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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    LibreOffice

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ALibreOffice 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

    MATLAB

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AMatLab is a predictive analytics and computing platform based on a proprietary programming language. MatLab is used across industry and academia.

    $49

    per student license

    Pricing
    LibreOfficeMATLAB
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Student
    $49
    per student license
    Home
    $149
    perpetual license
    Education
    $250
    per year
    Education
    $500
    perpetual license
    Standard
    $860
    per year
    Standard
    2,150
    perpetual license
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    LibreOfficeMATLAB
    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
    LibreOfficeMATLAB
    Considered Both Products
    The Document Foundation
    No answer on this topic
    MathWorks
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    92%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    16 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    12 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    12 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    15 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    92%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    LibreOfficeMATLAB
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    Enterprises
    Microsoft 365 Business Premium
    Score9 out of 10
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    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    LibreOfficeMATLAB
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (33 ratings)
    9.0
    (55 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (6 ratings)
    7.5
    (6 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.3
    (6 ratings)
    9.5
    (7 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    LibreOfficeMATLAB
    Likelihood to Recommend
    The Document Foundation
    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.
    Read full review
    MathWorks
    MATLAB really does best for solving computational problems in math and engineering. Especially when you have to use a lot of functions in your solving process, or if you have a nonlinear equation that must be iteratively solved. [MATLAB] can also perform things like integration and derivation on your equations that you put into it.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    The Document Foundation
    • Tools like speeling, grammar, and thesaurus are super fast and intuitive
    • Read-only content can be created by adding a section and password
    • The right-click menus are very intuitive and change on the fly with what is needed depending on the content and situation
    • Documents can be saved natively as *.docx or *.xlsx
    Incentivized
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    MathWorks
    • It has a very user friendly library which helps users learn this software fairly quickly in a short span of time.
    • The graphical user interface provided by the software is really good.
    • The code that a person writes allows options for debugging.
    • One can visualize the flow of control of their code inside MATLAB.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    The Document Foundation
    • It doesn't provide all the functions it should with a paid subscription.
    • There are features that are only available with Premium and I have premium and they are still not available.
    • Paying for the premium version doesn't provide additional services than free version
    • Customer service is nonresponsive and has been nonresponsive for years even prior to COVID.
    Read full review
    MathWorks
    • MatLab is pricier than most of its competitors and because of this reason, many organizations are moving towards cheaper alternatives - mostly Python.
    • MatLab is inefficient when it comes to performing a large number of iterations. It gets laggy and often crashes. Python is better in this regard.
    • There is a limited number of hardware options (mostly NI) that can be connected directly to the data acquisition toolbox.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    The Document Foundation
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    MathWorks
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    The Document Foundation
    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.
    Read full review
    MathWorks
    MATLAB is pretty easy to use. You can extend its capabilities using the programming interface. Very flexible capabilities when it comes to graphical presentation of your data (so many different kinds of options for your plotting needs). Anytime you are working with large data sets, or with matrices, MATLAB is likely to be very helpful.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    The Document Foundation
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    MathWorks
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    The Document Foundation
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    MathWorks
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    The Document Foundation
    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.
    Incentivized
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    MathWorks
    The built-in search engine is not as performing as I wish it would be. However, the YouTube channel has a vast library of informative video that can help understanding the software. Also, many other software have a nice bridge into MATLAB, which makes it very versatile. Overall, the support for MATLAB is good.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    The Document Foundation
    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).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    MathWorks
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    The Document Foundation
    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 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.
    Incentivized
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    MathWorks
    How MATLAB compares to its competition or similar open access tools like R (programming language) or SciLab is that it's simply more powerful and capable. It embraces a wider spectrum of possibilities for far more fields than any other environment. R, for example, is intended primarily for the area of statistical computing. SciLab, on the other hand, is a similar open access tool that falls very short in its computing capabilities. It's much slower when running larger scripts and isn't documented or supported nearly as well as MATLAB.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    The Document Foundation
    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.
    Incentivized
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    MathWorks
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    The Document Foundation
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    MathWorks
    • MATLAB helps us quickly sort through large sets of data because we keep the same script each time we run an analyzation, making it very efficient to run this whole process.
    • The software makes it super easy for us to create plots that we can then show to investors or clients to display our data.
    • We are also looking to create an app for our product, and we will not be able to do that on MATLAB, therefore creating a limiting issue and a new learning curve for a programming language.
    Incentivized
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