When using e-mail to collaborate on spreadsheets, matching the changes made by different people on the same document can be a headache. We are currently trying out two different alternatives to e-mail: Zoho Sheet and eXpresso to allow us to collaborate on Execl documents online – without e-mailing the documents back and forth.
Zoho Sheet…
We already use Zoho for other applications so Zoho Sheet became the first service we tried when evaluating online spreadsheet options. Their program is still in “beta” mode, so we understand why sometimes the service is glitchy and unresponsive. But the user interface is easy to work with, and the most commonly used functions (font, color, highlight, alignment, etc.) have their own convenient buttons right on the toolbar (eXpresso make you open an ‘options’ window to use some common features like font and color options).
Zoho Sheet allows you to invite users to share your document with you, group those users by different permissions, and decide if you want to be notified via email whenever a user modifies your document. Once you have shared your spreadsheet, there are a variety of formats you can export it to, and you can also publish the document and embed it in a website/blog. Another nice feature is the Microsoft Excel Add-in that allows you to modify documents within Excel (offline), and then upload them directly to Zoho Sheet. But you have to re-upload the sheet – you can’t just click “Save” in Excel and have the latest version online (like you can with eXpresso). I imagine they’ll be adding this option soon, but it currently doesn’t work.
Once some kinks get worked out, and the service is officially launched, it should become a very efficient and time-saving choice. We’ll have to wait and see what the pricing will be like, but based on the feature-set we’d expect it to cost a little less than eXpress.
eXpresso…
We are also evaluating eXpresso as an alternative to Zoho Sheet. The eXpresso product has some similarities to Zoho Sheet, but the most noticeable difference is the way the spreadsheets are viewed and edited. eXpresso uses Microsoft Web Component controls to view and edit the spreadsheets, which provides a quicker environment for working on the document. It’s actually amazingly responsive when you’re working online – almost as if you were working offline. Unfortunately, common formatting tools are not embedded in the toolbar, so you have to either open the formatting box each time you want to make a change, or leave the formatting box open the entire time. eXpresso, like Zoho, has an Excel add-in, but their add-in has a couple more options than Zoho Sheet’s and also offers a convenient Help feature. The live offline editing is more real-time than Zoho’s (meaning changes made offline can be reflected online without having to upload the file), but due to a limitation of Excel, the eXpresso add-in only allows one person to modify a shared document in Excel at a time. If you need more than one person to be able to edit the document offline at one time, neither solution will solve that problem.
The Verdict: Both sites have their share of bugs (Zoho has an excuse, being in Beta. eXpresso bugs are more frustrating due to the $15/month subscription fee), but we find ourselves gravitating more to eXpresso right now since it generally runs more reliably, and their Excel Add-in is more powerful. It will be interesting to see how Zoho Sheet improves their service in the upcoming months; we will definitely be keeping an eye on it.
UPDATE (6/25/08): After only a week of side-by-side evaluation, our final eXpresso vs. Zoho Sheet comparison leaves us with a clear winner.
These two are great products, but there is no comparison to Boardwalktech, Inc at boardwalktech.com. This patented database technology transforms static spreadsheets into a collaborative enterprise 2.0, where you can instantly share spreadsheets offline from desktop to desktop.