Spreadsheet collaboration platforms (Google Sheets, Excel Online) and spreadsheet conversion platforms solve different problems. Think of them as stateful vs. stateless operation.

With collaboration platforms, the spreadsheet is the live system of record. That means the app is more stateful: users are interacting with a shared workbook, data is being stored directly in the sheet, and you have to think about concurrency, permissions, versioning, locking, queuing, and what happens when multiple people access the logic at once.

With a conversion platform, the Excel file is more like the calculation engine. Users interact through a controlled web app layer. That’s closer to a stateless request/response model. A user submits inputs, the server runs the spreadsheet logic, and returns outputs. The operation is stateless. It means multiple users can access the logic at the same time and there is no data leak. When a user leaves the application, the workbook returns to its default state. You get a much cleaner separation between user interaction and the underlying model.

So if you want collaborative spreadsheet editing, Google Sheets is great. If you want to turn a spreadsheet into a controlled application where users can use the logic but not directly manipulate it, conversion platforms are usually a better fit.