emaze Review – Making the Most of emaze Online Presentation Technology

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emaze_logoEmaze is a web-based presentation technology that makes it easy for people to make contemporary PowerPoint style presentations available to view online with no special skills required.

Simple to Use

Eye-catching professional presentations can be made in a few minutes with the use of a wide array of templates categorized around the type of presentation you’re looking to make. Because your presentations are stored online, you can access and share them anywhere. Emaze is a web app with cloud-based storage that allows you to view and edit your presentations on computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones anywhere you have an internet connection. The interface is user friendly and no understanding of HTML or CSS is required by the designer.

Plenty of Options

The templates include 3d scenes to 2d slides by skilled designers. The fact that the slides are created in HTML5 means you have a lot more design options including gifs, media, live data, hyperlinking, and more. Your presentation becomes interactive and engaging. Emaze also includes language support with automated translation tools. The templates are organized by type to help you more easily find one to suit your needs.

emaze free templates

 

You can also explore other public presentations to see what other people have done with their presentations and get ideas for how to personalize yours.

Designing with Emaze

Designing a presentation with Emaze is very user-friendly. You design within the web app in your browser, which is becoming increasingly common across the web. Many interfaces for these types of web apps are designed for users without a lot of experience with these types of software. Emaze is no exception, with large buttons and easy to understand labels, it will be easy to get your bearings and design a presentation even for someone without graphic design experience. You can even import PowerPoint slides to make your job easier, so if you have slides with information from other documents in the Microsoft Office Suite, you will be able to transfer that information easily.

emaze editor

 

The buttons on the interface are large, simple, and organized by general tasks.

Section 1:

  • Slide – with a plus sign. This button allows you to click to see what other slides are available in the template you have chosen. Each template appears to have a large selection of standard slides to choose from to make your presentation unique. The dropdown menu for this section also has space for importing PowerPoint slides.
  • Section – your presentation can be separated into sections for ease of editing or easily transitioning your audience between subtopics in your presentation.
  • Themes – This button allows you to select between color schemes for the theme you’ve chosen.

Section 2:

  • Text – This button allows you to select text size based on whether what you’ll be typing is a heading, a sub-heading, or general slide text.
  • Image – You can upload photos or import them from the web if you have the URL. You can also easily use photos licensed for free commercial use from photo repositories like Flickr and Google images. If you do a search within this tab, it will pull up images you’re allowed to use according to the specifications you set from all across the web. All of this is available free.

emaze photo importer

  • Media – You can also import media including video and audio files, as well as results from Google Maps. The “media” tab accepts uploaded audio and video files in .mp3 and .mp4 formats as well as URLs or embed code from YouTube, Vimeo, and other sites.
  • Shape – this button gives you access to a large number of shapes that can further customize your presentation. Many standard shapes are included as well as the most popular social media logos and other useful image outlines all with a similar style that will allow them to be used together.
  • Charts – You can even make your own charts easily by copying and pasting information from a spreadsheet data table and picking the type of chart that you want. They offer 11 chart options based on what you need to display your data. The standards are included (column, line, pie charts, bar, area, and tables) as well as other, less common types of charts.

Editing text on the slides is simple. Just click on the text you wish to edit. When you click on the text it will drop down an edit menu that allows you to manipulate the look and feel of the text similar to the options in the graphics interface. Though some have said you can’t edit fonts in the free version, it is available under advanced options in the dropdown menu (the ellipses). You can also edit letter spacing, add hyperlinks or sounds, rotate your font to make it look more 3D, add graphic features like gradients and text glow. You can also edit text placement by dragging the box to where you want it in the frame, similar to Photoshop and other image editing programs.

Editing images is similarly simple. Once you have selected your image, a dropdown menu will appear and your image will be highlighted. You can change the size, edit or crop the image, add borders or special effects, add hyperlinks or audio, rotate them, and more. You can arrange sets of images or lock them into place to keep from accidentally dragging them. The 3D effect allows you to rotate images in several different ways by degrees if you like for perfect placement.

Section 3 has your standards like undo/redo, copy and paste, delete, save, download, share, and play so that you can preview what your presentation will look like during the production process.

They have a good free support section to help you figure out the basics and how Emaze works.

Paid Accounts

The paid accounts come in 2 tiers and have different benefits. The “Pro” tier allows you to present offline, make your presentation private, download to PDF and video, and allows collaboration so you can work on presentations with other team members.

The “Business” account tier offers all the features previously mentioned as well as analytics information, customized brand templates, the ability to manage your team, and the premium training and support to get knowledgeable help on how to effectively use the system. If you have some team members who aren’t used to web interfaces like this, or would really like to make your presentations stand out, the training options might serve your employees well.

