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10 Top PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Beginners (2021 List)
Written by:
Chloe West
If you’re putting together a new presentation, you’re likely looking for the perfect presentation apps to help you design, present and share it effectively.
Well, you’re in luck. We’ve put together a list of the best presentation apps for both desktop and mobile that can help you to seamlessly create and produce your presentation.
Plus, we’ve put together a list of pros and cons for each to help you determine which presentation apps are going to work best for you. After all, you don’t want to put on a boring and ugly presentation.
Jump into our list of 17 desktop and mobile presentation apps and PowerPoint alternatives to help you create a beautiful and engaging slideshow.
Let’s start with a few great presentation apps that you can use to design your presentation on your desktop or laptop computer.
Since putting together your presentation can be design-heavy and content-heavy, it can often be easier to manage this on your actual computer than on a mobile device on-the-go.
Visme is a cloud-based graphic design software that allows designers and non-designers alike to create beautiful and professional presentations, infographics, social media graphics and more.
It comes with millions of design assets, including stock photography, vector icons, data visualization tools, free popular fonts and preset color themes.
When looking at presentation design, you also want to make sure you’re going to come out with a beautiful and engaging slideshow. With pre-designed templates and themes with hundreds of slide layouts to choose from, you’ll find the perfect design in Visme to fit your content.
But what sets Visme apart from other presentation apps and software is that it also comes with various interactivity options, like hyperlinked elements, video embed, audio upload and recording features.
Learn more about creating a presentation in just five minutes by watching this video below:
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Everyone has heard of Google, right? So it’s no surprise that Google Slides is one of the more popular presentation apps and PowerPoint alternatives available.
But popular does not always mean best. While the service is free to any Google account holder, its slide layouts are basic at best and its design capabilities are extremely limited.
However, if you need a quick and to-the-point presentation, Google Slides can be a great option since it’s free and has next to no learning curve. If you’ve used PowerPoint, you know how to use Google Slides.
Another popular presentation app is Prezi. The main feature that Prezi is known for is giving its users the ability to easily create non-linear presentations.
This type of presentation can be highly engaging for your audience because instead of side-to-side transitions, you can create a pan and zoom effect each time you switch over to another slide.
While this type of presentation can be a fun change of pace for your audience, Prezi’s slide design options are not very visually appealing, and non-linear presentations can still be created in many other presentation makers by linking slides.
Canva is a well-known cloud-based graphic design software, but it's not too popular for presentations. While it still has the “capabilities” for presentation design, it's main focus is on social media graphics.
What this means is that it offers a few visually appealing slide templates and you can create designs in the correct presentation dimensions. However, the software currently does not offer a way to animate your slide elements or even add unique transitions.
There are a few static chart options and Canva also has tons of graphic elements to choose from, such as photos, shapes and icons, so that you can still create static presentations in their software.
Venngage is first and foremost an infographic maker.
Similarly to Canva, they have added basic capabilities for creating presentations, but their design dashboard isn’t nearly as robust as some other presentation apps and software on this list.
While there are a number of presentation templates available for each of their plans, Venngage also doesn’t offer any type of animation or transition features for moving from slide to slide.
When it comes to creating a presentation, Venngage is in the same boat as Canva. Both certainly can be used to create a presentation, but they aren’t ideal, and they don’t offer as many features as a presentation app meant for building slideshows.
Beautiful.ai is a presentation maker that was actually created to focus on presentation design, like Visme. But while it’s meant for creating presentations, it doesn’t offer full-range design capabilities.
Instead, you’re given eight different themes with about 60 slide layouts to choose from that keep elements snapped into place, regardless of how you might want to customize your slides.
While this software is a great way to “stay in the lines,” per se, with your presentation design, it doesn’t allow you to design your presentation the way you want. If you’re trying to create a slide that falls outside of their parameters, you’re stuck.
Slidebean advertises itself as an AI-powered presentation maker. It allows users to separate the content and design of its slides, inputting content in one section and adjusting the slide design in a separate area.
When creating a presentation in Slidebean, once you add your content into the text boxes, you can switch over to the design section and have their AI automatically assemble your content pieces around the page in a way that makes sense.
You’re also able to refresh different AI designs until you find one that you like. Although this can be helpful for those who don’t really want to worry about their design, it is extremely limited, and they don’t have a lot of templates to choose from.
