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Adobe Workfront vs Smartsheet comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
Adobe Workfront boosts efficiency and productivity significantly, saving time and resources while enhancing collaboration and user growth.
Sentiment score
6.7
Smartsheet boosts efficiency and collaboration, streamlining project management with Excel-like simplicity, enhancing productivity, and offering cost-effective solutions.
We tracked all of the savings through Adobe Workfront, and at the end of the year, for those 2,500 users, we saved over 1,200 hours, or 1,200 man hours.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Adobe Workfront's support is well-rated for expertise and responsiveness, though complex issues can experience longer response times.
Sentiment score
7.1
Smartsheet customer service is praised for responsiveness and training but criticized for ticket management and inconsistency.
They provide answers and guidance on how to resolve issues, such as clearing cookies and cache, and assist in best practice configuration and optimization of the platform.
It is considered a citizen admin system, and you don't need to be an IT professional to be an administrator.
If L5 does not understand, it moves to L4. If they can't solve it, it moves to a higher level.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
Adobe Workfront scales well for midsize to enterprise businesses, offering flexibility, customization, and strategic planning with manageable scalability challenges.
Sentiment score
7.4
Smartsheet effectively scales for diverse user needs, with strong integration capabilities, despite some advanced feature limitations and cost concerns.
We have gone from two or three marketing teams up to over 40 marketing teams and 6,500 users in a few years.
The solution is really scalable.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Adobe Workfront is praised for its stability, with issues resolved quickly and performance consistently rated highly by users.
Sentiment score
7.9
Smartsheet is a reliable, stable cloud-based platform for project management, with minimal disruptions and frequent improvements enhancing its performance.
Adobe Workfront provides a stable foundation for project management.
Overall, I would rate the stability and reliability of Adobe Workfront a ten.
I have not faced any challenges with the stability of Adobe Workfront.
 

Room For Improvement

Adobe Workfront users want improved reporting, integration, and interface customization for better usability, efficiency, and data visualization.
Smartsheet needs a more intuitive interface, better integration, robust features, and enhanced support for an improved user experience.
We can enhance integrations, such as ensuring Adobe Workfront integrates more seamlessly with other Adobe products like Experience Manager and Creative Cloud.
If I have issue-level data and project-level data that I need to see, with some custom coding, you can do some of it in a report, but in general, if you have a lot of that blended data between levels, you need to use a dashboard, which requires two different reports due to the difficulty in pulling data at the different levels into one thing.
Integration with Azure DevOps could be improved to facilitate better communication between the two systems.
I have a novice understanding of Smartsheet, so I sought a solution more suited to repeatable projects and process-oriented governance.
 

Setup Cost

Adobe Workfront's pricing is high but offers flexibility, discounts, and value for large remote teams with efficiency improvements.
Smartsheet offers flexible, competitively-priced licensing options appealing to various users, providing value through extensive functionality and customization.
This can include items such as mileage, supplies, software, licenses, and travel costs.
 

Valuable Features

Adobe Workfront offers customizable tools for effective project management, enhancing collaboration, automation, integration, and workflow flexibility for users.
Smartsheet excels in real-time data sharing, automation, integration, and customization, making it a favored alternative to Microsoft Project.
It provides comprehensive features with built-in integration for creative tools, addressing the pain point of creative collaboration in the content supply chain.
The system aids in supporting demand management and producing high-level status reports.
You can set up the complete workflow from start to end with Adobe Workfront, such as content creation, content publication, and getting that approval process, storing it somewhere.
We were looking for a tool that allowed for repeatable projects and process-oriented governance.
What I appreciate best about Smartsheet is the straight Gantt chart and its flexibility.
 

Categories and Ranking

Adobe Workfront
Ranking in Project Management Software
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Digital Asset Management (1st)
Smartsheet
Ranking in Project Management Software
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Project Management Software category, the mindshare of Adobe Workfront is 2.8%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Smartsheet is 4.3%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Project Management Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Smartsheet4.3%
Adobe Workfront2.8%
Other92.9%
Project Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

Chris French - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced project management and automation simplify reporting and approval processes
I think that Adobe Workfront could be improved in several areas, including reporting, which I've already mentioned. There are very specific things within the custom forms that I think could be improved, such as having different labels within forms instead of system-wide. The ability to hide options in a drop-down at the custom form level instead of system-wide would be another improvement. There are times we have to create brand new fields because we need slightly different wording within the label. If we had the capability, we could easily trim down from over 1,000 custom fields to about 400 custom fields if we had the ability to have individual labels by form. So reporting is a big one, and I think there are some not huge changes needed, but improvements to custom forms and custom fields would be beneficial. My experience with reporting in Adobe Workfront so far is that the reporting could be better. The ability to report is great, but I think it is too difficult. Regarding dashboards, they are crucial to be able to pull information from different levels, but that's also a negative because it is very difficult to do that on a report. If I have issue-level data and project-level data that I need to see, with some custom coding, you can do some of it in a report, but in general, if you have a lot of that blended data between levels, you need to use a dashboard, which requires two different reports due to the difficulty in pulling data at the different levels into one thing.
PaulDiaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Needs to improve baselines and changing dates can be frustrating
I like the dashboarding feature best, as it lets me assemble a workspace with source sheets, dashboards, and reports simultaneously. The standard reports and worksheets are most useful for team collaboration. People look at dashboards during presentations, but they go to the sheets to update projects, add comments, or make notifications. It's automated, so changes come to me or whoever needs to see them. I can send notifications from specific line items. The worksheet is key for tracking project progress, though we track it at a higher level rather than detailed work breakdown structures. Subject matter experts say when they'll deliver things, and that's what we track.
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workfront?
Adobe Workfront features include expenses associated with a project or task that are not related to labor hours. This can include items such as mileage, supplies, software, licenses, and travel cos...
What needs improvement with Workfront?
In Adobe Workfront, there is a limit of 2,000 users that can be shown on a page. I would suggest increasing this to something around 10,000 so end users can search all objects more efficiently. Cur...
What is your primary use case for Workfront?
We use Adobe Workfront for project management where users manage their projects, add tasks to the project, track their timeline, and get approvals from project managers. I work on the developer sid...
Has anyone moved from Microsoft Project to Smartsheet? How has your experience been with Smartsheet?
Hi @Eire Zimmermann, I helped an organization evaluate both MS-Project and Smartsheet when they were conducting their PM tool RFP. The short of it is this, MS Project is not caught up with the mo...
What do you like most about Smartsheet?
The tool creates shareable dashboards. These dashboards allow us to display project deliverables' status, their position in the queue, expected delivery timelines, and more. The best part is that t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Smartsheet?
The pricing is great and reasonable enough that I maintained my copy and bought it for my team independently.
 

Also Known As

AtTask, Workfront DAM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Advance Autoparts, Emerson, Covario, Cisco, Caroma, TREK, Sapient Nitro, ATB, LexisNexis, CarPhone Warehouse
Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about Adobe Workfront vs. Smartsheet and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.