Smartsheet Reviews

We use Smartsheet for project management. We create plans for our projects using it.

There are many useful features in Smartsheet. One can easily share plans with the entire team, and it functions similarly to Microsoft Project. Creating dependencies across all tasks is smooth, and team members can make adjustments if necessary. Automation helps by simplifying some manual work, saving time and facilitating communication.

Currently, I feel that Smartsheet fulfills all my needs. However, I need to investigate more about the product to identify specific areas for improvement.

I have been familiar with Smartsheet for two years.

I haven't faced any issues with stability so far. I would rate it as a ten out of ten.

Smartsheet is pretty flexible and scalable. I would rate its scalability as eight, acknowledging that I may not be using all its capabilities and not fully aware of possible integrations with other tools or services.

The setup is quite easy. Smartsheet works on the website, and I'm not certain about a desktop version.

One person is enough to handle the installation.

Smartsheet saves time for both me and my team. Compared to Microsoft Project, which is more expensive, we save costs using Smartsheet. The savings are approximately around thirty to forty percent.

Licensing might be cheaper per user. I rate it as seven or eight due to its demanding nature. For personal use, I have a monthly subscription, while the company uses an annual basis.

I didn't notice any AI integration, perhaps because I haven't needed it for my use case. However, the ability to automatically create tasks and project timelines could be useful. Rating: 9.

Neutral

We have used Smartsheet for projects and consulting purposes. It has been implemented in various sectors like food manufacturing, meat processing plants, pharmaceutical corporations, and in consulting services with our clients.

Smartsheet has streamlined the process and increased productivity and output with projects. The intuitiveness and user-friendliness of Smartsheet make it preferable over Microsoft Project. 

Automation has improved workflow efficiency as Smartsheet moves quicker and adds necessary features for our needs.

The intuitiveness and user-friendliness of Smartsheet are very valuable. I prefer Smartsheet for its flexibility.

Although I can't pinpoint anything specific right now, there is always room for improvement. Initially, there were issues like dropdowns. Those have been overcome.

I have been using Smartsheet since September of 2019.

The stability of Smartsheet has been much better since I started. Initially, it was not very good. Now, I would rate its stability at about a seven or eight out of ten.

The scalability of Smartsheet has improved over time. Initially, it was slow. That said, I would now rate it as a seven or eight out of ten.

Customer service with Smartsheet is excellent. I have had great success in getting through to their support team, and they have been terrific over the years.

Positive

We use Microsoft Project most exclusively with my current organization, however, I prefer Smartsheet for its flexibility.

The initial setup is straightforward. It was more complex back in 2019 when I started using it, but it has since improved. I would rate it an eight on a scale of one to ten for ease of setup.

Implementation did not require extensive resources or team involvement due to its SaaS nature. It's minimal compared to other products' implementation requirements.

I couldn't provide specific data points for ROI. Smartsheet is less expensive than Microsoft Project, which is a consideration when comparing their costs.

The pricing is great and reasonable enough that I maintained my copy and bought it for my team independently.

I have tested multiple packages like Monday and Confluence but did not perform the most recent assessments.

I would recommend Smartsheet for its intuitiveness and ease of project implementation. Implementing Smartsheet on a project basis is much quicker than using Microsoft Project.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

My use cases for Smartsheet always revolve around small to medium-sized projects to define a standard project and assignment, work breakdown structure, and develop a timeline from start to finish.

I've always wanted to use the resourcing feature, but it has been super complicated and never sufficient. The overhead for capacity management has never fully realized enough value.

The dashboards are rather complex and not intuitive, requiring a full custom implementation in order to manage multiple programs. We're going to try and set that up now for this one national project, but from a pure project management perspective, Smartsheet works great as a low-cost replacement for Microsoft Project. I feel it equals and parallels the capabilities of Microsoft Project.

What I appreciate best about Smartsheet is the straight Gantt chart and its flexibility. The user interface is very customizable, allowing for easy segmentation of workstreams and leveling tasks.

Because of this customization, you can tailor your views for rapid project reporting as well. It's really about the user interface and basic project management, making it very fast.

The initial setup from a project perspective is very easy, simple, and fast.

However, from a reporting and dashboard perspective, it definitely requires more customization, but the end result of the dashboards is very flexible and customizable. There is value in developing those dashboards.

