This article covers a free GDPR compliant alternative to Google Sheet and MS Excel. Google Sheets and MS Excel are the two most popular spreadsheet programs used by millions of users. Both these programs have a centralized network where all your data is managed by the respective company. The companies behind these programs are reputed, trustworthy, and promise to keep your data safe and private. Also, both these programs are trying to comply with GDPR data protection and privacy regulations but those are not fully GDPR compliant yet. If you are concern about your data privacy and looking for a more secure alternative for spreadsheets, then you should give Arcane Sheets a try.
Arcane Sheets is a secure and GDPR compliant alternative for Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. This program is a part of Arcane Office which is a blockchain-based encrypted office suite builds upon Blockstack platform. Arcane Sheets provides 10 GB of storage with all the features of spreadsheets including import from Google Sheets and MS Excel. Since it is built upon blockchain technology, it uses a decentralized network that provides assured data privacy without compromising any feature.
Apart from this spreadsheet program, Arcane Office has an Arcane Docs which is a GDPR compliant alternative to Google Docs and MS Words. It also offers an image redact and annotation tool which is free for Windows and macOS.
Also read: Free Encrypted Decentralized Cloud Storage: XOR Drive
Free GDPR Compliant Alternative to Google Sheets, MS Excel
Arcane Sheets has been developed upon the BlockStack platform. So, for this spreadsheet program to work you would require a Blockstack. You can create one here if you don’t already have a BlockStack ID. When you have a Blockstack ID, you can use that ID to login to Arcane Sheets. (Blockstack ID is the universal ID for all the apps build upon the Blockstack platform.)
Upon login, this program takes you to the dashboard where it shows all your spreadsheet documents along with a button to create new sheets. From the dashboard, you can download a document as XLSX file, copy share link, and delete the document. To create a new document, you can either import data from Google Sheets/MS Excel or start with an empty sheet.
The spreadsheet has a similar UI to Google Sheets. It groups all the formatting options and features in various tabs at the top. You can use formulas and add more sheets to a spreadsheet document.
The last tab of this program is EXPORT & SHARE. From this tab, you can download the spreadsheet document as XLSX or CSV file. You can also get a link to share the document. The sharing link opens the document in view-only mode.
Give Arcane Sheets a try here.
Wrap Up
Arcane Sheets is a decent alternative to Google Sheets and MS Excel. It packs all the features that you expect from a spreadsheet editor. Being built upon blockchain technology, it is fully encrypted and secure. Due to the decentralized nature of blockchain, no one can access your data except you. This makes it a good spreadsheets alternative for those who don’t want to compromise on data privacy.
