Spreadsheets and WhatsApp is the free DIY stack most Indian solar EPCs start with; Solar Spine is for when coordination starts breaking.
In short
Spreadsheets and WhatsApp is not a product but the default DIY operational stack most Indian solar EPCs assemble for themselves before buying dedicated software like Solar Spine. A spreadsheet tracks the pipeline; WhatsApp (personal number or the free Business App) carries all conversations with staff and customers; phone calls handle anything urgent. Zero licence cost and no vendor lock-in make it the obvious first choice for pre-software teams.
It suits owner-operator shops doing a handful of rooftop or C&I projects a month with a small team. The spreadsheet lives as a shared Google Sheet or copied Excel file, rebuilt each year or inherited from a previous job, a cousin's business, or a chartered accountant's template. WhatsApp groups and personal phones are the only infrastructure needed.
But nothing in the stack enforces a process. Leads sit unqualified for weeks; a stage is marked done with an empty checklist; material ships before payment is collected. There is no owner's-eye view of kW closed, cash due, or stuck projects—each lives in a different person's head, a different WhatsApp thread, or a different spreadsheet tab. When someone leaves, so does the institutional memory of every open lead and half-finished project.
Where Spreadsheets and WhatsApp wins
- Spreadsheets and WhatsApp costs nothing and runs on accounts and apps your team already has—no vendor signup, no credit card, no setup call.
- The spreadsheet has no schema to fight; you add, rename, or delete columns and process steps the moment your business changes, with no vendor release cycle standing in the way.
- WhatsApp is where Indian site staff and customers already spend their time, so adoption is immediate and no one needs to learn a new app or remember another login.
Where Solar Spine wins
- Solar Spine creates tasks automatically with due dates whenever a stage opens, so nothing falls through untracked.
- Every night an overdue task climbs one rung of the org chart, escalating work until someone acts, not waiting for a person to remember to check a spreadsheet.
- Material cannot ship and payment cannot be marked received until the gates you set are satisfied; no stage advances with an empty checklist.
- The owner sees one live dashboard showing kW closed and outstanding, cash due by customer, and which projects are stuck; nothing is rebuilt by hand or late.
- Outcomes from the AI caller and from your team's calls flow back through the Meta lead sheet into Meta's Conversions API, so your ad account optimises for buyers, not form submissions.
Best for
It works for shops doing a handful of projects a month with a tight-knit team that fits around one spreadsheet and one WhatsApp group.
Not for
It is not for EPCs scaling past a handful of projects a month or doing the work to escape manual coordination; Solar Spine is not a design tool and requires internet access.
Pricing
Spreadsheets and WhatsApp
The core stack is free indefinitely: Google Sheets and WhatsApp (consumer app or free Business App) cost ₹0 to download and use. Most teams never buy Google Workspace (₹270–₹1,080 per user per month ex-GST, optional). The WhatsApp Business Platform (Cloud API) is a separate, rarely-used path: Meta's own India rate card charges roughly ₹0.86 per marketing message, up from ₹0.78 before its 1 January 2026 increase, and about ₹0.12 per utility or authentication message (ex 18% GST), with resellers typically adding 10 to 30% on top. It needs a developer integration that DIY shops essentially never set up.