Their templates are also focused on startups and entrepreneurs, so if your presentation doesn’t have that focus, your selection is even more limited.
Infogram is another cloud-based graphic design software that tries to do everything, including presentations, but really wasn’t built for that specific purpose.
There are less than 50 available premade templates and they aren’t very well designed. Redeeming qualities include the fact that there are animation and transition features available, as well as data visualization tools.
While there are icons and photos to choose from, most of them are premium and not available for use in the free plan.
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If you’re on the go, sometimes you need to be able to edit or throw together a quick design. Other mobile presentation apps can help you to click through or present your slideshow.
Here are nine mobile presentation apps that can help you with your presentation delivery as well as some quick slide design here and there.
MightyMeeting is an Android app that allows users to share, present and annotate presentations on Android smartphones and tablets.
Simply create your presentation in the software of your choice, save it as a PDF, email it to yourself and then open it in MightyMeeting from your smartphone or tablet.
You can invite other viewers, and each participant can annotate the slides, making it a great tool to use in classrooms and remote viewing settings. Once you’re finished, you can save the annotated presentation as a separate PDF and email it to participants.
Haiku Deck is a web and mobile-based app that allows you to create and edit presentations. It works well for making some on-the-go edits to a presentation you’ve previously created.
You can even download the app onto your smartphone or tablet to create full presentation decks straight from your mobile device. It also syncs presentations between your computer and phone apps, making it easy to create and edit in different areas.
The biggest caveat is that its presentation template design is outdated and not very pretty.
Keynote is another app that offers both desktop and mobile versions. It’s exclusively available for iOS smartphones, tablets and computers as it’s the Apple version of PowerPoint.
You can create presentations right on your mobile device and get them ready to present on your computer, which can be handy.
You can download the app from the Apple App Store for $9.99. It does come on most Macs and Macbooks automatically, but you’ll have to purchase it for your smartphone or tablet.
Flowvella is a downloadable desktop and mobile app that allows you to create presentations wherever and whenever you need to. While it’s a fast and efficient app, it lacks some of the features any good presentation needs.
For example, there’s no animation or interactivity options available. However, it does have one exciting perk in that it includes offline editing. Since it’s a downloadable app, users are able to work on their presentations without WiFi.
It creates an online link for you to present your slideshow from any device, and offers analytics for you to see who has viewed your presentation.
AIO Remote, or All In One Remote, allows users to turn their Android smartphone into a remote to control their presentation slides from a distance.
This can be useful when giving a presentation in front of a large audience, and you want to be able to move seamlessly around the stage. Your Android smartphone can turn into your own slide clicker.
Showpad is another app that works well for sales teams. It allows users to put together various types of content and share it with a tablet user for them to scroll through and annotate.
This can be very useful for sales reps that are on the go with meetings and appointments, so they can easily share their screens with potential customers and walk them through the process.
The app is available on both Android and Apple devices, so there aren’t limitations to which smartphones and tablets will have access.
LinkedIn’s SlideShare app is a great way to share and view presentation content on the go. You can create your presentation in any online software, like Visme, export it and upload it onto SlideShare.
You can then use the mobile app to share your presentation and help get the word out. You can also view other presentations and learn more about a certain topic.
There are millions of professional presentations that have been published on SlideShare, so it’s a great community of slideshows to watch and save.
SlideIdea is a free iOS app that allows users to create full presentation decks quickly from their smartphones and tablets. They offer an Express creation mode where you can simply input your content and the app will design the slides for you.
This can be a great hack when you don’t want to bother with the actual look and feel of your presentation and just need to get your content on a slide.
Presentation Timer can be helpful both during your prep time and actual presentation time. This app lets you set a timer for how long your presentation will be and it will change the screen color based on how much speaking time you have left.
Using an app like this can be very helpful when you’re rehearsing your content so that you don’t go over on time, and you know which anecdotes you can fit in.
Just make sure when you’re giving your actual presentation, you can see your phone screen so you’ll know when you’re running out of time.
Which one of these 17 desktop and mobile presentation apps is your favorite? Some are perfect for creating your presentation while others can be helpful for presenting and sharing your slideshow.
The Visme presentation app lets you access thousands of premade themes and templates, graphic elements, animations, transition effects and more to create the perfect presentation.
Sign up today for a free account and take it for a test drive!
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