Great Collaborative Spreadsheet Software

Google Sheets is generally very intuitive, and its support documentation is comprehensive, concise, and clear. Due to its widespread use, there's plenty of advice on various online forums, and LLMs like ChatGPT are usually correct about Sheets, something that can't be said for most software.

Google Sheets is great for just recording tabular information that needs to be shared with and/or edited by multiple people. Sharing and collaborating is especially convenient because Sheets is designed to be browser-based; while Excel has a browser version, it's limited compared to the desktop app. Google Sheets's editing, suggesting, commenting, and viewing permissions settings are absolutely perfect for my department. Google Sheets does not handle large datasets well. It does not load in a timely manner and often freezes. Apps Scripts fail to process large amounts of data.

I am not involved in the purchase/selection process, but my organization is a Google shop, and Sheets meets most of our spreadsheet needs and works seamlessly with our other tools. I don't anticipate our switching anytime soon.

Sheets's customizability shines via its granular user permissions, including locking individual cells. Apps Scripts are also very helpful when Google Sheets doesn't have a specific functionality out of the box. Apps Script is more usable than Excel's VBA because it's Javascript, which is more widely used and known.

I have never contacted Google Sheets support, but Google Sheets makes it very easy to report an issue or suggest a feature from Sheets itself (Help > Help Sheets improve), and I've had mostly good experiences with support for other Google products.

Google Sheets works very well with multiple users. It's convenient to see in real-time who is collaborating in a sheet, down to the specific cell that they're viewing/editing. Linking Sheets across departments is convenient with the IMPORTRANGE function.

Like most Google products, Google Sheets rarely has outages or slowness, and when it does, connection is always momentarily restored. I can't recall a time when I've been unable to access Google Sheets but able to access other sites just fine. That said, errors aren't uncommon when handling large data volume. You know what they say about using spreadsheets as databases, but sometimes it's just the most convenient option, especially for smaller or one-off projects, and not being able to store large amounts of data hampers our ability to move quickly with scrappy prototypes or full solutions. It would be great if we could better integrate our data manipulation (Apps Script) with big data in the sheet.

Again, Google Sheets is no exception to Google's general high speed and reliability, but load times can be slow for larger amounts of data. I've used Sheets with Zapier and have used the Python API, and speed has never been an issue.

Google Sheets plays very well with other systems! Google Sheets is widely used, so it behooves both Google and other vendors if data flows smoothly between systems. I've used Sheets with Zapier, the Sheets API, Google Docs, and Google Slides. One handy feature of Sheets with other products is the ability to link Sheets charts from Slides; that way, the chart automatically updates when the underlying data changes, and our KPIs in presentations are always up to date.

I wasn't part of the purchase process, but I assume everything went smoothly when my organization purchased GSuite.

I don't interact directly with the vendor, but I assume that renewing our GSuite subscription always goes smoothly; I've never heard negative things about vendor relationship management with Google products, from within my organization or otherwise.

I'm not involved with the purchase, but I assume everything goes smoothly and that the pricing structure is predictable and reasonable. We do not get surprise fees.