Find the right software

Software is expensive, sometimes you don’t need to buy it or download it illegally as there’s sometimes an alternative you can get for free!

Here’s a few ways to find an alternative:

1. Using AlternativeTo

AlternativeTo.net is a great site that allows you to search for existing software and discover if there’s an alternative option to it.

For example, if you search for iTunes, you may be provided with FooBar2000 as an alternative.

But that’s not all, it also offers all sorts of interesting information about each software title. You can even say which software you like.

This website is so good, you may not even need to try any other method.

2. Using Wikipedia

Here’s what you do:

1. Go to Google, search for “the product” +wikipedia (eg: “itunes” +wikipedia)
2. If Wikipedia has an article for the software it should show up in the results, go to this article.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the Wikipedia article and look at the categories.
4. Click on the category that best describes the feature you are looking for (eg: Windows media players)

In there, you will discover a whole range of software solutions that do the same job as the original software.

Of course this method isn’t always ideal as Wikipedia only has articles on software it considers “notable”. Not all software is notable as it often lacks good press coverage.

3. Using Google

We’re not going to just trawl through thousands and thousands of irrelevant results here, so here’s what to do:

1. Search in Google for your software (eg: “itunes”)
2. On the first result there should be a link that says “Similar” which is to the right of “Cached”.
3. Click the “Similar” link.

This should now show you a list of similar websites, which are usually similar software.

The first three pages of results should be enough to discover a good alternative.

I hope you find this useful!