Spreadsheets are a nearly universal business tool. As the most popular spreadsheet creator, Microsoft Excel has served as an accessible platform for people to organize, analyze, forecast and visualize data since 1985.
There are endless courses, books and tutorials teaching professionals how to make the most of Excel. But its virtual monopoly in the land of spreadsheets doesn’t make it the only choice for your business.
Instead, you may want to think about using a platform that integrates all of the client work functions for which you currently use spreadsheets.
As popular as it is, Excel has some significant shortcomings. Some even consider it obsolete, citing problems like:
And if you’re running your business on a budget, you might be looking for cheaper alternatives, since an Excel Office subscription will run you around $70 per user per year.
While there may not have been much competition years ago, myriad programs now serve as alternatives to Excel. If you’re looking for a lower price, or you just aren’t a fan of Microsoft's interface, we’ve compiled ten options for you and your team.
Airtable offers many of the same key features as Excel for a lower price. The app has a free plan offering limited features you can use to test drive the software. Paid plans start at $12 per user per month.
Not only can Airtable organize your data, but you can use it to build databases for many types of information. It generates spreadsheets that are aesthetically pleasing — always a plus when you’re making something to show to a customer or client.
Airtable’s strength is in the way it organizes data. It’s flexible in how data can be categorized, stored and retrieved, making for an intuitive user experience. These organizational features also lend themselves well to project management, as you can track several different types of data in one place.
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Apache OpenOffice is a popular suite of free, open-source office software. It includes all the basics you’d expect from a group of office tools, including word processing, graphics and presentation software, in addition to spreadsheets.
If you have the know-how to code, you can modify this platform to meet your specific needs. Projects are downloadable, so you can continue working on spreadsheets even when you’re offline.
Calc performs data analysis, and OpenOffice stores data in an open standard format. Calc also allows for multi-user collaboration and provides templates to work from.
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Part of the tried-and-true suite of Google Workspace products, Google Sheets is an easily accessible alternative to Excel. If you have a Google account, you’re ready to go. Google Sheets is nearly equal to Excel in performance, even offering some additional features lacking in Excel. It’s also free.
Files in Google Sheets save to the cloud, like everything else you create within Google Workspace. That makes Sheets an eminently portable app that can be used across multiple devices. Sheets facilitates collaboration by allowing you to share projects via email or Slack and edit simultaneously.
Sheets also integrates with other Google apps like Google Translate and GoFinance and lets you pull data straight from online URLs.
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Like the Microsoft Online suite of tools, LibreOffice is a set of free, open-source tools, including spreadsheets. LibreOffice offers many of the same features as Excel — like pivot tables and “text to” columns — that people have come to expect from a spreadsheet app. It’s also free to use.
LibreOffice is on the more basic end of the spectrum, however, and lacks some of the essential functionality of Excel. Extensive formatting isn’t available, and there have been reports of the program crashing when it has to handle large amounts of data.
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If you’re committed to using Excel or want to try it but aren’t sure if you want to shell out the money, Excel Online offers a more affordable loophole. Excel Online is a free, cloud-based version of the program that can be installed as a browser extension.
Excel Online stores everything in OneDrive, Microsoft’s version of the cloud, and is part of a suite of free, web-based Microsoft Office programs. The catch is that none of the programs have all of the features of the regular version.
Users can, however, access basic commands and features. You can create and share spreadsheets in Excel Online as well as edit collaboratively with coworkers. You just need to make a Microsoft account to access the program — something you probably already have if you’ve ever used Skype.
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Apple users will likely already be familiar with Numbers. Pre-installed for free on every Mac, Numbers provides high-quality data analysis, reporting functions and visual tools to make your spreadsheets look great.
Numbers leans heavily into pleasing visuals, providing a library of templates to choose from, including donut charts and shapes you can make into data visualizations. Newer versions of the platform let you convert handwritten numbers and data to typed text. You can even add videos to spreadsheets. If you’re working with someone who uses Excel, you can save files in Numbers as Excel files so they’ll be able to access them.
