A beta release of SoftMaker Office 2021 is available to download for free on Windows, macOS and Linux.
For those unfamiliar with it SoftMaker Office is a paid, closed-source productivity suite created by SoftMaker, a Germany-based software company founded in 1987. The company also produce a free (as in beer) office suite called ‘FreeOffice by SoftMaker’.
The SoftMaker Office suite boasts ‘seamless compatibility’ with, and indeed native use of, Microsoft Office file formats by default. The suite is comprised of a word processing program, TextMaker 2021, a spreadsheet program, PlanMaker 2021 and a presentation making tool, Presentations 2021.
Among various improvements made in SoftMaker Office 2021 the suite is said to include a “powerful new online research function”; support both EPUB and PDF/A export; and features Zotero integration for better scientific citation.
Users can also make use of new document templates, more flexible document footnotes, and enjoy ‘powerful’ text search and revision navigation in TextMaker 2021 specifically.
For the duration of its beta test period SoftMaker Office 2021 is free to download, install, and test on all major desktop operating systems, including Linux.
“We are proud to present the public beta of the new SoftMaker Office 2021 to our customers and all those who are considering to become one,” says Martin Kotulla, Managing Director of SoftMaker.
“We are inviting all users to download it free of charge from our website and to test our Office thoroughly. We are looking forward to receiving your feedback.”
The beta expires on June 1, and SoftMaker Office 2021 will require a license to use it.
But for the time being there are not limitations or hurdles involved in using it. You should be able to find installers for Windows, macOS and Linux systems (the latter in both 64-bit .deb and .rpm installer format) on the project homepage:
To help sweeten the deal SoftMaker is also introducing a flexible licensing scenario. This will allow users to buy the suite once and use/install it on as many as 5 different computers, regardless of which operating system they run.