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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Google Sheets

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AGoogle Sheets is the spreadsheet app available on Google Workspace, or standalone, with a free plan for personal use and accessible via mobile apps for iOS and Android.N/A

    LibreOffice

    Score9.4 out of 10
    N/ALibreOffice is a free and open-source Office Suite from The Document Foundation, presented as the successor to OpenOffice.org. The suite includes Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).

    $0

    free and open source under the Mozilla Public License v2.0

    Pricing
    Google SheetsLibreOffice
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google SheetsLibreOffice
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Google SheetsLibreOffice
    Considered Both Products
    Google
    Chose Google Sheets
    Google Sheets is newest of all and is easy to understand. It has better UI or display then rest all. Minimal design helps to focus more on work. In built chat features is one that makes it stand out of league then rest of all. Unlike MS Excel and LibreOffice it is available …
    Incentivized
    The Document Foundation
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    40 Answers
    89%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    37 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    39 Answers
    89%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    22 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    27 Answers
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    8 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Google SheetsLibreOffice
    Small Businesses
    Stackby
    Score9 out of 10
    Google Workspace
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Microsoft Excel
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Google Workspace
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Microsoft Excel
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Microsoft 365 Business Premium
    Score8.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Google SheetsLibreOffice
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (40 ratings)
    10.0
    (29 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    6.1
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (6 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Google SheetsLibreOffice
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Google
    Google Sheets is great for just recording tabular information that needs to be shared with and/or edited by multiple people. Sharing and collaborating is especially convenient because Sheets is designed to be browser-based; while Excel has a browser version, it's limited compared to the desktop app. Google Sheets's editing, suggesting, commenting, and viewing permissions settings are absolutely perfect for my department. Google Sheets does not handle large datasets well. It does not load in a timely manner and often freezes. Apps Scripts fail to process large amounts of data.
    Incentivized
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    The Document Foundation
    LibreOffice is a good alternative to MS Office. I like it better than Google Docs. It's compatible with MS Office applications. However, many of the features or functions are difficult to find even when utilizing the help menu. The website isn't too helpful either. My greatest disappointment is that I paid for the premium version a year ago but never received the features that were supposed to be available with a premium subscription. The upper right-hand corner of the app shows the subscription type and date of expiration of the subscription. I have premium yet every time I try to access a premium feature it requests me to pay. I have contacted LibreOffice several times over the year and they never responded or provided a refund. I can only recommend the free version because even with a premium subscription, which mine is supposed to expire on 10/22/21 (the date of this review is 08/04/21), I have yet to be able to utilize the premium features I paid for last year. I would not use this as my primary app for Word processing which is where I am experiencing the majority of the blocked features issues. Even with a paid premium subscription, I am unable to create labels. It's asking me to pay again. I think LibreOffice has greater potential but a user must get the features they paid for. I hesitate to call the company a scam but I can say I have contacted LibreOffice numerous times over the past year about the ongoing issues and have not received a response at least once. Along with the features and subscriptions issues that needed to be addressed, another area of improvement is their website. It is very difficult to locate information. Even when using the search field the instructions often do not match the app. I am not sure how often they update their online guides but I have never found it to be helpful. I have also found it very difficult to impossible to download templates. I usually get weird links with garbled codes and no template when trying to download a template. I'm not sure if it's an issue with their site or not but since they don't respond to inquiries I cannot determine a possible cause for the problem.
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    Pros
    Google
    • It is a cloud-based platform.
    • You can work in the same file simultaneously with your colleagues.
    • It allows you to share files much faster.
    • It allows you to access your Google Sheet files whenever you like and wherever you like if you have stable internet connection.
    • It has great integration with other Google software.
    • Google Sheets is very user-friendly and very intuitive to use.
    Incentivized
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    The Document Foundation
    • The text word processing (Writer) has come a long way and, if you are able to install your corporate fonts, there is basically nothing LibreOffice cannot handle. It works very well with document reviews and comments, and it can save in a variety of formats, making it compatible with the likes of Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
    • The spreadsheet software (Calc) can also handle most of the common tasks you may need, link various sheets, and perform some automated functions quite well. It is, I must say, somewhat less complete than the word processing side (Writer).
    • The Draw program allows you to do organizational charts and basic publications very well. It was a deficit in the past, but not anymore.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Google
    • Pivot tables are different but could be improved upon; sort, totals, filters
    • When entering negative numbers as the first in a formula you need to remember to "+-100+25" instead of "-100+25"
    • The power of the internet of course makes it easy to find solution, but the help function is not easily available
    • Color coding changes on the cell, but there is not an easy way to click on a cell and use the selected color; like excel
    Incentivized
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    The Document Foundation
    • Name brand office suites vendors such as Microsoft and Google have online portals where documents can be saved and shared for automation/integration. LibreOffice would do well to expand into this space.
    • Memory handling in large spreadsheets (i.e., 60k rows or more) seems a bit quirky on my Macbook Air. It might just be a memory issues, but scrolling with the trackpad behaves strangely (i.e., cell selection jumps around unexpectedly).
