When you talk about writing content, the first tool that comes to everyone’s mind is Google Docs.
It has an intuitive interface that lets you write, edit, share, and collaborate with your team members seamlessly and is also so versatile that everyone from writers to CEO’s can use it.
But while Google Docs is a familiar and easy-to-use tool, it still lacks many advanced functionalities, including limited offline access and advanced collaboration options, like time tracking, due dates, custom task statuses, or progress tracking.
In this article, we’ll explore some Google Docs alternatives that make up for these limitations and make writing faster and more scalable for you.
8 best google docs alternatives to speed up your writing
Google Docs might help you write long-form content and collaborate with your team members, but it doesn’t go beyond that. If you want to take your content creation game to the next level, and produce higher-quality content at scale without skimping on quality, here are the best alternatives to Google Docs:
1. Jasper AI
If you want to leverage the power of artificial intelligence to produce high-quality, original, and search-engine-optimized content—Jasper AI can help you.
All you need to do is use Jasper Commands to tell the AI about what you need to write. It will read your commands and produce quality content with complete context in a few seconds, allowing you to finish your first draft five times faster than Google Docs.
Besides, document management is easier with Jasper than Google Docs because it allows you to easily switch between multiple folders and simultaneously work on different content pieces at the same time.
Pros
- Integrates with SurferSEO to create original content optimized for search engines.
- Produces 100% plagiarism-free content by scanning your content through Copyscape, so you don’t have to do it manually.
- Beneficial for multiple use cases, such as blogs and stories.
- Allows you to write and translate content in 26 different languages.
Cons
- The plagiarism checker costs extra.
- You need to fact-check the AI-generated content thoroughly to find incorrect statistics or outdated content.
Pricing
$59/mo for 50,000 words.
2. Zoho Docs
Zoho Docs, part of Zoho Office Suite, is an online document editing and file management tool for teams and businesses of all sizes to work together securely.
Unlike Google Docs, Zoho Docs comes with advanced functionalities, including customizable reports, like activity reports and audit trails—which include the number of file downloads, uploads, previews, and edits to get a complete picture of activity on your documents.
Zoho Docs also makes team collaboration more organized and hassle-free by allowing you to assign roles and responsibilities for each team member, including admin, organizer, commenter, text editor, and viewer. It leaves no scope for gray areas and keeps everyone on the same page.
Pros
- Highly responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Allows you to work on files and documents offline by syncing your edits when you’re online.
- The free version comes with two-factor authentication to ensure high security.
Cons:
- Has a learning curve which doesn’t make it an intuitive solution for beginners.
- All the plans come with restricted file upload limits.
- Poor mobile and desktop synchronization.
Pricing
Starter plan at $1.77, Team plan at $3.47, and Business plan at $6.94—all upto 3 users.
3. Quip
Quip enables real-time collaboration by combining documents, checklists, spreadsheets, chat, and presentation slides in a single tool. Additionally, whether you want to take 1:1 meeting notes or plan marketing campaigns, Quip provides ready-to-go and fully customizable templates. It also allows you to track the changes in your documents through Quip’s news-feed-style edits list, so you always have a track record to go back to in case of confusion.
Pros
- Built-in chat feature inside each document and spreadsheet to streamline workflows.
- Salesforce integration to automate and embed collaborative documents with ease.
- Advanced security features, like control, privacy, and data protection to ensure trust, compliance, transparency, and governance.
Cons:
- Doesn’t offer advanced text formatting and customization features like in Google Docs.
- Makes organizing long-form content difficult because of its basic formatting tools.
- Doesn’t work well with PDFs.
Pricing
Quip Starter at $10, Quip Plus at $25, and Quip Advanced at $100 per user per month (billed annually).
4. Nuclino
Nuclico is a fast and lightweight Google Docs alternative that allows you to link relevant files together using the @ symbol instead of storing them in a folder. This unique document organization approach makes visualizing, structuring, and finding documents easy.
Besides being a great collaboration tool, Nuclino also comes with a list, graph, and board views that allow you to organize and switch between the content visually. This gives a bird's eye view of your entire content structure and makes it much easier and faster to find documents.
Other features include auto-saving changes, comments, version history, and controlling access rights that further help you manage document permissions with ease.
Pros
- Integrates with 40+ apps.
- Helps in knowledge sharing, employee onboarding, sprint planning, and memos for businesses.
- Mobile-friendly and supports various formats, including Markdown, Word, and PDF.
Cons
- Less extensive formatting options to prioritize speed and simplicity.
- Doesn’t offer offline writing or editing.
