Native .pptx ingestion
Upload your existing PowerPoint template. Paul automatically maps slide masters, fonts, color palette, and fixed elements (logo, institutional footer).
Tome shut down its presentation tool in April 2025. Here's the alternative that truly respects your template.
Around 20 million users saw their slide-generation tool disappear within weeks. Most migrated to Gamma or Canva — but the structural gap remained: none of these tools ingest your corporate template and respect it to the letter. Paul tackles this problem head on.
The Tome.app shutdown — timeline
Tome grew rapidly after its 2022 launch — fast adoption by startups and product teams drawn to instant slide generation. Here is the factual timeline of its closure:
- 2022Tome launches its AI slide-generation tool. Rapid adoption, especially among tech startups. Reaches several million users within months.
- 2023–2024Strong growth in free usage. Major funding round. The product expands (PowerPoint export, integrations) but revenue remains limited — users do not convert to paid plans.
- Early 2025Pivot to a commercial CRM tool is announced. The presentation feature is deprioritized. Users are notified to export their decks.
- April 2025Tome permanently shuts down its presentation tool. Presentations not exported before the deadline are deleted. The Tome brand is subsequently acquired by AngelList for a different purpose.
For the 20 million affected users, two options emerged: export to PowerPoint and regain manual control, or migrate to another tool. Most chose Gamma. Some looked further — that is the audience reading this.
Mainstream alternatives do not solve the real problem
Gamma, Canva, Beautiful.ai, Pitch — all excellent for producing a slide from scratch. But none of them directly addresses the question an established enterprise asks first: “My template already exists — how do I generate inside it?”
- From-scratch generation as the core paradigm.These tools are designed to create a slide from a prompt. Your corporate template is, at best, a color theme applied after the fact. At worst, it is ignored.
- Limited brand kits.Some offer a “brand kit”: palette + logo + one or two fonts. Not enough to reproduce an institutional template with 8–30 PowerPoint slide masters and their own rules.
- Degraded PPTX export.PowerPoint exports are often flattened images or non-natively editable objects. Your teams cannot take over after generation.
- No clear enterprise strategy.The business model targets consumers. Features expected in an enterprise deployment (data isolation, controlled hosting, template governance) are secondary concerns.
Paul exists precisely for this gap.
Template compliance, by design
Paul starts from the opposite premise: your template exists, your slide masters are defined, your guidelines are set. Paul composes WITHIN that framework, not around it.
Generation inside slide masters
Every generated slide reuses a native master from your template — not an ad hoc layout. Your design teams find their reference structures intact.
Natively editable PPTX export
The output file contains real PowerPoint objects (text, shapes, tables) — not images. Free editing in PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides after generation.
European hosting + no training
All data stays in the EU. Your content is not used to train any model — neither by Paul nor by its LLM partners.
Real-time collaborative editing
Multiple users can work simultaneously on the same deck with no conflict risk. The template constrains the visual output — no silent brand drift.
Enterprise-ready business model
Individuals use prepaid packs. Companies subscribe to an unlimited plan with seat management and centralized billing.
Paul vs Tome (RIP) and mainstream alternatives
Factual comparison on 6 observable criteria for teams evaluating a Tome successor:
| Criterion | Tome | Gamma | Beautiful.ai | Paul |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product status | Shut down (April 2025) | Active | Active | Active |
| .pptx template ingestion | No | No — lightweight brand kit | Partial — brand kit | Yes — native slide masters |
| Editable PPTX export | Limited | Partial | Good | Native |
| Hosting | — | United States | United States | European Union |
| Enterprise business model | — | Freemium + premium | Subscription | Unlimited subscription |
| Real-time collaborative editing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Comparison based on public information published by each vendor in spring 2026. Features evolve regularly — verify each vendor's sources for up-to-date details.
How to switch to Paul
Tome's closure left many presentations in limbo. Depending on what you were able to recover, here are your options:
Presentations exported before shutdown
If you exported your decks as PPTX or PDF before April 2025, you can use them as a template ingested into Paul. Paul extracts the structure to produce future materials in the same style.
No export recovered
Start from an existing template (your official brand guidelines, a recent institutional deck). Paul builds on it to produce your new materials — the break from Tome becomes an opportunity to align your decks with your official brand.
No clean template yet
Paul also works in free-generation mode, without an imposed template. But that is where Paul shows the least advantage over Gamma. Ideally, use the transition to formalize an official brand template.
Questions from teams in transition
- Why did Tome shut down if it had 20 million users?
- Business model: the vast majority of users stayed on the free tier without converting to paid plans. The company pivoted to a different commercial product (a CRM) with more favorable unit economics.
- Are my existing Tome presentations still recoverable?
- If you did not export them before the April 2025 deadline, they are permanently gone. That is the main lesson of this closure: always save your strategic content in an open format (PPTX).
- Can Paul guarantee it won't shut down tomorrow like Tome?
- No vendor can guarantee the future. What we can guarantee: your Paul decks are native PPTX files, exportable at any time and usable in any PowerPoint-compatible tool (Microsoft, Google, Keynote, LibreOffice). You keep your content — not a proprietary format.
- Why is Paul a better choice than going back to manual PowerPoint?
- PowerPoint remains your editing tool. Paul intervenes upstream: it handles the 80% of formatting that can be automated (structure, branding, data) so you can focus on the 20% that requires genuine human judgment (wording, strategic choices).
- How long does it take to get started with Paul?
- A few minutes to ingest your template and generate a first deck. Onboarding is fast for anyone already comfortable with PowerPoint.
Let's see Paul at work on your template
30-minute demo: bring your corporate template (or an exported Tome deck) and we generate a deliverable inside your brand guidelines live. No commitment.