How to Sell Excel Templates Online
Stop Selling Spreadsheets. Start Selling Web Apps.
Are you in the business of selling Excel templates online?
Checklists, budget planners, habit trackers, to-do lists, financial planners, credit rating tools and weight loss trackers. The Internet is full of Excel spreadsheets that are sold on platforms such as Etsy or Sellfy.
If you are an Excel whizz and would like to sell your Excel template online, keep reading this guide.
In it, we will present you with two options to make money selling your Excel template online: the traditional way using marketplaces such as Etsy, and the new, more professional way by converting your Excel template into a full-fledged web app — or even a SaaS product.
There is also a third path that did not exist a few years ago. With Five’s AI assistant, V, you can turn your spreadsheet into a working web application by describing what you want. Attach the file, prompt V, and you have a real product with a database, login, user roles, and hosting — without writing a line of code. That changes the economics of selling your template.
Option 1: Selling Excel Templates on Etsy
Etsy is an online marketplace that is primarily used to sell artworks, collectibles, gifts, or other creative items. Though Excel templates were probably never Etsy’s focus, the platform nowadays also boasts a thriving (and highly competitive) marketplace for Excel templates.
A search on Etsy for “Excel Template” has more than 1,000 results and contains common Excel templates, such as to-do lists, planners, bookkeeping sheets, budget, and fitness trackers, ranging from as little as US$5 to US$100+ per template.
How To Sell Excel Templates on Etsy
Selling Excel templates on Etsy is easy. Set up a free seller’s account, list your template, and watch the money rolling in. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Here are the pros and cons of selling Excel spreadsheet templates on Etsy:
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy and quick to get started | Crowded and very competitive |
| No fixed fees | Fees once you start selling are high |
| Well-known marketplace for arts & crafts | Hard to build a brand |
Etsy is a highly competitive marketplace, and most of Etsy’s website visitors are looking for creative arts and crafts products, rather than spreadsheets. So one major drawback of using Etsy to sell Excel templates online is that its main audience may not be the audience you are after.
Moreover, it is hard to differentiate your spreadsheet template from the existing templates on the platform. There’s little you can do to make your spreadsheet stand out, as every product page has the same customization options. Even if you have created the budgeting spreadsheet the world has been waiting for, getting it to the top of Etsy’s results page will take time. Specialist spreadsheet shops such as SheetCrafters, Excelanss, or DigitalPlannersbyAR already offer a wide variety of highly-reviewed spreadsheet templates.
Last, selling on Etsy makes it hard to have meaningful interactions with your customers. Your customer is more likely to remember that they have purchased an Excel template from Etsy rather than purchasing from you.
Despite Etsy’s drawbacks, let’s keep in mind that the platform is simple and quick to set up. So if speed is your primary consideration, then getting started on Etsy is a valid choice.
Option 2: Sell Web Apps, Not Spreadsheet Templates
Now that we have explored Etsy as a marketplace for selling Excel templates online, let’s look at an alternative path of making money off templates: selling web apps.
You might find the idea of selling a web app, rather than an Excel spreadsheet slightly intimidating. After all, writing an entire application is significantly more complex than creating a spreadsheet.
That used to be true. It is no longer true. With Five’s AI assistant, V, you can turn your Excel template into a working web application by describing what you want in plain language. Attach the spreadsheet, tell V what the application should do, and V builds it — the database, the forms, the list views, the search, the user roles, and the hosting. What used to be a development project is now a prompt.
Better yet, our experts also offer free spreadsheet assessments, giving you an instant idea of how much time and effort are involved in converting your spreadsheet. Contact us today to discuss your project with one of our developers.
Five is an AI-powered application development platform with an integrated relational database, pre-built user authentication, forms, charts, and dashboards. It is ideally suited to turn Excel templates into full-fledged web apps — and it is fast enough to turn them into products.
What are the advantages of selling a web app rather than a spreadsheet?
Three Advantages Of Selling Web Apps Instead of Excel Spreadsheets
1️⃣ Web apps are more professional and harder to copy.
Excel spreadsheets can look very professional, but let’s face it: it is still a spreadsheet. By offering a web app, the entire product experience is different. Users can access the app from anywhere and anytime, from mobile, desktop, or tablet. Users log in using unique credentials and can interact with the data in ways that a traditional Excel template doesn’t let them do. Moreover, copying an entire web app is much harder, whereas a spreadsheet can easily be passed on or copied.
2️⃣ Web apps come with sophisticated authentication, login, and user permission features.
Unlike spreadsheets, web apps can easily be login-protected and assign different Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD) permissions to different users. For example, say you would like to sell two versions of a budget tracker: a “basic” version without analytics, and a “pro” version with analytics. In Excel, you’d have to maintain two different templates to set this up. In a web app, a “basic” and “pro” user role can be created. By assigning different permissions, each role only has access to those features that are included in their plan. V sets up these roles for you — you describe the tiers, and V generates them.
3️⃣ A database-driven web app can handle big data and analytics.
Web apps developed in Five run on an integrated MySQL database, which is designed to handle millions and millions of records. This is a big advantage over Excel, which is typically designed to handle smaller datasets. Moreover, with more data stored in the database, more sophisticated analytics can be performed on databases compared to spreadsheets. For example, web apps can include sophisticated dashboards, charts or other business intelligence features.
Lastly, promoting your web app to users doesn’t require an external, third-party marketplace such as Etsy. Simply launch your website using Wix or WordPress, and link to your web app from there. In this way, you have full control over your SEO, how people discover you, and what their purchasing process looks like. And, of course, you also don’t need to pay platform fees to Etsy every time your web app gets sold.
How V Turns Your Excel Template Into a SaaS Product
Here is the part that changes the economics. Selling a spreadsheet is a one-time transaction. Selling access to a web app is recurring revenue. Turning a template into a SaaS product used to mean hiring developers and spending months on it. With V, the path from spreadsheet to sellable product is short enough to do yourself.
Step 1: Attach your spreadsheet and describe the product.
Open Five and start a prompt with V. Attach your Excel template. Describe what the application should do, and who will use it. For example: “I want to turn this budget tracker into a web app. Users should be able to log in, create their own budgets, and see a dashboard of their spending. I want a free plan and a paid plan with extra analytics.”
Step 2: V builds the application.
V generates the MySQL database, imports your template’s structure and data, and creates the front end — forms, list views, search, filters, and dashboards. V also creates the user roles you described, so free and paid tiers are separated by permissions rather than by maintaining two templates.
Step 3: Refine it and launch.
Keep describing changes to V until the product matches your vision. Then deploy. Five includes hosting, so you get a live URL you can link to from your own website. No marketplace required. No platform fees on each sale.
Maintaining the product is just as fast. As customers ask for new features, you describe them to V and V builds them. When your schema needs to change, you can adjust it in Five’s visual database modeler. When you need custom logic, you can drop into code. AI, GUI, or code — whichever fits the change.
Get Started with Five’s Excel to Web App Conversion Services
If you’re still not convinced that selling web apps is more lucrative than selling Excel templates, let me give you one more reason to get started with Five: you can start for free.
Sign up for a free trial and try V yourself with your own template. Attach your spreadsheet, describe the product you have in mind, and see what V builds. If you would rather have someone do it with you, we will evaluate your spreadsheet at no cost and suggest a conversion strategy.
⛔ Stop selling Excel templates.
▶️ Start selling web apps.
