Office productivity suites are every office’s primary and non-negotiable requirement. Resultingly, a great number of Software companies tried to create awesome office suites to capture this vast market but most of them failed in competition with Microsoft Office.
NOTE: If you are looking for a quick advice, Go straight to VERDICT at the end of the article.
WPS Office, on the other hand, isn’t among those suites. WPS Office has been in the market since 1988 but only took a solid stand in 2000. WPS Office comes loaded with features to simplify your daily office activities. In this WPS Office review, we will dig deeper into each and every aspect of this software and evaluate how good WPS Office really is and if it is a worthy Microsoft Office Alternative.
Before we dive into it, here is a small guide to help you choose a suitable office suite for yourself.
Evaluating WPS Office:
1. Pricing:
| Pricing is our first basis of evaluation for WPS Office. In this part of WPS Office review, we will be looking at the price at which the WPS Office is offered and will also compare it with its worthy counterpart.
WPS Office is available in three different packages: WPS Free (Windows, Android, iOS, MacOS, and Linux) WPS License (Windows Only): $89.25 for Lifetime WPS Premium (Windows, Android, iOS, or MacOS): 1 Year: $29.99 (1 Person) 6 Months: $18.99 (1 Person) 1 Year: $39.99 (5 Persons) Note: Offers a 7-Day Free Trial. To compare if WPS Office is worth the price, let’s compare it with it biggest competitor, Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office also comes in multiple variants. Microsoft Office Free (For Android only) Microsoft Office Lifetime License (Windows, MacOS) Microsoft Office Home & Student: $149.99 Microsoft Office Professional: $499.99 Microsoft Office Subscription (Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android) Microsoft 365 Personal: $69.99/year (1 Person) Microsoft 365 Family: $99.99/year (Up to 6 Persons) |
Note: There are a few other business plans offered by Microsoft Office and of course they are a bit steep in price. To check them out, click: Microsoft Office Business
In the price evaluation above, we saw that WPS Office has a free version available for all the platforms be it Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. On the other hand, Microsoft only has the free Office for Android mobiles. Here WPS Office seem to be ahead in the game.
While the yearly subscription of WPS Office comes at $29.99/year for 1 user, Microsoft Office 365 is priced at $69.99/year for 1 user. Though WPS Office is cheaper, if you want a family version for more than 1 person or device, WPS Office has a plan for 5 devices at just $39.99/year instead of $99.99/year for 6 persons in MS Office, the price difference is considerable.
In one time licensing, WPS Office is priced way cheaper than what Microsoft Office is priced at. Where one-time licensing of WPS Office is available at $89.99, Microsoft Office begins at $149.99 and goes to a whopping $499.99. (Features available with the Microsoft Office Home & Student are available in WPS Office Free Version)
Looking at the figures above, WPS Office is a really cheap and worthy solution for the price it is offered at. If you are an average user and want an Office suite to take you through your daily tasks, you don’t have to spend a dime on neither the WPS Office nor on anything else. Even if you are looking for an office suite for the whole family, WPS Office suite won’t disappoint you because Free x 5 = Free. Also, the family plan is $60 cheaper in WPS Office.
2. Tools and Features Offered by WPS Office:
In this section of WPS Office Review, we will evaluate the tools offered by WPS Office and are they enough to get you through.
| Free Version | WPS Premium | WPS License | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Word Processor | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Spreadsheet | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Presentation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| PDF Reader | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Edit Text in PDF | No | Yes | Yes |
| PDF to Word/Excel/PPT | No | Yes | Yes |
| Export PDF in Batch | No | Yes | Yes |
| Picture to PDF | No | Yes | Yes |
| Picture to Text (OCR) | No | No | Yes |
| File Split/File Merge | No | Yes | Yes |
| Cloud Storage | 1 GB | No | 20 GB |
| Insert/Extract Pages from PDF | No | Yes | Yes |
| Insert and Remove Watermark in PDF | No | Yes | Yes |
| Change PDF Page Order | No | Yes | Yes |
| Add Color or Picture in PDF | No | Yes | Yes |
| Files Repair | No | No | Yes |
| Automatic Document Backup | No | Yes | Yes |
| Price | FREE | $18.99 – $29.99 | $89.99 |
This is a pretty comprehensive list of what WPS Office has to offer. As you can see, WPS Office free version holds the capability to create Word Document, Spreadsheets, Presentation with amazing graphics, and a dedicated PDF Reader. (More than what Microsoft Office offers at $149.99)
WPS Writer, Spreadsheets, and Presentations have a familiar minimalistic design and layout which look polished and pleasing. These apps have all the options and functionality that a person writing a document, a letter, a blog, a person creating companies balance sheet, or preparing a school or office presentation would need. These apps feature fair amount of customization options similar to what would you get in their Microsoft counterparts.
