I looked at alternatives to replace Google Search, Chrome, as well as Google Maps and GMail. There is one service where Google has put a lot of focus lately, especially towards businesses, and that's Google Docs. Let's take a look at some alternatives ! Google Docs
Google Docs might be the least privacy invasive of Google's various offerings. It's also fast, easy to use, has nicely designed templates, it supports extensions, and its interface is coherent.
The major concern on Google Docs stems from its terms of service, which indicate that everything you create might be modified, redistributed and generally used by Google.
Fortunately, there are alternatives to Google Docs. Let's look at a few of them !
Zoho Docs
Zoho provides a complete office suite, with a word processor, spreadsheet application, and presentation creator. They are called respectively Writer, Sheet, and Show. The first thing you'll notice is that their interfaces don't look like each other. Writer has its own sidebar on the left with formatting options, Sheet looks just like Google Sheet, and Show looks like its own thing, with a sidebar on the right. This is not a big problem, but consistency is clearly not a priority here.
The Zoho docs applications can also be accessed offline, and let you sync which documents you want to access without a connexion.
A free Zoho account will net you 5GB of storage for your documents, with syncing to the desktop, file versioning, two factor authentication, collaboration features, dropbox integration, and an in-app chat.
The big problem here is that you need a Zoho docs account to edit or view said document. Sharing a link is limited to premium users. Every one of your documents can be synced to your desktop through Zoho Desktop Sync, an app available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
MS Office Online (Office 365)
It is not as full featured as the "real" MS office suite.
The applications are simple, and light, with only the basics available online. Microsoft still has to sell its subscription to Office 365 and the full Office programs, so they intentionnaly limit what you can do here, but for most people, this should largely be enough.
There were no features that I felt were missing from Office Online to allow me to do what I tried to. MS Office Online doesn't have any offline access though, which is a bummer, compared to Google Docs, which can be accessed even without a connexion.
Your document can be synced to your desktop through OneDrive, but that's not available natively on Linux, although some third party clients are starting to work reliably and with a GUI.
Office Online doesn't have a paid tier, as long as you pay, you get the full Office 365, but in installable format, so only compatible with Windows and Mac OS X, the web applications stay the same.
If you're on Windows or Mac OS X, and you absolutely need to use Microsoft Office, an Office 365 subscription is not a terrible choice to make. If you're on Linux, you won't reap the benefits of OneDrive and Office 365, which don't work natively on Linux, so I'd refrain for ponying up for a premium plan.
Only Office
OnlyOffice is an open source office suite, and can be used with a free online OnlyOffice account.
Among other features, it supports more text formatting, editing autoshapes, editing charts directly in a document, using color palettes to quickly change the look of a document, or showing non-printing caracters.
Collaboration features allow sharing a file through a link, even without an OnlyOffice account, with a selection of editing rights.
OnlyOffice's interface will look familiar to anyone who has used a ribbon before, and is consistent between applications. Only Office also allows you to connect many cloud providers for online document storage, such as NextCloud, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, or Yandex Disk.
They do have a full featured Cloud office suite, but it's more tailored for companies, with access to the online office suite, as well as email, a calendar, a project management tool, a community hub, and even a CRM.
This complete suite can be had for 60€ a year, for up to two users, and pricing goes up from that for more. If you're an individual, I'd recommend sticking to the free account, and storing your files on a separate cloud account when your space runs out.
In the end, all can meet my needs, but Zoho's document sharing is just too limiting. I don't see any of the people I collaborate with creating an account just to edit a document, whereas they would happily use OnlyOffice Online to edit the documents I shared. Offline editing is not really an issue for me for now, since I never edit documents on the go. The fact that I can sync my documents with pCloud, my favorite cloud provider, with OnlyOffice, is also fantastic.
Follow me on Twitter :
0 Comments