Google Slides vs. Microsoft Office 2016 (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Slides
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Google Slides is a presentation tool that enables users to create, edit, collaborate, and present. It is free for personal use, and available to businesses via a Google Workspaces subscription.N/A
Microsoft Office 2016 (discontinued)
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Office 2016 is the familiar suite of Office products including applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for use on a single PC or Mac. The 2016 is no longer available for sale from Microsoft, and support is at an end since 2020.N/A
Pricing
Google SlidesMicrosoft Office 2016 (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google SlidesMicrosoft Office 2016 (discontinued)
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google SlidesMicrosoft Office 2016 (discontinued)
Best Alternatives
Google SlidesMicrosoft Office 2016 (discontinued)
Small Businesses
Canva
Canva
Score 9.1 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Mentimeter
Mentimeter
Score 8.3 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Mentimeter
Mentimeter
Score 8.3 out of 10
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google SlidesMicrosoft Office 2016 (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
6.8
(8 ratings)
7.4
(64 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
5.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
6.9
(4 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(45 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google SlidesMicrosoft Office 2016 (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Well-suited to working on presentations or PowerPoint-style documents, including setting up templated slides and working collaboratively on presentations. It's less well-suited to setting up printable documents, though I have used it for simple printable documents, you just need to remember to set the slide size to A4 (or your preferred paper size) measurements.
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Discontinued Products
I'd recommend [Microsoft] Office2016 for any business that has more than a couple of users, as the software is very scalable from just a small business to a large enterprise corporation. I don't know of any case where it might not be appropriate, as even home users and students use the software suite as well.
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Pros
Google
  • Real-time collaboration makes it easy for multiple people to work on one presentation or deck.
  • Sharing is very straight forward, so it's easy to keep control of who can do or can't do.
  • Flexible so it's uses don't stop in presentations.
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Discontinued Products
  • Data manipulation. Excel takes the raw data we receive and allows us to digest it in ways that are useful to our business processes.
  • Communication. Outlook serves as our primary means of communication and setting up appointments.
  • Documentation. Word is the default standard when it comes to using a word processor and we are no different in this regard. Nearly every user has to use the application on a regular basis in order to accomplish their work.
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Cons
Google
  • The slides generated by the "Beautify this slide" feature are not editable. You need to prompt again to make the changes you want.
  • You don't have a way to switch to another company template. For example, if you want to switch from light to dark theme, you can't.
  • The layout of the Animations sequence is not easy to read.
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Discontinued Products
  • Office 2016 professional edition can be priced for a single user license, it would be nice to see a drop in the pricing.
  • Office 2016 home edition is a better price but does not include outlook 2016, so it is not a good fit for the workplace environments.
  • Office 2016 can run slowly on older systems, so you need to make sure you have a machine that is 4 years old or less for it to run smoothly.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
The popularity for Google Slides among the casual technology tool users is so great that we are not in a position to replace this tool with anything else. Every other tool either doesn't have the popularity, or doesn't match the ease of sharing level of Slides. The training needed to learn a different tool is too great. Google Slides is very easy to pick up and master.
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Discontinued Products
We believe that office 2016 offers the best value when it comes to features included out of the box. The software is used in its entirety by our organization and is easily supported by our staff of IT technicians. Users find this software to be easy to learn and easy to use with minimal learning curve.
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Usability
Google
Google Slides is very easy and intuitive for creating simple, straightforward presentations. Its limitations make for less decision making. Being part of the Google Suite makes for easy sharing and collaboration, auto-saving, and time-stamped versions/edit history. However, unlike a platform like Canva, there's no icon library, photos, graphics, or elements built-in, so if you're wanting more creative designs, you have to import or create yourself.
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Discontinued Products
It's fairly easy to use, but the automatic formatting or capturing of formatting when pasting is wonky - especially when there are outlines or other bullets/numbered lists. Fixing and sizing up tables can be annoying, and there are sometimes formatting issues that we just absolutely cannot fix for some reason
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Support Rating
Google
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
I am an MS feedback hub participant and they certainly don't pay enough attention to several bugs several people raise it in the portal. For the enterprise, it seems to me based on my prior experience that yes, they have a dedicated team to support operations. For mid to small companies or single users, it has been a struggle. So, you are pretty much with MS Blogs and others.
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Alternatives Considered
Google
Google Slides works both online and offline, they are free to use if you have a Google account. Easy to share and are supported by most web browsers. A great addition to your arsenal of interactive educational online platforms.
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Discontinued Products
We use Microsoft Office 2016 because at the time it was the best tool for us, but now with full attention to cloud products, we may be thinking of migrating our solution to a cloud service.
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Return on Investment
Google
  • We’ve closed all our clients using Google slides.
  • Google slides has directly led to 100's of thousands of dollars in our org.
  • It has helped us add dozens of new clients.
  • Has helped us present information to businesses making 10M+ revenue.
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Discontinued Products
  • Microsoft Office 2016 saves me a lot of time daily. I have functions and macros set up that calculate and show me a lot of things just from a couple of my inputs. This would take full days sometimes if not for that.
  • Apart from time, it saves me money, I manage data in Excel, I don't have to buy software specifically for that.
  • Sooner or later my company will have to switch to new edition, which will hurt revenues because of a subscription model.
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ScreenShots