Blockpad 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
User Reviews

Overview

Blockpad

4.4

(18)

Pricing

Starting at $18.00 per month

About Blockpad

Blockpad is spreadsheet software re-imagined for engineering calculations. It enables engineers to create professional calculation deliverables in an intuitive and familiar way. The primary interface feels like a traditional word processor, but pressing the equals sign opens up a formula like in a spreadsheet.

This formula is then calculated and presented in clear math notation so that the math is readable and not hidden behind a cell. Also like a spreadsheet, these formulas update whenever numbers change. Also, the various parts of a document can all connect together using spreadsheet-style formulas and references, so that a whole document can update when the numbers change.

Blockpad Screenshots

Blockpad Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $18.00 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Basic

$18.00

per user, per month

No plan information available

Blockpad Features

Popular features found in Spreadsheet
Commenting/Notes
Data Tabulation
Data Visualization
Reporting/Analytics
More features of Blockpad
Templates

Blockpad User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.4

Ratings Breakdown

44%

56%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.6

Value for money

4.8

Customer support

4.7

Functionality

4.3

Keith J B.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

501-1000 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed October 2024

Exceptional Tool

I used it first a couple years ago, but dropped it before really understanding it well enough. Now that I dug in a bit deeper it is my first choice when working on problem solutions.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The display of the calculations is very good. It rivals MathCad in the quality of its appearance. I am a Mac user & I am now using BlockPsd every day when preparing for lectures. I also really like the ease of building my own functions.

Cons:

I would love some added support for matrix operations to support work with tensors.

Reasons for switching to Blockpad

I am a Mac user & the only reason I was running PC shell had been to use MathCad. I am in the process of converting all my MathCad sheets to BlockPad

Gustave S.

Verified reviewer

Civil Engineering

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Reviewed December 2022

Money Saver

Overall the product has been great. We engineer custom products, and making templates for those products with Blockpad is a real time saver when compared to the competition.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The ease of using spreadsheets in templates is a real time saver. I would recommend this product to anyone cant be at this price point.

Cons:

When the work books get large they can take awhile to solve, and remembering to hit the F5 to make sure everything solves key can be annoying.

Reasons for choosing Blockpad

Price and Mathcad seems to be going backwards with functionality.

Tim M.

Verified reviewer

Civil Engineering

2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Reviewed September 2021

Create a Mac desktop app

I like it, minor annoyances with the browser version. Get the Mac app out and I'll love it.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Ease of access on Mac through the browser, as MatCad is unavailable for Mac

Cons:

Lack of Mac desktop app. Formatting in the browser doesn't work properly and makes cursor jump. Can't add images in the browser version.

Reasons for switching to Blockpad

Lack of Mac compatibility

Milena S.

Verified reviewer

Civil Engineering

2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Reviewed December 2022

An awesome calculation and presentation software

I would recommend blockpad to any practice that uses calculation sheets. If you are coming from mathcad, it's a no brainer. If you are using just excel, I recommend it for the ease of use, organizing information, ability to use excel tables and functions within your sheets, and presentation of informational and calculations.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Block pad provides the best of mathcad, microsoft word, and microsoft excel. It is a trifecta of these three programs. We transitioned from using MathCAD to blockpad after PTC stoped supporting MathCAD15. The sheet library we had would take extensive work to convert to PTC Prime, so we decided to make the switch to a program best serving our practice. Between prime and blockpad, we selected blockpad. It is intuitive, easy to use, and provides the results required.

Cons:

The documentation on the software lacks a good user interface/experience. It is all documented just hard to navigate and find information.

Reasons for switching to Blockpad

Software no longer supported or serviced by PTC and Prime was not satisfactory.

Tyler O.

Verified reviewer

Building Materials

501-1000 employees

Used monthly for less than 12 months

Reviewed November 2020

Where have you been all of my (engineering) life?

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Blockpad was super intuitive to use. Right off the bat, I was making a production ready document that looked great. The units intelligence makes sure that face-palming mistakes don't happen. The best part is that it just works.

Cons:

I haven't quite gotten the hang of the drawing features yet. On my first attempt, I didn't find as intuitive as other features and gave up. Granted, that was a half hearted attempted.

Reasons for choosing Blockpad

Blockpad's intuitive equation writing and units intelligence makes it a great choice for engineering calculations. The fact that it integrates spreadsheets and documents makes producing deliverables a breeze.