Out of the box, it provides a five-level setup, but after a full customization, you can reach a level eight of satisfaction. It does require an investment.

I've been using Smartsheet for over 15 years.

I have never had any issues with stability; it has always been good.

My impressions on scalability are that it is very good. Definitely, building out a project plan and multi-level integrated projects, such as a program with integrations and references, is very mature and capable.

I think their support team is low quality. They're low and lack response, which is not good for customers. I wouldn't rely on their customer support at all.

I would give the support team a three out of ten.

Neutral

Using Smartsheet is very easy. The initial setup from a project perspective is very easy, simple, and fast.

I do recommend it to other people. I highly recommend Smartsheet for all projects based on budget. For me, it is second to Planisware.

Overall, I would give Smartsheet an eight out of ten. It's my go-to at the moment. This review rates Smartsheet 8 out of 10.

We use Smartsheet to track projects, portfolio activity, and program activity. It also completes dashboards for upper management and team meetings and serves as a clearing house for items we're considering funding. It's mainly used for business operations.

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.

I want to improve baselines, predecessor-successor relationships, and the ability to use manual starts and stops while keeping relationships intact. Changing dates and durations can be convoluted, unlike in Microsoft Project. There are many things I'm used to in other software that don't happen in Smartsheet. It's offset by how easy it is to link sheets and pull data at higher levels, but figuring out why I can't change data sometimes can be frustrating.

I have been using the tool for three years. 

The solution is stable, with only two or three minor incidents in the past year where something was wrong and had to be fixed, but it wasn't a major disruption. It can bind up like any Windows application.

I'd rate the scalability as ten out of ten. It's very scalable, and additional features and add-ons are available. I'm in the early adapter program and can try advanced features before they're rolled out.

I've used technical support before, mainly to figure out how to do things, not due to system issues. The support team is very responsive, knowledgeable, and can effectively provide solutions or workarounds.

Positive

I've used various project management solutions, including Microsoft Project, an early version of Smartsheet about ten to fifteen years ago, Jira, and Primavera. I mainly settled on Microsoft Project for most of my work in the early 2000s.

The main differences between Microsoft Project and Smartsheet are that Microsoft Project is more for engineers, offering full access to all features and the ability to script using programming language. It's like a PC versus a Macintosh. The downside of Microsoft Project is its clunky reporting. Smartsheet has a user interface that's more limited but easier to use. It has automated features and is fairly easy to understand, but you must stay within its limitations. Smartsheet doesn't allow scripting, which I consider an essential feature. It looks like Excel but isn't as capable.

For the initial setup, I'd rate it a seven out of ten. Unlike Microsoft Project, it doesn't have much of a learning curve to get started. It's fairly straightforward, like Excel, but becomes difficult for more sophisticated tasks. We use a cloud-based enterprise system, but I'm unsure if it's a hybrid cloud. Our IT department set it up.

Deployment started about two years ago, maybe a bit longer, and is still ongoing. It began with a few key people figuring it out on their own. Now, the tool offers more customer service and training sessions. We have a subscription that lets us use direct instructors about ten times. They host classes every week.

Our deployment was done directly with Smartsheet and our personnel, not through a third party.

The return is good regarding time efficiency, better collaboration, and integration.

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.

The company I work for is very conservative with AI adoption due to sensitive information. My only exposure to AI in the company is through Microsoft Teams' Copilot for meeting notes and action items.

I recommend tools based on what the user needs to do. It's appropriate for simpler tasks and business operations. For more complex projects with 500 or more high-level steps, worldwide integration, or engineering build-outs, I'd recommend Microsoft Project.

Overall, I'd rate Smartsheet a four out of ten based on my personal experience because it holds me back compared to what I can do in Microsoft Project.

The only benefit of the solution is collaboration. When I assign tasks, my team members get an email, and they can click on it and update their tasks. Smartsheet’s reporting capabilities help us with capacity planning.

Smartsheet is a really good tool for collaboration. If I put somebody’s name into an assignment, they get an email. They know what they’re being assigned, and they can access it. I don't have to run around chasing people. The emails help in workflow efficiency. In terms of overall planning, capacity consolidation across plans is quite useful, but it takes a lot of effort to get it to work properly. It's not that intelligent, but it's better than Microsoft Project. From a workflow perspective, it's pretty powerful.

