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In a Nutshell: From junior high to junior associate, access to a quality office suite can make or break your ability to get the job done. For more than 2 million users, the solution to better productivity is ONLYOFFICE, the recipient of our Editor’s Choice Award™ for best free open-source office suite. ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors offer full-featured text editing, spreadsheet creation, and presentation development, freely distributed — and free of cost — according to an AGPLv3 license. ONLYOFFICE also provides its popular SaaS Cloud product free to nonprofit and educational organizations, giving them online access to feature-rich functionality such as CRM, mail, project management, and online document editors.

Written in “code,” a human-readable computer programming language, the collection of computer instructions that defines a given software program is called its source code. When that source code is openly provided to a program’s users for modification and/or redistribution, that program is deemed to be “free” software, often called “open source.”

Typically easier to obtain than proprietary or “closed” software, and generally thought to have fewer bugs and better customization, free, or open source, software is often free to use as well as to distribute. Today, free software powers thousands of programs for millions of people around the world, including important productivity and business software like web browsers, CRM platforms, and office suites.

Among the many programs making a difference is ONLYOFFICE, a dynamic office suite that’s earned our Editor’s Choice Award™ for the best free open-source office suite. Started as a system for internal team collaboration at Ascensio System SIA, an IT company based in Riga, Latvia, ONLYOFFICE has since been embraced worldwide.

“We have more than 2 million users in the cloud,” said Nadya Knyazeva, Public Relations for ONLYOFFICE. “But that’s not all. There are hundreds of downloads of our desktop editors and server-based solutions every day, so the ONLYOFFICE community is significantly larger than this.”

With products to suit both personal and business applications, including desktop and cloud solutions, ONLYOFFICE helps individuals, nonprofits, and educational organizations obtain the free software they need to excel.

“Good software is something vital for the people of today, and it has to be free — or at least have an affordable price,” said Nadya. “This way, users can unlock a new level of productivity, while developers get the chance to contribute to the global community and even change the industry forever.”

Download Free Text, Spreadsheet, and Presentation Editors for Your Personal Computer

Whether you’re a senior in high school or a senior-level executive, anyone trying to function in the digital world needs access to a quality office suite. From writing term papers to creating board room presentations — and all the spreadsheets in between — you can do it all with the free ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors.

Screenshot of ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors

The ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors include a document editor, spreadsheet creator, and presentation maker.

“ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors is an app for editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations offline, distributed under AGPLv3 license,” explained Nadya. “It means that anyone can use it without any restrictions for personal or business purposes.”

The document editors have all the bells and whistles we’ve come to expect from a good office suite — and a few you may not have realized you needed. Enjoy advanced table editing and multilevel lists, as well as customizable text, paragraph, and background colors. Use font effects, such as all caps and small caps, to fine-tune your formatting.

For those who want to take their office on the go, ONLYOFFICE’s free personal online solution offers access to your documents from any browser. What’s more, you have the same full-featured formatting functionality of the ONLYOFFICE desktop experience, while adding new features, such as group chat and co-editing, for online collaboration.

ONLYOFFICE’s office suite, both online and off, is fully compatible with popular file formats, including MS Office and OpenDocument. You can also make use of a range of third-party addons to do things such as create templates or insert videos from YouTube — or create your own addons for complete customization.

To take your productivity to the next level, ONLYOFFICE Community Edition has just about everything you need to keep yourself organized and your projects on track. Also distributed under AGPLv3, the Community Edition can be modified and customized according to the licensing conditions.

“ONLYOFFICE Community Edition is a solution for deployment on private network. It includes not only document editors, but also document and project management systems, CRM, calendar, mail, a platform for building a corporate social network and a messenger,” Nadya described. “By the way, one can connect ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors and ONLYOFFICE Community Edition to use them together and easily switch between online and offline modes.”

Create a No-Cost Cloud Office for Your Nonprofit or Educational Organization

In line with the ideology behind free software, ONLYOFFICE gives away far more than just the personal and community versions of its popular software. The company also provides its Desktop editors and leading Cloud product free to registered nonprofits and educational organizations.

ONLYOFFICE provides its SaaS Cloud solution free to nonprofits and educational organizations.

ONLYOFFICE Cloud is a solution with all the features of ONLYOFFICE Community Edition, but it runs in public cloud (AWS, to be more exact),” said Nadya. “It’s generally delivered as a paid SaaS service, but we made it free for nonprofit organizations and educational institutions.”

While the company does ask nonprofits to post a small ONLYOFFICE banner on their websites, nonprofit organizations receive feature-rich productivity software in return. ONLYOFFICE Cloud comes complete with online document editors, a CRM platform, a mail system, and document and project management software — all accessible online from any web browser around the world.

ONLYOFFICE Cloud includes robust features such as project and document management.

For educational institutions, schools in the K-12 levels can receive free access to ONLYOFFICE’s desktop and cloud solutions, as well as a huge 70% discount on the Education edition of the server solution. Higher education organizations are not left out, however; they can obtain a 50% discount on the cloud and server products to help them better serve their students.

“Nonprofits usually make something that really matters — for a local community, for some industry, or for humanity in general — while schools are raising up our future. We believe that these organizations have more important expenses than office software,” Nadya explained. “We deliver our programs for free as our own contribution to something good and important that is being made.”

More Than 2 Millions Users Prefer ONLYOFFICE

Composed of hundreds, thousands, even millions of lines of complex code, many of us likely take for granted the software programs that make our lives — and jobs — easier and more productive. Today, however, many of those programs, such as a quality office suite, have become less of a nice-to-have and more a must-have for individuals and businesses alike.

From school science reports to company quarterly reports, a good document editor, spreadsheet creator, and presentation maker are all but necessities in the modern world. For over 2 million people, that need is met by ONLYOFFICE, our Editor’s Choice Award™ winner for the best free open-source office suite.

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About The Author

Brittney is a credit strategist and debt expert with years of experience applying her in-depth knowledge of the credit and personal finance industries to write comprehensive, user-friendly guides on the products and strategies readers can use to make smart financial decisions throughout the credit-building process.

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