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Planisware vs Smartsheet comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 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

Planisware
Ranking in Project Portfolio Management
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Smartsheet
Ranking in Project Portfolio Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Project Management Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Project Portfolio Management category, the mindshare of Planisware is 9.8%, up from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Smartsheet is 8.1%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Project Portfolio Management
 

Featured Reviews

John Andrew Kossey - PeerSpot reviewer
Capably brings single source of truth to enterprise project portfolio management; provides consequential, flexible data display with effective visualization; integrated use of Agile, Kanban
Historically, some releases--even with extensive delays from initial announcement--had minor, yet troubling glitches. Planisware Enterprise has been addressing this shortcoming with more frequent releases that include helpful improvements. 7.0.0 release was January 2021; 7.0.1 March 2021; 7.0.2 July 2021; 7.0.3 December 2021; 7.0.4 March 2022. 7.1 became available in September 2023. Documentation has become much more thorough and clearly illustrated. Release notes for 7.0.4 has 133 pages. In my experience, small irritations I reported in E7 have been fixed in several days. SaaS provisions that Planisware provides in relation to security are superior to what smaller organizations can afford. Planisware SaaS no longer relies upon third-party providers. Faster data response time is a user benefit. Availability of Planisware software as a service (SaaS) contributes to operational stability; your team still needs to keep the configuration responsive to evolving business needs. Each customer has responsibility for continuing to grow "know why" as well as "know how." Investing in local capabilities on your customer side is vital--both for technical configuration and functional administrators. Over-dependence on the vendor can be needlessly expensive. Discussions with fellow Planisware customers conclude that commitment to achieving and sustaining product proficiency across versions is a key best practice. At-cost Planisware certification courses can provide training for a corporate customer's advanced users (those responsible for maintaining L1 level changes). One function I have requested for P6 and continuing through E7 is a comprehensive, detailed listing of attributes across modules--somewhat similar to attribute display in OPX2 versions (pre-P5). Some few attributes (e.g., Z-order) are difficult to document completely. Pull-down list of hundreds of attributes is insufficient.
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

"It has an inbuilt BI tool, which can be compared to Power BI or Tableau."
"It stands out by automating the intricate mechanics of project execution, eliminating the need for highly technical individuals to manage and reconfigure models."
"Planisware has introduced Agile concepts, making it capable of Agile management similar to Jira and other Agile tools."
"Overall, our company has all disintegrated systems, and with Planisware, we are getting a very integrated view of my portfolio reporting, cost and load, and everything else."
"The area that could benefit from improvement in this Planisware is the project management tool. I have previously used Project Server, which is a Microsoft solution, and I found it to be more user-friendly as it included a client solution. In contrast, with this solution, the only option available is the online version, making it difficult to create activities, milestones, and other necessary components. This is in comparison to Planisware, which offers a more comprehensive solution."
"The solution is performance-oriented and easily customized accordingly to many areas, such as performance KPI."
"Planisware offers integration with multiple tools and provides a good level of customization."
"We have a variety of different modules, but it is mainly used for costs, risks, and resources."
"Smartsheet is stable."
"I like that Smartsheet integrates Excel with a cloud-based project management software."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"Their support is awesome. We are on an enterprise plan and there is a customer success at Smartsheet and anyone from our licensed users can just send an email to them and they respond as soon as possible."
"The management aspect is the most valuable. You can also prioritize tasks and then view tasks by priorities as passports."
"The dashboard feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"The tool reduces manual labour and it is user-friendly."
"Smartsheet is a really good tool for collaboration."
 

Cons

"The area that could benefit from improvement in this Planisware is the project management tool. I have previously used Project Server, which is a Microsoft solution, and I found it to be more user-friendly as it included a client solution. In contrast, with this solution, the only option available is the online version, making it difficult to create activities, milestones, and other necessary components. This is in comparison to Planisware, which offers a more comprehensive solution."
"Its stability should be improved. Its stability is the main issue, but we sometimes also have issues with calculations."
"The learning curve is steep and there could be more avenues for opening up learning materials to a broader audience, enabling individuals to gain practical experience with the tool."
"The biggest con for Planisware is that if you are not a Planisware partner, you don't have access to their functions, making it difficult for beginners and new team members."
"More integration is needed with other kinds of products for better collaboration."
"I have experienced some issues, and that’s okay. It tends to be stable when the server's processing power and memory are adequate."
"They do not have anything that can assist customers with multi-year roadmap planning."
"The solution's user experience and user interface need improvement because they are not that great and intuitive."
"Lacks the ability to edit attachments within the solution."
"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."
"The dashboard is not user-friendly, it needs improvement."
"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."
"I'd like to see them add more features to their automation."
"The system can become more challenging to use in more complex scenarios, requiring additional add-ons that can be quite costly."
"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."
"Asana has a modern look and feel, particularly its agile project management interface featuring movable cards between columns."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive and support is an extra cost. There are three license types to choose from, and we only pay for support and cloud services depending on our needs."
"It comes with a high cost."
"The solution could be less expensive and the cost of scaling is expensive too."
"There are training and certification costs."
"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."
"The tool's monthly fee is 25 dollars, which is within the range of most cloud-based project management tools. I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"The solution is too expensive."
"Smartsheet has many licensing models. You need to add the package that best suits your requirements. The license is paid per user and it is monthly. The cost was approximately $7 per PC, $15 for professional, and $33 for the enterprise plan."
"For a normal license, like the one I had: I had my own Smartsheet because I wanted to play with it and I didn't want to mess with what I was doing in Verizon, so I paid $200 monthly, and it gave me all the same functionalities, so I could do whatever I wanted for $200. The problem is if you have anyone else working on it or deploying on it, it's $200 a month for every single person who's deployed on it, that's working on it as an owner or an administrator, so owners and administrators are the only ones who can change, edit, and add data to worksheets and columns. Depending on the size of your organization, Smartsheet can be costly. As for implementing its Control Center, Smartsheet forces you to have three people come in: it's a minimum of three people from Smartsheet for three months who will provide you the solutions for the Control Center side, and that's $150 an hour, so it can become very expensive. For my company, not having the Control Center would save on the setup fees and then the $20,000 a year, because the Control Center of Smartsheet is a yearly subscription of $20,000."
"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."
"I would assume there is a licensing fee. I don't think that it is free."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Energy/Utilities Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Planisware?
I don't have any specific details, however, it might be expensive.
What needs improvement with Planisware?
I haven't had the time to work with any other TPM tools, so I can't compare it to other tools just yet.
What is your primary use case for Planisware?
We actually use it for project planning and estimating the cost for the projects, in resource management, and as a timecard application. Users can log their time using the timesheet.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Apotex, Alstom Transport, HP, Stryker, Rexam, Jotun, Gelita, Kraton Performance Polymers, Abbvie, Rio Tinto Alcan, Maruho, Teva, SK Chemicals
Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about Planisware vs. Smartsheet and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.