- Doesn’t offer widgets for each functionality like in Wiki
Pricing
The Standard plan costs $5/user/month. Also has a Free plan.
5. Dropbox Paper
Dropbox Paper is much like Google Docs, but it comes with a virtual assistant that alerts you about several things, including newly shared documents and upcoming deadlines when you assign due dates to the tasks.
Its annotations feature makes it easy to add comments and provide feedback for specific attributes, such as images. Moreover, you can also create a meeting agenda and sync Paper to your calendar—making it easy to find the documents you require for each meeting.
Pros
- Lets you easily drop a YouTube link, GIFs, Pinterest board, or a SoundCloud clip into your documents.
- Let you provide feedback or brainstorm ideas on the go using your tablet or mobile—on both Android and iOS.
- It comes with an extensive set of templates for different categories—marketing, team, sales, HR, creatives, IT, and education.
Cons
- Not a beginner-friendly tool and comes with a difficult setup process.
- Lacks basic formatting and advanced word processing features as it’s markdown-based.
- Offers a set cloud storage limit with expensive upgrades.
Pricing
The Plus plan is $9.99/month, Family at $16.99/family/month, Professional at $16.58/month, Standard at $15/user/month, Advanced at $24/user/month, and Enterprise at custom pricing.
6. Slite
Slite takes team discussion and collaboration to the next level, especially for remote teams, focusing on faster and more cooperative decision-making with workspaces.
You no longer have to create a meeting invite and hop on a team meeting to finalize decisions. Instead, Slite makes project collaborations and decision-making more efficient, transparent, and contextualized by keeping every team member in sync with simple notifications.
Slite also organizes and stacks your documents in different channels, following a name convention so you can easily find what you’re looking for.
You can also leverage their extensive list of templates for content planning, weekly updates, and daily check-ins.
Pros
- Provides team insights concerning who’s working on what
- Offers seamless integration with several third-party tools like Slack, Trello, and Loom
- Comes with a simple user interface to make writing and navigation simpler and faster
Cons
- Limited document importing and exporting options
- Provides a limited number of notes with the free version
- Comes with minor usability and formatting issues
Pricing
Free, Standard at $6.67, and Premium at $12.50 per member per month.
7. Apache OpenOffice
Apache OpenOffice is an intuitive and open-source document editor and creation tool that streamlines document collaboration on word documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. Similar to Google Docs, it displays notes and comments on the side of the document.
Its multilingual software also streamlines the tedious task of adding mathematical equations and 3D digital illustrations directly to your word document.
Other excellent features include creating custom templates or choosing suitable templates, auto-corrects, spell-checks, and auto-completes.
Pros
- Flexibility to install the application on multiple PCs
- Allows you to share the document copies with anyone for free
Cons
- Outdated UI with no cloud saving option available
- Doesn’t support file formats like PPTX and XLSX
- Doesn’t seamlessly integrate with third-party software and applications like other tools
Pricing
Free
8. Streams by Fellow
The Streams tool is more like a digital notepad—best used to track and plan personal to-do lists, goals, and ideas.
It also acts as an excellent tool for project management or managing checklists and tracking Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to keep everyone on the same page. Thus, unlike Google Docs, which lets you write and work on extensive documents—Streams facilitates project tracking and planning in a collaborative and organized environment.
However, it doesn’t mean you can’t write long-form blog posts with Streams. In fact, it comes with a range of templates to help you create content best-suited for your needs—including a blog post, newsletter, podcast, agenda templates, and team meetings guide.
Pros
- Highly flexible and keeps your team focused and organized
- Offers seamless integration with Zapier, Asana, Jira, Slack, Google Meet, and Zoom
- Keeps everyone accountable with collaborative project tracking, thus boosting your team’s productivity
Cons
- Has a small learning curve
- Doesn’t have a user friendly interface
- The free version has limited features and user experience
Pricing
Free, Pro plan at $6/user/month, as well as a Custom plan.
Move beyond Google Docs and give your content creation efforts a facelift
Google Docs is a widely popular tool and a holy grail for many organizations—but it comes with a lot of hassle, especially with advanced integrations and collaboration features.
The Google Docs alternatives mentioned in this article fill all the gaps and promote team collaboration, organization, and communication to improve productivity. But, if you’re truly looking to accelerate your content creation game—Jasper’s Boss Mode stands out with its unique AI content generation capability for diverse niches and formats.
So, analyze your needs and pick a Google Docs alternative that best fits your requirements. To scale your content creation efforts further, use Jasper AI to produce high-quality content suited to your target audience and brand style guidelines at a faster pace. Sign up for Jasper today!
