Introduction
Choosing between Tome and Beautiful.ai can be challenging, especially with both tools offering unique ways to simplify presentation design using AI. These platforms aim to take the burden of formatting off your shoulders, allowing you to concentrate on the important stuff: crafting your story by creating quality content.
In this article, we'll provide an in-depth comparison of Tome and Beautiful.ai, examining their features, ease of use, customization options, and more, to help you make the best decision for your presentation needs.
Background
Tome was founded in 2020 by Keith Peiris and Henri Liriani to transform how people "create and communicate ideas" 1. They aimed to go beyond traditional presentations by blending interactive elements, visuals, and text into cohesive stories. Initially focused on storytelling, Tome introduced features like video narration and collaborative editing, making it popular for visually dynamic presentations. Today, Tome is carving out a niche as a storytelling-driven tool for creative, engaging presentations.
Beautiful.ai, founded in 2015 by Mitch Grasso, set out to make presentation design simple for everyone 2. By using AI to automate layout and design, Beautiful.ai helped users create professional-looking presentations quickly, making it appealing to business professionals. Over time, the platform expanded its features, adding collaboration tools and more templates, making it a reliable option for those needing traditional slide decks without spending hours on design.
Tome Overview
Tome positions itself as an AI-driven storytelling platform that focuses on creating presentations in a modern, engaging format. The goal is to go beyond simple slide creation by helping users tell a complete narrative through rich visuals, media embeds, and AI-generated content. Tome's interface emphasizes ease of use and aesthetics, providing users with a wide variety of pre-built blocks to construct their story. This makes it well-suited for users who want their presentations to stand out visually and conceptually.
Tome offers features such as drag-and-drop slide creation, AI-generated content suggestions, and integration with popular tools like Figma. Users can create a range of different types of presentations, from simple project pitches to interactive stories that include video narrations. The platform’s strength lies in combining visual storytelling and user-friendly design, making it ideal for creative professionals, startups, and educators.
Tome landing page.
Beautiful AI Overview
Beautiful.ai is a presentation tool that uses AI to streamline the design process, allowing users to create polished, professional-looking slides without needing a deep understanding of design principles. Launched with the mission to simplify slide creation, Beautiful.ai aims to eliminate the often tedious process of manually arranging content. The platform’s core feature is its smart slide templates that adapt automatically, ensuring consistency and maintaining a visually pleasing layout.
Beautiful.ai provides an experience that is similar to traditional slide software, but with enhanced automation. By leveraging AI, it helps users make data-driven decisions on slide layout, color choices, and overall design flow. It’s particularly well-suited for users who want to create standard business presentations quickly while maintaining a professional aesthetic, making it a popular choice among teams in corporate environments and marketers looking for efficiency in their workflow.
Beautiful.ai landing page.
Key Differences
To help you make a more informed decision between Tome and Beautiful.ai, we’ve broken down the key differences across several crucial areas: design philosophy, ease of use, customization, collaboration, pricing, and AI features.
Design Philosophy
Tome positions itself as a storytelling tool rather than a traditional slide maker. The focus is on creating narratives that can be shared visually, with an emphasis on non-linear presentation formats that mix elements like text, images, videos, and web embeds seamlessly. This makes Tome ideal for those who need a tool that prioritizes flexibility and creativity over the conventional slide-by-slide approach. The design is clean and encourages an immersive storytelling experience that feels more like a journey than a conventional presentation.
Tome interface.
Beautiful.ai, on the other hand, follows a more traditional design philosophy tailored for corporate settings. Its smart slide templates and automated adjustments emphasize speed, consistency, and efficiency. The AI ensures that your slides are well-designed without requiring manual tweaks, focusing on simplifying the creation of standard presentations for business use. Beautiful.ai’s approach is well-suited for people who are familiar with PowerPoint but looking for a more streamlined, automated version.
Creating a presentation in Beautiful.ai using AI.
Ease of Use
Tome adopts a modern, intuitive interface that feels familiar to users who have worked with tools like Canva or Notion. Its drag-and-drop functionality is designed to streamline content creation, making it simple for users to incorporate multimedia elements and adjust layouts on the fly. However, the customization options can be somewhat limited, favoring convenience over detailed, manual control.
Dragging a chart on a Tome page.
Beautiful.ai, on the other hand, opts for a more traditional presentation software interface that is reminiscent of PowerPoint but simplified. The tool’s smart templates auto-adjust based on user inputs, allowing for quick creation of professional-looking slides. While this automation is a major time-saver, it can sometimes limit the fine-tuning that users may desire when customizing their presentations.
Interface with AI generated deck with prompt: "Investor pitch deck for a Series A SaaS company in the B2C productivity space"
Customization
Tome provides a selection of basic templates and themes, allowing users to set workspace-wide defaults for colors and fonts. This consistency is helpful for teams looking for cohesive branding, though the customization options are relatively limited when compared to other platforms. The emphasis is on simplicity and aesthetic storytelling, meaning Tome's customization is aimed more towards maintaining visual appeal than offering intricate design controls.
