Using Google Sheets as a Blog Backend

I wanted comments and likes on my blog. I looked at Disqus (trackers everywhere), Firebase (overkill), and self-hosted DBs (too much setup for barely any traffic).

I actually asked ChatGPT for ideas and it suggested Supabase. Fair enough, it's a solid option. But setting up auth, tables, and row-level security policies felt like a lot when all I needed was a name, a comment, and a like counter. Then it threw out the idea of using a Google Sheet as the backend. That sounded so dumb I had to try it.

Turns out, it works.

The Setup

• A Google Sheet with two tabs: Comments (slug, name, text, date) and Likes (slug, count)
• An Apps Script deployed as a web app, accepting POST requests
• A React component that calls the script URL

That's it. No server, no database, no monthly bill.

The Backend

The entire API lives inside one doPost function. It reads the action from the request body and routes accordingly:

function doPost(e) {
  const data = JSON.parse(e.postData.contents);
  const ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();

  // Route based on action
  if (data.action === "getData") {
    // Read all comments + like count for this slug
    return getData(ss, data.slug);
  }

  if (data.action === "addComment") {
    // Append a row: [slug, name, comment, timestamp]
    ss.getSheetByName("Comments")
      .appendRow([data.slug, data.name, data.comment, new Date().toISOString()]);
    return jsonResponse({ success: true });
  }

  if (data.action === "updateLike") {
    // Find the slug's row and increment, or create a new row
    const sheet = ss.getSheetByName("Likes");
    const rows = sheet.getDataRange().getValues();
    let found = false;
    let newLikes = 1;

    for (let i = 1; i < rows.length; i++) {
      if (rows[i][0] === data.slug) {
        newLikes = (Number(rows[i][1]) || 0) + 1;
        sheet.getRange(i + 1, 2).setValue(newLikes);
        found = true;
        break;
      }
    }

    if (!found) sheet.appendRow([data.slug, 1]);
    return jsonResponse({ success: true, likes: newLikes });
  }
}

Reading data is just filtering the sheet by slug:

function getData(ss, slug) {
  // Grab all rows from Comments sheet, filter by slug
  const commentsSheet = ss.getSheetByName("Comments");
  const comments = commentsSheet.getDataRange().getValues()
    .slice(1) // skip header
    .filter(row => row[0] === slug)
    .map(row => ({ name: row[1], comment: row[2], date: row[3] }));

  // Find the like count for this slug
  const likesSheet = ss.getSheetByName("Likes");
  const likesRow = likesSheet.getDataRange().getValues()
    .slice(1)
    .find(row => row[0] === slug);
  const likes = likesRow ? (Number(likesRow[1]) || 0) : 0;

  return jsonResponse({ comments, likes });
}

Deploy this as a web app with "Anyone" access. You now have a REST API backed by a spreadsheet.

The Catch

I know this is a hack. It won't survive a traffic spike, and Google Sheets has API quotas and a 5-million-cell limit. I'll be migrating to a proper backend with a real database soon enough. But for a blog that gets a handful of visitors? This took me 30 minutes to set up, costs nothing, and I can see every comment in a spreadsheet instead of querying a database. Good enough for now.

Go ahead, leave a comment or hit the heart below. It writes straight into a Google Sheet. No database, no server, just a spreadsheet somewhere doing its job.