never really took off because there just wasn't enough benefit. We mostly went from 8 to 17.

Participant 3: Then that's one of the things depending on the collectors as he was talking about, there was some impact with respect to stop-the-world pauses and some background collections that's happening with Shenandoah and ZGC. There's a tradeoff, but a lot of improvements went into reducing the memory sets and everything like that.

Participant 4: You mentioned that 20% was what you needed, but how did you even secure the time to actually experiment with that? How did you convince stakeholders to say, we're going to spend some time doing an upgrade on some services, and then we'll demonstrate the values with that?

Bakker: There is the benefit of having a platform team as we have. If I look at my own time, I could do whatever I want. If I think there is some interesting failure to be had in experimenting with garbage collection, I'm actually not mostly doing performance work, there's actually other folks who are much better at that. It's just an example. If there is potential failure in there, if you can get a time to just experiment with it and play with it, basically, because our time of like one or two people is like drops in the water.

Participant 5: Did you see any difference in the memory footprint between virtual threads versus a traditional one for the same number of request-responses. The second is regarding the GraphQL versus traditional SOAP, because SOAP was superseded by REST back in the days when I was thinking that was very precious, and your network was very important if you don't have a large number of data going through easily. Now that data is cheap, so it has the disadvantage of the schema going between the client and the server. I see that GraphQL also had the same problem now that we have the other query and the schema, going between the client and the server. How do you see the REST, SOAP, and GraphQL in that conjecture?

Bakker: I think SOAP had, conceptually, a few things. For example, the fact that there is a schema, that was a good thing. It was so incredibly hard to use and complex, that the overhead of doing the right things was just too much. Then REST, at least the way everyone is using REST, went the other extreme like no schema, no nothing at all, nothing is defined. You just throw in some data and we're all good. I think GraphQL sits in the middle there. It doesn't have a lot of overhead for developers to implement the schema. It's very easy. It's much easier than SOAP was, just from using it. You do get a schema and that takes away a lot of the downsides of just having REST in the schema. It feels like it has found the sweet spot for APIs. Probably if I'm back here 10 years from now, I will be like, "GraphQL, a terrible idea. How did we ever get to that?" You know how that goes. Right now, it feels like a sweet spot.

There is a difference, that is why we have to be very careful about ending virtual threads where we replace traditional thread pools. Depending on if these thread pools are very CPU intensive or not, it does or does not make a lot of sense. The memory footprint doesn't seem to be a big factor. We haven't seen any significant bumps there at all. Again, it's all very early days, and we're just experimenting with everything. We haven't quite figured it out yet. It seems to be very straightforward from memory.

Participant 6: Then I was just wondering about your Kotlin usage percentage, and what that is looking like?

Bakker: It is fairly low. For a while we had a bunch of teams, including my own team, very excited about Kotlin. The DGS framework itself is written in Kotlin, although it's targeting mostly Java apps. That's my choice. We have microservices written in Kotlin, as well. The only downside that we see with Kotlin is we invest more in developer tooling, so IntelliJ plugins and automated tooling based on Gradle to help with these version upgrades with Spring, and all these things. That story is much harder for a platform team if you have to deal with multiple languages. Because either for an IntelliJ plugin, even if it's both from JetBrains, you need to write your inspections in IntelliJ twice if you want to use both Java and Kotlin. It's just a lot more work. It's just a lot easier for platform teams if everyone is just happily using Java. That doesn't make Kotlin bad, though. We have only seen good things about Kotlin and it works just pretty well. It's a great language.

