Have you ever searched for articles about the “best ppt makers of 2024” and found that the recommended tools don’t meet your needs?

It’s frustrating when top options don’t solve your specific problems. At Deckster, we understand this. Instead of offering a one-size-fits-all solution, we think the best presentation tools should tackle your unique challenges.

We’ll show you how choosing the right presentation tool can improve your workflow and enhance your presentations. Check out our blog post to find the perfect tool for your needs and make 2025 your best year for creating engaging presentations!

Table of contents

• Overview

• Pitch.com: Best for stunning slide designs

• Deckster.pro: Best for creating and tailoring content

• Presenter by iA: Best for fast presentations

• Tome: Best for “Send Out” presentations

• Plus AI: Best for enhancing Google Slides and PowerPoint workflows

• Final thoughts & recommendations

• FAQ

  
  

Overview

If you are busy, here is a quick overview of the tools, including their features and limitations. If you want to improve your presentations, we have detailed information about each tool below.

Pitch.com

Best for: Creating well-designed slides

Special features: Presentation narration; Multiplayer mode a.k.a. Collaboration; Advanced slides visual builder

Limitations: Pitch.com doesn't help with content creation

Pricing: $20-$80 a month

Deckster.pro

Best for: Creating and tailoring presentation content

Special features: Presentation structure generation with AI; Content suggestion and creation with AI; Presentation tips & instructions; Google Slides generation

Limitations: Doesn't have much to offer in terms of slide design

Pricing: $9 for limited usage, $15 for unlimited usage

Presenter by iA

Best for: Creating simple, well-designed presentations quickly

Special features: Hotkeys controls for faster interactions; PDF, PowerPoint, and HTML exports; Presentation mode with timer and speaker notes

Limitations: The biggest con is that it is not a specialized presentation design tool, nor help you with content

Pricing: $2.5 a month, or $25 a year, or even $50 for a lifetime ownership

Tome

Best for: Presentations meant to be shared online instead of presented in person

Special features: Powerful AI assistance; Non-standart 16:9 presentation layout

Limitations: AI assistance is mostly focused on design and content rewriting, rather than content suggestions and tailoring to your use case

Pricing: $20 a month

Plus AI

Best for: For people who want to keep their work in Google Slides and PowerPoint

Special features: Granular control over AI assistance; Presets for slide generation prompts

Limitations: While having granular controls over AI assistance Plus AI doesn't provide content guidance and tailoring

Pricing: Starting $15 a month, to $40 a month per user for the teams plan

Pitch.com: Best for stunning slide designs

Why Pitch.com is the best choice for slide design?

When it comes to slide design, Pitch.com stands out as the best option. Many tools tend to compromise either on functionality or simplicity, but Pitch.com's slide builder is both intuitive and versatile. This makes it useful for both professionals and beginners alike.

In our opinion, Pitch.com is especially suitable for individuals with design skills who already have content ready to work with.

Pitch offers a wealth of features for slide design, including a vast library of pre-designed slide templates and a powerful visual editor. With a variety of fancy fonts and animations available, Pitch.com truly has it all.

Feature spotlight:

Record: Our favorite feature is definitely the "Record" option. Fans of loom.com will surely love it. This feature allows you to add narration to your presentation, making it ideal for situations where you need to share the presentation rather than present it live.

Collaboration: Pitch.com enables you to collaborate with your teammates on a presentation, similar to how you would work in Miro. You can create presentations in multiplayer mode! Imagine a team of content creators and designers working together simultaneously - it's next-level productivity.

Advanced visual builder: You can create almost anything by adding various visual elements and graphs. You can also embed links, integrate Google Sheets, and connect Google Analytics to display data from these platforms directly in your presentation. Finally, you can animate all the elements on your slides.

Pitch.com limitations:

As a rule of thumb, it's important to prioritize content over form. While Pitch.com excels in slide design, it offers limited value if you don’t have a content draft prepared. The platform provides various templates for different use cases, such as sales pitches and product launches. However, without a clear understanding of your message and how to convey it, these templates may lead you astray rather than help you create a persuasive presentation.

Although there is a “start with AI” feature, it does not function as a fully developed AI assistant that can guide you through the presentation-making process. Instead, it simply converts prompts into slides, often resulting in random slides that feel disconnected.

Pitch.com alternatives:

If you enjoy using Pitch.com but are curious about other options, we recommend checking out Tome, which we will also discuss in this blog post. While Tome may not be as strong in slide design features, it excels in terms of AI assistance.