Pro Business
Present offline
Make your presentations private
Download to PDF and Video
Collaboration
Insight Analytics Pro
Customized Brand Templates
Team Management
Premium Training Support
14 Day Free Trial
Monthly Price $9/mo $19/mo

They also offer discount plans for students and educators.

Paid accounts also have the Emaze viewer which will allow you to play .emaze files offline. So far their Emaze viewer is for Windows only. If you’re running a Mac you’ll need to use the “Download HTML” feature to view your presentation offline.

Emaze also has a referral program where, if you invite a friend, you can get a free month of Emaze Pro to try out. They also have an affiliate program.

Emaze for Students and Educators

Not only is Emaze a great way for teachers to liven up their curriculum and keep students engaged with interactive elements, but it also has options that specifically help teachers. Emaze for educators has an easy to use and multi-device platform that encourages collaborative learning, and it has special tools to allow the teacher to track each student’s progress and engagement level with analytics and advanced team platforms.

Emaze is good for students, too. Any student that has to give a presentation as part of their grade school or college level class will benefit from not having to learn a complicated system in order to make their presentation one that teachers and their fellow students will appreciate. There are templates specifically for students that will allow them to create a presentation in minutes, and they can enhance their presentations easily with images, live data, audio and video.

Emaze is also particularly suited to contemporary students, who are used to doing much of their work online and may only have types of devices that don’t have serious storage so everything they do should be stored in the cloud. Students with Chromebooks or other types of internet accessing devices will greatly benefit from the tools Emaze offers.
Students can also share and collaborate with classmates and teachers through email, social media, websites, and blogs so other students can get involved and teachers can track their progress.

How Emaze Beats the Competition

Emaze finds a way to both have more templates and options than much of its direct competition and be more user-friendly. It has an intuitive interface with large, bold buttons and a deep grey and black background to reduce eye strain. It has more templates and options than some of the competition, is less clunky, and is intuitive enough to not require a tutorial for people with average experience in web native applications. It’s simple to learn, to use, and to share with friends, family, coworkers, clients, and more.

eMaze vs PowerPoint

eMaze PowerPoint
Compatible on PC, Mac, Tablets & Smartphones
Presentations can be accessed from anywhere
Professionally designed templates
3D templates
Video templates
Spatial motion of information
Position text, images and videos in 3D plane
Share your presentation via email or Facebook
Collaborate presentations with your colleagues
Dozens of pre-designed layouts
Supports all languages
Automatic presentation translation
Offline access
Presentations can be embedded in any website
HTML5 and CSS3
Hyperlinks support
Background Music
Sound effects
Import slides from PowerPoint
Charts & Tables

How Web Apps Beat Traditional Software

Many people have at least some experience with the business standard for presentation software, Microsoft Office Suite’s PowerPoint. Powerpoint is built to work within the Office Suite, pulling in information from other programs within the suite to make retrieval and display of information easy. The problem with PowerPoint is that it has a fairly steep learning curve compared to something like Emaze for people who aren’t used to generating PowerPoint presentations or who need to generate presentations regularly. Web applications like Emaze understand that their users might not have or want the skills required to generate a professional-looking presentation. Software that is streamlined for the most important functions, particularly software that can import PowerPoint presentations for the data needed, are perfect for business people who don’t have the time to invest in a skill unrelated to the demands of their job. You can make a presentation in minutes that looks just as if not more professional than a Powerpoint presentation with little-to-no training required.

emaze_easy_sharingThe fact that presentations are stored in the cloud and accessed via a website means that collaboration is easy. Everyone can access the same presentation at the same time and edit live. This saves on back and forth communication and file sharing, which saves everyone time on both large and complicated presentations and in positions where presentations need to be generated on the fly but certain people have access to different information that needs to be shared.

Cloud-storage means presentations can be accessed from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. It means that you can easily share works in progress with coworkers or other people on your team, as well as having the ability to easily share your completed presentations with clients, bosses, friends, and potential customers. You don’t have to pay separately for the storage and host it on your own website or server. You don’t have to personally worry about handling or transferring potentially large files unless you want a backup copy for offline use.

The fact that the presentations are created in HTML5 means that videos, gifs, certain text effects and animations, 3D looks, and other forms of media that are considered particularly eye-catching are available to people with no programming experience in an interface they can easily customize to meet their needs. HTML5 also means that people using every browser can get the full effects of the presentation, whether they’re on desktops, laptops, or mobile devices with any operating system.

Easy Enough for Everyone

Make slideshows for your family. Show your client what your business can do. Engage your students and find unique ways to share curriculum. Impress your teachers. Get your coworkers onboard with a project idea. Make your boss’s job easier. The possibilities with Emaze are endless and it’s so easy to learn you don’t have any excuse not to. With 5 minutes of investment you can have a professional quality presentation ready to go for work, school, or home. See what Emaze can do for you today!

 

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