At what point should we move?

The reliable signals are: a renewal has been missed, a technician left and the cost was visible, a client asked for something you could not evidence, or more than one person now needs the same answer at the same time. One of those is a warning; two is a decision.

Is it worth it at six technicians?

Sometimes. It depends far more on the complexity of your recurring book and the expectations of your clients than on headcount. If you resell a lot of licences and circuits, the renewals module alone often justifies it well before six people.

Can we start with just part of it?

Yes. Most providers start with clients, services and renewals, and move the service desk across a month or two later once the team is comfortable. There is no requirement to change everything at once.

What if we try it and it is too much?

You export everything, in full, in open formats, at no charge, and go back to what you had. We would rather that than have a customer who resents the software, and we would rather have found out during discovery.

Spreadsheets & A Shared Mailbox alternative

What Spreadsheets actually is

Most managed service providers under about eight technicians run on a shared mailbox with rules, a workbook of renewal dates, a folder of contracts and a great deal of institutional memory. Software vendors are professionally obliged to find this alarming. We do not, particularly. It is adequate for a small, stable book of clients, it costs nothing, everybody already knows how to use it, and replacing it too early is a real and avoidable waste of money. What it cannot do is scale past the point where more than a few people need the same answer at the same time, and the failure is not dramatic. It is a slow, unnoticed loss of the ability to answer questions about your own business.

Credit where it is due

What Spreadsheets does well

These are the real reasons it has the customers it has. If two or more of them describe something you need, weight them heavily.

It costs nothing beyond what you already pay for, which matters at six technicians.
Everybody already knows how to use it. No training, no adoption risk, no migration.
Infinitely flexible - a new column takes seconds, where a new field in a platform may take a change request.
For a small, stable client book handled by people who talk to each other daily, it really can be sufficient.

Side by side

The differences that actually change the decision

Not a feature checklist. These are the structural differences - licensing, scope, who implements it - that determine whether a system fits, and they are the ones nobody tells you until month four.

Based on information published by the vendor. Last reviewed 2026-08-06. Check current details with Your own team, over several years directly before making a decision.

Worth checking

Questions to put to them before you sign

None of these are faults. They are design decisions with consequences, and every one of them is answerable - so ask.

It is accurate only when maintained
The renewals workbook is correct when the person who owns it updates it. It is not that they are careless - it is that maintaining it is nobody’s actual job, and it competes with work that is.
It answers no questions about itself
How many incidents did this client raise last quarter? What was the average response? Which faults recur? A mailbox holds all the evidence and yields none of the answers.
Knowledge stays in people
A shared mailbox is not a knowledgebase. When somebody leaves, what they knew leaves too, and the cost appears as unexplained inefficiency for a year afterwards.
It cannot evidence anything
At renewal, in a dispute, or in front of a client’s auditor, "we handled that promptly" is an assertion. Everything needed to prove it exists somewhere in the mailbox, unextractable.

If you do move

What leaving Spreadsheets actually involves

1
The renewals workbook goes first
It is the highest-value and lowest-effort migration - a few hundred rows becoming structured services with cost, sell and renewal date. Most providers see the value of this within one cycle.
2
Run the mailbox in parallel briefly
Keep the address, forward it into the queue, and let clients carry on emailing where they always have. Nothing about the client experience needs to change.
3
Do not migrate the mailbox archive
It is not worth it and it will not import usefully. Keep it read-only for reference and start the history properly from cutover.

Questions

What people ask when comparing us with Spreadsheets

The reliable signals are: a renewal has been missed, a technician left and the cost was visible, a client asked for something you could not evidence, or more than one person now needs the same answer at the same time. One of those is a warning; two is a decision.
Sometimes. It depends far more on the complexity of your recurring book and the expectations of your clients than on headcount. If you resell a lot of licences and circuits, the renewals module alone often justifies it well before six people.
Yes. Most providers start with clients, services and renewals, and move the service desk across a month or two later once the team is comfortable. There is no requirement to change everything at once.
You export everything, in full, in open formats, at no charge, and go back to what you had. We would rather that than have a customer who resents the software, and we would rather have found out during discovery.

Relevant to this comparison

The parts of the platform people are usually weighing up

Also on the shortlist

CubeMSP compared with Spreadsheets

What Spreadsheets actually is

What Spreadsheets does well

The differences that actually change the decision

Questions to put to them before you sign

It is accurate only when maintained

It answers no questions about itself

Knowledge stays in people

It cannot evidence anything

What leaving Spreadsheets actually involves

The renewals workbook goes first

Run the mailbox in parallel briefly

Do not migrate the mailbox archive

What people ask when comparing us with Spreadsheets

The parts of the platform people are usually weighing up

Subscription Management Software

Service Desk Software

MSP Software

Client Reporting Software

Other comparisons people read alongside this one

Find out which fits before you commit to either