Grist: Evolution of Spreadsheets to Organize Your Data, Your Way
⚖️ Our Verdict
Grist is perfect for small to medium businesses, non-profit organizations, and academics as they can utilize this application to create simple lists, scientific research, inventories, and tracking customers. This is a robust and powerful application for simple data management and visualization. Every use case has its special needs and Grist makes it easy to set up records, establish relationships, and visualize the data. Using this customizable spreadsheet-database hybrid, you can organize, analyze, and share your data.
However, it cannot replace the functionality of excel, so it depends on the main goal of the user. Grist is more like an application rather than a spreadsheet. It is developer-friendly since you can employ codes. If you do not have any coding background, you can use the templates to make your experience easier.
Overall, this application is easy and intuitive to use, affordable, and a useful application for basic data management needs.
👍 Pros
👍 Intuitive to use
👍 Easy to visualize and share data
👍 Open source
👍 Has free version
👍 Excel-like formula
👎 Cons
👎 Needs Python knowledge to fully utilize the app👎 Odd to use at first
👎 Limited features in free version
🌟 About Grist
Spreadsheets are truly a wonder and of amazing value for the world. However, there are some key ways that they fall short and this is where Grist comes in. Grist is a relational spreadsheet and a modern dashboard in one, with every view backed by relational data that is linked and filtered with other views as required. This application goes beyond a normal spreadsheet, to the extent of allowing you to create a custom data application!
Some spreadsheets cannot handle the amount of data, complexity, and collaborators. Grist is as easy to start with as a spreadsheet and can also grow according to your needs. Starting with a spreadsheet, you can observe it grow and end up with a good relational database and a flexible custom application.
Built on a philosophy of openness and extensibility, Grist makes storing data a solid and durable bet. You can rely on this quality, open-code base!
🎁 What’s In It For You?
Grist gives you the flexibility of a spreadsheet and the robustness of a database to organize data in your way. With the simple database builder, Grist allows you to unify your spreadsheets in one beautiful relational structure!
This application allows you to share data in part or in full and also allows you to collaborate with your team in real-time. With the customizable user interface, you can lay out your screen in a way that makes sense for all the data. Grist also offers templates to make your life easier!
Grist lets you take control of your data. With the granular access control, you can set who can see what, even down to each row and column! You can also share with third parties the limited views of the relevant data. With this, you own your data as it is an open-source software, has automatic backups, and no data lock-in.
Grist is more than a spreadsheet. You can view records as customizable data cards, and attach relevant images and files! A data application is not complete without data visualizations, so Grist lets you create dashboard charts and summaries to see the big picture.
🖥️ How Does It Work?
- The homepage lists your documents and includes examples and templates.
2. Add a new document by importing from the add new button.
3. Select the file of the data you wish to import.
4. You can filter data by adding a widget then selecting the data.
5. Group the data identifiers and make them a reference.
6. Add a detailed view by clicking on the add new button, then the card widget.
7. Rearrange widgets using drag and drop.
8. Use Python and excel formulas to sort data.
9. To create a visual representation of your data, click add new, chart, then select the variables.
10. Customize the chart using the editor on the right.
💲 Pricing Plans & Support
Grist offers versatile pricing for individuals and teams.
💎 Individual — $0/Month
This deal is free and perfect for individuals!
〰️ 10 documents
〰 ️2 collaborators per document
〰️ Customize layouts
〰️ Dynamic views and charts
〰️ Granular access controls
〰️ Link sharing
〰️ Formulas with python support
〰️ Import/export data
〰️ Automatic backups
〰️ Rate-limited API access
💎 Team — $8/month
This deal is only $8 per month per user and is perfect for teams!
〰️ Unlimited documents
〰️ Collaborators: Team (+2 per doc)
〰️ Everything in individual plan
〰️ Unlimited API access
〰️ Workspaces
〰️ Custom Grist subdomain
〰️ Priority support
💎 Enterprise — $ — /Contact Grist
This deal is perfect for enterprises!
〰️ Everything in team
〰️ Custom number of collaborators
〰️ On-premise deployment
〰️ Custom functionality
〰️ SAML login support
〰️ Use your own domain
📍 The Competition
👍 Pros
👍 Power and functionality of a database
👍 Easy to use as spreadsheet
👍 No-code
👍 Collaboration features
👎 Cons
👎 Limited storage
👎 Bugs and functionality issues of formulas
👎 Too many features not used but paid on plan
🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋 Testimonials
Congrats!
I found a lot of great use cases for Grist.
I have already used it for:
1. fast data analysis by exporting data from multiple systems, super fast matching and calculations
2. helper for manually moving Prestashop to wordpress + woocommerce for some old site, it was the they faster than dealing with all the data using sheets
3. as a database for scraping some data from the sites using API, developing it right now and looks like it could be a gem for me. Scrapping some data → put it in grist to collect historical data + combined with n8n integration to collect some other external data with prebuilt integration.
So it will be a marketing tool for competitors analysis and comparing it with my client’s results.
– Konstantin Fedorov
I’ve been using this for a few months now, and it’s the only viable Airtable competitor I’ve ever come across. If Airtable, Google Sheets, and Microsoft Access were to ever were to have a threesome — their prodigy child would be just like Grist.
I love the ability to filter, set additional views and grant granular access to certain tables. If you know some basic Python, you can customize it even further.
I can’t wait to see Grist mature and become more powerful. Highly recommend!
– Digital Dandy Agency | RuleSEO
