Microsoft Project vs Planview Portfolios comparison

Microsoft and Planview are both solutions in the Project Management Software category. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Planview users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Project

Read 82 Microsoft Project reviews

3,489 Views
983 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Planview Portfolios

Read 63 Planview Portfolios reviews

953 Views
534 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Microsoft Project

Planview Portfolios

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Project and Planview Portfolios based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Project Management Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Project vs. Planview Portfolios Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Project vs. Planview Portfolios

June 2025

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Helped 856,873 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Project

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Project Management Software (3rd)

Planview Portfolios

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Architecture Management (13th), Project Portfolio Management (7th)

Featured Reviews

Nurul Asyikin Wahab

Management Design Civil Structure at Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd

Efficient project management with robust data tracking and an easy setup

When I have too many elements or items in a project, it becomes cumbersome, especially during printing. Non-technical users do not need all the data, so it's primarily for technical personnel. Without guidance, it's challenging to use the app. With guidance and expert knowledge, it becomes manageable, however, it's not for non-technical teams. The worst part is handling too many items, like 1,000 items, which Microsoft Project struggles with, especially when printing. Printing on A3 size is quite burdensome, so I prefer viewing it on a tablet or computer. On a tablet or phone, I can see the full project elements depending on the screen size.

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EduardoMaya

Project Office Manager at Hoteles City Express

A solution that gives you all the information you need to plan detailed projects

The initial setup was just a little complex. I rate the initial setup a seven out of ten. Deploying the solution took two weeks. While deploying the solution, we had two instances, one for the IT team and one for the business team. And we had to connect the two and explain things to the team. Only two people were needed to deploy the solution, me and another person.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The standard project planning features and charts are most valuable."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the product's GUI is very good...The product's scalability is good."

"One of the best features is that it is easy to use."

"We value all the features. Previously, we used Jenkins for similar purposes, but Microsoft Projects works fine. We're looking to improve integration with different clusters on production and automate various aspects of software development. This includes integration for alerting, monitoring, and pricing purposes, among other things."

"The most valuable feature is the Auto resource leveling tool because it shows students that often, expert resources get over-scheduled, and that dealing with the issue by just using the auto-resource leveling tool would have a large impact on the delivery date."

"A lot of valuable features have been added in the last three years, including scheduling automation and intelligence."

"The features I find the most valuable are scheduling and reporting."

"The integration between SharePoint and Power BI has been great."

More Microsoft Project pros

"Enterprise One provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool."

"We use expenditures quite a bit. We put in forecast expenditures and then we actualize them below the line in the little box in the bottom tray. Being able to track the project with relevant milestones is also valuable. Milestones are valuable because it helps us to keep the project on track. The expenditures are valuable because we need to be able to understand expenses that are beyond the regular resources in the projects."

"We can easily see which functions are overcapacity. Before, we did not have visibility into that."

"The resource capacity planning is the most valuable feature because you can evaluate your team's capacity by team and what projects they're working on and you can forecast easily by team."

"We can view a project both at the top level and dig into the particularities. It's given us greater visibility into the work itself."

"The portfolio management gives you a view of all the projects as well as all the information about the total amount of effort, time, and cost being spent on the projects. It gives the organization how much money and effort should be spent towards projects so they can budget and do better capacity planning in the next fiscal year. It gives them visibility into their resources and if they have capacity."

"Enterprise One provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. It affects our project management because our project management uses Planview to monitor their daily work. Every night it loads our SAP system and then they monitor the daily work. They use Planview as a full planning and monitoring tool."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is reporting."

More Planview Portfolios pros

Cons

"What could have been better is the integration with Office 365 so that if you're discussing a project on Teams or there's an email related to the project, it can be tagged to the project in Microsoft Project. That functionality is currently not there."

"It has a bit of a learning curve since there are a lot of features in it, and we haven't really gotten a chance to train through the whole product."

"In the next release, Microsoft should include cross-project integration."

