SoftMaker Office NX Universal: A Leaner, Safer Alternative to Microsoft Office
Disclaimer (Opens in a new window): No one is perfect, I appreciate your feedback.
TL;DR
Let’s exclude Outlook for now—a strong alternative will be presented in a future blog.
For everything else: once you’ve used SoftMaker Office, 100% built in Germany, you’ll start asking yourself… what else is out there that’s more productive, faster, safer, truly multi-platform, and cheaper than the offerings from Seattle?
To begin with, there’s no learning curve. TextMaker, PlanMaker, and Presentations are simply the better Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Costs have become a key driver for me. Over the years, my workflow has gradually shifted away from Office products. Today, Word serves mainly as a document finalizer for sharing, Excel is little more than a calculator, and PowerPoint? It’s been sidelined by many—including Amazon, which banned its use in leadership and team meetings in favor of clear, written narratives1.
Hence, yes, I need a typewriter, a 2-dimensional calculation grid, and the ability to create a slides every, now and then. For that Softmaker is cheaper, safer and better.
LibreOffice?
Yes, I use LibreOffice (Opens in a new window), and yes, I prefer open-source software over proprietary solutions whenever I can. And notably—and laudably—the French government has been actively promoting the adoption of open-source tools in public administration since 2016, with LibreOffice playing a central role.2
Why then promoting Softmaker Office?
Because it eliminates the learning curve. It feels and functions like the behemoth—only better.
At a glance
Origin: Europe, Germany
Users: Standard & Power Users, Business Users, Privacy Enthusiasts
Software Classification (see full classification):
Category: Productivity & Office Software
Type: Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android
License: Proprietary
Pricing: Subscription-based (NX Universal) or one-time payment (Standard editions)
Downloads and Tutorials
Download (Opens in a new window) SoftMaker Office NX Universal (Free Trial / Full Version)
SoftMaker Office Tutorials (Opens in a new window) (Video and Text Guides)
Knowledge Base / Support (Opens in a new window) Center
Beyond the Summary
SoftMaker Office NX Universal is more than just a cost-effective alternative to Microsoft Office—it’s a smarter, safer evolution. With its lean architecture, native support for Microsoft file formats, and a one-time or yearly subscription model that won’t bleed you dry, it offers genuine value for individuals and teams alike.
When combined with pCloud—a secure, Swiss-hosted cloud storage provider that complies fully with GDPR and offers optional client-side encryption—you get a solution that is not only cheaper than the Microsoft 365 ecosystem but also significantly more privacy-conscious. No telemetry, no background tracking, and no data-mining business model.
Let’s talk numbers. A full year of SoftMaker Office NX Universal (for up to five users) plus pCloud Premium (500 GB or more) typically costs less than a single Microsoft 365 Family subscription—especially when factoring in pCloud’s one-time payment options, which eliminate recurring costs altogether. That’s not just savings—it’s digital independence.
What About Collaboration?
It’s true: real-time co-authoring, like you’d find in Office Online or Google Docs, isn’t part of the SoftMaker + pCloud setup. But for many users, real-time editing is less essential than it seems. Most teams and professionals already rely on a familiar pattern: download a file, make edits, and save a new version.
With pCloud Drive, this workflow becomes fluid and secure:
Collaborators can share folders and files with versioning, access controls, and even password-protected links.
Everyone works locally in SoftMaker and syncs changes back to the shared folder.
pCloud’s version history protects you from accidental overwrites.
This model—asynchronous collaboration—has worked reliably for decades and remains the default for legal, academic, editorial, and technical teams worldwide.
In our next post, we’ll dive deeper into pCloud: how it fits into the European digital ecosystem, how to configure secure folders, and why it’s an ideal alternative to both OneDrive and Google Drive.
Write. Calculate. Present. – The SoftMaker Suite at a Glance
TextMaker
Create documents of any size in next to no time—whether you’re drafting a flyer, brochure, business letter, or full-length academic paper. TextMaker supports footnotes, bibliographies, track changes, and more. And since it uses the DOCX format natively, your work is seamlessly compatible with Microsoft Word.
PlanMaker
From simple tables to complex financial planning models, PlanMaker makes spreadsheet work intuitive and powerful. Charts, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and advanced functions are all there—and with native XLSX support, you can work directly with Excel files without conversions.
Presentations
Design impactful slide shows with cinematic animations and clean transitions. Presentations feels like a light, fast version of PowerPoint, while still supporting everything from bullet points to multimedia. Its native use of the PPTX format ensures perfect compatibility with PowerPoint users.
Further Reading and Resources
SoftMaker Office Homepage (Opens in a new window)
LibreOffice (Opens in a new window) – Fully Free and Open-Source Office Suite
Amazon’s famous 6-page narrative memo policy (Opens in a new window) ↩
Not only does it help with reducing costs, but it also aligns with France’s broader commitment to digital sovereignty and data privacy, as open-source software allows for greater transparency and control over software used in government operations. ↩
