Distribu vs. spreadsheets
Spreadsheets win on day one; they lose the first time two people edit stock at once or a return gets lost in a thread. Distribu gives you a shared source of truth without asking your team to learn SAP.
Distribu is best for
Small teams whose order volume has outgrown email threads, and anyone who's ever shipped an item that was already sold.
spreadsheets is best for
Solo operators testing a product or running fewer than a handful of orders a week.
Feature-by-feature
Where each tool stands today. Notes call out caveats and plan-gated features.
| Feature | Distribu | Spreadsheets |
|---|---|---|
| Day-to-day reality | ||
Two people can edit stock without clobbering each other | Yes | No |
Every stock change is attributed and timestamped | Yes | Partial If you religiously use version history |
Customers can place orders themselves | Yes | No |
Returns and refunds without deleting rows | Yes | No |
| When volume grows | ||
Per-buyer pricing & credit limits | Yes | Partial Possible, but you'll rebuild it every quarter |
Low-stock alerts without babysitting the sheet | Yes | No |
Scheduled sales & inventory reports by email | Yes | Partial Custom Apps Script, then maintenance forever |
Audit trail you could hand to an accountant | Yes | No |
| Connecting to your other tools | ||
REST API + signed webhooks | Yes | No |
QuickBooks / Xero / Slack / HubSpot integrations | Yes | No |
CSV import & export still works | Yes | Yes |
| Cost & ramp | ||
Up-front cost | Partial From $0 on the free tier | Yes $0 if you ignore the hours |
Time-to-setup under a day | Yes | Yes |
Scales past a few hundred SKUs without rewrites | Yes | No |
Based on publicly available documentation at the time of writing. If we’ve got something wrong, tell us at hello@distribu.app and we’ll update.
The bottom line
Spreadsheets are the right tool until they aren't — the tell is usually a returned order you can't reconcile or a double-sold SKU on a busy week. Distribu is the smallest step up that still gives you a real ledger, a customer portal, and an API when you need it.