"It would be ideal if the solution integrated more with Azure DevOps and other work management platforms like Jira."

"Its price can be improved."

"The solution is a basic tool that does not give you analytical insights. It does not have any AI capabilities which can also help to plan."

"They could also work on integrations with solutions like Teams. We have all of our project files in Teams and it is much easier to use for communication than MS Project, but there is no integration of the two solutions."

"Planview FLEX licensing gives us a central repository where all the projects are stored so you can check the finances, resources, etc. It's quite useful to have everything connected. We don't have that for Microsoft Project. It's disconnected. The reporting capabilities could also be better, especially with finance and resources. Everybody complains about reports. That's why we need another tool."

More Microsoft Project cons

"The UI needs improvement. The UI should have more possibilities for users who are not specialized in using Planview. At the moment, it is more of a technical UI. I would like it to be an open user UI."

"Even though Enterprise One is easy and user-friendly, it could provide better training like a demo. Providing more tutorials or sessions would really help."

"One big issue we have been having during our annual planning is that only the creator of a portfolio can edit it. This means that only the creator of a portfolio can edit which projects are included or excluded in it."

"The solution out-of-the-box that we established was insufficient. We had to purchase and set up OData. I don't believe that it's a great solution out-of-the-box but eventually you can get there."

"I would like to be able to copy and paste from Excel into work and assignments along with roles and hours, as opposed to having to type it out one by one."

"Our challenge will be this tool is complex. It is not necessarily easy to start and learn from the beginning. How do you get people who are not professionals to adopt it, use it, and not be mean about it?"

"Its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects is very limited. In terms of the out-of-the-box reporting for summary reports, the reporting that we typically leverage is around forecasting for resources, timesheets, and actuals, and just looking at what is the capacity. There is no real summary of what work is being done and how work is being accomplished. So, what we typically do is that we get a copy of the data files from Enterprise One daily, and then we have a team that manages the data mod outside of Enterprise One. They use data from Enterprise One as well as other additional sources to provide the reporting that we share with the management. So, we leverage a lot of Enterprise One data for reporting, but we don't use the reporting capabilities within Enterprise One. So, reporting can be improved, and they could help us make more customized reporting. I know it is very configurable out of the box, but we have to leverage an outside data mod that pulls in a lot of data from Enterprise One. So, the reporting function, and being able to customize reports, is the area that could be very beneficial."

"It would be great to see Planview incorporate agile interfacing/methods in it. Like CA Clarity and other leading PPM tools – Planview should enhance or develop the interfaces to ingrate with other market leading Agile tools."

More Planview Portfolios cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Microsoft Project's pricing a five out of ten."

"It gets expensive when having to add all of the plugins and everything that you need."

"Licensing costs vary depending on the user volume. The pricing is good, I'd rate it four out of five."

"We purchase perpetual licenses due to the high cost of subscriptions, which are about 1,000 Australian dollars."

"The license fees for the professional version, which is estimated to be approximately $1,600, and the standard version, which is approximately $1,200, may be considered expensive by some users. This is something that could be improved to make the platform more accessible to a wider audience."

"The product is not expensive. My company has opted for an annual subscription."

"It was a three-year license deal that was reconciled on a quarterly basis. It is a reasonably priced product, and I consider that we got good value for money."

"You only need a Team's license in order to use Microsoft Project within Teams, which is very helpful."

More Microsoft Project pricing and cost advice

"We have portfolio managers, resource managers, project managers, and time reporting licenses. These are the licenses that we have."

"We overbought our licenses. We looked at our needs three to four years down the road and tried based our contract on that. However, we were over aggressive. We use about a third of the licenses that we have. We're looking to adjust the makeup so we can start utilizing the amount of money that we are spending. Right now, we're overspending, and my organization is not seeing the value in Planview because we are paying so much for licenses that we're not using."

"We have unlimited licenses for all of our functionalities. Since we went global, we went with that model."

