Preceded by OpenOffice and StarOffice, this popular software has always been nipping at Microsoft Office’s heels.īy default, LibreOffice uses the ODF (OpenDocument) format, but it’s able to competently handle Microsoft Office document formats. Hundreds of open-source alternatives to Microsoft Office have been developed over the past few decades, and LibreOffice has emerged as the top dog. We’ve included a variety of free, paid, web-based, and desktop alternatives, and discussed the pros and cons of each. There’s no clear winner here because the perfect office suite for your needs depends on your unique requirements.
In this article, we look at some of the best Microsoft Office alternatives on offer today. There are currently enough alternatives to Office with their own benefits that it makes sense to consider whether there’s a better option for your business. Other Microsoft Office alternatives emerged, too, that catered to particular niches, such as cross-platform office suites and open-source office tools. Google offered its online office suite for free, so it quickly captured much of the market.
But around 2006, Microsoft felt pressure from web-based document editors such as the Google Docs Editors suite from rival Google, so an online version of Microsoft Office now exists known as Microsoft 365. Traditionally, you were required to download the office suite to your Windows computer and run it offline, and some people still use Microsoft Office this way.
