Microsoft's Office 365 and Office 2016 are both great products, offering up a full suite of tools that allow you to get more done on a daily basis. As an upside to Office 365, the subscription-based service, 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage is also included. Nevertheless, cost is usually a deciding factor — a year of Office 365 Personal costs about $70 while Office Home & Student 2016 costs about $150 — which is why there are plenty of great alternatives for you to try.
Zoho Office
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Zoho Office has everything personal users love about an office suite, and businesses can't get enough of their powerful enterprise tools. Writer, Sheet, and Show are feature-laden Word, Excel, and PowerPoint alternatives with a familiar look, and enterprise tools like Projects and Books make it easy for businesses to keep track of customers, employees, and finances. Zoho even has its own cloud storage system synced up with your office documents, which has tools for administrators and analytics. There's likewise Zoho Mail rounding things out, as well as iOS and Android apps to keep you busy when you're away from your home or office.
The free version of Zoho comes with 5GB of cloud storage and is available for teams of up to 25 members. For 100GB of storage and for more team members, pricing switches to $4 per user, per month, then goes up to $6.40 per user, per month for 1TB of storage and some extra features designed for businesses. If you'd like to give it a shot without committing, there is a 15-day free trial available.
G Suite (Google Apps)
Google offers a very nice free online office suite that also packages offline support. Docs, Sheets, and Slides are competent Word, Excel, and PowerPoint alternatives, but don't expect to find the same level of in-depth formatting that Microsoft Office offers. Everything you create in Google Apps is automatically saved to cloud storage anytime a change is made, and there is a far-reaching revision function that lets you go over each change and decide whether or not you want to keep it. You can also export and import files in all common file types.
With a Google account, you get 15GB of free storage in the cloud to hold your documents, and anyone with a Google account (and the right permissions) can share, view, and edit documents. There is likewise a paid alternative to the free Google Apps, known as G Suite. It's more business-oriented, offering up business email and thorough support, as well as more Google Drive storage space. The Basic subscription costs about $5 per user, per month and nets you 30GB, the Business subscription (about $10 per user, per month) adds a low-code app development environment, smart search, and unlimited cloud storage for teams of more than five users. Finally, the Enterprise option (about $25 per user, per month) adds further data loss prevention tools and analytics.
WPS Office
WPS Office has a few options to choose from, including free, premium, and professional versions that come with some different features. WPS Office Free gives you access to Writer, Presentation, and Spreadsheets, and 1GB of cloud storage let you quickly and easily share documents. To subsidize the service, you will see some ads once in a while.
WPS Office Premium costs about $30 for a year's subscription, but it lets you connect up to nine devices at once, there are no ads, you get access to a ton of templates, and the office tools come with extra features. You still get 1GB of cloud storage for sharing, and there's a PDF reader that can convert PDFs into Word filetypes.
Finally, WPS Office Premium — about $45 per year for one PC or $80 for lifetime access on one PC — adds further support for different languages as well as full support to help you get acquainted with the suite of tools.
Microsoft Office Online
If you're well acquainted with Microsoft's Office tools and would rather not change, you can always give Office Online a shot. It has free browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that can be used indefinitely as long as you have internet access.
You can move between the online version and full desktop-based Office at any time without losing work or formatting, and you do get most of the same core features in each app. Best part? It's completely free. If you're planning to work on a device with a screen smaller than 10.1 inches, you can likewise check out Microsoft Office Mobile for free.
SoftMaker Office
SoftMaker Office features Word, Excel, and PowerPoint alternatives — known here as TextMaker, PlanMaker, and Presentation — that use Microsoft Office file formats for easy transitions. Choose from ribbon or classic button UI in the Office apps, take advantage of support for multiple languages, and even handle email with integrated Thunderbird, one of our favorite email apps for Windows 10.
There is a 30-day trial version to help you decide whether or not SoftMaker Office is for you. After that, prices go from about $45 per year for five devices, or about $100 for a Professional version that only needs to be purchased once.
LibreOffice 6
When it comes to free office suites, LibreOffice is right up among the best. It includes the three core apps — Writer, Calc, and Impress — that replace Word's own Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and it also has Draw (diagrams), Base (database), and Math (formula editor) for added functionality.
LibreOffice works with a ton of file formats, including those associated with Microsoft Office, and there are over 350 extensions available for download to help make it feel more like your own set of tools. If you used to use OpenOffice, know that LibreOffice is the successor that's as good or better in just about every way.
Corel WordPerfect
Corel WordPerfect has come a long way, resulting in a powerful office suite with all the tools you'd expect. WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, Presentations, and WordPerfect Lightning are equivalents to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, plus there's eBook publisher and photo editing software.
It supports plenty of popular file types, there are thousands of clipart images, plenty of templates and fonts, and a built-in dictionary. This is just scratching the surface of features available in WordPerfect, making it well worth the price tag. A Home & Student edition starts at about $75 and doesn't include some of the extra features like ebook publishing, while a Standard edition with all features starts at about $250. If you'd like to give it a shot before buying, there is a 30-day free trial available.
Related resources
- How to upgrade Office 365 Personal to Home edition so you can use it on more devices
- Microsoft is giving its Office 365 apps a makeover
Updated August 21, 2018: We refreshed this list of Office alternatives to ensure you're still getting the best of the best if you'd like to go without Microsoft's suite.
