That paid plan does include more advanced proofreading and spellchecking options, a thesaurus, and other tools, but you can definitely use it just fine without paying. You install it, set it up, and it never bothers you again. What helps propel this to the top of my list is that while there is a paid version from SoftMaker that unlocks more features, FreeOffice is the single free app that doesn't feel like it's trying too hard to sell you on the paid plan. While the selection isn't all that vast, it's a good starting point. Each app gives you some templates you can start with. These three apps have all the basic functionality you'd expect, and they'll feel very familiar if you've used Microsoft's versions before.
The UI in FreeOffice, like most of these alternatives, is inspired by Microsoft's offering, but it's a bit more compact, and you have the option to enable touch mode to make some of the targets bigger for use with a touchscreen. However, FreeOffice does offer alternatives to the three major apps in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) in the form of TextMaker, PlanMaker, and Presentations. FreeOffice is an alternative to Microsoft Office I hadn't heard about until very recently, and to be fair, it's not the most complete in terms of replacing every aspect of Microsoft's suite of apps.
