Smartsheet Evaluation – The Good and The Unhealthy for 2023

Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-style venture administration answer for companies managing a number of tasks with dozens of transferring components. It helps firms of all sizes handle workflows and enhance collaboration. It’s not as straightforward to make use of as we’d like and doesn’t have the acquainted Kanban view of venture administration we’ve all come to like. However that doesn’t imply it’s not an excellent match for you and your staff.

Examine Smartsheet to the Greatest Mission Administration Software program

At its core, Smartsheet is probably the most highly effective and complex spreadsheet software you’ve ever seen. It’s supreme for these of you who have already got expertise utilizing spreadsheets to handle tasks—however you are feeling conventional choices like Excel and Google Sheets are simply too restricted for what you wish to accomplish.

For all these causes and extra, Smartsheet is certainly one of our suggestions for the perfect of venture administration software program:

1. Monday.com – Greatest for venture administration software program for many
2. ClickUp – Greatest distant work platform
3. Smartsheet – Greatest for flexibility
4. Teamwork – Greatest for consumer and service-based companies
5. Asana – Greatest steadiness of energy and ease
6. Trello – Greatest Kanban venture administration

Learn our full evaluate of the perfect venture administration software program for a side-by-side comparability of the advantages, tradeoffs, and pricing. 

We recognize the power to trace every little thing associated to a selected venture by means of the easy-to-use Monday.com interface, which is why it tops our checklist. Take a look at Monday.com to see if it matches your wants by signing up for the always-free tier or by benefiting from a 14-day free trial interval on the pay tiers.

Clear communication typically may be the distinction between success and failure with tasks, and ClickUp is certainly one of our favourite venture administration software program choices due to its excellent collaboration options. For those who subscribe to ClickUp, the service affords a 30-day satisfaction assure, throughout which you’ll be able to request to obtain your a refund if you’re sad.

Must you want venture administration software program that enables your consumer to collaborate with you, guaranteeing the venture stays on monitor, Teamwork lets you give shoppers restricted entry to your venture board. Join at Teamwork and benefit from the software program’s 30-day free trial interval to check its options.

Moreover, our analysis staff has loads to say about how Smartsheet stacks up in opposition to the opposite main options. For those who choose visual-style venture administration instruments which have Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and timeline views, you would possibly discover one thing you want higher than Smartsheet.

Smartsheet: The Good and The Unhealthy

Smartsheet has quite a few breath-of-fresh-air redeeming qualities for spreadsheet and database followers. If that sounds such as you, it could be definitely worth the complicated interface and costly price ticket.

The Good

Crew Collaboration Instruments: Along with venture administration, Smartsheet manufacturers itself as a “dynamic work and collaboration software program.” Groups can simply collaborate with file sharing, notes, and duties, all inside a central supply of fact. This permits everybody on a staff to maintain up with the progress of a selected venture. A number of staff members can share displays, pictures, and PDFs to work on content material on the identical time, full with notifications, model management, and a customizable approval course of. Your complete Smartsheet answer is extremely customizable so you may add the collaboration options you want and take away those you don’t to maintain issues so simple as potential. In truth, Smartsheet made our checklist of the finest easy venture administration software program choices.

Highly effective Analytics and Reporting: Admins, managers, and customers love Smartsheet’s reporting capabilities. The superior reporting makes it straightforward to consolidate probably the most essential info from a number of sheets right into a single report in just some clicks or faucets. In doing so, you may establish traits and potential bottlenecks to repeatedly enhance. You can even publish and share your experiences with staff members, departments, stakeholders, or anybody else who must be within the loop. You’ll be able to even use Smartsheet’s exercise log to see who’s accessing experiences and after they’re doing it so you already know who’s seen what. One standout function of Smartsheet’s experiences is that they’re bi-directional—if somebody makes a change on the report, it’s up to date in real-time again to the hooked up sheets. And experiences replace in real-time when somebody updates the hooked up sheets. So, you by no means have to fret about outdated info once more.

Knowledge Safety: As an enterprise-grade answer, Smartsheet makes use of top-of-the-line information safety requirements to maintain your staff, your information, and your enterprise safe with a Fort Knox-style gusto. It affords dozens of security measures, together with two-factor authentication, single sign-on (SSO), granular person entry controls, safe information facilities, AES 256-bit at-rest encryption, and extra to stop unauthorized entry. Smartsheet can be HIPAA, GDPR, ISO, SOC, ITAR, and FERPA compliant so you may relaxation straightforward understanding you don’t have to fret about privateness and safety compliance.

