SoftMaker

Last updated

SoftMaker
Company typeGmbH
IndustrySoftware
Founded1989;35 years ago (1989)
FounderMartin Kotulla
Headquarters
Nuremberg
,
Germany
Website SoftMaker's home page

SoftMaker Software GmbH is a German software company based in Nuremberg that produces office productivity software and digital fonts. SoftMaker was founded in 1989 by Martin Kotulla. [1] Best known in Germany and the EU, SoftMaker is offering its software worldwide.

Contents

Students, teachers, schools, and universities can purchase SoftMaker Office for a lower price, part of SoftMaker's academic sales program. Additionally, a free version named FreeOffice is available to all. [2]

SoftMaker Office

SoftMaker Office is SoftMaker's flagship product, an office suite marketed to home, small business and educational users. [1] It consists of the word processor TextMaker (compatible with Microsoft Word), the spreadsheet PlanMaker (compatible with Microsoft Excel) the presentation software application SoftMaker Presentations (compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint) and the scripting language BasicMaker (compatible with Visual Basic for Applications).

SoftMaker Office is currently available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, MacOS and Android. Older versions were available for Windows CE, Handheld PCs, Pocket PCs (Windows Mobile handheld devices) and FreeBSD.[ citation needed ]

SoftMaker Office supports all popular Microsoft Office file formats. SoftMaker claims to be working on ODF compliant formats, [1] but currently supports OpenDocument only in its word processor and the spreadsheet program.[ citation needed ]

SoftMaker productEquivalent Microsoft productEquivalent Google productEquivalent Apple productPlatformsFile formats
TextMaker WordDocsPagesWin32, Win64, macOS, Linux, Android.docx, .doc, .rtf, .odt, .tmd, .tmdx, .pwd, .txt, .sxw (import only), .pdf (export)
PlanMaker ExcelSheetsNumbersWin32, Win64, macOS, Linux, Android.xlsx, .xls, .csv, .pmd, .pmdx, .ods (import), .rtf, .dbf, .txt, .slk, .dif, .pdf (export)
Presentations PowerPointSlidesKeynoteWin32, Win64, macOS, Linux, Android.pptx, .pps, .ppt, .ppsx, .prd, .prdx, .rtf, Export: .png, .jpg, Video and .pdf
BasicMakerVBA (limited)Win32, Win64.bas, .txt

Competitive strategy

The SoftMaker Office sales strategy is based on cross-platform usability along with reasonable pricing and free post-sale customer service. However, since SoftMaker Office is not free like competitors LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice, or Calligra Suite, its greatest marketing strength is its high degree of Microsoft Office compatibility. [3] [4] [5] As a major sales point, SoftMaker cites its ability to render graphs and charts within PlanMaker which are often indistinguishable from those created within Microsoft's Excel. Significantly, this level of compatibility extends to non-Windows platforms. [4] Even on Windows platforms, SoftMaker Office competes with native Windows office suites based on its Microsoft Office compatibility.

SoftMaker also claims its Office suite is faster, with smaller memory and hard drive footprints than Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org. [3]

The most significant areas of incompatibility, as with all non-Microsoft office suites, are in documents that use VBA scripts. While BasicMaker is a step forward, it still does not offer seamless VBA compatibility.[ citation needed ]

FlexiPDF

FlexiPDF.png

FlexiPDF is a PDF editor allowing the user to modify and add text, images, drawings and form controls. SoftMaker claims that it makes editing PDF files as easy as working with a word processor. [6] [7]

Digital fonts

SoftMaker offers font packages for the home user (MegaFont NOW) and professional user (infiniType).[ citation needed ]

SoftMaker publishes one font each month free for download from its FreeFont web site.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lotus 1-2-3</span> Spreadsheet software

Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software. It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles in the business market.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Excel</span> Spreadsheet editor, part of Microsoft 365

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Excel forms part of the Microsoft 365 suite of software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Word</span> Word processor

Microsoft Word is a word processor program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including: IBM PCs running DOS (1983), Apple Macintosh running the Classic Mac OS (1985), AT&T UNIX PC (1985), Atari ST (1988), OS/2 (1989), Microsoft Windows (1989), SCO Unix (1990), macOS (2001), Web browsers (2010), iOS (2014) and Android (2015).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WordPerfect</span> Word processing application

WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, displacing the prior market leader WordStar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WPS Office</span> Office suite software by Kingsoft

WPS Office is an office suite for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Fire OS and HarmonyOS developed by Zhuhai-based Chinese software developer company, Kingsoft. It also comes pre-installed on Fire tablets. WPS Office is made up of three primary components: WPS Writer, WPS Presentation, and WPS Spreadsheet. By 2022, WPS Office reached a number of more than 494 million monthly active users and over 1.2 billion installations.

