When we talk about online presentations, most are limited just to sharing a slide deck with other users. But slides aren’t great for telling a story. So what happens when you add video? That’s what 9Slides does. 9Slides is a cloud-based service that marries slides with video, allowing its users to create hosted multimedia presentations. Once published, these presentations are available for viewing on almost any connected device with a web browser.
9Slides is all about accessibility, and being able to playback any presentation on any device. The 9Slides player is built-in HTML5, so that presentations and video can be viewed on a wide range of mobile and tablet devices. In addition to traditional web browsers on your PC or Mac, you can also access them on the iPhone, iPad, and most Android devices.
And it supports multiple file formats — not just your usual PowerPoint files. It also supports PDFs, as well as documents created in applications such as Prezi, Apple’s Keynote, or even Microsoft Excel. Once presentation documents and videos have been uploaded, 9Slides includes a cloud-based editor that allows the user to synchronize the two, using a drag-and-drop process for doing so.
The service operates on a freemium model, allowing anyone to upload files and create multimedia presentations. But there are premium features — like for instance, an ad-free video player, password protection for presentations, or providing analytics — that are available for users who pay. Pro users pay $9.99 a month, with even more features available to enterprise users of the platform.
While launching publicly, 9Slides has already been used by thousands as part of the Microsoft BizSpark program. The startup partnered to be part of Microsoft’s software development kit for entrepreneurs, putting it in the hands of more than 45,000 startups that take part in the program.