Spreadsheet.com is shutting down—and they’re pulling the plug soon. In an abrupt move February 15, CEO and co-founder Matt Robinson announced the cloud-based SAAS provider will cease activity on May 31. The very next day, the company will delete all user data from its servers.
As a result, a lot of people are suddenly bracing for the impact of Spreadsheet.com’s closure. Over 1,000 companies and organizations have come to rely on the company for DIY, no-code solutions for their spreadsheet-based work. With just three and a half months before the shutdown, those clients suddenly find themselves scrambling for a Spreadsheet.com alternative.
Of course, organizations could simply download their Spreadsheet.com data and return to using Microsoft Excel. After all, no app comes close to Excel’s power, versatility, and familiarity. People sometimes joke that Excel spreadsheets hold up the world, and there’s a lot of truth behind that.
That said, customers signed up with Spreadsheet.com for a reason. It offered them a platform for working in a familiar spreadsheet environment while also providing tons of new functionality. It essentially allowed them to create sophisticated custom web apps and automations, with online access to multiple collaborators, all based on the standard XLSX spreadsheet format. And they could do it all themselves, in real time, using the Excel knowledge they already possessed.
After learning to depend on the tools Spreadsheet.com gave them, those customers will have a hard time giving them up. As robust as Excel is, it will inevitably feel limiting to users who have become accustomed to building their own custom web apps.
And so, Spreadsheet.com users will want to find alternative platforms—and, with the looming shutdown, they’ll need to hurry. A transition like this can be time-consuming and may require significant effort to migrate data, retrain users, and adapt to new workflows.
One company hopes to bridge the gap. Sheetcast, which comes as an add-in to Excel, allows everyday Excel users to design and launch custom web apps in minutes. Like Spreadsheet.com, Sheetcast web apps provide a convenient, user-friendly way to collect, analyze and report data while protecting the security and integrity of the underlying spreadsheets.
To make a successful jump to Sheetcast, customers will want to begin migrating from Spreadsheet.com as soon as possible. Otherwise, when May 31 arrives, they may lose the ability to perform certain tasks efficiently or effectively. Those who serve outside clients may suddenly find it hard to meet their contractual commitments.
Sheetcast’s salespeople and technicians are poised to help users rebuild or reconfigure the workflows they had come to rely upon at Spreadsheet.com, and to have everything up and running when June 1 dawns—and Spreadsheet.com goes dark.
