There seem to be millions of software development agencies and freelancers around the world these days.

To stand out in this competition, you need to find a way to deliver to your clients faster.

An efficient way to deliver features quickly is to use spreadsheets as a data source or a data interface for certain features that a lot of clients request.

Read on to see what these features are. And how you can use a spreadsheet to build them at lightning speed.

Why should I listen to you? We are API Spreadsheets, a platform for developers to build spreadsheet features with little to no code. But that’s not why you should listen to us.

We have created this list from working with and listening to people just like you — other development agencies and freelancers!

Hmm.. alright, show me what I can build for my clients using just spreadsheets:

1. A form where the data is saved to a Spreadsheet or Google Sheets Forms are used everywhere on a website. A popular joke even suggests that 80% of front-end web development is building forms.

Good UX forms already take so much time to build. The hassle becomes finding where to store that data.

A database (or similarly complex solution) just to store form data seems overkill.

A simple solution then is to store form data to a spreadsheet or a Google Sheet. This offers a few benefits:

The data can be accessed by multiple people easily. From the marketing team to the executive team Saving form data to these spreadsheets is extremely simple to set up with the right tools Let’s take a look at some tutorials you can go through to learn how to save form data to spreadsheets or Google Sheets:

Save Web Form Data to Google Sheet or Spreadsheets

This tutorial shows you how to connect your Excel spreadsheet, Google Sheet, Dropbox spreadsheet, or AWS S3 File to use as an API on our API Spreadsheet service.

Then you can use the API and already pre-written code to instantly start collecting your form data in your spreadsheet or Google Sheet.

It is free to get started and you can upload up to 3 files. After that, it is $10 per month.

Use the Google Sheets App Script

On Google Sheets, you can create a script using the AppScript add-on to collect data from your HTML form. This tutorial gives you the step by step on how to get started.

The biggest benefit is that it is free, however it requires much more familiarity with JavaScript and you are limited to using only a Google Sheet.

Connect a plugin to your local spreadsheet

In this tutorial, you will have to create an account that lets you connect it to an Excel spreadsheet using their Microsoft Office Plugin.

The account will be connected to a web form and every submission will automatically be pushed into the Excel spreadsheet.

For light use, it is free to use and the next plan starts at $200/month. This is convenient if you are using Excel locally and have stringent security requirements

1. An import button for users to upload their spreadsheets Collecting data from users and clients is one of the core components of many businesses, applications, or organizations.

And the easiest way to collect data from people is from their spreadsheets.

However, building an import solution for spreadsheets is super time consuming.

Enter a no-code spreadsheet importer.

A spreadsheet importer is an element that lets people upload, clean, and parse data from spreadsheets.

Instead of building your own, these days there are many off the shelf solutions that let you build this functionality in a matter of minutes.

Create a Spreadsheets Importer on your Apps and Websites

On API Spreadsheets, you can customize an importer by setting up column matching for the imported files. And specifying if the uploaded spreadsheet should be saved to Google Sheets, Dropbox, or AWS S3.

There’s pre-written code you can copy and paste to insert on your own website. Or get a URL for a hosted version. .

This is a great option if you are looking to get started quickly yet with all the features

Plans start at $10/month

Use webhooks to get notified when your user uploads a file

Dromo provides a vanilla JavaScript widget, as well as a React widget which you can drop directly into your React app. Then you need some basic configuration to get started.

The benefit to this is that you can connect a webhook to get notified when the user uploads a file. Although you can do this with the other solutions as well.

Plans start from $200 a month.

Onboarding customer data in minutes

You can embed the Flatfile data importer directly into a SaaS app or website, run complex onboarding projects with customers, or anything in between.

Flatfile is beneficial for if your client has a large application or a big team they are dealing with.

For pricing you will need to request a demo and set up a call to get more information.

1. A front-end powered by a spreadsheet instead of a traditional backend/database Setting up a backend and a database can be very time-consuming. Especially if your app/website mostly has static elements, for e.g., a blog page or an information page.

Instead, you can get your client’s website up and running super quickly by using spreadsheets as the data source.

