Pros and Cons of Popular Presentation Tools: Google Slides vs. PowerPoint vs. Canva

Creating a professional presentation is already hard enough. You need to think about your goals, your audience, your content, your slides… UGH! Slides! What tool do you use? You don’t want your slides to look like… those slides. You know the ones. The ones where you zone out in the middle of the presentation, the ones where the speaker says I know you can’t read this, but…, the ones where you’d rather be checking your email or making your grocery list than looking at the slides themselves.

But how do you make your slides not look like those slides? I’ll give you a hint: it doesn’t have anything to do with the slide software.

But “What slide software should I use?” is typically the question that I get, so I decided to make a blog post on which presentation software can do what.

Let’s break down the pros and cons of three popular platforms used by professionals today: Google Slides, PowerPoint, and Canva.

PowerPoint: The Veteran Jack-of-All-Trades

Best for: Having full control of your presentation deck, robust features, and customing your presentation

Pros:

1. Powerful Functionality: PowerPoint is by far the most feature-heavy platform. If you’re creating animations or interactive buttons, this slide software should be your go-to. PowerPoint has come a long way! You can make advanced presentations that don’t even look like “PowerPoint,” such as interactive games like Jeopardy or zoomable presentations similar to Prezi.
2. Animation Capabilities: PowerPoint’s still the best when it comes to animations, transitions, and layering options.
3. Basic graphic design: It has a lot of features that graphic design programs have already built in (Selection pane, merging shapes, badly removing backgrounds, etc.) . You can use .svg or .eps files here (icons or illustrations) and can adjust color and Bezier points (how the lines and curves form).
4. Professional Customizations: Beyond templates, PowerPoint allows you to create presentations from scratch. However, most users don’t use this feature, or use it well. You can access the master slides (c’mon PowerPoint change this terminology to parent slides), and create needed templates for any type of design.

Cons:

1. Steep Learning Curve: While Microsoft PowerPoint is powerful, most users only scratch the surface and stick with headers and bullets, occasionally adding an image or smart art. Features are often hidden in menus, and its complexity may overwhelm casual users.
2. Template Misuse: Without design knowledge, users often rely too heavily on PowerPoint’s default templates. This leads to “death by PowerPoint”.
3. Time-Consuming: Fully learning and using all of PowerPoint’s features takes time and requires an upfront investment in learning the program.

Pro tip: Check out my webinar on how to become a PowerPoint ninja!

Canva: Easy design, templated approach

Best for: Beginners who want quick design solutions.

Pros:

1. User-Friendly Interface: Canva’s drag-and-drop interface makes it easy for anyone to create “pretty” slides without prior design knowledge.
2. Lots of Templates: Canva offers a wide variety of templates. These all tend to look very similar and are not always the best for corporate presentations.
3. Quick Customization: Changing typefaces and colors or adding images or illustrations is easy. Canva has done really well at simplifying the interface and making it very user-friendly.
4. Easy Animations: Canva has easy-to-use animations. However, it’s important to have a reason why you’re adding animations. Dont just add them to make it “interesting”

Cons:

1. Template Limitations: While the templates look lovely, they only work as well as the user deploying them. Adding too much content will result in a slide that does not match the original template’s look and feel.
2. Animation Limitation: Though animations are available, most people don’t realize you can customize individual elements, leading to the entire slide being animated. Animations are helpful to direct your audiences’ eyes where you want them to look. But if you have the entire side animated, it’s just there for decoration.
3. Contrast Challenges: Canva’s favorite typefaces (fonts), currently tend to be very decorative and have extreme thins and thicks in the letter forms. This is hard to see at the back of the room when being presented, and is harder for people with vision deficiencies to read.
4. Limited Advanced Features: Canva lacks the depth of PowerPoint. It’s great for an easily designed slide deck, but it makes it harder to show in-depth data visualizations or technical information.

Google Slides: The Tool that Offers a Little of Everything

Best for: Team collaboration and straightforward presentations.

Pros:

1. Collaboration-Friendly: Google Slides allows multiple users to edit a presentation in real time, making it ideal for team presentations. Changes are saved instantly.
2. Ease of Use: With fewer features than PowerPoint, it is easier for users who only occasionally present
3. Google Integration: It integrates smoothly with other Google Workspace tools like Google Docs and Forms.

Cons:

1. Limited Advanced Features: Google Slides lacks the depth of PowerPoint. It’s great for basics but isn’t as helpful if you need advanced animations or design capabilities.
2. Lack of Great Templates: The included templates are clean and functional, but they don’t offer the visual effect of Canva or the ability to customize that PowerPoint offers.
3. Basic Animations and Transitions: Its animation tools are straightforward but lack the ability to add advanced animations.

Pro tip: Use add-ons.

Which one is right for you?

Choosing the “right” presentation software largely depends on your needs and technical comfort level.

• For highly customizable presentations: PowerPoint
• For easy-to-make visual slides: Canva
• For teamwork and simplicity: Google Slides

Presentation tools are just that: tools. A great presentation comes not from the software you use but from your content, storytelling, delivery, and how you design your slides.

Want More Guidance? Check out our workshops and YouTube channel!