Spreadsheet or small web app for shared records?
Stay with a spreadsheet while one or two people maintain simple records and mistakes are cheap. Move to a small web app when many people edit the same records, when different people should see different data, or when you need enforced rules and a reliable history of changes. Size limits rarely force the move on their own, so decide on the working problems you actually have.
What a spreadsheet does well
A spreadsheet is quick to start, familiar to nearly everyone and easy to change on the day. You can sketch a process in an afternoon and fix it the next morning. For a single owner tracking a modest list, that flexibility is hard to beat, and building anything custom would be a poor use of money.
What the documented limits say
Microsoft documents a worksheet maximum of 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns in Excel. Google documents up to 10 million cells or 18,278 columns for spreadsheets created in or converted to Google Sheets. These figures were checked on 20 October 2026 and vendors can change them, so check the current pages if a number matters to you.
For most small businesses those limits are far away. The problems that appear first are usually about people rather than size: two people editing the same row, a column typed in three different ways, or a customer list that someone should not see.
Where the trade-offs sit
Compare the two options on the points below. These are general working observations rather than figures from the sources above.
- Speed to start: the spreadsheet wins, often by days or weeks.
- Rules on entry: a web app can refuse a missing date or an impossible quantity, whereas a spreadsheet mostly relies on people being careful.
- Different views for different people: a web app can show a driver only today's jobs, while a shared sheet usually shows everyone everything unless you split files.
- History: a web app can record who changed what and when as a designed feature, so you can answer questions later.
- Cost and upkeep: the spreadsheet is nearly free to run, while a web app needs hosting, fixes and someone responsible for it.
- Handover: a sheet that only its author understands is as risky as software nobody maintains.
Signs it is time to move
Look for repeated pain rather than a single bad week. Typical signs include the same data being re-typed in two places, errors reaching customers, arguments about which file is the latest, staff seeing information they should not, or a needed task, such as sending a reminder, that people keep forgetting.
One sign alone may be solved by tidying the sheet. Several at once suggest a web app is worth a conversation.
A middle step
You do not have to jump straight from a messy sheet to custom software. First tidy the sheet: one row per record, one meaning per column, a pick list wherever you can, and a single owner. Many teams find this removes most of the pain. If it does not, you now have a clean table that makes the move to a web app much easier, because the data and the rules are already written down.
A hypothetical example
Imagine a small training provider that tracks course bookings in a shared sheet. Two staff edit it, and a trainer needs only their own sessions. After a double booking and a mistyped date in an email, the provider lists the rules the sheet cannot enforce: no overlapping room bookings, required dates, and trainers seeing only their sessions. That list, rather than the number of rows, is the case for a small web app. This example is hypothetical.