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Excel or Google Sheets for your e-shop? See costs, limits, collaboration and selection steps for better reporting.
For an e-commerce store owner, choosing between Excel and Google Sheets isn’t just a matter of personal preference. It’s a decision that impacts the speed with which a team can read data, adjust inventory, track campaigns, reconcile orders, and turn raw sales reporting into actionable insights. G2’s article comparing Excel and Google Sheets comes to a familiar, but often misunderstood, conclusion: Google Sheets excels in instant collaboration and cloud-first everyday use, while Microsoft Excel remains stronger at demanding analysis, large datasets, complex models, and advanced features.
In e-commerce, the real question isn’t «which is better overall,» but «which fits my workflow.» A small or medium-sized e-commerce store that wants to instantly share product lists, daily sales, UTM reports, and simple inventory sheets can save time with Google Sheets. Conversely, a business with thousands of SKUs, complex demand forecasts, ERP imports, financial models, and a need for heavy e-commerce data analysis will likely benefit more from Excel, especially when combined with Power Query, Power Pivot, and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
The G2 analysis shows the key difference in philosophy between the two tools. Google Sheets was designed from the start as an online collaboration application. It opens from a browser, saves automatically, is easily shared with links, and allows multiple people to work on the same file at the same time. This is valuable for e-commerce teams that have daily communication between marketing, operations, customer support, and logistics. For example, a performance marketer can update spend and ROAS, a warehouse manager can fill in inventory shortages, and the owner can see the picture without waiting for a new version of the file named «final_v7.xlsx.».
Excel, on the other hand, has a huge depth of functionality. It is not limited to classic Excel formulas, but offers a very mature environment for analysis, modeling, data cleaning, connection to databases, pivot tables, macros, scenario planning and dashboards. In practice, Microsoft Excel acts as a «laboratory» for numbers. When an e-shop grows, its needs move from «to quickly see what happened today» to «to understand what will happen if we change price, supplier, budget or inventory policy». There, Excel remains difficult to replace.
For the everyday life of an e-shop, collaboration is often more important than extreme computing capabilities. If your team works remotely or uses external partners for ads, SEO, marketplaces and email marketing, Google Sheets reduces the barriers. With a shared file you can track campaign costs, conversions, returns, cancellations, low-stock products and customer reviews without exchanging attachments. Google Sheets formulas comfortably cover many everyday needs, from VLOOKUP and QUERY to simple automations with Apps Script.
But if your reporting relies on files with dozens of tabs, hundreds of thousands of rows, years of historical data, and complex formulas, Excel will provide a more consistent experience. The desktop version handles large models better, while Excel online is useful for collaboration but doesn’t always have the same depth of features as the full app. For e-commerce owners, this means you can use the two tools complementary: Google Sheets for live collaborative spreadsheets and Excel for in-depth analysis, forecasting, and financial planning.
Cost shouldn’t be considered in isolation. A «free» file that lags, breaks, or leads to incorrect orders can cost more than a subscription. However, ecosystem pricing plays a role, especially as your team grows. Based on the official pricing pages, basic business plans start at similar levels, with Microsoft 365 Business Basic listed at $6 per user per month with an annual commitment and Google Workspace Business Starter at $7 per user per month. More expensive plans add more security, storage, management, and business features that are more important as your team grows.
As shown in the graph below, the input difference is small, so the choice should not be based only on the monthly cost, but on how your team actually works.
Source: Official Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 pricing pages, USD prices with annual commitment where noted
The second critical point is the file capacity. According to Microsoft's official limits, an Excel worksheet can have 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns, i.e. theoretically 17,179,869,184 cells per worksheet. Google Sheets, according to Google's documentation, supports up to 10 million cells per spreadsheet. The comparison is not completely "same-for-like", because Excel refers to a worksheet and Google Sheets to a spreadsheet, but it clearly shows the difference in scale. For an e-shop with 2,000 products, it will not have any practical significance. For a business with multi-channel sales, order history, product variants, marketplaces and ERP exports, it can be decisive.
The following graph shows the difference in maximum cell capacity based on the official limits of the two platforms.