| Tier | ₹ / user / month | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Google Sheets (personal account) | ₹0 | Free with any personal Google account; no seats, no admin console, no company ownership of the data. |
| WhatsApp (consumer app or free Business App) | ₹0 | Free to download and use indefinitely; Business App links up to 10 devices to one number; broadcast lists capped at 256 saved contacts. |
| Google Workspace Starter (optional, if the shop formalises) | ₹270 | Official India list price ex-GST; +18% GST brings it to ₹318.60 per user per month. Confirmed live on Google's own India pricing page (workspace.google.com/intl/en_in/pricing.html) on 2026-09-08. |
| Google Workspace Standard (optional, if the shop formalises) | ₹1,080 | Official India list price ex-GST; promotional rate ₹864 per user in year one. Confirmed live on Google's India pricing page on 2026-09-08. |
Read from https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_in/pricing.html on 9 September 2026
Solar Spine
Solar Spine price list, the same numbers Razorpay charges
Feature by feature
| Capability | Spreadsheets and WhatsApp | Solar Spine |
|---|---|---|
| Solar-specific | ||
| Solar sales and install stages out of the box | No. Sheets and Excel ship completely blank with only generic templates (event planning, project tracking, inventory); no solar-specific sales or install stage model exists anywhere in the product. | Yes. 7 sales stages and 17 project stages seeded on day one, all editable. |
| Stage checklists that change with loan, subsidy and DISCOM | No. No per-stage checklist concept exists, let alone one that branches by loan, subsidy, or DISCOM; users would have to hand-build and hand-maintain IF-formula logic every time rules changed. | Yes. 57 checklist items; loan, subsidy and DISCOM-specific tasks appear only where they apply. |
| DISCOM net-metering steps tracked | No. No DISCOM-aware field or workflow exists in Sheets or WhatsApp; a net-metering step is at best a manually typed status in a free-text column. | Yes. Net-meter paperwork branches for BRPL, BYPL, TPDDL, PVVNL, NPCL, DHBVN and UHBVN. |
| PM Surya Ghar and subsidy tracking | No. No subsidy-application tracking exists out of the box; nothing prompts or structures a PM Surya Ghar step beyond a column someone remembers to update. | Yes. PMSG submission, DCR certificate, GBI and central subsidy redemption as dated tasks. |
| kW as a native field with kW reporting | Partly. A kW column and SUM or pivot formulas can total capacity manually, but there is no native field type, unit validation, or built-in reporting; totals break silently if a formula is overwritten. | Yes. Every deal and project carries capacity; dashboards and targets report in kW. |
| Roof design, shading and proposal generation | No. No roof design, shading, or proposal-generation capability exists in Sheets or WhatsApp; EPCs run separate CAD or PVsyst tools and paste results in by hand. | No. Solar Spine does not do roof design. Use a design tool and track the job here. |
| Execution | ||
| Tasks written automatically with due dates when a stage opens | No. Sheets' notification rules are per-user and opt-in, triggered only by 'changes made' or 'form submitted' and delivered as email; nothing automatically creates a task with a due date when a stage opens. | Yes. Nobody types the checklist; each task carries the date it was given when the stage opened. |
| Overdue work escalates up the org chart on its own | No. There is no org-chart or escalation concept in a spreadsheet or WhatsApp group; overdue work stays invisible until someone scrolls to that row. | Yes. Every night a late task climbs one rung and keeps climbing until someone acts. |
| A stage cannot be advanced with open checklist items | No. Any cell can be typed to 'Done' regardless of what else is or isn't filled in; nothing in Sheets enforces checklist completion before a stage change. | Yes. The advance button is unavailable until the stage's items are closed. |
| Documents verified by ops before work proceeds | No. Documents are shared as WhatsApp attachments or Drive links with no verification step; nothing prevents a project from moving on without them. | Yes. A document is done when ops marks it correct; a rejection goes back to the person who photographed it. |
| A different first screen per role | No. Everyone opens the same sheet tab or the same WhatsApp group; protected ranges and filter views can be configured manually by an admin, but there is no distinct first-screen experience per role. | Yes. Nine roles, nine first screens, from telecaller to director. |
| Field use on a phone: photos, tasks, call outcomes | Partly. WhatsApp itself is mobile-native and effectively how site photos and voice notes already travel, but there is no structured task-completion or call-outcome logging tied to a record. | Yes. Every screen works on a phone; documents are photographed at the customer's house. |
| Money | ||
| Instalment schedule per project | Partly. Manual columns for a 10/70/20 split are common practice, but there is no built-in instalment template or automatic status roll-up; it's static numbers someone updates by hand. | Yes. 10/70/20 or whatever you agreed, with due dates and outstanding balance visible to all. |
| Material cannot dispatch until payment is collected | No. Nothing in a spreadsheet or WhatsApp can block a dispatch decision on payment collected; that check exists only if a person remembers to make it. | Yes. Thresholds per stage, set by the workspace; the default is the one the first customer ran. |
| Daily overdue payment alerts to owner and manager | No. Sheets' notification rules are opt-in and per-user, triggered only by edits or form submissions, not a daily overdue-payment digest pushed to owner and manager by default. | Yes. 7 am every day, to the person who owns the collection and their manager. |
