Google Drive is a cloud file storage, synchronization, and collaboration platform and service, that features Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for document editing and presentation.
$6
per month
LibreOffice
Score9 out of 10
N/A
LibreOffice is a free and open-source Office Suite from The Document Foundation, presented as the successor to OpenOffice.org. The suite includes Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).
$0
free and open source under the Mozilla Public License v2.0
Pricing
Google Drive
LibreOffice
Editions & Modules
Basic
$6.00
per month
Business
$12.00
per month
Enterprise
Contact Vendor for Quote
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Drive
LibreOffice
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Discounts are available for students, educators, and non profit organizations.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Drive
LibreOffice
Considered Both Products
Google
Verified User
Chose Google Drive
I also use OneDrive from Microsoft as I also have a Windows phone and a Surface device and this integrated easily with my mobile document to my PC. However they can't in any way compare with Google Drive, first Google Drive have various apps which are also free and integrates …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Graduate Research Assistant at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Higher Education, 1-10 employees)
Chose LibreOffice
In my view, Microsoft office products are very much user-friendly and well documented. However, these products are very expensive where the LibreOffice is free of cost. Also if you have a Linux platform, the best office product will be the LibreOffice. Although LibreOffice is …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
CEO in Corporate at The Winnipeg Humane Society (Non-Profit Organization Management, 51-200 employees)
Chose LibreOffice
I think it is fair to say this:
If you are looking for a well-rounded, GNU-licensed product that will encompass word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database then LibreOffice is probably all you need.
For online collaboration, links with cloud storage, and more …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose LibreOffice
Microsoft Office 2016 is the premium option for word processing, but in my line of work the content is more important than the presentation. I am mostly content to work in Google Docs unless working with documents of a sensitive nature. Then I use LibreOffice.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Self Employed in Sales at 5 Star Housesitters (Wine and Spirits, 1-10 employees)
Chose LibreOffice
The most ubiquitous office suite now is of course, Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office offers very good tools, but is very Microsoft/Windows "centric" - understandably they want to tie users to the Microsoft/Windows universe. I'm a big proponent of open source operating systems …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Head of Development Innovation in Professional Services at Nesta (Non-Profit Organization Management, 51-200 employees)
Chose LibreOffice
The online docs - people often found [them] confusing and limited in what they do. LO was preferred to those though they lack the real-time collaboration features in the other documents. Users preferred Office 2016 though support was going to go away for it so we investigated …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Coordinator in Information Technology at Česká psychedelická společnost, z.s. (Czech Psychedelic Society) (Cosmetics, 11-50 employees)
Chose LibreOffice
MS Office is a very good office suite but in the early days of the company spending hundreds of EUR on licenses was not the priority and the added value of MS Office at that time could not compensate the costs. Google documents are used in a limited way for a few …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Co-Owner, President, Creative Services in Information Technology at The Framemakers (Retail, 1-10 employees)
Chose LibreOffice
Microsoft Products: LibreOffice is an affordable programme that is on par with Microsoft products. Unlike Microsoft, which tends to reinvent itself every couple of years and sacrifices functionality for aesthetics, LibreOffice is tried and true, sticking to the functionality …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It is possible to share files and folders with up to 200 email addresses, as well as with persons outside the company.Use the drop-down arrow to select who may see, comment on, or change the file or folder before sending out an invitation.I am very much impressed with this feature
If you're working with numbers, LibreOffice doesn't get in your way and try to make changes as it sees fit, forcing you to repeatedly go back and undo processes you didn't want, didn't ask for, and that have no place in the document you are trying to produce. All I want to do is assemble the data, process it for the task at hand, and then print it for distribution. LibreOffice allows me to do that.
Any user with access can store a file using different platforms like Android, IOS, Windows, or Ubuntu (Desktop version)
You can share files with any number of different users with different access rights or you can even keep it public by providing the access link and assign different rights for public access
You can open Excel/Word files using google software Sheets/Docs in the browser environment without having to install software like Microsoft Office etc on your Windows OS
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Having a little bit more control and clarity over what is shared and how it is shared would be a useful improvement.
Could be more robust and flexible as far as assigning restrictions.
Google Sheets could be enhanced because Excel really is not there yet as a product with equal capabilities as there are still quite a few limitations to the functionality.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It's perfect for me. It keeps things saved and is easy to remove items if needed. Also, I very much enjoy the formatting options. Along with the integrations it has for SSO. Overall, this is the most user friendly system I have ever come across.
