The subscription counterpart to SoftMaker’s Professional version is SoftMaker Office NX Universal ($49.90 per year) the Standard version's equivalent subscription tier is SoftMaker Office NX Home ($29.90 per year). These prices are lower than Microsoft’s or Corel’s, but in the same ballpark.

The slightly less powerful Standard version costs $79.95 (upgrades from older versions are $49.95). I tested the standalone version called SoftMaker Office Professional 2021, which costs $99.95 (upgrades from older versions are $59.95). Read our editorial mission (Opens in a new window) & see how we test (Opens in a new window). Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. If you don’t want to pay anything, SoftMaker offers a less-capable, no-cost version called FreeOffice (Opens in a new window). Either option costs less than Microsoft’s alternatives. You can buy the SoftMaker Office suite as a one-time purchase or opt for a subscription-based model. For most ordinary office and personal work in a word-processor, spreadsheet, or presentations app, SoftMaker strikes a near-perfect balance. Although it doesn’t offer online versions or collaboration capabilities, it offers a free, full-featured Android version plus a free, impressively-full-featured iOS version in public beta test.

It also runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux systems with slightly different feature sets on each platform. This office suite offers high compatibility with Office documents fast performance and a mostly clean and efficient interface.

It has more of a presence in Europe than in the US, but SoftMaker should be at the top of your list if you don't want to use Microsoft’s Office apps. You may have never heard of SoftMaker Office, but in many ways, it’s the best desktop-based alternative to Microsoft 365.

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Microsoft office for mac review 2018