I do not like the solution. From a project management and planning point of view, it's awful. The product must adopt some of the functionalities that are already in Microsoft Project. They must adopt functionalities like auto-scheduling, linking tasks together automatically, and scheduling based on the dependencies.

We have to manually put in every dependency in Smartsheet. It is incredibly annoying. In Microsoft Project, we just highlight the two that we want to link and click the link option, and it makes them dependent.

I have been using the solution for six months.

The tool’s stability is fine.

The tool is very easy to scale. It seems unlimited. It's certainly within our requirements. Five or six people use it within one business unit in our organization. There might be more users in other teams. It is an engineering company. So, we use the product throughout the world.

Microsoft Project is way quicker for actual active planning. We have moved to Smartsheet because we've got a geographically distributed team. Now, I create the project in Microsoft Project and put it into Smartsheet for collaboration. Microsoft Project is way more functionally rich, so things are quicker. The ROI on Microsoft Project would be higher than on Smartsheet.

There is no deployment needed. We just create Smartsheet and share. It does not require maintenance.

The solution is too expensive. For what I use it for, it's too expensive. I wouldn't pay for it myself. I would prefer to buy Microsoft Project or use Zoho Projects.

I am currently evaluating Zoho Projects for my own use.

Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

It's mostly for project management, scheduling, and planning.

Smartsheet mainly helps with project planning, maintaining and updating the plan, identifying and documenting risks, and staying on top of the plan.

It's very flexible when creating and modifying plans. It's also quite intuitive.

Integration with other tools. Smartsheet itself is good and not costly, but integration could enhance project plan management. For example, updating the plan with the help of triggers from other tools.

There isn't much automation at this time. Improving flexibility in creating and updating plans dynamically would be helpful. There's not much scope for automation right now.

I have been using it for a year. 

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. Keep in mind, it's only a project planning tool, which is SaaS. It's a single terminal; there's not much else to it.

Scalability is good, but you have to purchase a license for every user. We have licenses for 50 users. It was a small project, and we wanted something simple and effective.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I used Clarity. It's very costly and meant for a huge scale. It's not suitable for a small project that only needs a planning tool.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

It can be done in-house. There's not much specialized knowledge needed.

It was good with project delivery times and cost savings. It was mainly to communicate project plan changes and updates across the board. 

There are multiple ways of using it, and it's cheap. If there's a change in the plan, we update it, and it automatically notifies stakeholders.

It's a subscription model and a very effective way of planning any project. You pay about $25 per month for each user. If you want to integrate with other tools, it will not work. But if you just need a planning tool, it's a low-cost and effective option.

There's a trial version and a free version. But if you need additional features, you have to pay. Each license costs a decent amount, $25 per month or something.

It lacks integration. If someone is looking for a standalone project planning tool, I would recommend it. But if you want to integrate with other dynamic activity trackers, like Jira, I would suggest using something else.

Leadership changes occur every two years in my company, which is a public organization. This includes changes in CEOs, directors, leaders, coordinators, and other positions. We need to track strategic cycles, projects, and portfolios with each change. Each project involves a large team collaborating to understand needs and find solutions.

Granting access to Smartsheet is much simpler. Anyone can access it with just a link and password. Smartsheet also offers intelligent forms, allowing us to collect project proposals easily. Before our first meeting, I can review initial project ideas submitted through these forms. Additionally, attaching files is straightforward - no need to navigate through menus. The search function is also nice. 

The Gantt chart is a valuable tool for public organizations. There is a significant emphasis on external control compliance. Therefore, with this feature, you change the content in every cell in the sheet and in the timeline, and you can track and see the day, time, and the person changing the value. Furthermore, you can choose whether to display a PDF or an HTML page. It helps to update documents quickly. The tool is easy to use.

Every feature for text mining, even process mining, would be a plus. We have about two hundred contract management events daily. First, I share specific documents. I talk about the search function because we assume it has a thorough search when we read the catalog. But when you test it, you realize it doesn't search within attachments. So, it's a great search function, but you need the brand folder. It has many options and can become complex.

I have been using the product for a year. 

I rate Smartsheet's stability a ten out of ten.

I worked for Siemens in Brazil, the United States, and Germany. They used to have about half a million employees recorded in Primavera. It was nice, very rich, safe, and secure. I have also used Microsoft Project which was great for rigid timelines but not suitable for cost management. I never used Excel.