We use it consistently and have a lot of documents in the OpenDocument format so it will be necessary to use LibreOffice or a compatible product such as Openoffice in the future to be able to open these files. Because the license fee for Libreoffice is zero it is not very costly to keep using it - the costs are mostly for keeping it installed on the office PCs and regularly updated, and solving employee issues with the user support.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It's easy enough to use for computer users of all ages and skill levels. I am an advanced user, and I think the hardest part might be showing someone how to download and set up the app on their device if they weren't too familiar with computers, but overall it is very easy to understand.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
For all of the reasons in the foregoing evaluation. Its menus are clean, intuitive and straightforward. Any function I need to use can be accessed via keystrokes, without having to stop, move my hand to the mouse, deal with it, and then get back to the keyboard to proceed. It helps me keep my mind on my work and not worry about dealing with the mouse all the time.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Libreoffice is a desktop app not requiring any server part so it is always available when the PC is working normally. Installing it on another machine if one PC fails is very quick and easy. This is a non-issue.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The documents load fairly quickly and also update in real time, especially given the fact that multiple people can be using it at once. The "Offline" feature works great to allow the user to make edits and access the document without access to the internet, and then sync changes later once they're back.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
For big/imported tables or text documents with images loaded from the internet it is sometimes getting very slow, RAM and CPU intensive, and sometimes even hangs due to some memory leaks or other bugs. This is a long-term problem and is still not resolved perfectly.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It takes a few days for customer support to get back to you. Although, I have not had to use support too often. Once you get an email back, they are very thorough and work hard to fix the problem quickly. It is a really great resource and a great way to get the help you need if you're stuck. A phone call also works quickly but you have to call during specific times.
Support is not officially offered. However, you can find answers to any usage questions or trouble-shooting online easily, typically starting with a Google search. (I believe that all forums / tips for OpenOffice apply equally to LibreOffice, and vice versa.) While Microsoft Office, for example, officially includes support, I find that typically you end up going to a Google search in any case. So, this is not really a downside. However, in all these cases, you end up doing a lot of figuring things out for yourself.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The effective google workspace using training that my organization received and was conducted by me (as a team lead of the ICT team) was mind-blowing and as a result, our staff is performing well in terms of using the application for their daily jobs than before. Now, in my institution, all teachers and all the administrative personnel are very much interested in cloud storage facilities, in previous my institution was afraid of losing all important documents in the cloud storage. But, after having received the training they are now realized that if anyone has only one google account then he or she can use 15GB of cloud storage freely and they are now happy because now it is not necessary for anyone to carry the traditional pen drive.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It's an extremely easy software to implement, once you sign up for a google account you automatically have access to google drive with a set amount of storage space. The business or Google Suite accounts have more storage space than a regular free account, but setting up and accessing google drive is very easy in both cases
Generally easy to perform, issues are how to ensure regular automatic updates on Mac OS X. Fortunatly we have only a few machines with OS X run by management and we can do these updates manually occasionally. Windows updates are quite easy with the support of third party software such as Ninite or Chocolatey, and Linux updates are super-easy thanks to the package manager (apt-get).
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
In short, Google Drive is better for independent users who store a normal amount of stuff. OneDrive makes more sense for businesses and teams that are doing heavy-duty storage or large-scale syncing. Realistically, though, most users will fall somewhere in between the two, where either platform would meet their needs.
If you are looking for a well-rounded, GNU-licensed product that will encompass word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database then LibreOffice is probably all you need.
For online collaboration, links with cloud storage, and more robust support, Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs are probably what you or your organization needs.
LibreOffice is at its best for regular document creation and spreadsheet management. It is more cumbersome when it comes to fonts but also when it comes to linkages with cloud-based services. It is there, but you need some more computer knowledge to make it work.
There are other free alternatives, most notably Apache Open Office, which is also a very good alternative if you do not like LibreOffice.
Having said that, I honestly think off-line computers or laptops used off-site can certainly benefit from having LibreOffice installed.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
With more users using it in the company there are more cases when a simultaneous editing of the same document is needed and this feature is lacking in Libreoffice even though the files concerned are shared and synced by some solution (we use ownCloud). Google Docs or MS Office365 via Sharepoint/Onedrive offer a better function for this.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I am able to quickly create and edit word processing documents and spreadsheets which are for all intents and purposes equivalent to documents I could create and edit in other tools such as Microsoft Office and Google Docs/Sheets.
Lack of an online portal for sharing documents necessitates the use of Google Sheets for automation/integration. Ideal would be an all-in-one solution.
Having open-source software that provides common functionality eliminates the need for expensive licenses.
Lack of dedicated support is negligible. Most issues can be resolved using online search.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info