Planview Portfolios vs Smartsheet comparison

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Planview Portfolios

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Planview Portfolios and Smartsheet compete in the project management software category. Smartsheet seems to have an upper hand with its flexible, user-friendly interface and robust real-time collaboration features which are appealing in various organizational settings.

Features:Planview Portfolios is known for its comprehensive resource management and strategic alignment, offering advanced reporting capabilities and extensive customization options. However, it lacks built-in templates which complicates initial onboarding. Smartsheet stands out with its project customization, Gantt charts, task dependencies, and real-time collaboration. Its intuitive dashboards and automation capabilities significantly aid project management and organizational communication.

Room for Improvement:Planview Portfolios could benefit from a more flexible and intuitive UI, better Agile tool integrations, and enhanced customer access to guides. It also faces challenges with reporting flexibility and support responsiveness. Smartsheet can improve in real-time collaboration, dashboard interactivity, and security options. Users suggest refining API integrations and automation features for better productivity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Planview Portfolios supports various deployment models including public, private, and on-premises but receives mixed reviews in customer service due to personnel turnover. It shows strengths in comprehensive support systems and documentation. Smartsheet excels in public and hybrid cloud environments, noted for straightforward configuration yet faces inconsistencies in customer service, highlighting a need for proactive support measures.

Pricing and ROI:Planview Portfolios is considered costly, justified by its extensive features, providing ROI through strategic management. Its FLEX licensing offers adaptability, though over-purchasing and high consultant costs present issues. Smartsheet offers competitive tiered pricing suitable for various organizational levels, allowing scalable access with free collaborators and licensed users. Some users find it costly for extensive automation and customization, though its low-cost entry provides flexibility.

To learn more, read our detailed Planview Portfolios vs. Smartsheet Report (Updated: March 2025).

Planview Portfolios vs. Smartsheet

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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

Planview Portfolios

Ranking in Project Portfolio Management

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Architecture Management (14th)

Smartsheet

Ranking in Project Portfolio Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Project Management Software (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Project Portfolio Management category, the mindshare of Planview Portfolios is 7.4%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Smartsheet is 8.4%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Project Portfolio Management

Featured Reviews

Mark Hillman

Global Head of Portfolio Management at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

User-friendly interface, but the reporting could be improved

The reporting is poor and requires improvement. The tiles and exception-based activities in the application are sufficient to get by. However, when it comes to producing executive reports, MI reports, or any other type of reporting, we must exit Planview and work offline. We have been working with them to improve on that, as well as using some of the Power BI capabilities that have been available for a while, but it's still more difficult than it should be. In the next release, I would like to be able to use the data in the tool to gain insight much more easily.

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PaulDiaz

Project Manager at Amgen

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The overall interface is very easy to use. It puts together strategy and execution across all your investments."

"Another good thing is that we can create custom reports, which is great. If I created a custom report, a tile that tells me how many people have logged in today. We currently have a little under 2000 users, and that's only users, we actually have integrations, that we created a custom form that sends hours directly to Planview. They're not using Planview directly, but they're sending their hours to Planview through an API."

"I like that everyone is able to see the same data. All of our users who aren't just time reporters have read access to all the data that is out there. So, it is one source of truth where everybody can go in and see the exact same data that everybody else sees. It is transparent."

"Whenever we have issues, there is always someone ready to help us. Their people are knowledgeable and responsive. They get to tickets quickly. Just three or four weeks ago, we were having issues with getting data into Planview. We submitted a ticket and the turnaround was probably 45 minutes to get a response."

"The most valuable feature for me is the ease and customizability of reporting."

"Its view into resource capacity and availability absolutely help us manage work. We can't plan out projects for delivery until we know if we have resources available to deliver them. That's been really critical. We look at our projects and see what availability of resources we have. That helps us to determine when we can start new work."

"The sheer amount of information available in one single interface is valuable. Everything is there. It is also a lot of work to maintain all the information, but generally, you can find everything you need within this one tool."

"We have a fairly good picture of time tracking."

More Planview Portfolios pros

"The fact that you can have different access groups is definitely a pro for Smartsheet. It also has the ability to integrate with a lot of tools."

"The solution is scalable."

"Smartsheet is easy to use."

"I like that Smartsheet integrates Excel with a cloud-based project management software."

"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."

"Enables coordination and sharing of information that is relatively inexpensive."

"The dashboard feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

"It's stable and simple to use."

More Smartsheet pros

Cons

"The solution is stable. However, it's so robust, there's so much data, that it has the tendency to lag."

"Its reporting needs to be improved. My main complaint when it comes to Planview is that it is good to maintain all the data but to actually use the information that is in it, you actually have to use a different tool. We use Power BI. So, we pull all the information, and then we use a Power BI dashboard to stage or look at the information."

"We do have some significant issues with our integrations that we're working through. Those are not as stable or reliable as what we would like."

"There are some issues with how long it takes to load the data to Planview, It just depends on what your setup is. If there was a way Planview could maybe make the loading faster, in case you do have a lot of things going on with your setup."

"Configuring the UI in the content management system is too elaborate and too time-consuming."

"I think the capabilities are there, but it seems difficult for me to even create a report as I am not a Planview technical expert. It is not particularly intuitive. It slows us down in reporting the big picture to management."

"When I started working with Planview, I didn't know anything about project or resource management. I had to learn everything: the admin side, then the user side of it. Probably, in the beginning, I would implement in the blueprint or workshops more demos. A live demo of how the system works because we would like a little deeper dive in how the application works for us to understand what we need to provide, what we are doing, what we will be doing. Because in the beginning, it was so overwhelming, and we didn't know anything about the tool."