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Google
    It is easy to use, free of charge for basic functionality, and easy to share with people within or outside your team or company
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    The Document Foundation
    We use it consistently and have a lot of documents in the OpenDocument format so it will be necessary to use LibreOffice or a compatible product such as Openoffice in the future to be able to open these files. Because the license fee for Libreoffice is zero it is not very costly to keep using it - the costs are mostly for keeping it installed on the office PCs and regularly updated, and solving employee issues with the user support.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Google
    Overall the formula functions could improve but there's workarounds for them. Utilzing different formulas or approaches for building out accounting schedules. While collebrating with multiple team members and different departments being able to go in and see where others are on the sheets is helpful. Google Sheets overall is a great product
    Incentivized
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    The Document Foundation
    Most people can quickly start using Writer or Calc or Impress for basic tasks even if they see Libreoffice for the first time, because the interface is similar to older (97-2003) MS Office or other software. Some features are less intuitive than in recent MS Office and some power users of MS Office need to re-learn some things before being proficient in Libreoffice.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Google
    Like most Google products, Google Sheets rarely has outages or slowness, and when it does, connection is always momentarily restored. I can't recall a time when I've been unable to access Google Sheets but able to access other sites just fine. That said, errors aren't uncommon when handling large data volume. You know what they say about using spreadsheets as databases, but sometimes it's just the most convenient option, especially for smaller or one-off projects, and not being able to store large amounts of data hampers our ability to move quickly with scrappy prototypes or full solutions. It would be great if we could better integrate our data manipulation (Apps Script) with big data in the sheet.
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    The Document Foundation
    Libreoffice is a desktop app not requiring any server part so it is always available when the PC is working normally. Installing it on another machine if one PC fails is very quick and easy. This is a non-issue.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Google
    Again, Google Sheets is no exception to Google's general high speed and reliability, but load times can be slow for larger amounts of data. I've used Sheets with Zapier and have used the Python API, and speed has never been an issue.
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    The Document Foundation
    For big/imported tables or text documents with images loaded from the internet it is sometimes getting very slow, RAM and CPU intensive, and sometimes even hangs due to some memory leaks or other bugs. This is a long-term problem and is still not resolved perfectly.
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    Support Rating
    Google
    I have never contacted Google Sheets support, but Google Sheets makes it very easy to report an issue or suggest a feature from Sheets itself (Help > Help Sheets improve), and I've had mostly good experiences with support for other Google products.
    Incentivized
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    The Document Foundation
    Support is not officially offered. However, you can find answers to any usage questions or trouble-shooting online easily, typically starting with a Google search. (I believe that all forums / tips for OpenOffice apply equally to LibreOffice, and vice versa.) While Microsoft Office, for example, officially includes support, I find that typically you end up going to a Google search in any case. So, this is not really a downside. However, in all these cases, you end up doing a lot of figuring things out for yourself.
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    Implementation Rating
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    The Document Foundation
    Generally easy to perform, issues are how to ensure regular automatic updates on Mac OS X. Fortunatly we have only a few machines with OS X run by management and we can do these updates manually occasionally. Windows updates are quite easy with the support of third party software such as Ninite or Chocolatey, and Linux updates are super-easy thanks to the package manager (apt-get).
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    Alternatives Considered
    Google
    The major reason I use Google Sheets over Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers is for its ability to allow multiple users to access and work on the same spreadsheet at once. This is incredibly more efficient and effective than updating and sending copies upon copies of the same Excel or Numbers spreadsheet back and forth as email attachments.
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    The Document Foundation
    As noted previously, LibreOffice blows Google Docs (G Suite) out of the water in terms of singular application quality, and comes close but misses the mark as a drop-in replacement to Microsoft Office. We currently are evaluating the latest release of LibreOffice to see if we can replace Microsoft Office with it entirely as we've had more time to fill in the holes that were left when losing out on Outlook and OneNote and all of the integrations that come with Microsoft Office.
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Google
    I'm not involved with the purchase, but I assume everything goes smoothly and that the pricing structure is predictable and reasonable. We do not get surprise fees.
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    The Document Foundation
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Google
    Google Sheets works very well with multiple users. It's convenient to see in real-time who is collaborating in a sheet, down to the specific cell that they're viewing/editing. Linking Sheets across departments is convenient with the IMPORTRANGE function.
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    The Document Foundation
    With more users using it in the company there are more cases when a simultaneous editing of the same document is needed and this feature is lacking in Libreoffice even though the files concerned are shared and synced by some solution (we use ownCloud). Google Docs or MS Office365 via Sharepoint/Onedrive offer a better function for this.
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    Return on Investment
    Google
    • We've used it to prepare quick budgets, presentations for funds that have helped raise money
    • It has helped us quickly analyze raw data, collaboratively.
    • it has helped us work more efficiently by making it easier to work from one sheet and not lose track of versions by passing around attached documents
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    The Document Foundation
    • A lot of ROI because their license price, 100% of return.
    • Sometimes we lose time finding how to do things, lowering a little bit of productivity.
    • We need to spend on training for employees because most people only know how to use Microsoft Office
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