All the Spreadsheet Products

Discover the right spreadsheet product for you

There are more choices of spreadsheet products today than ever before - and the options keep growing. Since 2006, when Google Spreadsheets was launched, the world of spreadsheet products on the web expanded exponentially compared to the previous years - decades actually - when software was harder to distribute (diskettes!), and Excel seemed to earn a lock on the space after Lotus 1-2-3 and VisiCalc before that (the original spreadsheet!).

This page will try to give an overview of the MANY spreadsheet products that are available, and stay up to date with the newest of the pack in the spreadsheet - and spreadsheet-like genre of software products.

Grist

The Flexibility of a Spreadsheet with the Robustness of a Database

Best Used For:

  • Creating a database structure of traditional spreadsheets

  • Real-time collaboration - users work together on shared data at the same time

  • Customized layouts to visualize data

  • Granular access controls to manage data changes

  • Visual data - images - connected to data records

  • Dynamic charting and reporting

History:

Grist was conceived and created by founder and CEO, Dmitry Sagalovskiy, who previously helped develop significant early capabilities of the Google Spreadsheet product as a senior engineer at Google.

Key Capabilities:

  • Realtime Collaboration and easy sharing

  • Strong performance/speed and reliability

  • mobile access

  • high level of compatibility with Excel.

  • Large data set support

  • Programability via Apps Script (javascript based coding) and macros

Availability:

  • Public: Free TEAM accounts with unlimited private documents and spreadsheet size limits

  • Corporate/Company: Paid “Pro” level with 100k row limit per spreadsheet - $8/mo/user

  • Enterprise: “contact them” ;)

Find it here:

link to grist web site at getgrist dot com

credit: Image from Grist site: getgrist.com

Coda

Cross-productivity docs with words, data and teamwork

Best Used For:

  • Creating functional documents which act as workflow apps including tabular data

  • coming soon

History:

coming soon.

disclaimer: the owner of this site is a minority investor of a tiny fraction of a fraction of this company

Key Capabilities:

  • coming soon

Availability:

  • coming soon.

Find it here:

credit: Image from

AirTable

Tabular Apps to Connect your Data, Workflow and Teams

Best Used For:

  • coming soon

History:

coming soon.

Key Capabilities:

  • coming soon

Availability:

  • coming soon.

Find it here:

credit: Image from

SmartSheet

Manage Projects, Automate Processes, Enterprise-ready

Best Used For:

  • coming soon

History:

Coming soon.

Key Capabilities:

  • Coming soon

Availability:

  • Coming soon

Find it here:

credit: Image from

Monday

Manage Projects and Processes Like an Enterprise

Best Used For:

  • coming soon

History:

Coming soon.

Key Capabilities:

  • Coming soon

Availability:

  • Coming soon

Find it here:

credit: Image from

Google Sheets

The “original” web-based, collaborative spreadsheet

Best Used For:

  • quickest spreadsheet creation on earth (when logged in to gmail account, just use sheet.new)

  • easiest sharing of spreadsheets for collaborative editing, viewing, commenting

  • real-time collaboration - all users on the same spreadsheet at the same time

  • traditional spreadsheet formula support

  • common spreadsheet features like pivot tables, charting, filters and more

  • Access from anywhere - mobile (iOS and Android), web browser, with full editing

History:

Google Sheets is now one of the elders of the spreadsheet product world, being launched originally in 2006 as a beta product under the “Google Labs” brand. This was the result of an acquisition of the 2Web Technologies company, based in NY City, back in 2005, when co-founders Jonathan Rochelle (disclaimer, that’s me) and Fuzzy Khosrowshahi, along with lead engineer Micah Lemonick turned their B2B web-app generation product into an online spreadsheet which focused on sharing and real-time collaboration at it’s core. Google Spreadsheets quickly became the foundation of the GSuite Collaborative Apps suite (originally Google Apps for Your Domain) which was sold to companies along side Gmail and Google Calendar. It was expanded to include Google Docs (in October of 2006) which was the second company acquired in this suite, originally known as Writely) Google Slides, Google Drive, Forms, Drawings, Apps Script, Jamboard and others.

Key Capabilities:

  • Realtime Collaboration and easy sharing

  • Strong performance/speed and reliability

  • mobile access

  • high level of compatibility with Excel.

  • Large data set support

  • Programability via Apps Script (javascript based coding) and macros

Availability:

  • Public: Free with a GMail account, limited only by Google Drive space used

  • Corporate/Company: Paid tiers for private spreadsheets within your company’s domain along with strong administrative controls for sharing settings, etc.

Find it here:

credit: Image from Google Sheets site: sheets.google.com