"There can be improvement on the sense of urgency because a lot of times we've exhausted everything that we can, and now, we're reaching out. So, it isn't a, "Well, have you tried to reboot this?" We've already done everything. Once we put in a ticket, there should be more of a sense of urgency on it."

More Planview Portfolios cons

"More intuitive access without constant logins would be beneficial."

"Maybe the solution could be a little bit more flexible."

"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."

"Smartsheet could improve the UI and integrations. Some of Smartsheet's competitors have more than 2,000 integrations while Smartsheet only has approximately 40 integration applications."

"We have to manually put in every dependency in Smartsheet."

"The main challenge with Smartsheet is that when you start putting components on the Smartsheet dashboard, they don't know about each other. So, if I filter something in one widget, or if I click on a region or a project ID, the other widget or component and the visualization that's on that dashboard don't change. It doesn't know about the other component."

"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."

"The solution should include integrations with other platforms or software."

More Smartsheet cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have several hundred licenses. It costs us several hundred thousand dollars a year."

"The licensing part is a bit costly in comparison with the other available PPM tools."

"I think all in we are at $33,000 a year and that includes Projectplace and Planview. We used to have the integration to JIRA, but we don't pay for that anymore."

"Our licensing costs are probably $150,000 to $180,000 a year with 270 licenses total."

"We are on the Flex licenses."

"The cost of other pieces and integrating them in needs improvement."

"We have unlimited licenses for all of our functionalities. Since we went global, we went with that model."

"Planview is a little pricey. From a licensing perspective, for just a simple timesheet user who does nothing in the system but reports time, the licensing is a little pricey, but you have to look at it from what it is that you get. We have 6,000 users, and I don't manage the system at all. I just have to do add them to the system. The servers, maintenance, OS levels, security patching for the OS, and all other things are not something that we maintain. So, you have to look at it from an operational perspective. It is not just the product itself. A holistic view has to be taken when you look at the product and how you're going to support it. I would have to hire an entire operation staff to bring it in-house, and at the end of the day, that might cost me more."

More Planview Portfolios pricing and cost advice

"I would assume there is a licensing fee. I don't think that it is free."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There's a trial version and a free version. Each license costs a decent amount, $25 per month or something."

"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."

More Smartsheet pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Educational Organization

44%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Planview Portfolios?

Planview Management integrates seamlessly with other tools and systems used within the organization, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, customer relationship management (CRM) syst...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Planview Portfolios?

Planview Portfolios is not too expensive. You get what you paid for.

What needs improvement with Planview Portfolios?

Enhancements are needed in: Advanced reporting and analytics: While Planview Management provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, further enhancements could include more advanced data v...

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.

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Product Reports

Planview Portfolios

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Also Known As

Planview Enterprise One, Troux

No data available

Overview

Planview Portfolios offers a comprehensive platform for managing IT, project and resource management, along with strategic planning. The tool focuses on optimizing resource allocation and financial analysis, supporting global operations.

Organizations use Planview Portfolios to streamline project tracking from inception to completion, enhancing strategic alignment with corporate objectives. The tool integrates with platforms like JIRA to provide seamless workflows and supports critical business processes, including budgeting and capacity planning. Teams benefit from customized configurations and robust reporting, further supporting effective decision-making. Despite its strengths, improvements are sought in navigation, documentation, and integration capabilities.

What are the key features?

Customizable interface: Allows personalization to meet specific needs.
Comprehensive resource and financial management: Enables detailed tracking and analysis.
Robust reporting: Provides extensive data insights.
Integration with Power BI: Enhances data access for stakeholders.
Resource and capacity planning: Optimizes workforce allocation.

What benefits should users expect?

Improved strategic alignment: Supports better decision-making.
Increased operational efficiency: Streamlines project management.
Enhanced resource optimization: Ensures optimal use of workforce.
Better financial insights: Allows precise budget tracking.

In industries like IT and project management, Planview Portfolios supports complex portfolio handling, ensuring visibility across global operations. Companies in these sectors leverage its strategic planning tools for strategic alignment and resource management, integrating with existing systems for improved process efficiency.

Planview

Smartsheet is a dynamic platform with features like real-time data sharing, Gantt charts, and integration with Jira and Microsoft Teams, offering valuable tools for efficient task management.

Smartsheet combines Excel-like functionality with cloud accessibility, making it efficient for tracking, reporting, and workflow management. Users benefit from its scalability and robust security, making it ideal for enterprise-level projects. However, improvements in data visibility, real-time collaboration, and user-friendliness can enhance its utility. Customizable dashboards, project management features, and seamless integrations offer great flexibility, though there is a demand for better automation, API enhancements, and new templates.

What are Smartsheet's most important features?

Real-time Data Sharing: Facilitates seamless collaboration between users.
Project Management Tools: Includes Gantt charts and task prioritization for efficient project tracking.
Integration: Works with major platforms like Jira and Microsoft Teams for comprehensive data flow.
Automation Capabilities: Reduces manual work with robust automation functionalities.
Customizable Dashboards: Allows users to tailor dashboards to meet specific needs.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Efficiency: Streamlines workflows with tools that enhance project tracking and collaboration.
Scalability: Supports growing enterprise demands with its scalable architecture.
Security: Provides robust, secure environments for data management.
Adaptability: Offers flexibility to customize workflows for improved resource management.

Smartsheet is utilized by organizations in industries like engineering, education, and IT for project management, task tracking, and data integration. It enables planning, scheduling, and team collaboration, facilitating dashboard creation and automation of processes. Its flexibility in customizing workflows is appealing to those managing projects and programs.

Sample Customers

UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO

Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix

Planview Portfolios vs. Smartsheet