"Planview is a little pricey. From a licensing perspective, for just a simple timesheet user who does nothing in the system but reports time, the licensing is a little pricey, but you have to look at it from what it is that you get. We have 6,000 users, and I don't manage the system at all. I just have to do add them to the system. The servers, maintenance, OS levels, security patching for the OS, and all other things are not something that we maintain. So, you have to look at it from an operational perspective. It is not just the product itself. A holistic view has to be taken when you look at the product and how you're going to support it. I would have to hire an entire operation staff to bring it in-house, and at the end of the day, that might cost me more."

"Our licensing costs are about a quarter of a million dollars per year."

"In the time that I've used it, we've doubled up the amount of dollars on our intended projects."

"We have several hundred licenses. It costs us several hundred thousand dollars a year."

"When we went through that process, I believe it is competitive with others on the market. However, there are less expensive options available. It's a more premium offering at a higher price."

More Planview Portfolios pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

54%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Project?

The product's initial setup phase is easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Project?

I'm not aware of the price as we use organization-wide licenses.

See all answers

What do you like most about Planview Portfolios?

Planview Management integrates seamlessly with other tools and systems used within the organization, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, customer relationship management (CRM) syst...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Planview Portfolios?

Planview Portfolios is not too expensive. You get what you paid for.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Planview Portfolios?

Enhancements are needed in: Advanced reporting and analytics: While Planview Management provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, further enhancements could include more advanced data v...

See all answers

Comparisons

Jira vs Microsoft Project

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Project Server vs Microsoft Project

Compared 10% of the time

Asana vs Microsoft Project

Compared 8% of the time

Planisware vs Microsoft Project

Compared 7% of the time

Planview ProjectPlace vs Microsoft Project

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Project Competitors

Broadcom Clarity vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 14% of the time

LeanIX vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 10% of the time

Planisware vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 8% of the time

Planview PPM Pro vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Project Server vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 5% of the time

More Planview Portfolios Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Project

May 2025

Download Microsoft Project product report

Buyer's Guide

Planview Portfolios

May 2025

Download Planview Portfolios product report

Also Known As

Project Pro, MS Project

Planview Enterprise One, Troux

Overview

Microsoft Project helps you get started quickly and execute projects with ease. Built-in templates and familiar scheduling tools help project managers and teams stay productive.

Microsoft

Planview Portfolios offers a comprehensive platform for managing IT, project and resource management, along with strategic planning. The tool focuses on optimizing resource allocation and financial analysis, supporting global operations.

Organizations use Planview Portfolios to streamline project tracking from inception to completion, enhancing strategic alignment with corporate objectives. The tool integrates with platforms like JIRA to provide seamless workflows and supports critical business processes, including budgeting and capacity planning. Teams benefit from customized configurations and robust reporting, further supporting effective decision-making. Despite its strengths, improvements are sought in navigation, documentation, and integration capabilities.

What are the key features?

Customizable interface: Allows personalization to meet specific needs.
Comprehensive resource and financial management: Enables detailed tracking and analysis.
Robust reporting: Provides extensive data insights.
Integration with Power BI: Enhances data access for stakeholders.
Resource and capacity planning: Optimizes workforce allocation.

What benefits should users expect?

Improved strategic alignment: Supports better decision-making.
Increased operational efficiency: Streamlines project management.
Enhanced resource optimization: Ensures optimal use of workforce.
Better financial insights: Allows precise budget tracking.

In industries like IT and project management, Planview Portfolios supports complex portfolio handling, ensuring visibility across global operations. Companies in these sectors leverage its strategic planning tools for strategic alignment and resource management, integrating with existing systems for improved process efficiency.

Planview

Sample Customers

Aston Martin, ABANCA, Airbus Group, Capita, Cardiff University, City of Saskatoon, Intel, Pegasus Airlines, South Australia Power Network (SAPN), Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing

UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Project vs. Planview Portfolios

June 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Project vs. Planview Portfolios

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Project vs. Planview Portfolios and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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