There are a number of templates available which can be used to easily create Resumes, Write letters, create posters, brochures, checklists, project reports, invoices, annual reports, work reports, albums, infographics, etc. (WPS Office has a premium subscription named Templates that users have to subscribe to in order to gain access to these templates for the users who are professional designers and often design things for others or for blogs.)
But what kind of tool review would it be if we don’t compare the tools available with WPS Office with the tools available with its competitor.
Tools Offered by WPS Office vs Tools Offered by Microsoft Office
| wps office free | WPS Office license | WPS Premium | Ms office license | ms office 365 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| price | FREE | $89.99 for Lifetime | $29.99/Year | $149.99 | $69.99/year & $99.99/year |
| word processor | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Spreadsheets | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| presentations | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| pdf reader | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| pdf to word/xls/ppt | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Edit pdf text/sign pdf | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| cloud storage | 1 GB | No | 20 GB | No | 1 TB |
| extract text from word | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| file repair | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Mailing app | No | No | No | No | Outlook |
| Publishing | No | No | No | No | Publisher(PC Only) |
| Database management | No | No | No | No | Yes |
As can be seen in the table above, WPS Office has features which aren’t even available with the industry best office suites. Hence, if you are looking for a tool to replace your day to day word processor, spreadsheet creator, or presentation maker, you should definitely go with WPS Office Free version. Also, if you are an advanced user and require much more tools, WPS has a tons of different features to offer. As you may have noticed, the features offered by $149.99 Microsoft Office Licensed and $69.99/year Microsoft 365 are exactly similar to what WPS Office has to offer for FREE except that Office 365 comes with Outlook, Access, and Publisher. I think anyone would be glad to dump Outlook if you could save $69.99/year, I would.
3. File Compatibility:
In WPS Office review, it’s time to check its compatibility with the files created on the other suites. I may sound like a WPS Office Fanboy, but when it comes to File Compatibility, WPS Office is second to none. WPS Office is compatible with files created on Microsoft Office, Google Suite, Adobe PDF, and Open Office.
Formats supported by WPS Office: doc, docx, dotm, docm, xls, xlsx, xlt, xltx, ppt, pptx, rtf, csv, xml, wpt, dot, dotx, et, ett, pot, dps, dpt, potx, ppsx, and pdf.
LibreOffice Suite supports even more file formats than what WPS Office supports. On the other hand, other competitors like Microsoft Office stand nowhere in file compatibility.
Hence, if you are looking for an Office Suite with wide range of compatiblity with other Office suites, WPS Office is a great tool to have as it supports most of the commonly used Office suites like MS Office, G-Suite, Open Office, and more.
4. User-Interface:
As we discussed earlier, the interface offered by WPS Office is heavily inspired by its famous counterpart. As a result, the learning curve isn’t too steep and new users would have an easy time getting a hold of WPS Office interface. The layout and the place where features are listed is fairly simple to access. The ribbon style is pretty familiar too.
Its competitors like LibreOffice have a bit outdated interface which may not be fun to use for many users. However, Microsoft office is the best in the game in this field and WPS Office can’t beat it either. But WPS Office’s interface is the closest you can get to MS Office’s interface.
To sum it up, User-Interface offered by WPS Office is second to none and the best you can get in this price and hence, user-interface shouldn’t be a concern to anyone thinking of buying WPS Office.
5. Collaboration:
Collaboration features haven’t gone unnoticed from WPS Office too. For Collaboration, WPS office features WPS Cloud and WPS Online document creator where you can simply head to the WPS website and login to create online document. Also, you can share the file in real-time to collaborate of any number of people you like to get the desired result.
Although the online suite doesn’t offer as much features and function as the offline suite, you can always download the file to your PC to customize it better after all, its free.
Competitors like Google Suite also offer a similar feature to create online documents and collaborate in real-time. However, Google Suite doesn’t have any option to download the file to PC to customize it for better because of the absence of any offline suite.
VERDICT:
In the end of our WPS Office review, by taking all the aspects of WPS Office into account, we can surely say that WPS Office is an amazing tool and is worth every penny you are charged for it i.e. if you go for the premium version. It isn’t just another Microsoft Office alternative but a worthy tool in itself. The clean and minimalistic design doesn’t fail to impress at any point in time. Users have the access to all the features they would require for free. Looking at the tools, file compatibility, User-interface, ease of collaboration, and pricing, I would suggest everyone to give it a try for a week or two if you are going to buy a complete suite anyways, the chances are you will like it. If you don’t, No regrets, you don’t lose a penny.
So, this was my WPS Office review. Do let us know how did you like WPS Office if you tried it, we love hearing from you.
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Matthew
WPS Office is an amazing application.. I too have been using it for the past 2 years and it has gone under some very influential changes.