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Smartsheet Reviews: 4.4/5 — Solid Choice
Priding itself as the trusted work management platform of over 90% of Fortune 100 companies, Smartsheet is a modern work management software that enables businesses to manage projects, automate processes and workflows, and scale up to enterprise-level portfolios and programs. It offers a robust set of views, dashboards, reports, and workflows to track and capture project plans, schedules, and resources. Smartsheet easily integrates with a number of third-party apps and software to allow teams to integrate the platform into their current way of working. Enterprise-grade, it’s one of the most secure work management software in the marketplace, giving managers and IT teams visibility and granular control over data and access.
| Capabilities |
API
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
Small Business
Mid Market
Enterprise
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Mobile Android, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone |
| Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
Smartsheet Pros and Cons
- Data-driven automation for more efficient workflows
- Easily customizable platform
- A highly visual solution makes task tracking easier
- Critical task management features help drive productivity at scale
- Reliable automation of critical business processes for team and projects
- No time tracking feature
- Doesn’t offer an auto-save option
- Limited calendar view
- No time tracking feature
Compare Smartsheet with other popular tools in the same category.
I liked that multiple members of your team are able to view what you're working on
It's really complicated (at least the project I was working on) It was difficult to tell what was worked on and what wasn't, lots of color coding and assignments.
We used it to manage a project with a group of 20, we were building and designing a local park. It was nice that everyone could go on and see our progress, but I didn't want to mess with anything with fear of getting something wrong or coding it improperly.
It is useful for sharing sheets with other members in your team. Also,it is easy to use and well built
It needs a lot of improvements such as to hyperlink a email address - you can not do it in the Smartsheet. There is a work around that is manual and is not preferred.
We use it to share sheets to other members of our team.
It is a fairly user-friendly too. It mimics the type of documents you're used to using, such as Word/Google Docs or Excel/Google Sheets, so there's not a huge learning curve.
From what my company uses Smartsheet for, it just seems like a glorified Google Sheet. All of our shared documents are already hosted in Google Drive, so I don't see a real need for Smartsheet.
We use Smartsheet to upload our sales schedule and revenue, comparing year over year. It presents that data clearly.
Quick to get going, easy to use and collaborative
Duped into thinking its as powerful as Excel - it's not!
Sharing tabular data for status updates
I like Smartsheet's detailed toolbar, which keeps all of my formatting options at my fingertips, as well as the fact that I can see all of my "Sheets" as tabs within one window.
My team has found that we have to refresh the page if more than one of us is working on a sheet in order to see each other's additions- it doesn't allow for real-time collaboration, which is frustrating.
We organize a list of projects using Smartsheet, and it allows us to utilize a rating system and then sort them. This has helped us to prioritize the projects that we deem most important and take the "pulse" of our team.
I loved that it was your standard Gantt chart format and that you could visually see the project deliverables and timeline differently. I also enjoyed setting up the relationships between tasks, that was easy.
It was very difficult to setup and manage tasks. If I had one change to make that affected multiple items it seemed I had to make multiple changes. It was hard to relate tasks that weren't necessarily things that had to be done first, second or third.
Better project management of tasks and timelines with large scaled projects. None. We used this for a few months on a large scaled project, but ended up canceling our subscription once that project ended. We didn't see any clear benefits I paying the subscription to help us manage projects better. Its easy to use something like Google Sheets free Gantt extension.
The ability to share files with the rest of my team.
Slow saving times, lack of formulas or formatting like Excel,
We wanted a tool that promotes sharing of work processes among team members. This platform was helpful in constructing timelines and managing multiple campaigns at one time.
I like that multiple user can have access to the smart sheet.
It is not as user friendly as Microsoft Project
our sole use is for scheduling purposes.
This program provides an adjustableformat that allows you to create a customized table for whatever data you may need, no matter how much. It is great for categorizing content.
It was difficult to manage versions with multiple users. The documetn became lengthy and repetitious and therefore very difficult to use. It was too easy to replicate tasks and assign them to different categories which made it difficult to truly track status and users became quickly and easily confused.
We used it for cross-team task management for a major conference. series. We had about 45 people using the document to manage 300+ individual tasks and the project overall.
I don't know if I could rightfully say that I like something "best" for Smartsheet, but more so that I dislike something the least. Smartsheet claims that one of its primary attractions is acting as a cloud-based solution for project management from estimates to timelines. Yes, it is cloud-based, and yes it can be used for project management on a handful of levels. That is the extent to which I am willing to say it has a "best" performance criteria.
The tool has barely kept up with design updates as others have progressed leagues ahead. At this point even MS Project looks better than this thing. Even a basic Excel sheet looks better, and with the exception of not being able to attach a file to a specific row in Excel or a few other collaboration needs, Excel actually performs better. Smartsheet's pricing is disproportionate to the value it provides, in a bad way. It's honestly far too much per user for the number of sheets permitted. Aside from design, the functionality based on a backend where instead of a static spreadsheet, you are building data on the front end that is being fed directly into an online database on the back end in its raw form. This means that you are EXTREMELY limited in terms of formatting and functions/features that you might otherwise try to use to solve your problems via Excel or MS Project. Features that are intended to make your life easier in the short run, make your life harder in the long run. For instance, the "Duration" "Start Date" and "End Date" columns which populate the Gantt chart view have drag and drop dependency capabilities in the Gantt view. But you can't do anything else with them there. You must delete and edit them from within the database cell in the "Precursors" column. Really. REALLY. Annoying. The list could go on and on, but I won't.
Currently, none that I couldn't accomplish via Excel or another cloud-based solution such as Teamwork PM.
I really appreciate all of the different customizations that are available. You can create all sorts of ways to input information into the different line items. I also like the ability to link line items across sheets.
