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Rally Software vs Smartsheet comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
Rally Software boosts efficiency by 10%, offers 15X ROI, saves time, and is cost-effective despite some user challenges.
Sentiment score
6.7
Smartsheet boosts efficiency and collaboration, streamlining project management with Excel-like simplicity, enhancing productivity, and offering cost-effective solutions.
The ROI is visible, as that's why we are investing in these tools and running our projects successfully through them, despite a few challenges such as role-based access being somewhat difficult.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Rally Software's customer service is responsive, with quick, knowledgeable support and proactive communication, generally satisfying users despite occasional delays.
Sentiment score
7.1
Smartsheet customer service is praised for responsiveness and training but criticized for ticket management and inconsistency.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Rally Software offers strong scalability supporting large enterprises, despite occasional performance issues, effectively handling significant user volumes globally.
Sentiment score
7.4
Smartsheet effectively scales for diverse user needs, with strong integration capabilities, despite some advanced feature limitations and cost concerns.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Rally Software is generally stable and reliable, with occasional slowness and downtime, but users appreciate the responsive support.
Sentiment score
7.9
Smartsheet is a reliable, stable cloud-based platform for project management, with minimal disruptions and frequent improvements enhancing its performance.
 

Room For Improvement

Rally Software struggles with navigation, integration, user-friendliness, and requires improvements in reporting, customization, and workflow efficiency.
Smartsheet needs a more intuitive interface, better integration, robust features, and enhanced support for an improved user experience.
One area for improvement might be the rigidity in role and access configurations, which require many process changes to fit the tool.
I have a novice understanding of Smartsheet, so I sought a solution more suited to repeatable projects and process-oriented governance.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find Rally Software pricing high but valuable for large-scale agile projects, suggesting a more flexible model.
Smartsheet offers flexible, competitively-priced licensing options appealing to various users, providing value through extensive functionality and customization.
Rally Software is affordable because our customers also prefer it.
 

Valuable Features

Rally Software offers user-friendly Agile project management with real-time dashboards, customizable reporting, and robust integration capabilities.
Smartsheet excels in real-time data sharing, automation, integration, and customization, making it a favored alternative to Microsoft Project.
Rally Software provides real-time dashboards for different kinds of stakeholders and governance, giving clear insights into project progress, team velocity, and potential risks.
We were looking for a tool that allowed for repeatable projects and process-oriented governance.
What I appreciate best about Smartsheet is the straight Gantt chart and its flexibility.
 

Categories and Ranking

Rally Software
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (10th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (8th)
Smartsheet
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (3rd), Project Management Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Rally Software and Smartsheet aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Rally Software is designed for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites and holds a mindshare of 5.8%, down 6.6% compared to last year.
Smartsheet, on the other hand, focuses on Project Portfolio Management, holds 8.7% mindshare, up 7.5% since last year.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Rally Software5.8%
Jira17.7%
Microsoft Azure DevOps13.0%
Other63.5%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
Project Portfolio Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Smartsheet8.7%
ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management9.9%
Planisware9.6%
Other71.8%
Project Portfolio Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rakhee Srivastava - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time dashboards provide clear insights into project progress and team velocity
Rally Software is easy to use for Agile project methodology because it follows Scrum and Kanban, helping with sprint planning and backlog management. Rally Software provides real-time dashboards for different kinds of stakeholders and governance, giving clear insights into project progress, team velocity, and potential risks. Backlog management is present in the product, allowing prioritization of tasks. The dashboards provide all types of insights through analytics. Capacity planning helps optimize resource allocation, ensuring balanced workload and realistic sprint commitments for our projects. The solution integrates with GitHub, and we can also integrate with Excel and CI/CD pipelines.
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.
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Insurance Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise110
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Rally Software?
Rally offers many features that help the management of activities, coordination, alignment and reports, which applies agility across the organization. If I were to highlight a particular feature, i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rally Software?
I don't know the exact pricing, but I think the tool is priced high. They provide quality workmanship, good software, regular upgrades, and they're always attentive and listen to users. Everything ...
What needs improvement with Rally Software?
The product itself seems to have a lot of bugs. One issue is that it sometimes allows people to modify data inappropriately. For example, team members can change numbers at will. While we have a me...
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.
 

Also Known As

CA Agile Central, Rally Enterprise, CA Agile Training, CA Agile Coaching, CA Agile Academy, CA Agile Management , CA ALM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Physicians Mutual, Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare, Editora Abril, Tata Communications, Level 3 Communications, Seagate, TomTom, Philips, Hiscox, Physicians Mutual, MYOB
Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlassian, Microsoft, Siemens and others in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.