Thanks for posting this as I learned about Grid and it looks really interesting. I wonder how exactly do you name this category of spreadsheet app for SEO purposes? When i search top spreadsheet apps or Excel alternatives, apps like yours don’t often show up, instead I get AirTable, SmartSheets and other general spreadsheet apps that are not calculation intensive. I’m trying to find Excel on steroids for data analysis and reporting that connects to DBs directly, does database exploration, connects or offers a BI tool and has convenient integrations like PowerAutomate. Is there any Microsoft killer out there with this roadmap?
When we set out to build GRID, we quickly realized that what people use spreadsheets for can broadly be split in two categories: Models and tables.
Models are free-form sheets with formulas that typically generate insights in the form of output based on a set of inputs.
Tables are the structured sheets that typically have (somewhat) defined columns detailing the attributes of each row of data. Insights from tables generally come from filtering, grouping, aggregating and sorting the row-level data.
As you point out, a lot more attention has been paid to the table use-case where people are essentially using their spreadsheets as small databases. Historically you could say this the usage pattern that gave birth to the modern BI tools (such as Qlik, Tableau and PowerBI). More recently, this is where companies like Airtable and Smartsheet play, but also to some extent what Coda and Notion are trying to achieve with their tables/databases.
The models are where GRID shines. The unique value GRID offers is the ability to easily create and publish an interactive web document on top of spreadsheet calculations, whether the models are built in Excel, Google Sheets or in our own built-in GRID Sheets.
I don't think this specific category has a name, but more broadly we've seen people talk about "next-gen spreadsheets" where - in addition to GRID - Equals, Rows and Spreadsheet.com also play, each with their own unique flavor.
GRID is clearly the solution that leans most heavily into models and interactivity (hence the focus on our engine as evidenced e.g. by alexharri's article).
While all the other solutions have capable calculation engines, I think it's fair to say that they are more focused on table-like use cases. Equals leans heavily into data connectivity, governance and reusability of spreadsheets, while Spreadsheet.com focuses a lot on project management use cases. Both offer an otherwise very traditional spreadsheet user experience. Rows has also focused a lot on connectivity, but lately they have leant heavily into AI to generate insights from data in their spreadsheets.
Good write-up. What was understated but I appreciate was that this optimization was done late and after being picked up via profiling. For devs there is sometimes a drive to do this kind of work early. It really should always be done late just as in this post.
Really good write up! Concise and very clear. The optimisation isn’t overly complex, but you still brought the pitfalls to the reader’s attention. There’s a lot of those low hanging fruits around if only somebody cared to look.