Sturdy Automation Instruments: Most venture administration instruments include fundamental automation options however Smartsheet outshines most of them with an extremely complete set of integrations, connectors, clever workflows, and automation instruments. Regardless of its energy, organising fundamental automations takes just some minutes due to Smartsheet’s drag-and-drop automation builder. It makes use of fundamental logic, conditional paths, and triggers, permitting you to create even probably the most superior workflows you may think about.

Prolonged Performance: In addition to fundamental venture administration, you may add useful resource administration, digital asset administration, and portfolio administration capabilities that can give rise to venture budgeting, time monitoring, superior experiences and analytics, and forecasting instruments, amongst others. Nevertheless, these options aren’t baked into Smartsheet’s plans—they’re an add-on which have a further price ticket. However it’s good to know that the platform expands to match your wants slightly than making you purchase one other software to develop your enterprise.

Customization and Flexibility: One in every of Smartsheet’s claims to fame is flexibility. Very similar to a spreadsheet, you may manipulate your sheets into absolutely anything, from venture administration and stock administration to finances monitoring, expense categorization, marketing campaign monitoring, and extra. You should utilize it in a whole lot of various methods, which makes it a contender to interchange different enterprise instruments it’s possible you’ll be utilizing for different features or departments. You get limitless customized fields, a number of views, and limitless sheets. So, there are not any limits to how you should utilize Smartsheet—in comparison with different project-management-only instruments, it’s refreshingly versatile.

Take Benefit of Templates: Once you wish to be up and working rapidly with Smartsheet, you should utilize one of many 350 templates which can be a part of the software program. The template gives a fundamental construction for managing your venture. You then can regulate the template as wanted to completely suit your wants for a selected venture. Smartsheet’s dash planning template is among the finest obtainable amongst venture administration software program packages. We additionally named just a few agile venture plan templates from Smartsheet among the many finest obtainable out there.

The Unhealthy

Complicated For Rookies: Spreadsheets are one thing that the overwhelming majority of us are acquainted with. In concept, Smartsheet shouldn’t have a steep studying curve. Sadly, that’s not the case. The interface isn’t very user-friendly, which may make it difficult to chart and analyze information. Except you’re producing experiences, there’s no actual straightforward solution to analyze the sheets at-a-glance. You’ll must manually undergo rows and columns, which is hard to do at scale. 

Restricted Exercise Log: Smartsheet’s exercise log permits customers and admins to trace frequent actions, like who has seen what, what’s been shared, and extra. Nevertheless, this log is a bit restricted in comparison with different venture administration instruments in the marketplace right now. You’ll be able to’t actually simply get a fast look at what’s occurred because you final logged in. Typically it may be time-consuming to get a solution. For instance, to see a full historical past of a selected cell, you’d have to navigate to that cell, right-click, after which discover the historical past from there.

Not Excellent for Sure PM Methodologies: Agile groups that wish to use Kanban boards and different hybrid venture administration methodologies will battle with Smartsheet. The software program simply doesn’t supply that kind of performance. Every part is spreadsheet-based. Although you may change the view to a calendar or one thing else, most of what you’re doing will depend on conditional formatting inside a selected sheet. 

Larger Costs: At first look, Smartsheet appears fairly reasonably priced. Plans begin at simply $7 per person monthly. Nevertheless, if you take a more in-depth take a look at these packages, you’ll discover Smartsheet to be a bit costly in comparison with different venture administration instruments in the marketplace right now. They usually require a minimal of three customers on any plan, so that you’ll be paying extra that it’s important to in the event you solely want a platform for one or two customers. 

Odd Autosave Function: For some purpose, Smartsheet doesn’t autosave your modifications or replace the web page to replicate edits in actual time. This challenge admittedly received’t be an enormous deal to everybody, however we discover it to be extremely annoying. Most cloud-based software program packages save your modifications in actual time, so it’s a function we’ve come to take with no consideration. Smartsheet requires you to click on a Save button and a Refresh button after you make modifications. You’ll be able to go into the Settings window of Smartsheet to arrange autosave as soon as a minute or if you go away a sheet, so you may form of work round the issue. (Nevertheless, we consider you shouldn’t must.)

Smartsheet Pricing and Choices

Smartsheet Pricing

Smartsheet has fairly streamlined pricing. There are simply three easy tiers, with every successive plan providing extra options than the final. There’s additionally a separate bundle referred to as Smartsheet Advance that features every little thing on the Enterprise plan, plus all the additional add-ons you’d must pay for on the Enterprise or Enterprise tiers.

