Does the world need another alternative to the almost ubiquitous Microsoft Office? While LibreOffice is its most recognisable rival, it does suffer a little from a dated user interface. Enter, stage left, OnlyOffice, an open-source rival to both that manages to find more than a few selling points to help it stand apart.

First, it supplies word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, form creator and PDF viewer in a single, streamlined app. This consumes less resources than its rivals, making OnlyOffice a good choice for older and less powerful machines, particularly as legacy OSes like XP, Vista and older versions of macOS are still supported via dedicated builds. Then there’s the user interface. It apes Office’s slick ribbon-like interface, making it easier to transition directly from Microsoft’s behemoth.

More pertinently, OnlyOffice attempts to keep everything uncluttered and neat by utilising a tabbed-based interface, which means you keep all your documents, spreadsheets, PDFs and presentations within a single window (but if you hate this, you can change it via Settings > Open file). Copying and pasting between different document types was never so easy.

In terms of functionality, there’s no doubt OnlyOffice falls short of both Office and LibreOffice, particularly with its spreadsheet tool. Nevertheless, all the core functionality is there, and there are some nifty tools for collaboration, including an option to plug directly into various open-source cloud services, including Nextcloud and OnlyOffice’s own online cloud ecosystem.

There’s also support for plugins, with a surprisingly wide range of powerful add-ons from known sources like Zotero, DeepL, WordPress and ChatGPT all available.

For those who like online editing on the go, OnlyOffice offers a free self-hosted Community Edition of its online Workspace iteration, which can be installed natively on Windows Server, Linux or via Docker.