SoftMaker Software GmbH is a German software company based in

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

that produces office productivity software and digital fonts. SoftMaker was founded in 1989 by Martin Kotulla.Review and interview focusing on the company, compatibility, and ODF compliance
/ref> Best known in Germany and the EU, SoftMaker is offering its software worldwide. 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.

SoftMaker Office

SoftMaker Office is SoftMaker's flagship product, an

office suite Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital painting ...

marketed to home, small business and educational users. It consists of the

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current ...

TextMaker TextMaker is a word processor developed by the German company SoftMaker and available as part of the SoftMaker office suite. TextMaker is available for Windows, MacOS, Linux and Android. Some reduced versions of TextMaker are released as free ...

(compatible with

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software 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 pla ...

), the

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...

PlanMaker (compatible with

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for App ...

) the presentation software application SoftMaker Presentations (compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint) and the scripting language BasicMaker (compatible with

Visual Basic for Applications Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6.0 built into most desktop Microsoft Office applications. Although based on pre-.NET Visual Basic, which is no longer support ...

). SoftMaker Office is currently available for Microsoft Windows,

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

and Android. Older versions were available for

Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...

Handheld PC A handheld personal computer (PC) is a miniature computer typically built around a clamshell form factor and is significantly smaller than any standard laptop computer, but based on the same principles. It is sometimes referred to as a ''palmto ...

s, Pocket PCs (

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants. Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...

handheld devices) and FreeBSD. SoftMaker Office supports all popular Microsoft Office file formats. SoftMaker claims to be working on ODF compliant formats, but currently supports OpenDocument only in its word processor and the spreadsheet program.

Competitive strategy

The SoftMaker Office sales strategy is based on cross-platform usability along with reasonable pricing and free post-sale

customer service Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but in the end, the idea of a well-performed service is that ...

. However, since SoftMaker Office is not free like competitors

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite co ...

Apache OpenOffice Apache OpenOffice (AOO) is an open-source office productivity software suite. It is one of the successor projects of OpenOffice.org and the designated successor of IBM Lotus Symphony. It is a close cousin of LibreOffice, Collabora Online and ...

, or

Calligra Suite Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE. It is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones. It contains applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, databases, vector graphics, and digital paintin ...

, its greatest marketing strength is its high degree of

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketi ...

compatibility.ITWEEK SoftMaker Office 2006 review
/ref>Review of TextMaker under Linux
/ref>
/ref> 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. 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 A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...

footprints than Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org. 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.

FlexiPDF

''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.

Digital fonts

SoftMaker offers font packages for the home user (''MegaFont NOW'') and professional user (''infiniType''). To promote its digital font sales, SoftMaker publishes one font each month free for download from it
FreeFont
web site.

References

{{Authority control Companies based in Nuremberg Companies established in 1989 German brands Office suites