The best free or discounted software packages for charities

Justifying the cost of software is a challenge in any organisation, especially in the charity sector.

Discounted or even free software is available to charities, but that isn’t always made clear by software vendors. So we thought we’d make it as obvious as possible.

Below is a list of useful software packages that your charity can get for a huge discount, or even receive free. 

Adobe Express, Creative Cloud

What is it?

Adobe Express is graphic design software with an emphasis on ease of use. It is well-suited for creating content for social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. The Premium plan includes access to 200 million stock images, videos, and audio files, and allows scheduling of posts to social media.

Adobe Creative Cloud includes graphics editors like Photoshop and Illustrator, video tools like Premiere Pro and After Effects, and other professional grade media software.

What is the discount?

Charities can get a free one year subscription to Adobe Express Premium (normally £99.80/yr), and 60% off the first year of a Creative Cloud Complete, and 40% in subsequent years.

Atlassian Suite

What is it?

Atlassian develops a family of products aimed at managing work, projects, and IT services, including project management tools like Trello and Jira, collaborative content space Confluence, as well as more techy tools like BitBucket and Bamboo for collaboration around coding, building, and deploying software.

What is the discount?

For eligible non-profits, Atlassian offers 75% off their cloud hosted software, or for those with the resources to host the software on their own infrastructure, their software is available for free.

Canva

What is it?

Canva Pro is an easy to use online graphic design tool with great benefits, and can be used for social media posts, infographics, websites, and much more. The pro version comes with access to premium templates, more than 100 million stock photos, video and audio, advanced tools for resizing images, removing backgrounds etc, and the ability to schedule social media posts.

What is the discount?

Canva Pro is free for eligible nonprofits.

Google Workspace

What is it?

Workspace is Google’s set of cloud storage, email, and office tools, including things like Google Drive, Gmail, Calendar, as well as Docs, Sheets, and other “productivity” software.

What is the discount?

Charities can get the basic “Workspace for Nonprofits” plan for free, including 100TB of cloud storage for your organisation and email using your own domain.

There is more than 70% off the business and enterprise plans, which include storage, support for larger video calls, and other advanced features (business plans are normally £5 or £10/mo).

Hootsuite

What is it?

Hootsuite is an all-in-one social media management platform to plan, publish, promote, and participate with your social media content across all popular networks, and helps you maximise your impact.

What is the discount?

Hootsuite for non-profits is up to 75% off for professional (one user, usually £89/mo) and team (up to three users, usually £249/mo) plans.

Microsoft 365

What is it?

Microsoft’s suite of office products have been ubiquitous in organisations for decades. The latest offerings integrate the old desktop tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint more tightly with Microsoft’s Cloud services such as OneDrive and Sharepoint. The 365 subscription also comes with the communications tools you’d expect – Outlook and Teams.

What is the discount?

Eligible non-profits can get the Microsoft 365 Business Basic subscription for free (up to 300 users) and more than 75% off the Business Standard price (usually £10.30/user/mo). Smaller non-profits can get Business Premium subscriptions for free (up to 10 users, usually £18.10/user/mo).

Slack

What is it?

Slack provides chat functionality to help teams, especially remote ones, coordinate. It features video calling and many automations and integrations with other software you use.

What is the discount?

Charities are entitled to a free Pro subscription for up to 250 users, and an 85% discount for larger organisations or the Business+ subscription.

Tableau

What is it?

Tableau is data analysis and visualisation software to help you easily get to grips with your data and create compelling interactive visualisations to tell your story through your data.

What is the discount?

Eligible non-profits are entitled to Tableau Desktop and Prep Builder for free (usually $75 per user, per month, as part of Creator subscription).