If your team keeps business data in spreadsheets and you're asking how to collaborate on it without the mess, you've probably looked at all of these. Here's what each one actually is, who it's for, and where Symphony fits.
Two things up front. First, every tool below is good at what it was built for — this isn't a hit piece. Second, they split into two camps: tools that keep you in Excel and tools that ask you to leave. That's the decision that matters most, so it's the one we'll keep coming back to.
What is Excel co-authoring?
Co-authoring is Excel's built-in real-time collaboration. When a workbook is stored on OneDrive or SharePoint, several people can open it at once and see each other's edits as they type. It's free with Microsoft 365, requires no setup, and for a quick shared list it works.
The model is the problem for anything more serious. Every keystroke is live, so there's no draft state. The whole workbook is shared, so there's no private tab. Version history is a list of auto-saves, not decisions. Most teams that try it for a budget, a forecast or a pipeline turn it off within weeks and go back to emailing files — which has its own problems.
Symphony's difference: same Excel, different model. Edits stay private until you Submit; teammates see them when they Refresh; one worksheet is shared, not the workbook; and every change carries a reason. The five problems in detail →
What is Google Sheets?
Google Sheets is Google's browser-based spreadsheet. It's free, it runs anywhere, and real-time collaboration is its headline feature — multiple cursors, live edits, comments, a full version history. For a team already on Google Workspace, it's the default.
Collaboration-wise it has the same shape as Excel co-authoring: everything is live, the whole file is shared, and history is keystroke-level. It also means leaving Excel — which for finance, operations and sales teams often means leaving behind pivot tables, macros, Power Query, and years of models that don't translate cleanly.
Symphony's difference: you stay in Excel with everything that implies, and you get draft state, worksheet-level sharing and decision-level history that Sheets doesn't offer.
What is Airtable?
Airtable is a cloud database that looks like a spreadsheet. Each "base" holds tables of records; you can view the same records as a grid, a kanban board, a calendar or a form, link records across tables, and build automations and simple apps on top. It's popular with marketing, content and operations teams who've outgrown a flat spreadsheet but don't want a developer. Pricing is per seat.
It's a genuinely different tool, not a spreadsheet replacement. Formulas are simpler than Excel's, there are no pivot tables in the Excel sense, and the data model is relational — which is powerful once you've designed it and awkward if your work is ad-hoc analysis. Moving an existing Excel model into Airtable is a rebuild, not an import.
Symphony's difference: Airtable asks you to move your data into its database and adopt its interface. Symphony puts your data in a database too — but leaves the interface as Excel, so nothing has to be rebuilt.
What is Monday.com?
Monday.com is a work-management platform. Work is organised as boards of items with configurable columns — status, owner, date, numbers — plus automations, dashboards and integrations. It's built for tracking projects, campaigns and processes across a team, and it's strong at visibility: who owns what, what's late, what's blocked. Pricing is per seat, with tiers.
It is not a spreadsheet and doesn't try to be. Number columns can be summed but there's no cell-level formula engine, no pivoting, no modelling. Teams often end up exporting from Monday to Excel for anything analytical, which reintroduces the copy-paste problem.
Symphony's difference: if your work is a project plan, Monday is a fine home for it. If your work is numbers — a forecast, a budget, a pipeline with weighted values — Symphony keeps it in the tool built for numbers and adds the collaboration layer.
What is ClickUp?
ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity platform: tasks, docs, goals, whiteboards, chat and a table view, with the pitch that one app replaces several. It's flexible and feature-dense, with per-seat pricing and a generous free tier. Its table view can hold simple structured data and its docs can embed it.
The table view is a task list with columns, not a spreadsheet — the same limitation as Monday. And the breadth is a trade-off: teams that only need a shared, accountable set of numbers can find the surface area overwhelming.
Symphony's difference: one job, done inside Excel. No new app to learn, no per-seat licence to manage.
What about CRM and lead-tracking software?
Dedicated CRMs — HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce — are the right answer when you need sequences, email tracking, deal stages with automation and a customer record that outlives any one spreadsheet. If you're a sales team with a proper sales process, buy a CRM.
But many emerging businesses run their pipeline and lead list in Excel, and the reason isn't ignorance. It's that the spreadsheet is faster to change, everyone already knows it, and the "CRM" they need is really a shared, accountable worksheet. That's the gap Symphony fills — see opportunity tracking and lead tracking for how teams do it.
Side by side
| Capability | Excel co-authoring | Google Sheets | Airtable | Monday.com | ClickUp | Symphony |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stays in Excel | Yes | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Share one worksheet, not the file | No | No | Per-table permissions | Per-board | Per-list | Yes |
| Private draft until you publish | No | No | No | No | No | Yes (Submit) |
| Pull changes on your terms | No — always live | No — always live | No | No | No | Yes (Refresh) |
| History with who, what, when, why | Who + when only | Who + when only | Record history | Activity log | Activity log | Yes, with reason |
| Same sheet in multiple workbooks | No | IMPORTRANGE (fragile) | Synced tables | No | No | Yes (xCopy / xPaste) |
| Excel formulas, pivots, macros | Yes | Partial | No | No | No | Yes |
| Pricing model | Included in M365 | Free / Workspace | Per seat | Per seat | Per seat | $250/mo, whole team |
Which should you choose?
Pick Airtable, Monday or ClickUp if your work is fundamentally about tracking items — tasks, campaigns, assets, requests — and the numbers are secondary. They're built for that and Excel isn't.
Pick a CRM if you have a sales process with stages, sequences and a need for a customer record that lives beyond the spreadsheet.
Stay with co-authoring or Sheets if the sheet is simple, short-lived, and nobody will be embarrassed by a half-finished edit being seen.
Pick Symphony if the work is numbers, the numbers live in Excel, more than one person owns parts of them, and you need to know who changed what and why. That's the case for most budgets, forecasts, pipelines, order books and plans at an emerging business — and it's the only case Symphony is built for.