Pitch.com pricing

You can start using pitch.com absolutely for free, and be ready to pay $20 a month for extended functionality with limited usage and $80 for all features with limitless usage.

Deckster.pro: Best for creating and tailoring content

Why Deckster.pro is the best for presentation content?

Having created tons of presentations, we understand that the most challenging and time-consuming parts are developing the message you want to convey, deciding on the presentation format, and creating the content. Once these aspects are in place, the design becomes much easier.

Creating a persuasive presentation is difficult. The content must be intuitive to understand, reflect your perspective, and be tailored specifically to your audience. This requires expertise in various areas, including the fundamentals of storytelling, psychology, the inner workings of the corporate environment, and the ability to simplify complex ideas into clear concepts.

Most AI-powered presentation tools currently function similarly: they prompt you to provide a text input to help the AI generate slides. However, the results are often unhelpful.

For example, here’s a presentation created by Slidesgo to pitch a new experimentation tool. Although it was generated from the single prompt, “I need to pitch a new experimentation tool to C-level management,” it lacks crucial details and context.

The AI assistant did not prompt us to provide further specifics. As a result, the slides are vague and unusable, which will not help me with my problem. Here is the full presentation.

Deckster takes a different approach. Deckster is the only tool that relies on the fact that your audience should be a part of your presentation. It guides you through the presentation creation process step-by-step, assisting with format selection and content creation. It also helps to tailor the presentation to the audience and your goal. It even offers valuable tips and advice on how to approach your presentation.

Deckster's superpower lies in its use of chain reasoning. It builds each content piece and slide based on top of your previous inputs, resulting in unique, tailored, and precise content that effectively communicates your message and resonates with your audience.

Feature spotlight:

Custom structure generation: Presentations can vary significantly depending on their purpose, audience, and overall goals. For example, an educational presentation for students will be quite different from one aimed at your colleagues. Similarly, a simple pitch delivered to the CEO will differ from one presented to investors.

Using your input, Deckster’s AI-powered structure generator will identify and create the most effective presentation structure adapting the story for different audiences.

Thought refinery: Should a presentation be bullet points or paragprahs? Neither! People generally dislike presentations cluttered with excessive text on the slides. Slides should serve as supportive material for your presentation. The “Thought Refinery” feature, also powered by AI, guides you in determining what to include on your slides and helps you refine the content to make it concise, intuitive, and effective.

Google slides generation: Deckster not only develops the structure and content of your presentation while offering valuable advice, but it also generates a draft in Google Slides, saving you a significant amount of time.

Presentation tips & instructions: Once your presentation is generated, Deckster's AI assistant will provide personalized tips and advice to help you with presentation rehearsal and delivery!

Deckster.pro limitations:

Currently, there are two main limitations:

1. Deckster's AI assistant is only trained for one specific use case: corporate pitches. Additional use cases such as sales pitches, startup pitches, educational presentations, and reporting presentations are expected to be added later this year.

2. Deckster offers minimal customization for slide design. You can choose from only five predefined color palettes, but there are no further design options available at this time.

Though, for those who are thinking of design as a non-critical thing this might even be an efficiency advantage. After all, there is nothing better than minimalistic, white slides with a clear cut content.

Deckster.pro alternatives:

Deckster is a one-of-a-kind tool. The only alternatives that might match its output are ChatGPT or Claude, which can be used for creating presentation content. However, using these language models requires you to develop and use mega presentation prompts for great results (luckily if you decide to go this way we have a detailed guide on how to use ChatGPT for presentation generation). Additionally, you would still need to create the slides yourself, whereas Deckster generates them for you instantly.

Deckster.pro pricing:

Deckster offers straightforward pricing. You can start for free with one presentation to get a feel for how it works. After that, there are two tiers available:

- $9 per month for all features with limited usage

- $15 per month for the same features but with unlimited usage.

Presenter by iA: Best for fast presentations

Why is Presenter by iA the fastest presentation tool?

Have you ever found yourself facing a presentation deadline tomorrow or even in just two hours, with nothing prepared? Let’s be honest - we've all been there.

When time is of the essence, speed becomes the priority. While you could use Google Slides or PowerPoint, they still require time for styling and formatting the white clean ppt template you start with. Presenter by iA, on the other hand, creates well-designed slides right out of the box, eliminating the need for any additional styling.

