Best Alternatives to Microsoft Office 365 for You & Your Business
The main reason we look for alternatives is not being fully satisfied with the current one.
Microsoft Office 365 is the first choice for people because of its exceptional applications. They are Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, among others. It has even helped professionals and organizations in ways that have no limit.
However, even after being considered as the best productivity suite to work with, it still has some loopholes that direct the footsteps of the users towards its competitors.
“Why does this happen?”, you may ask.
Users need to share their documents with teammates. It doesn’t matter whether these are within office 365 platforms or to a platform other than Office 365. There are errors that Microsoft gives when a user wants to share documents between different Office 365 suite platforms.
Some options have caught the eye of users. It can be because of a price-competitive licensing fee, or a free platform to work on. A platform being free or of low cost doesn’t portray a sacrifice of quality.
No matter what the reasons are, there are applications in the market trying to steal Microsoft’s thunder. Who are they? Find out from the top 5 alternatives to Office 365 listed below.
Top 5 Best Alternatives to Office 365
We consider Office 365 alternatives for all budgets and circumstances.
I. Google Workspace
Google Workspace is the best alternative to Office 365 among all the options. There is a combination of renowned apps like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and, Google Forms provided by the internet giant Google.
It is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, and, computers with a modern web browser. It is popular for easy collaboration and, sharing of documents.
Users who want to use it for free can do so through the Google account. Only if you want more storage in your Google Drive, you need to pay. However, for business users, it starts at $6 per user per month.
Note: The problem users face in this is how to migrate to Google Workspace. To solve these issues, Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace migration solution can be used. The tool allows migration from other platforms like Office 365, Lotus Notes, and Google Workspace itself. All your data, whether they are emails, events, attachments, archive folder, contacts, documents, appointments, a shared mailbox can be migrated.
II. LibreOffice
Having a flexible interface that is very similar to Office 365 makes LibreOffice one of the best alternatives to Office 365. The reason why it is the most preferred is that it is free and an open-source office productivity software suite.
It is a project of ‘The Document Foundation (TDF)’ and was forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org. The number of languages it is available in is 115 languages, making it a feasible option for users all over the world.
Benefits of LibreOffice
- Since LibreOffice is an open-source suite, it’s always developing. Thus, users can always find updates and add-ons on this website.
- It consists of applications for word processing, forming and editing spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams, and drawings. It also includes working with databases and composing mathematical formulae.
The different tools it provides are:
- Writer for word processing
- Calc for spreadsheets
- Impress for presentations
- Draw for vector graphics and flowcharts
- Base for databases
- Math for formula editing
- It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers and offers a mobile version for Android.
- Supports all the formats of Office 365 like .pptx, .docx, .xlsx, and many more. This means that you can import all your existing files to LibreOffice without any issues.
One problem with it is that it doesn’t have any integrated cloud storage or collaboration tools.
III. WPS Office
WPS Office was launched in 2016 by the Chinese software developer Kingsoft. It offers both free and a premium tier.
Features of WPS Office
- The free version of WPS Office includes Writer, Presentation, and Spreadsheets. This makes it a suitable substitute for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
- The ‘Premium’ tier allows the user to connect up to 9 devices all at once. The premium version doesn’t show the annoying ads.
- It also has a PDF to Word converter that supports bulk conversion of files.
- WPS Office suite works for all Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.
- The languages it is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Russian.
- 1 GB of cloud storage is available to store documents. It is available across multiple platforms including, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, but not for android.
The only problem with this option is it is not as collaborative as Google Workspace and the free version also annoys the users with too many ads.
IV. Zoho Workplace
Zoho is considered to be the most affordable Microsoft Office 365 alternative. It is an Indian multinational technology company that produces web-based business tools. The online office suite for which It is popular is Zoho.
Price:
Zoho is free for up to 50 users. The Standard package starts at $3/user/month that is billed annually.
Features:
It is the first choice for small businesses because of the following reasons:
- Businesses with over 50 users can access all these features and more through the Standard or Professional editions.
- It is an integrated online office application suite that includes a word processor, email hosting platform, web conferencing tools, chat functionality, and more.
- The size of its email attachments is around 30 MB
- There are private chat channels available.
- The size limit for file upload for docs is 5 GB. And, Workspace integration is free for up to 50 users.
V. Polaris Office
Polaris Office is developed by Intraware and was launched in March 2014.
The best thing about this suite is its user-friendly interface. You can find it in free and paid versions, and choose the one as per your preference. The price of the standard package starts from $7.99/month.
You can find it on Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS. This easy-to-use application supports all popular file formats of Office 365. Also, its editing tools are better than most Office 365 alternatives. The different languages in which it is available are French, German, Korean, English, and Russian.
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