Source: Microsoft Excel specifications and limits, Google Docs Editors Help
Cloud storage is also important, because e-commerce files aren’t just spreadsheets. They include supplier price lists, product feeds, photos, ad reports, order exports, and financial files. Google Workspace plans offer 30 GB per user in Business Starter, 2 TB per user in Business Standard, and 5 TB per user in Business Plus. Microsoft’s basic business plans typically include 1 TB of OneDrive per user. For teams that upload large product files or keep a lot of historical exports, this difference can affect ecosystem choice.
The chart below helps to show the difference in storage space per user in the most common business plans.
Source: Official Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 pages
Making the right choice becomes easier when you turn it into a process. Step one: record which files you use each week. Typically, you’ll find product lists, price lists, stock reports, orders, performance marketing reports, SEO keyword exports, returns, cash flow, and purchase forecasts. Step two: note which users open each file and whether they’re editing it at the same time. If a file needs daily feedback from three or more people, Google Sheets is very practical. If the file is mainly worked on by an analyst or the owner for deep analysis, Excel has the edge.
Step three: measure the volume of data. If your reports have a few thousand lines, basic spreadsheets will do. If you have exports with hundreds of thousands of lines, complex pivots, or connections to ERP, prefer Excel or combine it with BI tools. Step four: check the automations. If you rely on spreadsheet automation with Zapier, Make, Apps Script, or integrations from Shopify, WooCommerce, and Google Ads, Google Sheets has the convenience of being cloud-first. If you work with Power Query, VBA, Power BI, or corporate templates, Excel integrates better with the Microsoft environment.
Step five: set access rules. In an e-shop, a mistake in a price list or stock file can cause damage. Check if you need per-user permissions, change history, cell protection, approvals, and central management. Step six: do a two-week pilot test. Take a real sales report, an inventory report, and a marketing file. Test them in both tools with your team. Measure update time, errors, ease of commenting, loading speed, and the final result. The best answer rarely comes from a theoretical comparison of Excel and Google Sheets; it comes from seeing where your own team is wasting time.
If you’re just starting out or have a small team, Google Sheets is a great choice for day-to-day coordination. You can set up shared sales reports, simple dashboards, product lists to optimize, content calendars, refund tracking, and basic e-commerce inventory management. It’s fast, simple, easily accessible, and works well when decisions need to be made by people who aren’t all power users. For owners who want visibility without the technical complexity, this is a big plus.
But if your e-shop has grown, Excel deserves to remain at the center of your analytical work. It is best suited for advanced profitability analysis, product categorization, demand forecasting, financial scenarios, cleaning large datasets, and connecting to BI tools. Excel is not just an old office program; it remains one of the most powerful tools for business analysis, especially when decisions are made about profit margins, inventory purchases, and budget allocation.
The most realistic strategy for many e-shops is a hybrid. Use Google Sheets for collaboration, quick updates, and files that need to be always online. Use Excel for large files, advanced models, financial analyses, and reports that require in-depth accuracy. This way, you don't lock yourself into one tool, but rather leverage the strengths of each platform. The goal is not to choose a camp, but to build a data flow that reduces errors, saves time, and helps the e-shop make better decisions based on real data.
Microsoft Support: Excel specifications and limits
Google Help: Files you can store in Google Drive and Google Sheets limits
Microsoft 365 Business Plans and Pricing
Google Sheets offers instant collaboration and easy access from anywhere, which is ideal for teams that need speed and collaboration in everyday tasks.
Excel provides a powerful environment for data analysis, supporting large datasets and complex financial models, making it ideal for detailed business analysis.
The choice depends on your team's needs. Google Sheets is suitable for collaboration and daily reporting, while Excel is better for in-depth analysis and big data.
The basic plans of both tools have similar costs, but the choice should be based on your team's operational needs and not just the monthly cost.
Excel supports up to 17 billion cells per sheet, while Google Sheets supports up to 10 million cells per spreadsheet, which affects performance on large datasets.
Cloud storage is critical for storing and sharing files. Google Workspace offers more capacity on higher plans, while Microsoft 365 provides 1 TB of OneDrive per user.
A hybrid use of both tools is ideal. Use Google Sheets for collaboration and Excel for analysis and financial planning.
