Tome alternative: where Tome users should go in 2026
Tome shut down its slides product, so if you built decks there you need a new home. The thing to look for now is portability: Plain's source is plain Markdown and its output is a web link, so your work can always move with you and never gets locked in again.
If you are reading this, you probably built decks in Tome and now find that the tool you relied on is no longer the product it was. That is a frustrating spot to be in, but it is also a chance to choose something that will not put you here again. This post is a short, practical guide to where Tome users can go and what to look for so the next move is the last one.
What happened to Tome
The plain fact is that Tome wound down its AI slides product and redirected the company toward a different focus. For a while it was one of the more talked-about AI presentation tools, with a distinctive take on turning a prompt into a narrative deck. That specific product is no longer the thing to build your presentations on.
None of this is a knock on the people who built it. AI tooling moves fast, companies pivot, and products get retired. The useful takeaway is not blame; it is a lesson about what to prioritize next time. When a tool you depend on can go away, the question that matters is: can I take my work with me? For a lot of Tome decks, the honest answer was harder than it should have been, because the content lived inside a format tied to one app. That is the exact thing worth avoiding when you pick what comes next.
What Tome users actually need now
Strip away the branding and the feature lists, and people leaving Tome want three concrete things:
- AI that drafts for you. The reason you used Tome in the first place was speed: describe the deck, get a real starting point instead of a blank canvas.
- Sharing that just works. A deck exists to be seen. You want to hand it to someone and have them open it with no install, no login, and no wondering whether they have the right app.
- No lock-in, ever again. This is the one the shutdown made real. Your content should live in a form you own, so if any tool changes direction, your work is not held hostage by it.
The first two are common to most modern deck tools. The third is where the choices actually diverge, and it is the one that just cost you a migration.
Comparison
Here is how the tools Tome users most often consider line up on the things that matter for a move. Gamma and Beautiful.ai are both capable hosted deck makers; the difference with Plain shows up in the last two rows, which are exactly the rows the Tome shutdown made you care about.
| Gamma | Beautiful.ai | Plain | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Migration path | Import content, rebuild in-app | Import content, rebuild in-app | Paste your text or Markdown, AI lays it out |
| AI generation | Fast, mature, prompt to deck | AI plus strong layout assistance | Prompt or Markdown to a web deck |
| Lock-in risk | Proprietary format inside one app | Proprietary format inside one app | Markdown source, plain text you own |
| Sharing | Link or exported file | Link or exported file | A link, no install and no login to view |
Two rows are where Plain is built differently. On Lock-in risk, Plain keeps your source as plain Markdown: readable text you can keep, move, and open anywhere, rather than content sealed inside one app's proprietary format. On Sharing, the deck is a web page from the start, so you hand someone a link instead of a file, and it always shows the current version. Those two are precisely what a shutdown teaches you to value.
How to move your decks
Moving off Tome is more about your content than about any one tool. The steps are simple, and the goal at each step is to end up holding text you own.
- Get the text out first. While you still have access, copy the words from each page and save any images. Text is the part that survives any move, because it can be pasted into anything.
- Rebuild fast in Plain. Paste your outline or the copied text into Plain and let the AI turn it into a structured deck, or drop it in as a Markdown outline if you prefer to shape the structure yourself. Either way you get a real draft in minutes, not a blank canvas.
- Edit element by element. The AI produces the structure; you click any element and change it in place. You are not re-prompting the whole deck to fix one line.
- Share the link. The finished deck is a web page. Send the link, and the receiver opens it in any browser with nothing to install and nothing to log into.
Because the source stays in Markdown, this is the last forced migration you have to do. Your content is text you own from here on, so if any tool ever changes direction again, you keep your work and move it yourself.
The short version
Tome shutting down its slides product is annoying, but it points at the real lesson: choose a tool where your content is portable, so a change in any one product never costs you your work again. Plain takes that seriously by design. The source is plain Markdown you own, the output is a web page you share as a link, and the AI drafts the structure so you can edit it element by element. Nothing to be locked into, nothing to migrate away from later.
If you also want a head-to-head against another popular AI deck tool, read the best Gamma alternative in 2026. Otherwise, the fastest way to feel the difference is to paste an old outline in, get a deck back, and share the link. Try Plain and make this the last move you have to make.