hey everyone kevin here today i want to show you the top five best free microsoft office alternatives i used to work at microsoft as a program manager and i worked on microsoft office and i love microsoft office but it does come with a cost it costs 70 dollars for a subscription and you pay that every single year if you just want to write a document or maybe you want to run some basic calculations there are free alternatives that can do all of that extremely well alright let’s jump on the pc and let’s check out some of these free options [Music] this brings us to our very first microsoft office alternative and that’s wps office you can get it at wps.com wps stands for writer presentations spreadsheets it has all of the core applications it was also previously known as king soft office it’s been around for almost as long as microsoft office has been around it also happens to be one of the most popular and installed apps on windows pcs it works on all major platforms to download wps on the home page simply click on this free download button when you launch wps office you’ll land in an interface that looks like this and first i want to start with what i like about wps office here if i jump into the document experience you’ll find that it’s very similar to microsoft word here right up at the top i have access to this ribbon and i also have a similar set of tabs on the top as what i would find in microsoft word so if you know how to use word or powerpoint or excel you’ll also very quickly learn how to use wps also along with that if you have any existing files created in microsoft office you can very easily open those in wps office it accepts all the same file formats another thing i like up here on the top you’ll see this tab structure so it borrows this concept from a browser so let’s say that i have a spreadsheet and i’m feeding information into a document i can very quickly jump back and forth between these different files also back on the main interface another thing that’s really nice about wps they go really deep into different pdf capabilities here i could start a new pdf file i could open pdf files i could also use any one of these different pdf tools overall wps office sounds really solid what is there not to like well wps is a freemium app that means that throughout the experience you’ll see little upsells sprinkled in here for example when i click into the document start page you’ll notice that some of these templates have a diamond icon if i want to use these i have to pay some money to gain access to these by using the free version of wps i’ll also occasionally see ads within the experience and to target those ads wps uses third-party tracking all in all though wps is an excellent offering and if you’re willing to put up with some ads and upsells here and there this works as a great office suite [Music] this now brings us to the second best free alternative to microsoft office and that’s libra office this is an open source project and it also works across all major platforms to get libreoffice head to libreoffice.org and on the home page click on download now first i want to start with what i like about libreoffice you get a ton of value all for free you get six different apps included here’s libra office writer this is the microsoft word equivalent i also get a spreadsheet app here you have a powerpoint equivalent called impress i also get a database app this is like microsoft access and then you get two bonuses here you have libreoffice math which allows you to write math equations and you even have a vector shape drawing app called libra office draw and you can even use this as a pdf editor these apps work across windows mac and linux and they are truly free there are no ads there’s no tracking and there are no upsells like you would find in wps office within libreoffice it’s fully compatible with all office file formats so i could open a word document in libra office writer without any issues these are very powerful applications and i have a ton of functionality throughout all of these different menus so what do i not like about libreoffice well when you look at the interface it just looks a little bit more dated i don’t have access to a ribbon so if i want to access functionality i have to dig through these different menus to find what i want to do also i can’t collaborate with others on a document in real time instead i have to save the document send it to someone else and then they could send it back so that feels a little bit old-fashioned however once again this is completely free so it’s hard to complain all in all libreoffice is a very capable and good office suite brings us to microsoft office alternative number three and that’s google drive to access google drive you can head to the website drive.google.com and that’ll drop you in this interface here over in the top left hand corner you can click on this new icon and you can kick off a new document a new sheet or a new slide let’s click into document let’s start with what i like here you’ll find a very simple intuitive and modern design and it surfaces all of the most used core capabilities because google drive is on the web you’ll also find that it has excellent collaboration capabilities so let’s say you want to work with multiple people on a document you can simply go up to the top right hand corner and you can share this document with any number of people because you access google drive on the web you also don’t have to install anything and you can access your documents on any computer because google drive is on the web you might worry though what happens when i don’t have internet access well right here you can click on this gear click into settings and there’s the option to set it so you can continue editing your docs sheets and slides even when you’re offline another thing i like too is although it appears that you only have a limited number of capabilities here if you click into add-ins you can access and extend the functionality of drive with hundreds and hundreds of different add-in options google drive is an excellent alternative to microsoft office so what are some of the downsides one thing you’ll find is that it’s just not quite as feature rich as what you find in word excel and powerpoint although it has 80 of the functionality as what you would find in microsoft office it’s that 20 that’s missing that’ll sometimes block you when you’re trying to get work done also you don’t have access to a ribbon on top so here too to find