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.

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.

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.

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.

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. From my experience, most people don't like using Microsoft Project if they need to create any kind of custom column. I was never unable to create the functionality I needed.

It has got a really nice workflow engine. It is helpful if you want to let people know based on a date or criteria. Anytime a new project was submitted to the project intake table, I would get an email. You can also send the email to Slack or a whole host of different types of targets. If a task was due next week, I could have the system send an email that says, "Hey, you've got a task coming up next week," and then, if it was late, I could have it send an email or a Slack message to somebody. That was very helpful.

The main challenge with Smartsheet is that when you start putting components on the Smartsheet dashboard, they don't know about each other. So, if I filter something in one widget, or if I click on a region or a project ID, the other widget or component and the visualization that's on that dashboard don't change. It doesn't know about the other component.

It probably also doesn’t allow you to level resources in a project plan. So, if I assign five tasks to you and they all occur on the same day, in Microsoft Project, I can level them. Because you can only do one thing in a day, it would spread those out over five days, instead of all piled up on a single day, but I don't think Smartsheet had that.

I started with it back in 2019. In less than a year, I was a power user. I was doing presentations to the broader user group about all the different solutions we were building in our division. So, I'm considered fairly proficient at this tool.

It is stable. I've never had any issues.

It is scalable. I never reached any data limits. I used to know what the data limits were. My suspicion is that if you're looking to have a massive data warehouse, you're probably not going to use Smartsheet, but if you're building some processes and supporting some processes that are fairly light with basic notification and things like that, it can handle enough data. It can handle a corporate PMO and all the tasks in a fairly easy manner. So, it seems scalable,  but I don't know the upper limits. We never ran into any data constraints.

It is good. I did have some issues from time to time. They weren't so significant, but they managed those in a professional and timely manner.

I also work with Domo. Achilles heel for me is that Smartsheet's dashboards are missing a key piece of functionality, which is the whole reason I have to use Domo. When you put components on the Smartsheet dashboard, they are not aware of each other. That's the beauty of Domo where every component that you have on your dashboard is listening, and if it knows how to, it'll change the data it is displaying based on how you interact with the other components on the dashboard on that page, whereas Smartsheet doesn't do that. For example, in Domo, you can pick a project ID and go filter down the entire dashboard just to show data about a given project. In Smartsheet, I'd have to create a whole separate dashboard. If you want to show a report for a bunch of different regions or a bunch of different departments, you might have to create 5 to 10 separate different dashboards to support the company. If you are asked to add a new pie chart there that shows the number of tasks, or the tasks broken down by red, yellow, or green status, you would have to add that in 5 to 10 different places. Instead of just adding it once on one dashboard and having it work and filter for every single project, like in Domo, you'd have to go and update 5 to 10 different dashboards.

They do have a piece of software called Control Center that helps manage that. It is an automation engine. If you have built your solution using their Control Center automation tool, and you change a dashboard there, it can automatically go and update the existing dashboards that are out there, but I haven't used that. It is an expensive component. In one of my companies where we had this, I was the very first person outside of the company trained in the Smartsheet Control Center. It is quite nice. It is relatively new. It has been around only for less than four or five years, but it is a little more complicated to work with. Generally, you hire a Smartsheet consultant to configure your Control Center and create solutions using that automation tool, but I was able to do it for my company. They had bought all of the components. So, I was able to use that along with a bunch of other components. They had some upsell components, such as DataMesh, Data Uploader, and Control Center, but in my last company, they hadn't paid for those things. So, using its dashboards to support the entire business required a lot of maintenance. Typically, I don't have a lot of people in my department. So, I wasn't willing to try and use that because it would've taken a lot more maintenance. I was able to convince the organization to pay for Domo because I could finish the solution by myself and be able to maintain it because I only needed a single dashboard and not a whole bunch of different dashboards.

Power BI, in my opinion, is very competitive as a tool. Microsoft is pretty good at making things reasonably usable. It works well with Excel, and it has an Excel-type metaphor. It has similar functionality to Domo where components on the page know about each other, as long as your data model is set up properly. My instinct is that if they're not careful, Smartsheet could lose a lot of business to Power BI without a stronger dashboard solution.

I didn't set it up. There was a whole separate group for that. Both companies that I came to already had people using it. In both cases, I managed and administered the licenses just because it was really pretty straightforward. Buying new licenses, getting those into the system, managing the deployment of those licenses, and other things like that were pretty straightforward and pretty light work. I wasn't really a true administrator, but we did the single sign-on setup. That was all fairly straightforward. When you buy a software-as-a-service tool, generally, you can start using things pretty quickly. So, we were able to get started right away while we continued to configure and manage the licenses and configure the system.

If I'm not mistaken, it was pretty manageable. It was about 200 bucks a seed. The business really felt a strong need for it. So, it was viewed as a safer and more straightforward cost that we were willing to pay as compared to Domo, which took some convincing.

My advice would be to not be intimidated by this tool. If you know Excel, you know 80% of how to work with Smartsheet. It is quite flexible. The main difference is you can more strongly type the columns, which is a good thing because you're ensuring that the data records that you are producing and managing contain the data that they should. It is good data validation. You end up with cleaner and stronger data that's easier to work with. So, you shouldn't be intimidated by that. It is so similar to Excel, but you get the additional workflow.

From a project perspective, the only thing you couldn't do is be able to level resources in a project plan, but it has got all the other project features. It has got a really simple workflow engine to notify people and communicate. So, it has a lot of power, and people should not be intimidated by it. It is pretty straightforward, and they should feel like they can get up to speed quickly in it. If you're used to working with Excel and other tools like that, you can get into Smartsheet and be productive very quickly.

I'd give it a 9 out of 10. It is a great tool for the things that I use it for. It would be a 10 or an 11 if the dashboard components were more aware of each other. If it had the same capabilities as Domo, it would be a top-tier tool.