We performed a comparison between Microsoft Project and Smartsheet 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."The ability to break down project phases is most valuable. Being able to align the tasks and reporting with project milestones and progress is also valuable."
"It comes with our Office 365."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is planning."
"It is easy to define timelines with Microsoft Project."
"If you work with Microsoft, it's very easy to work with this."
"The user interface is very clean."
"We have not had any problems with Microsoft's technical support. We are happy with the support."
"Being able to get a milestone schedule or a breakdown out of it is valuable. It can integrate into Visio, which is helpful."
"It is my favorite project management tool. The reason for that is that it is very flexible. It is much easier to use than Microsoft Project in terms of creating custom fields. It is very similar to Excel. So, people understand it, which makes it a little bit easier to use for most users."
"It operates as an enhanced and versatile version of Excel, offering a wide range of capabilities that allow you to accomplish various tasks and operations."
"Smartsheet offers more than Project because it's similar to a table-based, database-type system. It's like a hybrid between Excel and project software. We were able to enter the formulas and do much of the automation. We added budgets to it and linked them to a vendor page. Smartsheet let us integrate the budget into the project seamlessly. With Project, we needed to open up Excel."
"The product is easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Smartsheet are its collaboration tools, the ability to centralize and prioritize projects, and robust reporting capabilities."
"The ability to build a quick dashboard and give management insight into the progress of the project itself is probably one of the most beneficial pieces."
"The dashboard feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"Smartsheet is easy to use."
"I have no idea about the cost because it is a corporate decision."
"Collaboration is an area that needs improvements."
"Microsoft Project should include more visualization, queries to filter out data, and more reporting structures."
"The tool's deployment is complex. Integration and automation also need to be improved."
"The scalability is co-dependent on the stability of the product. We have 4000 users, and at times the product is slow."
"The collaboration has room for improvement."
"It is a traditional Waterfall-based solution, so it doesn't lend itself particularly well to Agile development. You can record Agile sprints within it, but it is not really an Agile-based product. It can store the basic information about budgets that an Agile set of work is looking to use, but that's about it."
"There are a few bugs that can affect the stability. This is typical of most applications."
"The integration with Microsoft products should be improved."
"It would be beneficial to enhance user-friendliness and make it less complex while maintaining its overall excellence as a product."
"Lacks the ability to edit attachments within the solution."
"An area for improvement in Smartsheet is that if you're in the government or you're a regulated customer, you're not allowed to use APIs due to internal restrictions, so there are specific things that you cannot connect to it. Another area for improvement in the solution is that because there's a capacity of how many records you can have, and there's a capacity of how many functions you can apply, Smartsheet has set up their system where they can force people into purchasing a $20,000 additional module that is called Control Center, that will create documents for them on the fly, so they don't use so many functions and automation. Smartsheet also needs to improve on training, because the training that is out there is very little. The solution requires a steeper learning curve. You have to do your own training and you have to work on your own solution."
"With a large quantity of data, the solution lags a bit."
"Maybe the solution could be a little bit more flexible."
"We have to manually put in every dependency in Smartsheet."
"Smartsheet could improve the UI and integrations. Some of Smartsheet's competitors have more than 2,000 integrations while Smartsheet only has approximately 40 integration applications."
Microsoft Project is ranked 2nd in Project Management Software with 77 reviews while Smartsheet is ranked 4th in Project Management Software with 33 reviews. Microsoft Project is rated 8.0, while Smartsheet is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Project writes "A stable solution that very accurately runs projects". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Smartsheet writes "Has customization, data pulling, and cross-functional global communication features; it's a secure solution". Microsoft Project is most compared with Asana, Jira, Microsoft Project Server, monday.com and Broadcom Clarity , whereas Smartsheet is most compared with ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management, Spreadsheet.com, Adobe Workfront, monday.com and Planisware. See our Microsoft Project vs. Smartsheet report.
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@Eire Zimmermann,
Smartsheet is amazingly flexible. You can configure a template project plan, and view it either as a traditional Gantt chart or as a kanban style board with multiple simultaneous swimlanes derived from any column that is configured as a drop-down list. This allows you to work with the same plan in multiple ways based upon the type of team or preference of the team.
The only thing of note that Smartsheet cannot do (or at least I did not find it yet) is to level a plan based upon resources and task priority. With the workflow engine, you can automatically send emails based upon any rule you configure. I had RACI columns for every task so I could auto-notify folks when the task was done. Very cool stuff.
Dashboards are okay but not as powerful as other tools in that each component on the page does not know about any of the other components to auto filter. Pretty limiting. I export data to another external visualization tool like Domo if the budget allows it.
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 modern automation and low-code capabilities that you will see in many SaaS PM tools today (Smartsheet, Asana, Workfront, etc.).
Being able to add simple automation with logic like, "If 'Project Status' = 'Red', then Alert XYZ Stakeholder" is made simple with Smartsheet. With this type of low-code functionality, you can begin to remove that robotic, manual work of typing up emails and sending messages from your day-to-day.
Moreover, Smartsheet's reporting capabilities are something that I have yet to see any other PM tool on the market compete with. Think reports for important launch dates, milestones, past due tasks, or at-risk items.
Then when you add the capabilities of the Smartsheet's logic-driven forms for project intake, you really have a system that can become a pseudo-ERP/workforce management tool. Not to mention Smartsheet's cost is much lower compared to MS Project since you only pay for licenses that manipulate data.
Hope this helps in some regard,
Ian
Unfortunately I have never used Microsoft Project so I can’t compare. My use with Smartsheet was pretty basic and more for project plans.