functionality you’ll find that you have to dig through these different menus [Music] this brings us to the fourth alternative and this is zoho docs you can access it at zoho.com i’ve also included a link in the description down below on the home page up in the top right hand corner click on get started and over here on top to access the free version click on this radio button for zoho docs then you’ll need to fill out your name email and a password and then click on sign up once you finish signing up for zoho docs on the main page in the top left hand corner you can create a new document a spreadsheet or a presentation let’s start with what i like about zoho docs i get access to a full set of different office productivity apps here i have an authoring tool i also have a spreadsheet and i can create presentations and because all of these are built on the web i don’t have to install anything to use these as another advantage as well because they are web-based here i could very easily share a file with others and so i could work together on say creating this document once i’m finished with my document i could click up here to publish my document so then i could distribute this out to a larger audience also over on the left hand side i have access to a rich set of functionality here within a document i could insert let’s say a video a qr code a signature so there’s lots of rich functionality that you won’t even always find and say microsoft word so what do i not like about zoho docs well here when we look at the document experience you’ll see the navigations over on the left hand side when i jump into the spreadsheet it looks more like the google experience and here when i jump into presentation here again the interface changes so it’s not really a cohesive design in fact it feels like different teams worked on each one of these different experiences so it’s going to take you a little bit of time to become accustomed to this interface especially if you’re coming over from microsoft office also although you don’t have to install anything and that’s one of its strengths let’s say you go offline you won’t be able to access your different documents also from looking through the different menus and the different features it’s not quite as rich as what you would find in microsoft office [Music] this now brings us to our fifth and final free alternative to microsoft office and that’s soft maker’s free office you can get this at free office.com on the homepage you can click on free download and that’ll kick off the download one thing i’ve found though is the download does take a little bit of time so you’ll have to be a little bit patient let’s start with what i like about free office and what i like begins with the installation process you can decide to install just one of the applications or you could decide to install all of the applications you get access to three different apps here you have a word equivalent you also get a spreadsheet app and you can also create presentations so you get all of the core applications and as you install you also have the option to go with this ribbon interface or you could go with the traditional menus here i opted to go with the ribbon just so it would look more similar to what i’m used to with microsoft office overall you have lots of rich functionality within these different applications here i could click through some of the tabs and you’ll see some of the functionality that you have available to you so what do i not like about free office well one of the deal breakers for me is there’s no dictionary or the thorus so let’s say you’re writing a document and you misspell a few things well text maker is not going to tell you so you better hope that your spelling is rock solid also there’s no cloud support so if you want to say co-author a document with others well you won’t be able to do that [Music] hopefully by now one of these free options will work for you but maybe you really just want to use microsoft office but you don’t want to pay luckily microsoft offers office entirely for free through the website office.com on the office.com homepage you can log in with a microsoft account and if you don’t yet have a microsoft account you can also sign up for the free version by clicking on this text once you sign into office.com over on the left hand side you can click on this create icon and you can launch into a new document a spreadsheet or a presentation there are also a few other types that you can create as well here i’ll click into microsoft word here on the word start page i could start a new document i could start with one of these templates or i could get back to recent files i’ll click into a new blank document let’s start with what i like about office on the web i can edit office files entirely for free and it has a very similar interface to what i would find in the desktop apps and in fact sometimes features hit the web apps before they even hit the desktop apps and here too if i want to work with others in real time i can share the document and then work together with my teammates so what is there not to like well what you’ll find is some of the features in the desktop apps just aren’t on the web yet so there’s a little bit of a feature gap also if i decide i want to work offline these apps only work when i have internet connectivity all right well those are the free alternatives now you might be wondering well why would you ever sign up for a subscription of microsoft office when you have all of these free options so microsoft is offering a lot more than just word excel and powerpoint when you sign up for a subscription you get cloud storage space you get one terabyte of space in one drive also if you’re using something like powerpoint you can take advantage of ai services you get all these different design suggestions to help make your slides look better also if you’re using word excel or powerpoint you could insert free stock images stock videos that’s also included if you want to know more about what do you actually get with a microsoft 365 subscription i’ve included a link to a video that goes a lot more in depth in the description but once again if you just want the core fundamentals these free options work extremely well alright let me know down below in the comments will you be using one of these free options if you enjoyed this video please consider subscribing all right well that’s all i have for you today i hope you enjoyed and as always i hope to see you next time bye [Music]