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Recorded at:

Feb 26, 2024

Paul Bakker

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15 Best Presentation Software for 2024 (Full Comparison Guide)
Presentation software is frequently used to pitch an idea to investors, present proposals to clients, introduce new products or services to customers, train staff on new policies or ideas, or teach your students new or complex concepts. Best Presentation Software: A Visual Comparison.
The Best Presentation Software
The Best Slideshow Creation Apps. The slideshow format is the classic presentation option, and the best two apps in this category are Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote, which is a part of the ...
Best presentation software of 2024
LibreOffice Impress is part of the open-source suite offered as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, and comes with a powerful array of tools and editing options for your presentation, not ...
The 11 Best Presentation Software to Use in 2023
Once considered the "O.G." and best presentation software available, it is still widely used and has a familiar interface—which means most users are comfortable with it. This presentation app has everything you need to create a presentation: from animated transitions for interactive presentations to pre-installed fonts and graphic elements.
Presentation Software Definition and Examples
Presentation Software Definition and Examples. Many software suites offer a program designed to accompany a speaker when he or she delivers a presentation. The specific presentation program in this suite of programs is usually (but not always) in the form of a slide show. This category of program is well-established; it doesn't change much, and ...
What is presentation software?
presentation software (presentation graphics): Presentation software (sometimes called "presentation graphics") is a category of application program used to create sequences of words and pictures that tell a story or help support a speech or public presentation of information. Presentation software can be divided into business presentation ...
12 Best Presentation Software for 2024
4. Keynote (for Mac users) Source: Screenshot from Keynote. For Apple users, Keynote is a presentation tool designed exclusively for your Apple devices and is available on macOS, iOS and iPadOS. Keynote is known for its sleek and intuitive interface, reflecting Apple's design aesthetics.
The best presentation software
The best presentation software. Canva for a free presentation app. Beautiful.ai for AI-powered design. Prezi for non-linear, conversational presentations. Powtoon for video presentations. Genially for interactive, presenter-less presentations. Pitch for collaborating with your team on presentations.
What is Presentation Software?| The Beautiful Blog
Presentation software is a type of computer application software that is designed to help users create digital presentations, or slide shows, to convey information in a more engaging way. Most presentation software will come fully equipped with tools and features for creating and editing digital slides that can include text, images, audio ...
What is Presentation Software Anyway? A Complete Guide to Essential
Presentation software is the deck designer you've been looking for, without actually having to hire a designer. At its core it's a platform or software that enables you to create visual presentations. Everyone knows the household names like PowerPoint, Keynote, ...
The 10 Best Presentation Software for 2023: Complete Guide
1- SLIDEBEAN PRESENTATION SOFTWARE. Ease of use: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - Fantastic! Customization: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Good. Final result: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - Fantastic! Slidebean is an online presentation tool that uses artificial intelligence to design beautiful slides. Simply add content blocks to your presentation without worrying about ...
13+ Best Presentation Software to Bid Farewell to PowerPoint
The presentation software lets users create personalized presentations using ready-to-use templates with custom fonts and styles, color schemes, animations, transitions, and background images. If you're a larget team, you can also upload files from Google Drive or Dropbox. 5. Microsoft Sway.
What is Presentation Software?
Presentation software is a category of application software that is specifically designed to allow users to create a presentation of ideas by stringing together text, images and audio/video. The presentation tells a story or supports speech or the presentation of information. Presentation software can be divided into business presentation ...
List of Top Presentation Software 2024
Presentation software serves as an effective tool for communication to a wide audience and therefore is used across different types of industries and business units. Finding the right software program to support presentations is a crucial part of communicating and ultimately enhancing workplace productivity.
What Is Presentation Software? (Quick Guide)
Presentation Basics. At its simplest, presentation software is a digital application that allows you to present information in the form of slides or slide decks. In many cases, it gives you the ability to add text, graphics, and video. And since most presentation software today allows you to design your own slides or use templates, depending on ...
Presentation program
In computing, a presentation program (also called presentation software) is a software package used to display information in the form of a slide show. It has three major functions: [1] an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted. a method for inserting and manipulating graphic images and media clips.
What Is Presentation Software? (Definitions and Examples)
Here's a list of popular presentation software programs you can compare to help you find one best suited to your goals: Microsoft PowerPoint This program is the original slideshow presentation application. Its familiar and easy-to-use interface makes it many people's favourite software program for presentations. It offers several unique ...
Different Types of Presentation Software & Use Cases
Historically, presentation software has been pretty straightforward. People used apps like PowerPoint in the office or the classroom to provide slide-based reinforcements to their speech, lecture, or business presentation. But over time, technology became more and more capable, enabling more intricate uses for presentation software.
What is Presentation Software?
A presentation software (sometimes called a presentation program) is a digital tool. It utilizes sequences of graphics, text, audio, and video to accompany a spoken presentation. These sequences, often called slides, are consolidated in virtual files called "slide decks.".
Ranking the Best Presentation Software Heading into 2024
Best Presentation Software for Professional Use Cases Microsoft Powerpoint. As a product of the tech giant Microsoft, PowerPoint is a staple in many business and academic environments. It's considered one of the most widely-used presentation software globally and is especially well-known for its user-friendly interface and vast array of ...
Top Presentation Software for Teachers
Google Slides. Microsoft PowerPoint. Prezi. Visme. The last thing teachers have time for is fussing with finicky presentation software. These four tools are effective and easy to use. As a teacher, you need presentation software to keep your students engaged, and you need to be able to use it both online and in the classroom.
15 Best Presentation Software for Mac [Reviewed & Ranked]
15 Software Used for Mac Presentation. Here is some of the best presentation software for Mac that you can use to make your ideas and design extraordinary: 1. Keynote. Price: Free Best for: Mac users. Get Software. Keynote is one of the top presentation software for Mac and comes included with most Apple devices.
NVIDIA Blackwell Platform Arrives to Power a New Era of Computing
Additionally, a growing network of software makers, including Ansys, Cadence and Synopsys — global leaders in engineering simulation — will use Blackwell-based processors to accelerate their software for designing and simulating electrical, mechanical and manufacturing systems and parts. Their customers can use generative AI and accelerated ...
How Netflix Really Uses Java
Paul Bakker discusses Netflix's use of Java, emphasizing the use of microservices, RxJava, Hystrix and Spring Cloud. Bio Paul Bakker is a Java Champion and developer in the Java Platform team at ...

