Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Notion 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Notion
Ranking in Project Management Software
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Knowledge Management Software (2nd), Document Automation Software (3rd)
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 August 2025, in the Project Management Software category, the mindshare of Notion is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Smartsheet is 4.6%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Project Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

Iván Fanego - PeerSpot reviewer
Creates customizable systems and improve team collaboration
Notion is a very flexible and customizable platform, allowing users to create whatever they need. The most impactful feature for project management is the ability to invite multiple client stakeholders without complication. Once I understand the basics, it's easy to use despite an initial learning curve. It also significantly improves team collaboration through customized views and visualizations of data.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Notion has a lot of integrations."
"Notion has very strong integration capabilities."
"I like the high level of customization in Notion."
"I rate Notion a ten out of ten."
"It is easy to use and very intuitive compared to Microsoft Project."
"It is easy to use, and I love its UI."
"The product has a valuable feature for databases. It has a table and a calendar view and saves various documents in the system."
"Notion is a very flexible and customizable platform, allowing users to create whatever they need."
"The tool reduces manual labour and it is user-friendly."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"The solution is scalable."
"It's very user friendly."
"To me, one of the most powerful features of Smartsheet is being able to email others."
"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 solution has subtasks and a rollup."
"The most valuable features of Smartsheet are its collaboration tools, the ability to centralize and prioritize projects, and robust reporting capabilities."
 

Cons

"The only problem I experience is that it often hangs."
"User management needs improvement."
"The linked view of database, along with the sharing and permission settings, are areas with shortcomings in the solution that need improvement."
"The product could be integrated with external platforms."
"The platform's documentation feature needs improvement."
"Notion's UI needs improvement."
"It can be difficult to contact the people at Notion."
"If the internet or Notion's servers are down, I cannot access information. This is a big disadvantage."
"They provide a limited number of sheets which is not enough."
"There isn't much automation at this time."
"Smartsheet needs to improve the user interface."
"Lacks the ability to edit attachments within the solution."
"You were forced to create a new tab rather than add another sheet."
"Smartsheet could be improved to be a ticketing system. It would be nice to have a system to do everything."
"There are some pain points for me. Other people use it a little differently, but I would like to be able to do a little more with it. I would like database functionality with it wherein if I bring in several Excel spreadsheets of data and load them into Smartsheets, I should be able to make a correlation between an index field and run a report against those two. I can do it, but it's a little clunky. So, I need a little more experience to feel comfortable doing that."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing structure is quite reasonable, and the basic plan covers the most essential features."
"I rate the product's pricing a three out of ten. We only need to pay for it if we use it in the workspace."
"The product has good pricing."
"Notion is free to use."
"I pay around $100 per year."
"The product's pricing depends on the usage plans."
"It's pretty affordable."
"Notion offers a free plan that covers most functionalities. Clients are only prompted to upgrade if they require AI capabilities, priced at $10 for unlimited usage, or if they need to add team members, typically around $10 per member."
"I believe a licensed user costs between 300 to 400 euros."
"This licensing is straightforward and they charge per user."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is less expensive than Microsoft Project for enterprise or Oracle Primavera by an order of magnitude. If you buy a Microsoft Project license, it's probably $300 or so by itself, whereas Smartsheet is probably less than $50 per head."
"Smartsheet can be low-priced, with personal subscriptions around eight dollars a month, but I imagine it gets pricier for enterprise systems. Microsoft Project can be more expensive."
"Smartsheet only requires licenses for project managers. When we were using Asana, we had to purchase a license for everyone who wanted to access their tasks and use the system. That gets costly fast. It was one of the main reasons we left Asana. As Asana and these other tools scale, they become way more expensive."
"For a normal license, like the one I had: I had my own Smartsheet because I wanted to play with it and I didn't want to mess with what I was doing in Verizon, so I paid $200 monthly, and it gave me all the same functionalities, so I could do whatever I wanted for $200. The problem is if you have anyone else working on it or deploying on it, it's $200 a month for every single person who's deployed on it, that's working on it as an owner or an administrator, so owners and administrators are the only ones who can change, edit, and add data to worksheets and columns. Depending on the size of your organization, Smartsheet can be costly. As for implementing its Control Center, Smartsheet forces you to have three people come in: it's a minimum of three people from Smartsheet for three months who will provide you the solutions for the Control Center side, and that's $150 an hour, so it can become very expensive. For my company, not having the Control Center would save on the setup fees and then the $20,000 a year, because the Control Center of Smartsheet is a yearly subscription of $20,000."
"There would be more extensive usage if the solution were cheaper. It's really expensive right now, and that's why we provide a few licenses for admins. The rest of them are just users without admin privileges."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Project Management Software solutions are best for your needs.
864,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Media Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Notion?
I like the high level of customization in Notion.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Notion?
The licensing and setup cost for Notion is affordable for us as a small company.
What needs improvement with Notion?
The main problem with Notion is that it's not flexible enough for all of the use cases we intend to address. For instance, it is challenging to focus on a single KPI as it's mandatory to have a cha...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Startups like Loom, Mixpanel, Blinkist, Adobe, Deel and Education facilities such as USC, Dartmouth and The University of Chicago.
Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about Notion vs. Smartsheet and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.