Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
LibreOffice
Score 8.9 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
Microsoft Excel
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application available as part of Microsoft 365 (Office 365), or standalone, in cloud-based and on-premise editions.
$6.99
per month
WPS Office
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Kingsoft, headquartered in Beijing with offices in Palo Alto, offers the WPS Office suite, a productivity suite available in a Free edition, and Education edition, a Professional edition, and a Business edition, touting a word processor, spreadsheet app with tables and formulas, and presentation app, as well as total compatibility with Microsoft Office products.N/A
Pricing
LibreOfficeMicrosoft ExcelWPS Office
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Excel with Microsoft 365
$6.99
per month
Excel for 1 PC or Mac
$139.99
perpetual license
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LibreOfficeMicrosoft ExcelWPS Office
Free Trial
NoYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LibreOfficeMicrosoft ExcelWPS Office
Considered Multiple Products
LibreOffice
Chose LibreOffice
Versus Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice is a workable solution for collecting, manipulating and reporting data. Excel is not. Apache OpenOffice is the idea LibreOffice is based on, but LibreOffice has advanced beyond OpenOffice. New features, within the LibreOffice framework are …
Chose LibreOffice
Except for collaboration, which I seldom need, I find that LibreOffice beats all of the other similar products I have used in features, functionality, and intuitiveness. The user interface on the LibreOffice applications seems cleaner, and the right-click menus are more …
Microsoft Excel
Chose Microsoft Excel
I personally like Excel better than the other two programs I have listed. They are very close to excel but I know where everything is and what all the symbols are in excel where the other ones have some different nuances that take a little bit more time or that I have to …
Chose Microsoft Excel
As compared to the other software, MS Excel is continuously getting better day by day by its R&D Team. Contacting the support team of MS Excel and getting the solutions from them is easy while it is [a] paid one.
Chose Microsoft Excel
I use Google Sheets when there is small [amounts of] data that i have to enter and share with somebody over my Google account. Other than that, i always prefer Microsoft Excel since it provides way more ease of use when compared to [Sheets]. It is a very good tool and I will be …
Chose Microsoft Excel
In [Microsoft] Excel, a stacked column chart is a very basic [Microsoft] Excel charts type that permits from a piece to whole assessments concluded time, or through
WPS Office
Chose WPS Office
In my work area, I have the option to use both programs, but with WPS Office, in addition to having more experience, I also have more familiarity and [experience], because of that I prefer it. Based on this, this other informed program does not offer the same ease that WPS …
User Ratings
LibreOfficeMicrosoft ExcelWPS Office
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(33 ratings)
9.2
(77 ratings)
9.4
(6 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.9
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(6 ratings)
8.4
(22 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(6 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.5
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
LibreOfficeMicrosoft ExcelWPS Office
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
Microsoft
I don't really know another program as powerful as Excel. I've used Google Doc programs but do not feel they come close. So far, anytime I've needed a table of some sort for data, whether it's budget oriented or information off a survey, the best system has been Excel. We do web audits on occasion and we create an Excel worksheet featuring every URL of the pages we're auditing, notes, data about the content, information about files attached to the page and other information to help us determine what pages need updating, deleting or otherwise. We also use Excel primarily to export our Google Analytics to in order for us to create reports for clients that need to see specific information about their traffic.
Read full review
Kingsoft
The WPS Office is an extraordinary program [that has practically] everything; apparatuses [are] expected to work, compute, and present. There are many devices and it [leaves] nothing [to be desired]. I would have zero excuses not to introduce this total program bundle; undoubtedly, I suggest this program
Read full review
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
Read full review
Microsoft
  • It is very good at embedded formulas and tying cells to one another
  • It allows me to compare deals terms on a side-by-side basis and talk my clients through it easily.
  • It is very helpful as well in terms of allowing me to filter/sort results in many different ways depending on what specific information I am most interested in prioritizing.
