CRM spreadsheet vs CRM app: an honest comparison

We sell both, so this is not a "spreadsheets are dead" article. For a lot of small businesses a well-built spreadsheet is the right tool, and the honest answer to "should I get a CRM?" is often "not yet". Here is the comparison as plainly as we can put it.

Side by side

Where the spreadsheet wins

• Under about thirty clients, one person, occasional contact. A consultant with fifteen retained clients, a decorator who does a job a fortnight. The overhead of a CRM is not worth it; the spreadsheet is faster.
• When the "CRM" is really a project list. If what you track is jobs rather than people, a spreadsheet's freedom to add a column is exactly right.
• When you already live in Excel. If you spend the day in it anyway, another tab costs nothing.
• When money is genuinely tight. A good template is a one-off few pounds and lasts for years.

Where the app wins

• Following up. This is the big one. A spreadsheet can highlight overdue rows, but only when you open it, and only on the computer it is on. An app shows you what is due the moment you open it, on the phone, in the van. For a business that lives on quotes, that single difference pays the subscription many times over.
• History. After a year, the notes cell is a wall of text and the log sheet is two thousand rows. A timeline per client stays readable forever.
• More than one person. Shared spreadsheets are where client lists go to die. The day someone else needs to see the list, move.
• Growth. Past a hundred or so clients the spreadsheet slows you down every single day, in small ways you stop noticing.

The signs you are on the line

If two or more of these are true, you are ready to move:

• You have missed a follow-up in the last month and it cost you a job.
• You have more than one copy of the file and are not sure which is current.
• Notes about clients live in three places.
• You have opened the spreadsheet on your phone and given up.
• You have typed a client's name into the search bar of your inbox to find out what you agreed.

If none of them are true, keep the spreadsheet, lay it out properly, and put a "next date" column in it. Check back in six months.

The middle path

The reason people put this decision off is the fear of re-typing everything. That is a solved problem. A CRM built for small businesses imports a CSV in one click, mapping Name, Company, Email and Phone by their column headings. So the sensible route is:

1. Start in a spreadsheet. Use a decent layout with a status column and a next-action date.
2. When the signs above appear, export it as CSV and import it. Ten minutes.
3. Keep the spreadsheet for a month as a comfort blanket, then archive it.

You have lost nothing, and you have not paid for a tool before you needed it.

What to check before choosing an app

• Export: a button, everything, in CSV or a similar open format.
• Delete: you can close the account yourself and the data goes.
• Price after free: the step from free to paid, not the headline.
• Where it is hosted: for a UK business, UK or EU is simplest.
• No card for the free plan: otherwise it is a trial with a timer.

Whichever you pick, the thing that makes it work is the same: a next action and a date on every client, updated at the moment, not at the end of the day.