When you’re starting up and money is tight, it can be oh so very painful to dish out money for a $300 or $400 piece of software. Sure, it is an investment and you need it to make your money… but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Even established businesses could do with a little savings in the software department, especially in uncertain times. The good news is, you can save a ton on licensing fees. Check out these alternatives to common – and expensive software.

Office Suites

OpenOffice – consistently one of my favorite replacement applications for Microsoft Office. It comes with a word processor, spread sheet, drawing application which is great for flow charts and presentation builder to replace PowerPoint.

The best thing is, you can save and open Word, Excel, Powerpoint files with no problems. I get Word documents from partners and assistants all the time, and have had no issues opening them.

Image Editors

Paint.Net – Windows only alternative to PhotoShop. Okay, I’ll admit it is not quite as advanced as PhotoShop. But still a very good start with an active community and tons of free tutorials online.

Gimp – Another one in the photo editor department. Works on Windows and Linux.

Inkscape – not an image editor per se but a vector image illustrator. Alternative to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw or Xara.

Web Development

Here are several alternatives to Dreamweaver, Expression Web or the older FrontPage.

Amaya – from the W3C consortium. Available for Windows, Mac and Unix systems

Kompozer – another WYSIWYG editor available for Windows, Mac and Unix as well.

FileZilla – Alternative FTP software to CuteFTP or WS_FTP.

PDF Readers and Creators

PDFCreator – create PDF’s. Works like a printer. Just print to it. Open source, Windows only.

Foxit Reader – alternative to Adobe Acrobat reader. Granted, Acrobat Reader is free, but have you seen how much space it hogs on your computer? I’ve used Foxit for about 2 years now. Love it. Fast, quick and easy. I also don’t run into too much trouble opening PDF’s unlike Adobe where it sometimes can’t even open its own files.

Desktop Publishing

Scribus – Alternative to QuarkXpress. I’ve used Sribus to create some sharp looking PDF documents.

Antivirus

ClamWin for Windows or Clam AntiVirus for Unix systems. ClamWin also has a portable version you can carry on your USB stick.

Encryption

TrueCrypt – encrypt your hard drive or even USB drives. This can be very helpful when carrying company information on your USB drive or your laptop. Lock it down, keep your data away from prying eyes.

ZIP Utility

7-Zip – open source alternative to WinZip. Opens a bunch of different compression formats too.

Desktop Project Management

Open Workbench – Alternative to Microsoft Project.

Password Manager

KeePass – alternative to RoboForm. Although I have not found KeePass to be as intuitive and easy to use as RoboForm and not giving up, this is a good alternative if you need some way to manage your passwords securely.

Almost all of the software listed here are opensource. Which means (usually), support is a hit and miss and it is always a work in progress. Your mileage may vary with some of these. I’ve had no problem with them on my computer. Keep in mind, I run Windows XP and try to keep the computer as squeaky clean as possible, which may account for the reason why I don’t encounter much problems.

However, software like FileZilla, OpenOffice and 7-Zip have been installed on more than one computer over the years. It’s usually a smooth ride. So if you’re willing to try things out and save some serious cash at the same time, go for it.

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