Read full review
Kingsoft
  • Its user interface is very easy to operate.
  • This is one of the best apps for PDF viewing. PDF viewing is very seamless in this app.
  • It has multi-platform availability. It is available on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS.
  • It provides many pre-loaded templates for presentation slides.
  • It provides documents sharing facilities also.
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
Microsoft
  • Excel offers collaboration features that allow multiple users to work on the same spreadsheet, but managing changes made by different users can be challenging. Excel could improve its features by offering more granular control, better tracking of changes, and more robust conflict resolution tools.
  • Itcan be a barrier to productivity when importing and exporting data from other applications or file formats. To improve its features, it should offer better support for standard file formats and more robust error handling and reporting tools.
  • Excel can be challenging for finance students and working professionals, but it can be improved by offering more robust tutorials, better documentation, and more user communities and support forums.
Read full review
Kingsoft
  • I want to be able to sort a column from a-z and have it shift everything and not just the current column (maybe I haven't' figured this out yet).
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Excel remains the industry standard for spreadsheets and has maintained simple and straight-forward formula writing methods. Although there is a learning curve to do more complex calculations, there are countless help sites and videos on the Internet for almost any need.
Read full review
Kingsoft
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
Microsoft
I'm giving it a 7 because it is my go to. But the fact other prefer Google Sheets when working with a team does get irritating. I've used the online version of Microsoft Excel that other teams can get into and it still seems behind Google Sheets. It's a little clanky and slow? If that's even a term.
Read full review
Kingsoft
I have never had much difficulty and use different software, but WPS Office has a very friendly and simplified interface. Those who are already familiar with programs of this type certainly have no difficulty in learning to use it. Best of all, the main tools of the programs provided by the WPS Office are easily accessible.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
I have rarely, if ever, had issues with its availability.
Read full review
Kingsoft
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Excel load and performs calculations immediately. It integrate well with all Microsoft Office applications and does not slow them down.
Read full review
Kingsoft
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
I have not had to use it often, but it is good.
Read full review
Kingsoft
I would not have anything to do with the support side as my IT department would handle all of that.
Read full review
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).
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Kingsoft
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Out of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, IBM SPSS, and Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel is by far the most common tool used for anything data-related across organizations. Accordingly, our organization has also implemented Microsoft Excel as a first-step tool. We recently adopted Microsoft Power BI (the free version), and use it occasionally (mostly for creating dashboards), but it is less commonly understood by stakeholders across our organization and by our clients. Accordingly, Microsoft Excel is more user-friendly and because of its popularity, we can easily look up how to do things in the program online. Google Sheets is a comparable alternative to Microsoft Excel, but because it's cloud-based and we have sensitive data that needs to be protected, we chose against using this software. Finally, a few users (including myself) have access to and utilize IBM's SPSS. For my role, it's a helpful tool to do more rigorous analyses. However, because of its cost and limited functionality as a simple spreadsheet, we only use it for more complex analyses.
Read full review
Kingsoft
I like WPS office most because it helps me more than the other software. I can easily access the software and do my work. I can design my documents by using the software. Some features of the software are amazing to compare to others. Amazing tools, design parts of the software helps to use it perfectly for the organizations
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
The Document Foundation
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
N/A I was not involved in this process.
Read full review
Kingsoft
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Each user can use it to whatever level of expertise they have. It remains the same so users can contribute to another's work regardless of whether they have more or less expertise
Read full review
Kingsoft
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Excel has positively impacted the business as it has increased our efficiency.
  • It also saves us the time that we would have spent on making the calculations that it does for us.
  • Since it works on all devices and is compatible with both Windows and Mac, we do not have to invest in any other alternative.
Read full review
Kingsoft
  • No negative whatsoever, I have never regretted using WPS Office.
  • It has only had a positive impact on my career.
  • Some of my more personal data are also stored in WPS Office and I feel safe and comfortable about its reliability.
Read full review
ScreenShots