Best presentation software of 2024

Best overall

The best presentation software of 2024 in full:

1. PowerPoint

Reasons to buy

2. CustomShow

3. ClearSlide

4. Haiku Deck

5. SlideDog

Other presentation software to consider

Presentation software FAQs

How we tested the best presentation software

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The 11 Best Presentation Software to Use in 2023

Choose the best presentation software by weighing the pros and cons

1. Piktochart

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

2. Microsoft PowerPoint

3. Google Slides

5. SlideDog

6. Haiku Deck

7. Prezi Business

9. Slidebean

10. ClearSlide

The best presentation software is…

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

Collaborate on presentations, reports, and more with Piktochart.

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Presentation Software Definition and Examples

Benefits of Presentation Software

Other Forms of Presentation Software

Microsoft Sway

12 Best Presentation Software for 2024

1. Venngage

Vast selection of templates

Data visualization made easy

Seamless real-time in-editor collaboration tools

Consistently brand your designs with smart Autobrand features

Who is it for

Key features

2. Microsoft PowerPoint

3. Google Slides

4. Keynote (for Mac users)

7. Adobe Express

8. Haiku Deck

10. Slidebean

11. Beautiful.ai

The best presentation software

What makes the best presentation app?

The best presentation software: at a glance

The best presentation app for AI-powered design

The best presentation app for conversational presentations

The best presentation app for video presentations

The best presentation app for interactive presentations

The best presentation app for collaborating with your team

The best simple presentation app

The best presentation app for generative AI

What about the old standbys?

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

What is presentation software?

What features should you look for?

Collaboration

Shareability

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1- SLIDEBEAN PRESENTATION SOFTWARE

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