Travel Life vs a spreadsheet: when a shared sheet is enough, and when it is not

Most group trips begin as a spreadsheet. Someone makes a sheet called "Italy 2027", adds tabs for flights, stays and costs, and shares it with the group. It works, for a while, and it deserves some credit: a spreadsheet is free, familiar and endlessly flexible.

This is a comparison with Google Sheets, Excel and shared documents in general, not with one product. Tools like these are well known, so we are describing what any spreadsheet does, not quoting a specific plan. We make Travel Life, so we have a bias, and we have tried to be fair about where a sheet is the better tool.

What a spreadsheet is good at

A spreadsheet's strength is that it is a blank canvas.

• You already know how to use it. Nobody needs to learn anything or install an app. Most people in a group have opened one before.
• It is as flexible as you are. You can build a budget with your own formulas, a comparison of five hotels, a day-by-day grid or a packing checklist with columns for who brings what.
• You can see everything at once. A large grid on a laptop is a good way to compare options side by side, and sorting and filtering are genuinely useful when you are choosing between flights or villas.
• It is portable. You can export it, print it and keep it for next time. Shared sheets and documents let several people edit at once.
• There is no lock-in. It is yours, in a format that other tools can open.

For a short trip with two or three people, one tab of costs and one of plans is often all you need.

What Travel Life does differently

Travel Life is a trip planner built for a phone. It does a handful of things a sheet can do only with effort.

• A day-by-day itinerary. Ideas live in a list and you drag them onto a day. A map shows the route for each day, which a grid cannot.
• Gaps called out. Travel Life tells you when a day has "No way there yet" or you have "Nowhere to stay", without you writing a formula or colouring a cell.
• Expenses that split themselves. Log an expense in any currency at the day's rate, split it evenly, by share or by exact amount, and settle with the fewest payments. The sums are done for you.
• Bookings in one place. Stays, reservations and transit, from flights to ferries, are stored with their confirmations and costs. Tours booked through the app file themselves into the trip.
• Packing and to-dos. Packing lists for your own bag and a shared one, and to-dos for the group.
• Works offline. The trip is on your phone, with or without signal, and a home-screen widget counts down to departure.
• Free for the group. Unlimited trips and people, with Pro optional.

Travel Life is for iPhone and Android only, and there is no web app.

Side by side

A shared spreadsheet or document:

• Free or low cost, familiar and flexible
• Any layout, any formula, any column you can think of
• Easy to sort and compare on a large screen
• Several people can edit at once, and you can export or print it
• You build the structure, the maths and the checks yourself
• On a phone, a big grid is awkward to read and edit

Travel Life:

• Ready-made itinerary, map, bookings, expenses, packing lists and to-dos
• Gaps called out for you
• Splits and settle-ups worked out in any currency
• Works offline on your phone
• Less freedom of layout: it is built around the trip, not a blank grid
• iPhone and Android only

When a spreadsheet is the better choice

Use a spreadsheet when the question is analytical. Comparing eight villas on price, distance and bed count is easier in a grid, and a formula that totals a shared budget is a good use of one. If the whole group is happy in a sheet, and the trip is simple, adding another tool only adds another thing to check.

It is also the better choice when you want complete control over the layout, when someone in the group loves building them, or when you mainly work at a desk. If you want a quick budget before you commit to anything, our guide to making a travel budget works well in a sheet.

When Travel Life is the better choice

Switch when the sheet starts to hurt. The usual signs: the itinerary is on a tab nobody opens, the confirmation numbers are in three different inboxes, someone has to scroll sideways on a phone to find the hotel address, and the expense tab has an argument in it.

A phone is where a trip actually happens, and a spreadsheet was not designed for a train platform with one bar of signal. Travel Life puts the day's plan, the bookings and the map in front of you, offline. It also takes over the part spreadsheets are worst at, which is the group's money. Splitting costs across currencies, with some people not joining in on some things, is a hard thing to maintain by hand. Our article on tracking travel expenses explains what a good system needs, in a sheet or otherwise.

You can use both

Plenty of people keep the research in a sheet and move the decided plan into Travel Life when it is time to book. A sheet is a good place to think, and a trip planner is a good place to carry out the plan. Try it with a single trip and see which one your group actually opens.