This allows for 2 main benefits:

The client can update the data as necessary in the Google Sheet or Spreadsheet without having to constantly send you requests You can deliver results way quicker than if you were to set up a backend and database Do note that this does come with a tradeoff for speed, so we don’t recommend using this for a high traffic application. But even then, using a spreadsheet as a backend allows for super quick prototyping.

Let’s go through some tutorials of how you can use a spreadsheet or Google Sheet as a data source for your front-end:

React Site with no Backend

This tutorial shows you how to use Google Sheets to create a react frontend. It uses API Spreadsheets to connect to your Google Sheets.

Using API Spreadsheets, you can also make CRUD requests to your spreadsheets using SQL queries. This service is free to get started and you can upload up to 3 files. After that, it is $10 per month.

Bonus: If the website has small dynamic text or elements that constantly need to be changing, you can set it up even without a spreadsheet!

Use Google Sheets as a Backend

This tutorial goes over how to use the Google Sheets API to embed it into your React site. In the tutorial they only go over post requests but you can also GET data to render something on your front-end

The Google Sheets API is free to use but is notoriously cumbersome and difficult. Use this option if you have more free time than money.

Turn a Google Sheet into a JSON API

SheetDB turns your Google Sheet into a JSON object. After creating the API, you can send requests to read, create, update or delete rows.

You can get started for free and upload up to 2 files, after which the plans start at $29.99 per month.

1. Automatically email your database data as a spreadsheet Once data is collected in a database, it is impossible to access by anyone who does not know SQL.

An easy way to share this database data is to export it in a spreadsheet and share it with people.

However, if your organization is anything like ours, this is not a one time job. Data needs to be constantly exported from a database and emailed to the relevant people.

Setting up an auto-reporting job to constantly export and email database data as a spreadsheet is a complicated task.

Here are a few ways you can set this up pretty quickly

Automatically email your database data as a spreadsheet

This tutorial shows you how to connect your MySql or Postgres database to API Spreadsheets and select the data you want to report using SQL queries.

Then you can configure how often, and the recipients, you want the data to be emailed to as a spreadsheet! It is very straightforward to use and plans for database connection start at $50 per month.

Create Excel XLS from T-SQL

This script creates an excel file, you can send as an attachment. This script shows how you can automate a SQL query to send excel spreadsheets via email.

This is an older script so you will have to replace”Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0" to “Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0” in this script. You will also need to install “Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable “ x32 or x64 — depending what version of Office you have installed. .

While it is free to do, it can get a bit complicated.

1. Create a live dashboard connected to spreadsheets A common request from clients is to view their data in a dashboard. However, this process is complicated because you have to set up a way to get the data, store it, and connect it to the front end.

Instead, use a spreadsheet or Google Sheet to create a dashboard, since that’s where most people store their data already.

Here are some ways you can use a spreadsheet or Google Sheet to create a dashboard:

Live Dashboard with Google Sheets

This is not exactly a dashboard as this tutorial shows you how to make a bar graph connected to your Google Sheet.

However, you can incorporate it into your dashboard as it will update live. Allowing someone to get a good visual of the data they need.

This starts at $10/month

Build a real-time dashboard with any spreadsheet

In this video you can create a live dashboard using the spreadsheet or google sheet and the tool Geckoboard.

The tool lets you set up an email report of the live dashboard, get a link to embed on a website, invite others, and integrate it on Slack.

It is $49/month

Embed a Google Sheets dashboard in your application

Using BoldBI you can create customizable dashboards using data from your Google Sheet.

Then you can embed them in your application into any server-side application including Angular, Ruby on Rails, React with ASP.NET Core, React with Go, and many more.

This is beneficial for big companies with a lot of users for it is $495 a month.

Conclusion Time is money. These highly requested and common features would normally take you a super long time to build.

Using a spreadsheet allows you to build them fast and leave your clients happy. After all, more than 750 million people use spreadsheets!

Stand out among other web development agencies by using spreadsheets.

If you have any questions or want to talk about developing with spreadsheets even more, email us at info@apispreadsheets.com