[Software] Best Microsoft Office alternatives of 2020: Free, paid, online mobile office suites

[_Happy boy]

 

 

Google Workspace : Collaboration + productivity apps
There are many different office software suites but Google Workspace formerly known as G Suite remains the original cloud one and one of the best business office suites, offering a huge range of features and functionality that rivals can't match.
Try it free for 14 days.The best Microsoft Office alternatives can increase office productivity.

Microsoft Office remains the most po[CENSORED]r productivity suite for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more - whether as a download software package, or as the cloud-based Microsoft 365 suite - through powerful apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Outlook, and more.

However, a range of alternative competitors have become increasingly attractive, not least because of more price-competitive licensing fees, and some are free to use. However, paying less, or nothing, doesn't necessarily mean that the software is of lower quality, as the open source community can testify.

Yet there can be issues with sharing documents between different office suite platforms, which can be a real concern. This is why when choosing an alternative to Microsoft Office, you need to be certain of any shortfalls that might limit your use of the software, especially if you need to share or collaborative on documents with other users who have one or more different office suites.

If you're using the office alternative as a standalone piece of software there shouldn't be any such issues, but it is something to be mindful about if you end up changing to a different software suite.

That said, the best in the Microsoft Office alternatives are generally strong programs with full functionality, and little problem sharing files with other platforms, though few come close to the full functionality of Microsoft 365 with it's cloud service bundle that includes OneDrive and Microsoft Teams. 

Here we'll show the best of them, along with their strengths and weaknesses.Best Microsoft Office alternatives - at a glance
LibreOffice
FreeOffice
WPS Office
Calligra
OfficeSuite
Polaris Office
OnlyOffice
WordPerfect
Zoho Workplace
Google Workplace

LibreOffice is the offspring of The Document Foundation and split from OpenOffice in 2010. The suite itself is free and open source, and is made up of a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software, and is available in 110 languages.

While LibreOffice uses the ODF (OpenDocument) format it still supports a range of other format types such as those used in Microsoft Office. LibreOffice is the default suite for most Linux distros and it is also available for use on Windows and macOS. There's also a LibreOffice viewer for Android.

As with most open source software all your technical support comes from online, but seeing how easy this is to use, support will be rarely needed. The platform also offers the option to export your files into PDF format amongst others.

You can add extra features to LibreOffice via extensions from its website. These include extra templates for documents.

If you are looking for a free and easy alternative to Microsoft Office, then FreeOffice is the suite for you. The company, SoftMaker, has been developing office software since 1987 and its office suite is their flagship product.

FreeOffice is a complete office suite that is free to use for both home and in the workplace. It is developed for both Windows and Linux, and offers a basic version for Android users.

The suite itself is fully compatible with all Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats. This means that you can not only view but save files in formats such as DOCX, XLSX and PPTX. It also supports older file types such as PPT and XLS.

The new interface that was launched this year gives you the option of either working with modern or classic menus and toolbars. This makes switching from Microsoft Office easy to do as the interface is eerily similar.

For those users who have the luxury of a touchscreen PC you can use touch mode with larger icons. This mode is available for both the newer version look and the classic menu-based interface.

WPS Office was released in 2016 by Chinese software developer Kingsoft. It is an office suite that is available for Windows, Linux, Android and iOS. The suite is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Russian.

It offers a free and a premium tier. The free tier allows you to use Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheets, which are alternatives to the Microsoft Office suite which it also resembles closely. WPS offers a PDF to Word converter which is fast and easy to use. It supports bulk exportation and can also split-merge PDF files if needed.

The suite offers 1GB of free cloud storage for iOS and PC users, but this service is not yet available for Android.

The 'Premium' tier allows the user to connect up 9 devices at once. It also gets rids of all those annoying adverts that are commonplace on the free tier.

WPS has been criticised for not allowing collaboration beyond those that track changes and allow users to insert comments. Users have also said that the interface can be quite slow at times when it comes to loading documents. Linux users have mentioned that not all fonts are automatically included and that they have to be installed separately.

For Android users installation is quite large and criticism has been levelled imploring the developer to make it more lightweight.