Numbers can also be used on any iOS device, which is helpful if you have an iPhone.
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One of Quip’s main strengths is its collaborative nature. It allows for simultaneous editing, which is useful if multiple people on your team need to work on budgeting or data reporting.
Quip has over 400 functions, allowing it to handle intensive projects. It also boasts some impressive customers, including CNN and Pinterest.
Features include chat and collaboration, cross-device access, spreadsheet creation, document editing, slide building and more. Quip’s enterprise-level tier offers Salesforce integration for advanced data reporting.
You can try Quip for free, and if you like it, you can upgrade for $30 per year for a team of up to five people. They also offer starter and enterprise options for larger and smaller businesses.
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Smartsheet's strength is in its project management features: Gantt charts, file sharing and collaborative tools.
Smartsheet is also a cheaper alternative to Excel, with a free trial period available for users to test out the software. After the trial period ends, subscriptions are $14 per user per month for personal accounts and $25 per user per month for business accounts.
Smartsheet’s portability makes it easy to achieve real-time collaboration with coworkers, which is especially important when working remotely. Charts with percentage readouts to track goals also make this a great app for project management.
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WPS Spreadsheets is part of yet another suite of online office tools. WPS Office is available as a free download and has a premium version if you decide you want to upgrade. The premium version costs $30 per year.
WPS works across multiple operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. That compatibility allows WPS to support just about all office file formats. WPS Spreadsheets is also cloud-based, so it backs up all your information.
Even with the free version of WPS, your documents are synced across desktop and mobile devices, so changes show up everywhere immediately. If you want the full feature set, you’ll need to pay for the premium version, which includes collaborative features, up to 20GB of cloud storage and more built-in formulas.
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Zoho Sheet is free for teams of up to 25 people, making it another great budget alternative to Excel. Like Google Sheets, Zoho is cloud-based, so it easily backs up all of your work, and you can access it across devices.
Zoho’s features are similar to those of Excel, but it has an arguably smoother user interface. The app offers pivot tables, conditional formatting and dynamic charts comparable to Excel’s and supports .xlsx, .xls, .csv, and .ods file types.
Simultaneous editing is possible in Zoho, so you can collaborate with colleagues on projects in real time to save time. Visualization tools make your presentations more eye-catching, and filters can help analyze data to show you only what you need to see.
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Based on our evaluation, the best overall alternative to Excel would be Microsoft Office Excel Online. If you’re looking for a version of Excel you don’t have to pay as much for, you can’t do much better than the same program — even if it is a limited version. True, it doesn’t have the bells and whistles you might expect from the full version of Excel, but it can hold you over until you can upgrade.
Excel Online is particularly helpful if you run a small business on a tight budget. You’ll still get to create the Excel-formatted files your clients will likely expect and have access to most of the spreadsheet features they need.
If you aren’t looking to stick to Excel and want a spreadsheet solution with a little more flexibility than Excel Online, you can’t beat Google Sheets. It’s web-based, stores everything in the cloud — for which you can always buy more space — and works on iOS, Windows and Android. Almost everyone, and every company, already has a Google account, meaning most are already using G Suite. With nearly everyone already familiar with the program, file sharing and editing tend to be straightforward.
Sheets also works with another popular workplace app: Slack. The integration between these two common tools makes it easy to share files quickly and be notified about document edits.
Bottom line: Google Sheets gives you a level of power nearly equal to Excel for zero dollars. For a free tool, it doesn’t get much better.
Although spreadsheets are part of the working world for many of us, research has shown that up to 88% of spreadsheets contain errors. Even if you have one of the solutions above, double-checking data cell by cell is time-consuming and costly. Plus, spreadsheets live separately from a lot of your other essential tools and business functions, making your team less efficient.
When you're ready to transition away from the limited uses of spreadsheets and find an efficient, centralized platform, discover why professional services firms turn to Accelo.