The secret to Presenter by iA's speed lies in its simple text editor, which converts your text into slides and utilizes hotkey controls for efficiency.

If you only have two hours until your presentation delivery, you can quickly write an outline in the text editor and transform it into beautiful, minimalistic slides in no time. If you already have your content prepared, the process is even faster - you can simply paste your text into the editor, tag your titles and headlines, and your slides are ready to go.

Additionally, once you master the hotkeys, you’ll be able to create presentations at lightning speed!

Feature spotlight:

Hotkeys: Have you ever wondered how some programmers are so fast? One of the reasons is that they use shortcuts. Similarly, Presenter provides a list of keyboard combinations, or hotkeys, that you can memorize to significantly speed up your slide creation process.

PDF, PowerPoint and HTML exports: Flexibility is essential, and Presenter offers just that. You can quickly create slides using the tool, and then distribute your presentations in various formats as needed. This feature is especially useful for sending out presentations.

Presentation mode: Many presentation tools include a presenter mode, but Presenter by iA has its own unique version. It is minimalistic and focused, allowing you to concentrate on your slides and notes, with the added benefit of a built-in timer.

Presenter by iA limitations:

One significant limitation is that Presenter occupies a middle ground; it offers limited design customization options and lacks content assistance features.

Additionally, this tool is a desktop application, which means it requires downloading and installation. If you are using a corporate computer that restricts such actions, you will not be able to utilize this tool.

Presenter by iA alternatives:

A close alternative to Presenter is the Keynote app by Apple. This desktop application features an easy-to-use design editor and a variety of templates.

Presenter by iA pricing:

One of the highlights of Presenter is its pricing structure. They offer both monthly and annual subscription plans, priced at $2.50 and $25, respectively. Additionally, there is a lifetime option available for a one-time payment of $50, which allows users to own the software forever. We genuinely appreciate this pricing policy.

Tome: Best for “send out” presentations

Why is Tome best for "send out” presentations?

Some presentations are designed for speaking, while others are meant to be shared via email or chat. There is a significant difference between the two, particularly regarding the amount of information conveyed. We believe Tome is the best tool for "send out" presentations.

Why is that? Tome offers superior sharing functionality compared to other tools. If you're familiar with Notion or Google Docs, you might notice the similarity. Like many other applications, Tome allows you to share content with specific users or groups. However, what sets it apart is how the presentation appears once shared.

Sometimes, a standard 16:9 slide format isn’t sufficient to effectively tell a story. Tome adopts a different approach: instead of being confined to traditional slides, it utilizes pages that can vary in length and layout.

Additionally, similar to Pitch.com, Tome includes narration functionality. This enhancement elevates the "send out" presentation experience, allowing your audience to have a similar impact as if you were presenting in person, but at their convenience.

Tome also offers insights such as views and engagement statistics. While Pitch.com provides this feature as well, Tome excels in delivering an overall user experience.

Feature spotlight:

AI generation: Tome has one of the most advanced content generation features among all available tools, second only to Deckster. Deckster AI is developed using insights from the world's best presenters and psychological research. Tome, on the other hand, operates in a more general manner, focusing primarily on automating manual tasks rather than using intelligent insights. It generates slides based on your prompts, but unlike many other tools, Tome allows for much greater control over the layout and style of each individual slide. You can even create content for separate slides.

Although Tome may not be the most useful tool for content creation, it can significantly save time when it comes to generating slides, especially for educational presentations.

Presentation layout: In terms of presentation layout, Tome enables you to create pages rather than relying on the traditional 16:9 slide format. This flexibility allows you to present content more effectively, as you don’t have to fit everything into a constrained space.

Tome.app limitations:

Despite its impressive ability to create visually stunning presentations and provide detailed control over its AI assistance, Tome does not offer suggestions for content creation. Additionally, it falls short in helping users tailor presentations to audiences and to specific use cases and audiences, which is essential for delivering a persuasive presentation.

Tome.app alternatives:

Pitch.com is the option that is most similar to Tome in functionality. While it may not be as "fancy," Pitch offers much of the same visual quality for presentations as Tome does. However, it significantly lacks in terms of AI assistance. Given that both tools have similar pricing, we recommend choosing Tome over Pitch.com, primarily due to its AI support - unless you have a strong preference for animations, as Tome does not excel in that area.

Tome.app pricing:

$20 a month, or $16 a year. Fair price, considering functionality you get.