Tome template catalogue.
Beautiful.ai excels in providing a more comprehensive array of customization features. Users can choose from various templates and easily adjust slide layouts to match their specific needs. Beautiful.ai also offers options for adding logos and selecting brand colors, making it a more robust choice for companies aiming to adhere to strict brand guidelines. Its extensive customization options give users more freedom to modify the design and layout, making it a better option for those who need greater creative control over their presentation's look and feel.
Beautiful.ai template catalogue.
While Tome is ideal for those who want clean, visually attractive presentations with minimal effort, Beautiful.ai is better suited for users who desire more control over slide aesthetics and company branding.
Collaboration
Tome provides basic collaboration features, allowing users to share presentations with teammates and track viewer engagement through analytics. An interesting addition is the ability to record narration videos, which can enhance communication for remote teams or when presenting asynchronously. However, Tome's collaboration tools are quite limited compared to some other platforms, focusing more on sharing rather than real-time team editing.
Tome collaboration pane.
Beautiful.ai, on the other hand, is more optimized for teamwork. It offers shared slide and template libraries, making it easy for multiple people to contribute to a cohesive presentation. The platform allows collaborators to work on slides together, and it also provides controls for what viewers can do with shared presentations, such as allowing or restricting downloads, copying, or editing.
Beautiful.ai share window.
Pricing
Tome offers a single premium plan called "Tome Pro," priced at $20 per user per month, or $16 per user per month when billed annually. This plan includes unlimited AI usage, unlimited presentations (or "tomes"), and options for custom branding like personalized themes. This straightforward pricing makes it accessible, especially for individual users looking for a design-centric presentation tool.
Tome pricing.
Beautiful.ai is a pricier option, with plans ranging from $45 to $50 per user per month for monthly billing, and $12 per month if billed annually ($144 total). Though more expensive, the subscription includes a range of advanced customization features and team-focused tools, making it an appealing choice for businesses and larger teams.
Beautiful.ai pricing.
AI Features
Tome's AI generates dynamic slide content with ease. Users can leverage AI to create entire pages from scratch—simply input a prompt, and Tome’s AI will build slides that include relevant text, images, and a consistent layout. The AI also provides editing tools that allow users to refine content, offering suggestions for improving flow and structure. The emphasis is on creating visually impactful presentations with minimal effort from the user.
Tome text AI prompts.
Beautiful.ai features the "DesignerBot," which offers a more structured approach to creating slides. Its AI assists in optimizing the arrangement of content on traditional slide templates, ensuring that elements like images, text, and data are formatted for clarity and visual appeal. Beautiful.ai's AI is designed to maintain a professional and polished appearance, with a particular focus on precision in formatting. While its AI-generated content might not be as visually experimental, it’s highly effective for users looking to create clean, business-ready slides.
Beautiful.ai Designer Bot to arrange content.
The AI not only assists in optimizing the arrangement of content but also allows users to generate slide templates based on prompts, making the design process fast and straightforward. Beautiful.ai gives users the option to add more specific content prompts to further refine and train the AI-generated slides, ensuring that the final output aligns with their particular needs.
Beautiful.ai deck creation with AI.
Sonic Slides
Sonic Slides is an innovative presentation tool that aims to simplify slide creation by offering a seamless, text-to-action interface. Unlike more traditional presentation editors, Sonic Slides allows users to generate entire presentations through simple, natural language prompts. This capability means you can go from concept to fully formed, visually engaging slides in a matter of minutes—all without needing advanced design skills.
The standout feature of Sonic Slides is its "text-to-action" function, where users can describe what they need, and the tool automatically generates and formats the content, whether it's charts, visuals, or entire layouts. This is particularly beneficial for those who need to format and edit presentations quickly and accurately. Whether you’re a student on a tight deadline, a corporate professional who needs polished slides, or someone who strives for perfection in every detail, Sonic Slides offers a fast and efficient way to create exactly what you envision.
Sonic Slides stands out as the perfect choice for users looking for a balance between precision, creativity, and speed—turning ideas into visually compelling presentations effortlessly.
Sonic Slides deck editing with AI.
Conclusion
Both Tome and Beautiful.ai offer unique approaches to presentation creation, catering to different preferences and needs. Tome shines in storytelling and modern, visually captivating designs, while Beautiful.ai excels in simplifying traditional presentations through its robust templates and customization options. However, if you’re seeking a tool that blends the ease of text prompts with advanced formatting capabilities, Sonic Slides emerges as a highly efficient and intuitive choice. Each of these platforms serves distinct audiences, and the best option ultimately depends on your personal preferences and use case.