Verified

Reviewer

Oil & Energy

51-200 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Reviewed December 2022

A True Game Changer

Genuinely one of the best software experiences I have ever had. It is an invaluable tool with the best customer support in the world.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I don't know where to start! You can think of Blockpad as a nearly perfect combination of Word, Excel, and MathCad. I use it for almost everything now.- Units and unit conversions are absolutely simple and intuitive. The upcoming version 1.3 (I was given beta access) even supports custom units and unit conversion factors!- Equations are displayed in a readable math format sort of like a simplified version of LaTeX. It's not perfect yet, but it gets the job done and formats nicely enough 90% of the time.- Style Rules are unbelievably powerful. You just have to try it to understand the amount of time style rules save to battling formatting in MS Word.- There are SO MANY more amazing features that I can't list here. You will have to discover them for yourself! On to my praise of documentation and customer support:- The online deep dive guide is extremely in depth, while still being clear and concise.- Customer support is unmatched. I have reached out several times with questions, suggestions for future features, and occasional bug reports. Without fail, I receive a well-written, thoughtful, and helpful response in under 36 hours, but usually under 12 hours. Blockpad support is THE BEST I have received from any company, of any size, in any industry, ever. Period.

Cons:

Some very small issues that will no doubt be fixed in the near future:- Headers and footers can be difficult to format. Formatting everything else is a breeze though.- About 10% of equations don't seem to display quite right, but they get close at least. It does not affect anything but the appearance of the equation. Some form of LaTeX support or similar could remedy this.- "Blocks" are not intuitive in my opinion.- I have had some minor troubles saving files to the Blockpad cloud, but that very well could be a user error...- Charts/graphs/plots have a LONG way to go, but Blockpad is perfectly compatible with Excel (it even has an Excel plugin) so it is not a big deal to generate plots in Excel, save as an image, and put it back in Blockpad.- I would love to see a symbolic "solver" like MATLAB has.

Reasons for switching to Blockpad

It almost completely replaced a multitude of programs. It is free for educational use (I'm a university student). It is easy to use. Customer support is unmatched.

Albert S.

Verified reviewer

Design

2-10 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Reviewed December 2022

Blockpad For Consulting Engineers

We have already written some complex files with multiple sheets. One feature we have taken advantage of is to use one of the sheets to record the revisions to the sheet. As this page does not have to be printed, we have a simple record for internal purposes of controlling the calculations.Also with multiple sheets we can add to the complexity with calculations on different sheets and have the option to print for our records only if required.The variable naming convention is also very good in that the formulas may be placed anywhere on the work sheet and they are understood. They deed not be sequential, that is the main formula which may rely on other formulas can be at the top of the page and all others later on the sheet.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The ease of integration of spreadsheets and the method of handling variables and formulas.

Cons:

At the early stages of deployment there was some confusion due to the difference with other similar software. There were also some frustrating editing bugs most of which were dealt with promptly.

Reasons for switching to Blockpad

The pricing and control of distribution.

Verified

Reviewer

Civil Engineering

2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Reviewed September 2021

An engineering notebook

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Functionality

Pros:

Blockpad provides an easy way to do ordinary calculations with automatic updating and units. This is the most common thing we need as a structural engineering design office: a better way to do free-form calcs than pen and paper, and Blockpad provides that.

Cons:

We're waiting for the native Mac app. Using the web app is okay but has the usual annoyances of web apps, like not being able to use keyboard shortcuts properly.

Reasons for switching to Blockpad

Lower cost, fewer extraneous features.

Patrick Y.

Verified reviewer

Civil Engineering

51-200 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Reviewed September 2021

Blockpad Review

Been very happy so far, eager to see how the program continues to evolve.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The integration between being a light word processor and typing in formulas and preforming calculations is incredibly convenient. Has made making calculation packages a breeze. Makes making calculations much more readable versus formulas being hidden in cells in a typical spreadsheet program. Report management on the left column makes handling packages with many components easy. Good documentation online.

Cons:

Overall some lack of polish here and there. Some things aren't always clear on how to handle. Unsure if there have been recent updates, perhaps prompting the user with a changelog on update would be nice. Finer control over when formulas are broken into separate lines; when there is normal text earlier on the line and a formula wraps around to the next line, no way for formula text to stay justified with the part of the formula on the prior line. Just minor formatting nit picks like that. Occasional slowdown on reports where lots of calculations are being done. Overall lightness of the built in spreadsheet editor.

Steve S.

Verified reviewer

Civil Engineering

Self-Employed

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Reviewed December 2020

My go-to tool

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Blockpad has become my primary tool for day-to-day calculations on a wide variety of engineering topics. The program is very stable and has a replete set of functions and tools. It combines the best of several programs into one: word processor, spreadsheet, sketch/CAD, math calculator, and basic tablet. Support resources are solid.

Cons:

The block features (saving and curating templates and building-block calculation elements) are still getting further refined and documented.

Reasons for switching to Blockpad

Blockpad’s cost is favorable (competitive). Display of equations in math form and automatic resolution of units are huge benefits. Working with mixed units (including feet-and-inch notation) in calculations is great. Easy ability to link equations and variables has been a big plus. All of this while working inside a word processor environment.

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