Plus AI: Best for enhancing Google Slides and PowerPoint workflows

Why Plus AI is the best presentation tool for PowerPoint or GoogleSlides?

Plus AI is our personal favorite because it aligns closely with our values: improving what works without introducing unnecessary complexities. It is a simple yet powerful tool. While it may lack the advanced visual editing capabilities found in tools like Pitch.com or Tome, Plus AI offers a capable AI assistant focused on slide and content editing, as well as slide creation.

The AI assistant in Plus can generate a presentation outline based on your prompt, create content based on your description, and provide you with granular control over each element on the slide.

What sets Plus AI apart is its seamless integration with Google Slides and PowerPoint, similar to what Deckster offers.

You don't need to learn a new tool, and your audience won’t have to figure out how to view the presentation you've sent them. Plus AI enhances what is already familiar to most of us, giving it an AI upgrade.

If you prefer to keep things simple and avoid learning new tools, Plus AI will greatly improve your existing workflow.

Feature spotlight:

Presentation generation prompts presets: Creating presentations for weekly updates, town hall meetings, and sales pitches can be repetitive. Most of the content remains the same; you only need to adjust a few details. With this feature, you can create and save prompts specifically for these types of presentations, allowing you to generate a complete deck with just one click. Then, you only need to edit a few details to finalize it.

Granular control over AI assistance: One aspect we love about Plus's AI assistant is its granular control. Whether you need to rewrite a specific paragraph in a certain style or replace an image on slide 13, this tool makes it easy to make those adjustments seamlessly!

Plus.ai limitations:

There are two notable limitations to consider.

First, Plus AI operates within Google Slides or PowerPoint, which means it inherits their quirks and restrictions. For instance, you cannot create animations, change the layout from the standard 16:9 format, or utilize built-in, optimized narration features.

Second, similar to Tome, Plus AI offers granular control over AI assistance, but this assistance is limited to editing content and images. Unlike Deckster, which provides content guidance, Plus AI does not offer this kind of intelligent support.

Plus AI alternatives:

We believe there is no direct alternative to Plus. While various plugins and extensions are available from the Google Workspace Marketplace, they do not provide the same experience. The best way to achieve a similar outcome is to use ChatGPT, Claude, or other large language models (LLMs) together to generate or edit content. Once you've created your content, you can transfer it to Google Slides using one of the available online design templates.

Plus.ai pricing:

Starting $15 a month, to $40 a month per user for teams plans, depending on your usage.

Ending thoughts

In our assessment, there are over 100 presentation tools available, ranging from established names like Prezi and Beautiful AI to newer entrants like Gamma. However, we have chosen to focus on a select few that we believe offer the most value for popular use cases.

This guide is not meant to limit you to just one tool; instead, it should serve as a menu from which you can select the most appropriate tools for your current needs.

It's essential to remember that a presentation is not just about slides; it is a multifaceted communication tool. To create great presentations, you need to master various skills, including design, communication strategies, tactics, and an understanding of psychology.

With this perspective, you should view the process of creating a presentation as a complex task rather than a quick task. A well-executed presentation can help you advance in your career, secure resources, open new opportunities for your startup, and even educate the next generation of doctors.

Conversely, a poorly executed presentation is likely to be forgotten within seconds.

FAQ

Does a presentation tool really make a difference?

Yes and no. At its core, a presentation is a medium for communicating your ideas. A well-communicated idea can be conveyed effectively even if you use a napkin instead of slides. Conversely, a poorly formulated idea cannot be saved by the fanciest slides.

“I have made this letter longer than usual, because I have not had time to make it shorter.” said Blaise Pascal.

If you have a well-structured idea, you can use various tools to enhance its presentation through better design and improved delivery.

Does it make sense to look for Power Point/Google Slides alternatives?

We don’t believe it does. You will achieve greater efficiency by improving the tools you already use rather than searching for a new solution. This approach saves you time since you won't need to learn new software, and you’ll avoid compatibility issues that can arise when transitioning to a different platform, especially if your existing setup is optimized for PowerPoint or Google Slides.

Can I use ChatGPT or Claude for presentation creation?

If you're looking to use ChatGPT or Claude for creating presentations, here’s some advice: both ChatGPT and Claude, along with other large language models (LLMs), are excellent tools for crafting presentation content. While the process might seem complex, there's no need to worry. We've created a concise and effective guide on how to use ChatGPT for presentation creation to help you get started.