The tool's deployment is easy since it's online. It takes only ten minutes to complete.

I have used the tool's trial version.

We're using Smartsheet at the enterprise level throughout the organization. We did a test at the corporate office before moving forward. In the beginning, we were only using Smartsheet to help our corporate users open new facilities and convert warehouse management systems. Also, we used it in implementation at sites with new customers. Eventually, we began using Smartsheet for entire projects. We transitioned from Microsoft Project to Smartsheet for all of our projects.

I'm consulting with a company that uses Microsoft Project, which isn't cloud-based. Smartsheet is cloud-based, so it's more accessible. We need not worry about saving versions of the file when someone makes changes. For example, Microsoft Project locked up while someone was saving a file, and we couldn't access the original file properly. 

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. 

Smartsheet should continue to expand the spreadsheet-type functionality because it's limited currently. Most business users are familiar with Excel and Office, so Smartsheet should adopt a similar way of navigating the program. 

When you're moving through cells or fields, you can't move with your arrows flipping back between things. If you hit enter, it doesn't do the same thing it does in Excel.

I have been using Smartsheet for about three years.

The stability is excellent. 

Smartsheet is scalable. We deployed it in 47 large distribution centers across the United States, and we had six projects running on it. The corporate office could view all of the projects at once because the program management option is terrific.

Smartsheet support is fantastic. It's better than any I've ever dealt with before. They could answer any question I had about the functionality in a given use case. They were serious superusers. It wasn't just like, "Well, let me check." They actually knew the answer. We'd have a resolution in minutes because of how they had it set up for our organization.

Overall, setting up Smartsheet is pretty straightforward, but sometimes the project settings and the Office-style functionality limit people from getting the information as quickly as possible.

I don't know that that's a Smartsheet issue as much as it is a user issue. They have to understand that when somebody requests to open a project, they need to accept it, activate it, and move forward quickly. 

The cost varies based on the number of users and the commitment that we gave them. I think it was reasonable. I can't remember the exact cost, but it's less than Microsoft Project.

I rate Smartsheet nine out of 10. Smartsheet has room for improvement, but they're moving in the right direction. If you're planning to implement Smartsheet, you need to take the time to prepare upfront. Depending on the organization's size, you need to gain experience and train some superusers. 

You need a few people to learn the ins and outs and get in-depth training in the specific features they will utilize. Learn as much as possible about the system and do a lot of hands-on training right out of the gate.

The solution is primarily used for project management. I've coordinated a large educational program that has multiple contributors and multiple organizers. It's a weekly program and we use it to outline our curriculum and keep track of the steps in the curriculum. I've used it for my own research projects as well in more of a traditional project management kind of way with tax, people, contingencies, et cetera.

The ability to update in real-time before meetings is great. 

The ability to connect documents to builds or whatever that are being worked on or related is helpful.

Multiple people can contribute to it. Instead of the project manager or myself having to collect information from people and then put it in, they can just go in and update their stuff weekly or whatever by themselves.

The initial setup is easy. 

At one point we were trying to use it to organize a curriculum for students to just have the weekly stuff. We kind of ran into trouble doing this. It's not really designed for that. What we were trying to do is give them a real-time syllabus with pre-readings and activities and stuff embedded. It ended up getting really complicated.

They also had access, and while there’s probably a way to not give them access, I didn’t know how to set that. I just wanted to let them download. It got complex. It wasn’t just people updating what they were working on. It was something else and it didn’t work.

If there was some way to store more complex files in the system, or if there was a back-end structure where you could store files, that would be ideal. We use Box to store recordings, for example, of sessions and stuff. We’d like to store it in this solution. We already integrate Smartsheet into Teams for updates and stuff. That works well.

I've used the solution for a while. I've used it over the last 12 months at least.

It's very stable. The only time I've had a problem is when somebody has made a mistake in something.

The solution can scale. 

We're coordinating multiple speakers sometimes and it works for that. 

For us and how we use it, it's also finite. We have eight sessions a week. There's a limitation to how many weeks you do in a year. However, in terms of availability, in terms of people that handle it or multiple people working on it, it would be fine to scale. It's easy to explain that process, whereas Teams is a little bit more difficult. We're always managing more in the past, or on the shared drive and it's geared to that.

