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Adobe Workfront 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

Adobe Workfront
Ranking in Project Management Software
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Digital Asset Management (1st)
Smartsheet
Ranking in Project Management Software
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Project Management Software category, the mindshare of Adobe Workfront is 3.5%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Smartsheet is 4.6%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Project Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

Graham Sprague - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized task management and simplified creative collaboration but interface is inconsistent
Adobe Workfront could improve its interface, which may benefit from an overhaul for better consistency between the web interface and the API. The current setup was not originally designed API-first, leading to some confusion and differences in available functions. Additionally, the low-code environment in Workfront Fusion is beneficial yet sometimes limiting, and it might be more powerful with enhancements.
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

"Feature-wise, I would say that its overall ability to be infinitely customizable is valuable...My experience with the support team has been amazing."
"Instead of following everything on email, business users can track everything on Adobe Workfront when the other systems are integrated with it."
"Monitoring the progress of projects and tasks is very effective."
"The solution is stable."
"Workfront is innovative and these were plenty of features that I found valuable while working at Logitech. Workfront had this feature of Project Schedule Templatization. This saves time and effort and even leads to the standardization of processes that are well-assorted. The Intelligent Graphical Interfaces of Workfront allow one to look at a specific type of resource and a specific phase for a specific family of products. You can get quite granular with the data and even zoom in or out of the timeline. It also categorizes projects according to classes and portfolios so that over time, you can more easily understand what are the various metrics involved in producing a specific portfolio Another important feature is Workfront allowing you to validate milestones and investigate the project. This also helped me to understand which projects are performing well and whether it was beneficial to invest in the same. The IT and the app configuration is quite secure and it is one of the benefits. One more valuable feature is the integration of communication systems inside Workfront. This helps you differentiate between normal business emails and project-specific conversations. This is also known as ‘queues’ and I absolutely find this feature extremely powerful."
"I also like Workfront's integration. The solution integrates natively with other systems. It's easy to connect Workfront to any product that has a customer service database, such as a CRM or service ticket management solution."
"Workfront centralizes the tasks, the assignment of tasks, and documents required to do the work, streamlining communication and information availability, thus improving organization and reducing dependency on decentralized methods like email or servers."
"The intake feature is the most valuable in Workfront."
"The most valuable features of Smartsheet are its collaboration tools, the ability to centralize and prioritize projects, and robust reporting capabilities."
"The solution is straightforward. Whenever a requirement arises, we create three things in Smartsheet: a project plan, a dashboard, and internal documents. It is done through the form and Smartsheet's automation services. This process shortens the time to market from seven days to less than 12 hours."
"The solution is scalable."
"The management aspect is the most valuable. You can also prioritize tasks and then view tasks by priorities as passports."
"If you just need a planning tool, it's a low-cost and effective option."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"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."
"For doing project plans what was really valuable is the ability to do a predecessor."
 

Cons

"We were having some difficulties creating different kinds of reports and dashboards."
"Adobe Workfront could improve its interface, which may benefit from an overhaul for better consistency between the web interface and the API."
"The solution's visualization feature could be user-friendly."
"Sometimes, new users find it a bit difficult to handle Adobe Workfront."
"I would say that the stability, honestly, has gone down since the Adobe acquisition, and the quality when they roll out their updates."
"Workfront's reporting capabilities must be improved."
"Our product and graphic designers are working with various Adobe products, but Workfront has a no-frills interface. It's a useful tool with everything we need, but it could be a little more attractive and present information in a polished way. It's a web interface, so it's accessible, but the appearance could be a little slicker."
"I have used the product and instantiated it, almost seven years back. The process was fairly complex, however, I don't know if they have changed the same now. But this is something I think, if not addressed can be improved. Another area that needs a little attention, is the change of implementation lead. Back when we had Workfront instantiated, we often had our timeline delayed due to the change in the implementation lead. Now Workfront is under Adobe and, in case, this issue, isn't fixed it should be given due attention. Also, Workfront is a universal tool, which can pose a difficulty for small businesses and companies, who don't have the required time, effort, and knowledge to configure it periodically."
"Smartsheet needs to improve the user interface."
"With a large quantity of data, the solution lags a bit."
"The solution should include integrations with other platforms or software."
"Smartsheet is a cloud-based tool similar to Google Sheets in that multiple stakeholders can work on a document simultaneously. However, unlike Google Sheets, which saves changes in real time, Smartsheet requires users to manually save their changes."
"I think it is all going to be about APIs in the future and I don't think Smartsheet is doing a lot in that regard. They have some integrations with Jira, but you have to pay for them."
"Initially, there were issues like dropdowns. Those have been overcome."
"The downside of Smartsheet is that there are some security concerns. We were able to restrict people from sharing sheets with anyone who was not in our domain, but it could be easier. We also found it hard to restrict certain user groups from adding attachments to sheets."
"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

"We are partners with Adobe, so we get the licensing at a cheaper rate."
"Adobe purchased Workfront in the past year, and they're putting work into developing the platform, so I expect the price to rise. It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable for the value it provides. It isn't Monday.com where you pick a license with a set price, and you've got a project manager."
"The pricing is a barrier to implementation. It is expensive compared to other competitors. Speaking about licensing, they have a private manager license for $1000, which you can use for administration as well. Then they offer a worker license for $500, and then a reviewer or contributor license which is free."
"Speaking about pricing, I wouldn't recommend it to a smaller company because I do think the price point is higher than other solutions that can work."
"Adobe Workfront is an expensive solution."
"The pricing of Workfront is completely license based."
"This licensing is straightforward and they charge per user."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. I was responsible for negotiating the price with the Smartsheet team, but I don't remember what the price was. Its standard license probably was around 5,000 to 6,000 a year. The enterprise version is significantly 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."
"I pay $ 120 or $ 128 a month for two to three users."
"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."
"There's a license for Smartsheet, and the enterprise plan comes down to about $750. My company also pays an extra $60 monthly apart from the standard licensing fee."
"I would assume there is a licensing fee. I don't think that it is free."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
69%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Computer Software Company
4%
Healthcare Company
3%
Educational Organization
44%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Workfront?
I can say it is a powerful tool. We have everything in-house in that tool, like, creating reports, dashboards, creating various workflows, and everything we have inside one application.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workfront?
Workfront incurs around a hundred thousand plus dollars per year. Licensing is strict, particularly with free accounts, however, it offers flexibility in project access, which could be enhanced fur...
What needs improvement with Workfront?
Adobe Workfront could improve its interface, which may benefit from an overhaul for better consistency between the web interface and the API. The current setup was not originally designed API-first...
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

AtTask, Workfront DAM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Advance Autoparts, Emerson, Covario, Cisco, Caroma, TREK, Sapient Nitro, ATB, LexisNexis, CarPhone Warehouse
Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about Adobe Workfront vs. Smartsheet and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.