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Smartsheet pros and cons

Vendor: Smartsheet

4.0 out of 5

40 reviews
92% willing to recommend

379 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Smartsheet integrates with various tools and supports different user access levels, providing project management features such as Gantt charts, subtasks, API integration, and task prioritization. Despite offering customizable workflows, automation, and low-code options, its dashboard components don't interact, limiting functionality. Security concerns, costly add-ons due to capacity limits, and lack of integration capabilities complicate its use, making it difficult and expensive for tech buyers seeking efficient project management solutions.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Smartsheet excels at creating Gantt charts and facilitating project management with tools like predecessors and task prioritization.

Its ability to integrate with multiple tools, including robust API access, enhances operational flexibility and data manipulation.

Smartsheet supports various project management methodologies including Agile and Waterfall, making it adaptable to different workflow preferences.

The platform enables effective collaboration and information sharing, further supported by features like real-time updates and customizable dashboards.

Automation and low-code capabilities streamline workflow and reduce manual labor, improving efficiency and easing user interaction.

CONS

Smartsheet faces challenges with integration capabilities, lacking seamless connections to other platforms and software.

The single sign-on setup in Smartsheet has been reported as difficult, requiring easier implementation.

Smartsheet's export and print functionalities are not seamless, demanding improvements for smoother transitions to other formats.

Smartsheet's handling of large data quantities can lead to performance lags, indicating a need for optimization.

Formulas in Smartsheet are not as intuitive as Excel, with limitations that complicate the use of complex functions.

Smartsheet Pros review quotes

MD

Melody D Dashora

Business Analyst

May 19, 2022

What I found most valuable in Smartsheet is its project customization feature. It's a great solution because you can add in your own WBS. You can see it in Jira style, Kanban, and you can even do Agile and Waterfall. Another feature that's valuable in the solution is when you have those connections, you have that API, you have a sandbox, and you can make a solution, it's a tremendous product because you can pull data.

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Resource Manager at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees

May 12, 2022

We like Smartsheet's workflows, automation, and low-code capabilities. I don't know of any other project management tool with low-code functionality designed for project managers.

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Project Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees

Jun 19, 2022

The ability to update in real-time before meetings is great.

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James John Wilson

Business Development Manager at Freelancer

Jul 21, 2022

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.

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Natalija Prodanovic

Global IT PMO at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 1, 2022

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.

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reviewer1407036

Senior PM / Scrum Master at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 25, 2021

Smartsheet does a really good job of creating Gantt charts. Export to Excel feature was also very useful.

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Ciprian Porutiu

Vice President, Operations & Delivery | Change Management | Digital Transformation at Marsh Limited

Apr 29, 2022

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

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Project Manager at Amgen

Aug 1, 2024

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.

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Project Manager at USCCG

Aug 26, 2022

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.

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reviewer1916505

National Sales Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 7, 2024

The most valuable features of Smartsheet are its collaboration tools, the ability to centralize and prioritize projects, and robust reporting capabilities.

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Smartsheet Cons review quotes

MD

Melody D Dashora

Business Analyst

May 19, 2022

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.

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Resource Manager at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees

May 12, 2022

I would like if Smartsheet allowed more formulas in its sheets. I don't think working with formulas is as intuitive as it is in Excel. I use Vlookups and index matches in some of my sheets, and I had to find an outside consultant to help me build out those formulas.

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Project Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees

Jun 19, 2022

If there was some way to store more complex files in the system, or if there was a back-end structure where you could store files, that would be ideal.

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James John Wilson

Business Development Manager at Freelancer

Jul 21, 2022

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.

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Natalija Prodanovic

Global IT PMO at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 1, 2022

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.

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reviewer1407036

Senior PM / Scrum Master at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 25, 2021

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.

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Ciprian Porutiu

Vice President, Operations & Delivery | Change Management | Digital Transformation at Marsh Limited

Apr 29, 2022

Maybe the solution could be a little bit more flexible.

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Project Manager at Amgen

Aug 1, 2024

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.

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Project Manager at USCCG

Aug 26, 2022

Smartsheet should continue to expand the spreadsheet-type functionality because it's limited currently. Most business users are familiar with Excel and Office, so Smartsheet should adopt a similar way of navigating the program.

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reviewer1916505

National Sales Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 7, 2024

Areas for improvement in Smartsheet include better integration capabilities with other technologies through APIs and addressing limitations in reporting functionalities.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 38)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Project Portfolio Management

Project Management Software

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

monday.com vs Smartsheet

ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management vs Smartsheet

Broadcom Clarity vs Smartsheet

Microsoft Project Server vs Smartsheet

Planisware vs Smartsheet

Planview PPM Pro vs Smartsheet

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