The main problem for me is real time updates. If I were to choose, I would just use a google spreadsheet because real time updates are that important to me. There are a ton of features but it takes a long time to get things set up. I also don't really love how I navigate between sheets that aren't used all of the time. I can only see 5 sheets at a time across the top area and have to click 'Home' and navigate to my other sheets.
Linking items across sheets has helped us a lot to stay organized with sprint planning. We put something in the 'Request' sheet and can just link it right over to the 'Sprint Plan' sheet. As we update the Sprint Plan sheet it updates the request sheet which is very nice.
smartsheet works best with a small set of users. It allows the users to interact with the customers real-time and allows sharing.
smartsheet does not scale well with large number of users, as it has to process large number of users at the same time.
interacting in real-time with a large number of users
I really didn't find smartsheets very user friendly and wouldn't recommend it.
I didn't really like anything about smartsheets.
We were trying to solve a 1 location for all info and it just didn't solve that problem.
Spreadsheets link between each other nicely
The sales team lies about what's included and wait until you sign on to hit you with a $35,000 extra fee for the governance features. Support is awful. They outsource it to low-cost countries and take several days to provide resolutions that leave us unable to log into SmartSheet. I've never had any other company let a show-stopping issue go on for so many days without any resolution.
It's allowing teams to work together on projects without spreadsheets disconnecting from each other, like they sometimes do with SharePoint.
The on-line info looked like it would work to convert existing worksheets to this format. So we purchased licenses and training to help us convert. The trainer droned on and on and never really helped us to convert. So we called and requested what we paid for and were told the salesperson was wrong and what we purchased was what we were getting. So we tried to get what we asked for and paid for and went in circles. We never acclimated to using the system and we spent almost $3000 for nothing. Terrible communication and customer service.
Misled from the beginning. Overpaid and underutilized due to lack of training capabilities of the trainers. Don't believe what they tell you.
NONE - terrible waste of money and time.
Smartsheets has a very user-friendly UI. It is easy for people who are not particularly tech-savvy to access and use the basic functionality. So if you have people that struggle with spreadsheets SmartSheets is a good product.
SmartSheets is not nearly as robust as other services that cost significantly less. There are fee alternatives to SmartSheets that can do more and you never have to pay for additional functionality.
In all honesty, when we transitioned to SmartSheets we were told that it would do everything that our previous product could do and more. It only took a few days to see that that was not true. We had to totally redesign our procedures and even scrap a few services that we had been providing to accommodate the limitations of SmartSheets. Rather that solve problems for us, it created new ones.
the platform is great to use, user friendly once you get the hang of it .
the emoloyees , all departments are unhelpful, have no regard to the customer
customer reporting
Being able to collaborate with my internal team
The organization is wack. Nothing really lines up with what others are doing in real time. Auto refresh would be nice.
I am not really sure what isuues we are trying to solve honestly
What I like about Smarsheets is it really modern features involving 1) Smartsheet's collaborative features, such as real-time updates, comments, and file attachments, which facilitate teamwork and communication. 2) I really like Flexibility and Customization that Smartsheet offers with a wide range of templates and the ability to create custom workflows and project structures to suit different business needs. 3) Its Project Management Capabilities is really efficient most times as it provides must have features like Gantt charts, task dependencies, and automated workflows. 4) As someone who started new, I was really impressed with the Smartsheet ease of use.
I have had issues with opening the MS office Project files with smartsheets and have found that dates and dependencies get changed sometimes. I think that is something that can be improved as most big organizations still use MS project and we mostly get those files shared with us . Thus that integration needed to be made more efficeint.
It is my tool to go to for project management work. I have had really easy time sharing this tool with colleages and teaching them and thus this is very easy to adapt.
You can attach files/documents to the sheets easily You can create spreadsheet-type documents You can send email reminders and people can respond and the information goes directly into the sheet
- It's not intuitive - search is not specific enough (you can just search one sheet) - it's difficult to add information - the sheets don't "connect" so everything is separate and in silos
SmartSheet was originally supposed to help with gather all the relevant information that we use and put it in one location so we would easily have access to it. The challenge with SmartSheet is that it creates separate siloed sheets and the information gets lost.
The dashboards look very nice and have a good feel .
The flow and setup has some work needed.
Currently it is not solving any problems that we were seeing with exce.
It offers most of what you need and is quite sophisticated.
It's too complicated for what I need or can understand.
Managing projects with multiple tasks, deadlines, etc
The conditional formatting attribute allows users to automate processes.
I dislike the column view, particularly when too many items are present.
NA
hmmm can't say I like this tool, compared to other options it is not the most useful.
It is not very "smart". Don't like I have to renumber everything if I delete a row. You have to constantly save things because if by accident to go back you loose everything. Overall it is not a smart useful tool.
None, just creating more busy work distracting from actual project management
Nothing really. It's web based? Need more characters.
It's an Excel wanna be. Just use Excel..
It's not solving any problems. In fact it's just adding them because users need to be trained.
Use of spreadsheet to enter data makes date entry easy
Most useful features not included with basic subscription
Smartsheet allows my team to maintain a customer data base as well as workflow management
Honestly, very little. I suppose the access is easy enough.
Clunky UI and interface - requires multiple sheets / pages to create a dashboard.
Need to track projects tasks and differing items within categories.
How it is collaborative. I love I can share it with my colleagues
The columns titles are too long and the long title interferes with the formulas.
We stay on track on our budgets
The ability to attach files and support to a smartsheet, that is very handy.
smartsheets are not effective for real time collaboration, and has a clunky interface
its solving a solved problem
There is nothing I like and enjoy about Smartsheet. I would prefer using the associated MS product
Features that I am used to from MS packages are not available
Company silo structures and the use of different programs + access restriction impeded work processes