• Professional — $7 per person monthly
• Enterprise — $25 per person monthly
• Enterprise — Customized pricing
• Smartsheet Advance — Contact gross sales for value

One huge factor for the cut price hunters on the market to pay attention to: Smartsheet requires a minimal of three customers on any plan. So, maintain that in thoughts in case you have your eye on both the Professional or Enterprise tiers, particularly in the event you’re cautious of your finances.

So, in actuality, the beginning value for Professional is basically $21 monthly and $75 for Enterprise.

You’ll be able to see how a few of the options break down by plan beneath.

At first look, they’re fairly related, with simply the Professional plan having limitations on the variety of sheets and widgets you should utilize.

Nevertheless, as you drill down into superior options like conditional type logic, customized branding, integrations, and security measures, you’ll actually begin to see what you’re paying for with the Enterprise and Enterprise plans.

The Normal Marketing strategy is a viable possibility for smaller companies and easy tasks. It comes with all the Smartsheet core options at an affordable value level. Enterprise plans require a minimal of three licenses.

When you hit the Enterprise stage, you’ll profit from limitless free customers. So, you don’t essentially want a license for each staff member. However it’s price noting that free customers can’t create sheets, experiences, or dashboards. They’ll solely view or edit these gadgets which were shared with them by licensed customers. 

Total, the Enterprise bundle is stable. It does fall a bit brief in comparison with different venture administration instruments on the identical value level when it comes to worth. However it’s nonetheless loaded with options, and we are able to suggest it with confidence for companies that choose spreadsheet-style venture administration. 

The Enterprise plan comes with every little thing within the Marketing strategy plus limitless sheets, single sign-on, enterprise entry controls, listing integrations, chargeback experiences, person merge, and the power to ship emails out of your area electronic mail addresses.

With the Enterprise plan, you’re undoubtedly getting an improve from the Normal Enterprise bundle. However the plan nonetheless lacks a few of the instruments that basically take enterprise venture administration to the subsequent stage.

Smartsheet Superior

Some key energy options like specialised and separate encryption keys and automation bridges are solely obtainable as paid add-ons to the Enterprise or Enterprise plans. The Smartsheet Superior bundle is the one solution to get all of those with out paying à la carte. There are three further tiers to that: Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

Observe the one approach you may improve to Smartsheet Superior is with an Enterprise plan. Although we don’t know the precise costs, it’s protected to imagine the plans might be costly.

Most Enterprise packages from different venture administration software program suppliers embrace the same function set at no cost, which is why we expect Smartsheet is barely overpriced. To really get probably the most out of the software program, you’ll want the top-of-the-line bundle.

10,000ft by Smartsheet

To be clear, 10,000ft by Smartsheet is just not a venture administration software. However we undoubtedly suggest it for companies that wish to fill the gaps with options not supplied in a standard Smartsheet plan.

10,000ft by Smartsheet is a useful resource administration platform. Since useful resource administration and venture administration go hand-in-hand, it’s price contemplating. 

The software program is designed to simplify useful resource allocation and enhance the accuracy of venture planning. It even affords instruments for time monitoring, budgeting, forecasting, dynamic reporting, and extra. 

For organizations managing tasks at scale with Smartsheet, 10,000ft by Smartsheet primarily turns into essential.

It’s a bummer that these options aren’t included with any of the opposite Smartsheet packages. Nevertheless, different venture administration instruments in the marketplace don’t have a tendency to supply these, both. So you may often anticipate to pay additional for useful resource administration instruments, whatever the venture administration software program you’re utilizing. 

Total, we strongly suggest 10,000ft by Smartsheet in the event you’re utilizing certainly one of their venture administration instruments—particularly for companies on the Enterprise and Superior plans.

Critiques of the Greatest Mission Administration Software program

Smartsheet is among the strongest spreadsheet-style instruments for venture administration in the marketplace right now. It’s constructed for groups of all sizes and comes with loads of capabilities. With that stated, Smartsheet does have some limitations. Check it out with a 30-day free trial earlier than you commit. It will provide help to resolve if Smartsheet is correct in your wants. 

Try our high picks of the finest venture administration instruments to see some widespread Smartsheet options. There, you’ll get an excellent sense of what else is in the marketplace and the way Smartsheet compares with different widespread choices.