What it is
Google Sheets is Google's online spreadsheet: free with a Google account and built for real-time teamwork, with comments, version history and per-file permissions. It covers formulas, pivot tables and charts, offers Apps Script for automation and, on Workspace plans, Gemini to write formulas and analyze data. It's where almost every team starts.
How to use it
- Share a sheet and edit it together, with comments and mentions.
- Analyze data with pivot tables, charts and functions like QUERY or XLOOKUP.
- Connect forms so responses land straight in a sheet.
- Automate with Apps Script or with Zapier, Make and n8n.
- Ask Gemini to build formulas, tables or summaries on Workspace plans that include it.
What it's good for
- An online store tracking inventory and orders in a sheet shared among partners.
- An accounting firm sharing expense templates with clients and reviewing changes in version history.
- A team collecting form sign-ups and cleaning them with formulas before moving them to a CRM.
Pros
- Free with any Google account, nothing to install
- Real-time co-editing with comments, version history and permissions
- Apps Script to automate and write custom functions
- Native BigQuery connection for analyzing large datasets
Cons
- Slows down on big sheets and caps out at 10 million cells
- Not a database: no real table relationships or record-level permissions
- Some advanced Excel features are missing or behave differently
