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Basecamp 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

Basecamp
Ranking in Project Management Software
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Smartsheet
Ranking in Project Management Software
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Project Management Software category, the mindshare of Basecamp is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Smartsheet is 2.3%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Project Management Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Smartsheet2.3%
Basecamp1.3%
Other96.4%
Project Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

Abenazzer Tadesse - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Operations Officer at BeOnline ICT
An easy-to-use project management solution with good stability and scalability
The recent update on the solution has made it a little bit complex. For example, to create a team and a project, there is a separate button that you need to click. Recently they updated it with only one button making it difficult for us to create teams or supply teams other than a project. Hence the solution could be more user-friendly. Additionally, some additional features need to be integrated so it'll be easy for other companies or project managers to manage software projects.
DS
Project Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Automation simplifies manual tasks and facilitates team communication
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ease of use is valuable."
"The ability to network informally is great for communicating with colleagues."
"To me, one of the most powerful features of Smartsheet is being able to email others."
"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 is a really good tool for collaboration."
"The solution is scalable."
"This solution provides easy collaboration and allows non-building users to use the system without requiring a license."
"As I am in the corporate legal department, I have to deal with a number of contracts and sometimes it's hard to keep up with email transactions. Having the tracker sheet and being able to build dashboards and workflow has been quite valuable."
"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."
"Smartsheet does a really good job of creating Gantt charts. Export to Excel feature was also very useful."
 

Cons

"The product isn't easy to use. It's not very intuitive."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"Smartsheet could improve by having seamless integration with Azure Board."
"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 think that the mobile interface needs to be improved. If you cannot access it through your laptop, I'd prefer to have that option on the mobile, but I don't think that it's user-friendly and easy to navigate."
"They should improve the solution's integration with API."
"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 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."
"There are some pain points for me. Other people use it a little differently, but I would like to be able to do a little more with it. I would like database functionality with it wherein if I bring in several Excel spreadsheets of data and load them into Smartsheets, I should be able to make a correlation between an index field and run a report against those two. I can do it, but it's a little clunky. So, I need a little more experience to feel comfortable doing that."
"A room for improvement I found in Smartsheet is the view, as it's currently row-wise. I should have the opportunity to view a full scale, top down list instead of just a column driven list. I shouldn't have to go just left or right. I should be able to view it top down."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"This licensing is straightforward and they charge per user."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"There would be more extensive usage if the solution were cheaper. It's really expensive right now, and that's why we provide a few licenses for admins. The rest of them are just users without admin privileges."
"I believe a licensed user costs between 300 to 400 euros."
"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."
"There's a trial version and a free version. Each license costs a decent amount, $25 per month or something."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
14%
Healthcare Company
9%
Government
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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?
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ashland Addison Florist Co., Victory Auto Wreckers, Ideal Box Co., Hollymatic Corp.
Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about Basecamp vs. Smartsheet and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.