# Spreadsheets & A Shared Mailbox alternative

> It is free, everybody understands it, and it works right up until it stops.

**URL:** https://cubemsp.co.uk/alternatives/spreadsheets-and-shared-mailbox

**Vendor:** Your own team, over several years | **Category:** What you have now | **Last reviewed:** 2026-08-06

## 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.

## What Spreadsheets does well

- 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

| Dimension | Spreadsheets | CubeMSP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Cost | Nothing you are not already paying | Per technician per month, plus a fixed implementation fee |
| Accuracy | Correct when somebody remembered to update it | A by-product of doing the work |
| Answering questions | Requires a person, an afternoon and some interpretation | A filter |
| Knowledge | Lives in people and leaves with them | Drafted from resolved incidents and searchable by meaning |
| Client reviews | Rebuilt by hand the week before, if at all | Assembled from the period’s data, approved, published |
| Renewals | A workbook, and the year one auto-rolls at old pricing | A dated view with margin attached |

## Worth checking before you sign

- **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.

## When Spreadsheets is the better choice

If you have four technicians, twenty stable clients, a simple recurring book and no client asking for formal reviews, stay where you are. The money is better spent elsewhere and we will tell you so on the phone rather than after a demonstration. Come back when renewals start being missed, when a technician leaving costs you visibly, or when a client asks for something you cannot evidence.

## What leaving Spreadsheets involves

- **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.
- **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.
- **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.

## Frequently asked questions

**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.

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> Spreadsheets & A Shared Mailbox is a trade mark of Your own team, over several years. Cube Systems Limited is not affiliated with, endorsed by or a partner of Your own team, over several years. This comparison is based on information published by the vendor and was last reviewed on 2026-08-06. Verify current details with the vendor before making any decision.

## Contact

- **Product:** CubeMSP
- **Trading name of:** Cube Systems Limited (company number 17220899, ICO registration number ZC216972)
- **Email:** hello@cubemsp.co.uk
- **Sales:** sales@cubemsp.co.uk
- **Support:** support@cubemsp.co.uk
- **Telephone:** 01234 672 617 (+441234672617)
- **Address:** Unit 11, Olney Business Park, Osier Way, Olney, Buckinghamshire, MK46 5FP
- **Opening hours:** Monday to Friday, 9am to 5.30pm
- **Part of:** Crushed Ice Group (https://crushedicegroup.co.uk)