| A bounced cheque reopens the instalment | No. There is no instalment workflow to reopen; a bounced cheque just means someone has to remember to edit a status cell back manually, if they notice. | Yes. Yes |
| GST invoices and quotes from the same record | Partly. EPCs commonly type GST invoices in Excel or Word by hand; only third-party add-ons exist for this in Sheets, not a native template; nothing validates or auto-generates them. | Yes. Invoice creation is a stage in the pipeline; the subscription itself is GST-invoiced too. |
| Leads and calling | ||
| Meta lead ads land in the system within minutes | No. No native Meta or Facebook Lead Ads connector exists for Sheets or WhatsApp; leads are exported as CSV from Meta and copy-pasted in, if the process is followed at all. | Yes. Ad leads arrive marked hot at the top of the calling queue inside five minutes. |
| PIN-code check on incoming leads | No. No serviceability check of any kind exists; a lead's PIN code is at best a value in a column nobody cross-checks. | Yes. Leads outside the PIN codes you serve are kept out of the AI caller's queue. |
| AI caller that qualifies leads and books visits | No. There is no calling or voice capability in either product; qualification calls are placed manually by a person from their own phone. | Yes. Optional. Calls 9 am to 9 pm IST, books the visit on a named salesperson's day, hands off with notes. |
| Built-in telecalling queue with daily batches and outcomes | No. A caller works down a spreadsheet list top to bottom, marking outcomes in a free-text or status column by hand; there is no queueing, batching, or timestamped outcome log. | Yes. Queues built and ordered before the caller sits down; one outcome vocabulary for humans and the AI. |
| Lead outcomes written back to Meta | No. Nothing writes lead-outcome data back to Meta for ad optimisation; that requires an API integration neither Sheets nor the free WhatsApp app provides. | Yes. Qualified, converted and disqualified statuses flow back through the lead sheet into Meta's Conversions API, so the account optimises for buyers, not form-fillers. |
| WhatsApp messaging and automation | Yes. WhatsApp (consumer or the free Business App) is literally half of this stack, with quick replies, labels, and basic greeting and away auto-replies built in. | Partly. Click-to-chat and logged WhatsApp interactions. No automated messaging. |
| Reporting | ||
| Owner dashboard: kW against target, cash due, stuck projects | No. No built-in dashboard combines kW versus target, cash due, and stuck projects; producing that view means a skilled user manually building and maintaining pivot tables and charts. | Yes. Yes |
| Per-person monthly targets and attainment | Partly. A target column and manual formulas can compute attainment per person, but nothing updates live or rolls up automatically as deals close. | Yes. Yes |
| Ask the business a question in plain English | Partly. Gemini in Sheets can answer plain-English questions and generate charts, but it requires a paid Google Workspace plan and operates within one open spreadsheet at a time. | Yes. Director and GM only. Finding, evidence, table, caveat, next step, from live data. |
| One-click export of everything | Partly. The spreadsheet itself exports natively as CSV or XLSX with one click, but WhatsApp chat history, photos, and call notes sit outside and aren't captured in a single export. | Yes. Excel export any time. No lock-in. |
| Data | ||
| Data hosted in India | No. Workspace data-region choices are explicitly US, European Union, or 'No preference'; India is not offered. WhatsApp runs on Meta's global infrastructure, not India-only. | Yes. Postgres in Mumbai (ap-south-1); documents in a private store. |
| Tenant isolation at the database level | Not applicable. There is no multi-tenant database to isolate; each business's files and chats are separate documents under manual sharing permissions. | Yes. Row-level security fences every workspace; identity documents are visible only to the project chain. |
| Pricing and support | ||
| Pricing model | No. There's no flat per-company licence to compare; the core stack is free, and the optional Google Workspace add-on is priced per user per month, not per company. | Yes. Flat per company: ₹10,000 a month or ₹99,999 a year plus GST. Unlimited users. |
| Prices published in INR | Yes. Google Workspace prices are published directly in INR on its India pricing page; WhatsApp's Cloud API billing is localised in INR, with a further India-specific marketing-rate increase confirmed effective 1 January 2026. | Yes. Yes |
| Free trial without a card | Yes. Sheets and the WhatsApp Business App are free indefinitely with no card required at all; this exceeds a mere trial. Google Workspace itself, if added later, runs a 14-day trial. | Yes. 30 days, no card, no call. |
| Setup or onboarding fee | No. Self-serve signup for every piece of this stack; ₹0 setup fee, though real cost is the staff time spent building and maintaining the sheet. | Yes. None. Send the filled setup form and the workspace configures itself. |
| India-based support in IST | Partly. The free WhatsApp app has only self-serve FAQs and no phone or chat support; priority support is reserved for paid Meta Verified subscribers. Google Workspace paid tiers include vendor support, often through India-based resale partners. | Yes. Email, replies within one business day, from Mumbai. |
Switching from Spreadsheets and WhatsApp
- Export the spreadsheet as CSV or XLSX with one click—there is no vendor lock-in because there is no vendor.