I don't know how many people in our organization use the solution since we work in teams. On my team, the Smartsheet that we use for this particular program has probably 12 people dealing with it at any given time. However, there are directors and higher-ups that may look at it just to see where they are. There are likely other people who need to use it as well. 

I used technical support once or twice during the initial setup when we first started using it. We loved it so we moved everything to Smartsheet - all our curriculum development items. There are now multiple threads. It actually worked way better than a shared drive.

However, the setup was about two years ago, and as I recall, I was stuck somewhere in the setup. They were helpful. I never thought beyond that. I don't remember being particularly bad or particularly awesome.

We also use Microsoft Teams. It's harder to set up yet has more items we can leverage. 

The implementation process is really easy. Comparatively, we use Teams for a lot of things and Teams is a lot harder to set up. That said, they have sharing capabilities, different types of files, and other items as well.

The deployment took a couple of weeks. It's continuously being upgraded since we do a curriculum over the year typically. We don't have speakers or topics sometimes for the end or at the beginning of the curriculum. However, how we use it is really just for project management purposes for our program. Therefore, the initial deployment would be a week or two, depending on schedules. Then we have a team meeting to go through where everyone is on the sessions that they're organizing. It's all so continuous. The session organization is ongoing. That said, there are multiple steps, including an initial phone call with the speaker, curriculum development, readings postings (we use Blackboard to manage our LMS), et cetera. 

We organize and it tracks everything from the beginning to the thank you note to the speaker and the evaluation. There are about eight steps and we keep track of them. We have about six people that are involved in organizing the curriculum. They're those product leads and there are maybe six weeks worth of curriculum that is in production at any given time.

We’ve seen an ROI. It’s effective particularly if you have teams that are virtual or located in different places. Just having something web-based, cloud-based, and easily operational, yet looks similar to Excel is useful. It's easier for different levels and understanding that people have of technology. It's not too fancy, however, it has features that give you what you want. When people are not co-located, it's a great solution as everybody can enter their stuff by a certain time in the week. The process is more self-managed so it's not as dependent on the project manager.

I'm sure there's a license involved, however, that's handled through the institution. The institution just pays for their licensees and then they hand it out, and it gets charged to the program. I'm not in finance, and I don't have access to pricing information directly.

I was part of early discussions. We were working virtually. The technology pieces of the program are actually run through a government agency by logging into a VPN. So the team moved to being remote from being 100% on the ground, basically, in the office. We needed a solution that would work for people working for multiple sites or states and not go down. The team was all over the place and they needed something that could be there with them and not go down.

This fit the bill. It's worked really well. If people are out of town, they can update stuff. It's more easily accessible. I don't know if we would've moved to it in the pandemic. We were using a shared drive in Teams and we moved to Teams too during a pandemic. 

The web-based piece of it, or the cloud-based piece of it, was a good feature. And then it was just simple. You can set up the sheet and it's dummy-proof in terms of putting stuff in. In contrast, if 12 people put something on an Excel sheet it got messy. I used to spend half a day just cleaning up the sheet and making sure the dates were right.

It did make my life a whole lot easier. You can select and limit how the cells look in Smartsheets. For example, you don't get numbers where you want letters, letters where you want numbers, et cetera. It just made things easier and offered less likelihood of wrong information getting entered. That's why we adopted it.

I cannot say which version of the solution we’re using. I’m not sure. 

How I can access the solution depends on which organization I’m working with. I can access it through a VPN or I can access it through web mail.

Compared to even when I use Microsoft Project, for example, which I would probably use for a curriculum thing if you were collecting updates as a project manager, so people would email them, you're going to be chasing them around. Plus, you're entering all the data before you can really do anything with it. This solution is really great in that sense, as everybody has access to it once you set it up and can start entering information themselves. And it's easy to set up, so it's not hard.

For project management, it's just a good solution that's fairly simple to implement. It doesn't require a lot of like upgrades or maintenance from the project manager. For large programs where there are multiple contributors, or multiple people working on different tasks, it's a good solution. It actually makes your work as a project manager a lot easier.

I’d rate the solution nine out of ten. It’s simple to use, easy to set up, and really works for non-co-located environments. In academia you often have people running off to conferences and stuff, even if you are in the office. The ability to have multiple users on the sheet at the same time so they can enter their own information is great.

I’m a customer and end-user.