Productivity is increasingly moving away from the classic desktop machine. As mobile, BYOD and cloud transfigure the way we work – soon to be further disrupted by Google’s Chromebit,which can transform any screen into a computer for $100 – we need software tools that facilitate productivity in that new environment. our four slides on MS PowerPoint aren’t going to cut it. At the same time, you don’t want to spend a fortune. So what can you do? Choose from these free online presentation tools.
1: HaikuDeck
HaikuDeck lets you create slide decks on a range of devices. It’s been instrumental in showing off the productive powers of tablets and is particularly good for creating simple,yet crystal-clear, presentations. It’s not features-packed but it is reliable and effective. It’s also quite impressively free, in both its web app and iOS incarnations, and according to the company, ‘always will be.’
2: Empressr
Empressr devotes itself to storytelling rather than HaikuDeck’s emphasis on clarity. Here, you get a rich media tool for talking people through processes or narrating systems or stories. Right now you get unlimited presentations on Empressr for free, but it’s currently in beta, so don’t count on it staying that way.
3: Slides
If you work on a laptop, this might be your best choice. Slides is a browser-based presentation creator and editor with free cloud storage so you can easily device-hop. Like HaikuDeck it’s more about appearance than storytelling, so if you need clarity with style it’s a great choice. Slides.com presentations are referred to as ‘desks,’ and Slides.com is free as long as you don’tmind all your desks being public. If you want privacy, though, you have to pay for it, to the tune of between $6 and $12 a month.
4: PowToon
PowToon is a quirky, fun tool that lets you create step-by-step narrative cartoons, narrated by voiceovers. Behind the scenes you build on a series of storyboards, but when the presentation is shown it looks like a short animated film. If you want to stickj with PowToon and get the occasional basic presentation too, PowToon Slides does just that and comes bundled with the core app. The free version features watermarks and outros, so you’ll probably want Pro at $19 a month or Business at $57 a month.
5: SlideDog
SlideDog allows you to build presentations from a range of media and keep it all the right size and shape,with no file type or compatibility problems, so you can build a presentation with multiple different types of media embedded, then share it online or show it conventionally. You can use SlideDog offline, but if your presentation features online content like YouTube videos they won’t work without an internet connection. SlideDog is freemium, with a free plan that offers short trials of premium features.If you like them you’ll need to switch to the $8.33 a month Pro plan.