Microsoft Office is a quintessential tool in any office worker's arsenal, and even for students or just regular PC users. It's become so ubiquitous since its inception 40 years ago that it's hard to imagine living without it, but the thing is, there are actually some great alternatives out there if you want to save money.

A very notable one is OnlyOffice, a suite that is available as a paid enterprise version for broad deployments, but also works completely for free on desktop and mobile operating systems. After using it for a while, I've actually started to really like OnlyOffice, so here are a few reasons why you might want to check it out for yourself.

6 A familiar UI

There's no place like home

Looking for alternatives to popular software can be a bit of a nightmare because yes, there are free options out there, but most of the time, these alternatives lack the familiarity of the tools you're accustomed to, so the transition isn't very easy. Thankfully, that's not the case with OnlyOffice.

While it's not exactly the same, the OnlyOffice UI is very close to what Microsoft offers with its own Office suite. There's a ribbon-style UI and all the tabs are very similar, with the same options generally being available in each tab and presented in a very similar way, too.

It's all very familiar if you've been using the Microsoft Office apps, and the adjustment period shouldn't take very long at all. OnlyOffice actually tries to bring some tools more to the forefront with side panels showing extra options, like viewing comments or changing various text and formatting options.

5 It's truly cross-platform

Windows, Mac, Linux, and more

Microsoft Office may be great and all, but it's only available on Windows and macOS (in addition to Android and iOS). Linux users are left out, but with OnlyOffice, that's not the case. OnlyOffice is available on all of these platforms, including x86 and x64 versions of Windows, and even supporting Windows versions as old as XP. It also supports various versions of macOS, as well as both Intel and Apple Silicon models.

And for Linux, there are versions for Debian and Ubuntu (DEB), CentOS and RHEL (RPM), and through Snap packagges, Flatpak packages, or AppImage. Certain Linux distros like Linux Mint, Zorin, Deepin, and others also offer it through their built-in app store.

All of that is to say you can run OnlyOffice on any machine you have without issues, and install it using the method you prefer. What's more, it's also on mobile through the Google Play Store, Apple App Store, Huawei App Gallery, and Samsung Galaxy Store. It doesn't get much more convenient than that.

4 Plug-ins

More features just a few clicks away

A big component of an Office suite is the extensibility, and thankfully, OnlyOffice doesn't sacrifice that, either. You can use plug-ins to add new features and capabilities to the suite, and it can come in pretty handy. The ecosystem definitely isn't as vast as the Microsoft Office add-ins, but you still have things like ChatGPT to help you rewrite text (if you have an API key), DeepL for translations (again, you need an API key here), or LanguageTool for more advanced spellchecking.

Some plug-ins are meant to facilitate collaboration, too. For example, there's a Telegram plug-in that basically just brings your Telegram chats into OnlyOffice so you can talk to collaborators more easily without switching contexts. It's not a huge ecosystem yet, but there are some good tools here that can help you get things done faster.

3 PDF tools

Easily create forms for free

Another great thing about OnlyOffice is that it includes some PDF tools that you can use for free, too. Essentially, this allows you to create easily fillable PDF forms, which you can send to people when you need to collect some kind of information from them. You can add text fields, checkboxes and radio buttons, images, and more to make a form that's easy for anyone to fill on their device.

There are other tools out there for creating fillable PDF forms, but having it integrated into the rest of the suite is definitely great to see, and the tools are very easy to use so you can create the form exactly how you want it.

2 Online collaboration

Easy and familiar

Like many other Office suites these days, OnlyOffice also offers the option to collaborate with other users in real-time online. You need to connect a cloud account, and an OnlyOffice account is available for free with 2GB of cloud storage. Setting this up, you can create files in the cloud so you and others can work on it at the same time.

Now, collaborative editing is only available using the web-based editing tools, but the great thing is these web tools look exactly like the regular local apps. It's surprising how closely the team was able to replicate the UI and features across both apps, and the only major difference you'll probably notice right away is that the plug-ins you install locally aren't available in your online account automatically, but you can still install them again.

The editor is based on the HTML5 Canvas element, and it feels pretty close to native, which is something you definitely can't say with Microsoft's web-based Office apps.

1 Tab-based interface

Keep it all together

One of my favorite things about OnlyOffice is that while it includes the major apps you'd expect — replacements for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, it doesn't separate them like other suites do. All the tools are available in the same OnlyOffice app, and all the tools open in a tab within that main window. I definitely appreciate decluttering my window management and keeping all the documents I need together, so I think this is great.

If you want to, you can separate individual documents into different windows on demand, so there's a bit of flexibility with that, too.

Give OnlyOffice a shot

I'm not necessarily saying OnlyOffice is here to oust Microsoft, but if you're a relatively basic user like me, this free alternative is pretty much all you need. It does everything you'd need it to do, it has a familiar UI, and it's on every device you could possibly want. Plus, it's hard to beat free, so there's really no reason not to give it a shot. Check it out and you might just realize you don't need Microsoft Office at all.