Quick Links
Summary
Once upon a time, you’d pay for an app and be able to use the version you paid for indefinitely. Now, you have to pay a monthly fee to keep using it. There are free alternatives to a lot of these subscriptions, however, so here are the best, free alternatives to Office 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud.
It Doesn’t Hurt To Try Open Source Apps
Unless you work for a company that is heavily reliant on Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Cloud software, you probably don’tneedto use (and pay for) them. Open-source alternatives to Microsoft Office, Adobe PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign, and other paid productivity tools have come a long way—they look great, and offer enough functionality for home users (and are even preferred by some professional users!).
And because all of these open-source alternatives are free, if you don’t like them, you haven’t lost anything.
KritaReplaces Adobe PhotoShop and Illustrator
Kritalets you edit both raster and vector graphics as an alternative to Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Originally developed for Linux, it now runs on Windows and macOS as well.
Krita is a really outstanding piece of software: it’s not only functional, it looks amazing, and it is the paragon of open-source creativity software.
KdenliveReplaces Adobe Premiere Pro
Video editing tools have historically been expensive. Now that phones have built-in high definition video cameras (that are even used toshoot Hollywood movies), it’s just the software side of things that are inaccessible to some people due to the high costs.
Kdenliveis a popular open-source video editing suite that can replace Adobe Premiere Pro, and is considered by some to be the best video editing software for Linux. It is also available for Windows and Mac.
ScribusReplaces Adobe InDesign
Desktop publishing is almost niche these days (many people don’t even need to own their own printers anymore!) but it’s still in demand for creating distributable PDFs, and occasionally, for actually creating printable things like posters and pamphlets.
Scribuscan replace Adobe InDesign for these tasks (when LibreOffice Draw isn’t quite enough). Though it’s a bit clunky, it gets the job done, and the price is definitely right. It is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
LibreOfficeReplaces Office 365
LibreOfficeis the stalwart of open source productivity, and it is a legitimatecompetitor to Microsoft Office. It offers Write (a Word alternative), Calc (to replace Excel), Impress (instead of PowerPoint), as well as a bunch of other high-quality desktop productivity tools. LibreOffice also includes Draw, which can be used toedit PDF files. LibreOffice works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
InkscapeReplaces Adobe Illustrator
While Krita does a pretty good job with vector images,Inkscapeis the true open source champion in this category. It does have some rough edges, but once you’re used to it, it is a powerful tool for creating professional-grade illustrations and diagrams. Like the other Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud alternatives on this page, it is available for Windows, MacOs, and Linux.
There are also otheralternatives for the Adobe Creative suite of apps, tailored for different use-cases, so be sure to give them a try. Because why pay if you don’t have to?