- Export WhatsApp chat history per conversation (Settings > Export Chat) as plain text, with photos and media saved separately; there is no API or bulk export across all conversations.
- Import the CSV into Solar Spine's calling queue and contact import to seed the CRM records, hand-mapping whatever ad-hoc columns you created (Name, Phone, kW, Status, Loan Applied and the rest) onto Solar Spine's native fields.
- Photos, call notes, and quotes scattered inside WhatsApp threads are not machine-migratable because WhatsApp has no structured export—a real switch either accepts a clean cutover (start fresh in Solar Spine) or budgets staff time to manually re-attach anything from the recent past that still matters per project.
- There is no data-egress friction or vendor negotiation because there never was a vendor—the entire cost is your team's time untangling years of unstructured spreadsheet and chat history, not a technical or contractual barrier.
Questions people ask
Can I run Spreadsheets and WhatsApp alongside Solar Spine?
Yes. Most switching teams do, at least at first. You can import your existing spreadsheet as a starting snapshot and keep WhatsApp for site and customer conversations, while Solar Spine's calling queue and customer record become the single source of truth for lead qualification and hand-offs between roles.
Does Solar Spine replace a roof-design tool?
No. Solar Spine does not do roof design, shading analysis, or proposal generation, and has no plans to. You keep running a design tool separately (CAD, PVsyst, Helioscope, Aurora Solar or whatever your team already uses) to produce the proposal, then track everything downstream of that in Solar Spine: the sales stage, the site visit, the loan and subsidy paperwork, and every project milestone and document.
Is there an integration between Sheets and Solar Spine, or between WhatsApp and Solar Spine?
Not today. You export the spreadsheet as CSV once, import it to seed the CRM, and then Solar Spine becomes the source of truth for new leads and projects. WhatsApp remains the channel for chat; call outcomes flow back to the lead record automatically if you use the AI caller, or are logged manually as notes on the contact.
Which is cheaper for a 12-person team?
Spreadsheets and WhatsApp costs ₹0 indefinitely (or ₹270–₹1,080 per user per month if the team buys Google Workspace later). Solar Spine costs ₹10,000 a month or ₹99,999 a year plus 18% GST for unlimited users—the same cost for 12 people or 120. For 12 people, Solar Spine is ₹833 per person per month; once you add Google Workspace, Spreadsheets and WhatsApp costs more. The real cost of Spreadsheets and WhatsApp is staff time managing process gaps and rebuilding what someone forgot to update.
Where does Solar Spine host customer data?
In a private Postgres database in Mumbai (ap-south-1). Each workspace is fenced at the database level with row-level security; documents are stored separately and visible only to the people working on that project. Nothing is shared across customers or accessed from outside India.
What happens to my spreadsheet and WhatsApp history when I switch?
The spreadsheet exports natively as CSV or XLSX—no lock-in, because there is no vendor. WhatsApp chat history exports per conversation as plain text with media saved separately, but there is no API or bulk export to reconstruct it all in Solar Spine. Most teams accept a clean cutover (start fresh in Solar Spine, don't re-key old WhatsApp) or manually re-attach recent project photos and call notes that still matter.
Other comparisons
Run one real project through it this month. You will know by the end of it.
30 days free, no card, no call. Then ₹10,000 a month for the whole company, however many people you put on it.