The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, standardized as ISO 26300, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed with the aim of providing an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Works</span> Productivity software suite

Microsoft Works is a discontinued productivity software suite developed by Microsoft and sold from 1987 to 2009. Its core functionality includes a word processor, a spreadsheet and a database management system. Later versions have a calendar application and a dictionary while older releases include a terminal emulator. Works is available as a standalone program and as part of a namesake home productivity suite. Because of its low cost, companies frequently preinstalled Works on their low-cost machines. Works is smaller, less expensive, and has fewer features than contemporary major office suites such as Microsoft Office.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corel Photo-Paint</span> Raster graphics editing software

Corel Photo-Paint is a raster graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel since 1992. Corel markets the software for Windows and Mac OS operating systems, previously having marketed versions for Linux. Its primary market competitor is Adobe Photoshop.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TextMaker</span> Word processing software

TextMaker is a word processor, which aims at utmost compatibility with Microsoft Word, its default document format is .docx.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Documents To Go</span> Office suite for portable operating systems

Documents To Go is BlackBerry's cross-platform office suite for Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Maemo, BlackBerry OS, Symbian, Android, and iOS. Also, a larger-screen version would have been included with the Palm Foleo, but Palm, Inc. cancelled the device before its release.

SoftMaker Office is an office suite which aims for compatibility with Microsoft Office. It is available as a one-time purchase, as well as a subscription. A freeware version with a slightly reduced feature set is released under the name SoftMaker FreeOffice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac</span> Productivity software

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is a version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Mac OS X. It supersedes Office 2004 for Mac and is the Mac OS X equivalent of Office 2007. Office 2008 was developed by Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit and released on January 15, 2008. Office 2008 was followed by Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 released on October 26, 2010, requiring a Mac with an Intel processor and Mac OS version 10.5 or better. Office 2008 is also the last version to feature Entourage, which was replaced by Outlook in Office 2011. Microsoft stopped supporting Office 2008 on April 9, 2013.

Ability Office is an office suite developed by Ability Plus Software and distributed and marketed by Ability Software International and which consists of a word processor, spreadsheet, database, modules for presentation and photo or image editing, plus a photo/image organiser and vector line drawing application. The current version (V6) offers a level of compatibility with Microsoft Office, allowing users to create, load from and save both to Microsoft Office 2010 and earlier file formats. In the same way, the photo and image editing application will create, load from and save to Adobe Photoshop (*.psd) file formats, together with other mainstream graphical file types.

The Office Open XML file formats are a set of file formats that can be used to represent electronic office documents. There are formats for word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations as well as specific formats for material such as mathematical formulas, graphics, bibliographies etc.

Software Publishing Corporation (SPC) was a Mountain View, California-based manufacturer of business software, originally well known for its "pfs:" series of business software products, it was ultimately best known for its pioneering Harvard Graphics business and presentation graphics program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OfficeSuite</span> Computer program

OfficeSuite is a cross-platform office suite application developed by MobiSystems. It has versions for Android, iOS and Microsoft Windows (PC) and adds extensive PDF abilities to its compatibility with the most frequently used Microsoft Office file formats. The software has over 220 million downloads on Google Play and is among the top Android business applications.

References

  1. 1 2 3
  2. "About us".
  3. 1 2 ITWEEK SoftMaker Office 2006 review
  4. 1 2 Review of TextMaker under Linux
  5. 2011 Review in PC World
  6. "FlexiPDF".
  7. "FlexiPDF Pro: PDF-Editor mit starken Bearbeitungs-Funktionen" [FlexiPDF Pro: PDF editor with powerful editing features]. c't Magazin (in German). 2019. Retrieved 26 February 2022.