I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Spreadsheets as Lightweight Backends

  • Many commenters use Google Sheets (and Excel/LibreOffice) as primary backends for dashboards, small apps, and personal organization: workouts, finances, health, gardening, accounting, org charts, inventories, etc.
  • Advantages cited: instant sharing, familiar UX, low friction, built‑in versioning/rollback, works well for prototypes and internal tools, easy integration with scripts and APIs.

Concrete Use Cases Shared

  • Fitness tracking via custom sheets, scripts, and regex parsers; some use Google Forms → Sheets as a “pseudo‑app” on mobile.
  • Medical/medication tracking, house inventory, small‑business workflows, COVID testing systems scaling to >1M tests using Airtable + automation tools.
  • Internal tools: accounting helpers, off/on‑boarding workflows, news dashboards, tournament management, org charts, and election trackers.

No‑Code Platforms (Glide, AppSheet, Retool, Airtable, etc.)

  • Glide is praised for quickly turning Sheets into polished PWAs and for internal business apps; some built full league or newsroom apps on it.
  • AppSheet, Retool, and Airtable are also popular for internal tools; Retool seen as more dev‑oriented (SQL + JS), Glide more no‑code.
  • Airtable is favored over Sheets for relational data + API work; some use Notion, Fibery, Logseq, and emerging tools like Thymer for database‑like note systems.

Debate: No‑Code vs “Just Code It” (or Use AI)

  • Some argue a simple HTML/JS app (possibly AI‑generated) or Django/SQLite is straightforward and avoids no‑code lock‑in.
  • Others push back: deployment, auth, PWAs, cross‑device support, and maintenance are real friction; time and opportunity cost matter, especially for non‑developers.

Limitations and Pain Points

  • Google Sheets: awkward on mobile, clunky pivots vs Excel, API considered verbose and flaky at ~25k+ rows, no stable row IDs, and poor fit beyond a few thousand records.
  • No‑code tools struggle when data must be split across multiple tables/sheets; complexity grows sharply.
  • Several report Sheets or no‑code breaking or slowing at higher scale; workarounds include offloading to real databases (Postgres, BigQuery, SQLite).

Pricing, Target Market, and Accessibility

  • Strong backlash to Glide’s pricing ($69+/mo tiers); seen as fine for businesses but prohibitive for hobbyists or non‑revenue personal apps.
  • Multiple commenters want a cheaper “personal/hobby” tier or FOSS Glide‑like alternatives, especially for mobile‑friendly UIs.

Privacy and Control

  • Some are uneasy about banking and sensitive data in Google Sheets; others consider the risk acceptable or minimal compared with existing data collection.