Top 5 Smartsheet Alternatives

monday.com is the best alternative to SmartSheet because of its customizability, team collaboration features, and post-project feedback capabilities. With such a large variety of features, it is suitable for various projects, and its interface is easy to use.

While monday.com is our top SmartSheet alternative, it may not the right choice for you. That’s why we’ve delved into four other providers so you can easily compare and find the right software for your business.

We know how important it is to find software that is within budget, easy to use, and offers great support, so our independent research team compared 14 different project management software programs. From these 14, we’ve picked five providers that we think can rival SmartSheet. To find the cream of the crop, we looked at several factors, including, price, usability, and customer support.

monday.com – Best Smartsheet Alternative

monday.com vs SmartSheet – Pricing

SmartSheet starts at a lower price, however, monday.com offers a free version. It’s worth noting that the free version does not enable projects to be created, it can only be used to track tasks. This is helpful for clients or individuals outside of the project who want to track the progress of a project without incurring extra costs.

monday.com’s lowest price starts from $9 (when paid annually) and $12 (when paid monthly). monday.com also offers a wider range of plans, so businesses have a variety to choose from. SmartSheet only offers three tiers: Pro, Business, and Enterprise.

SmartSheet’s Pro plan has a limit of 10 users, 20GB of storage, and 100 projects per user compared with monday.com’s similarly priced Basic projects plan. This plan allows for an unlimited number of users, 5GB storage, and an unlimited amount of projects.

monday.com

Smartsheet

Is monday.com Really SmartSheet’s Best Equivalent?

Both are customizable, although SmartSheet’s prepopulated spreadsheet templates offer more capabilities for workarounds. These spreadsheet templates include columns for a task name, the duration, start and finish dates, and assignee, making it straightforward to mark the progress of a project.

monday.com offers ‘Items’, which are customizable rows that can be used to represent tasks. Almost anything that is created on a monday board can be edited with a few clicks, making it easy to set up and edit projects.

Both offer very similar features, although SmartSheet does not have a stand-alone time tracking feature, so you’ll need to rely on a third-party integration to include one in the software. For any post-project feedback, Smartsheet does not have an online whiteboard functionality, whereas monday.com does. A whiteboard feature makes it easier to gather post-project feedback, discuss errors, and implement new learnings.

monday.com offers a free plan, which is one of the reasons it scores just a tad higher than SmartSheet in our research. However, you can’t actually create projects on the free plan, it exists purely to track tasks.

monday.com and SmartSheet have similar capabilities, features, and scores, so monday.com is the closest equivalent to SmartSheet.

ClickUp – Best for Ease of Use

ClickUp vs SmartSheet – Pricing

Although both providers offer a package priced at $9 per user, per month, ClickUp’s higher tiers are lower than SmartSheet’s. Two of ClickUp’s lower plans don’t include a customer chart and widget builder, whereas all of Smartsheet’s plans include these.

ClickUp has a free plan that includes an unlimited number of users. ClickUp’s free plan may only have a storage limit of 100MB (which isn’t a lot), but the rest of its plans do have an unlimited amount of storage. SmartSheet does not offer a free plan, and its Pro plan has a user limit of 10. Smartsheet’s cheapest plan also has a limit of 20GB, so ClickUp is a better choice in terms of storage data and number of users.

ClickUp

Smartsheet 

Is ClickUp really SmartSheet’s best equivalent?

CickUp is a great equivalent, but it does lack some key post-project features that SmartSheet has, such as the ability to share the project, and create forms and surveys.

Our independent research team scores ClickUp a 4.6/5, a notch higher than SmartSheet’s score of 4.5/5. SmartSheet scores higher than ClickUp for usability, with a 4.3/5, and we especially recommended it for users who are used to using Excel or Google sheets. If you aren’t a big fan of these, you might be better off with ClickUp which is user-friendly, and has a usability score of 4/5.

ClickUp includes a ‘List View’ which means tasks can be easily amended, it also includes a bookmark-style bar at the top of each project so you can easily access different tools. SmartSheet also has a similar sidebar, which includes access to tools such as ‘Conversation’, so messages can be quickly sent to other team members. ClickUp also includes team collaboration features, such as an instant messenger, so the two are similar in this respect.

Zoho Projects – Best Price

Zoho Projects vs Smartsheet – Pricing

Zoho’s biggest win over SmartSheet is its affordability, with pricing starting from $4 per user, per month (paid annually), compared with SmartSheet’s, which starts at $7 (also paid annually). Smartsheet’s next tier up starts from $25 per user, per month, whereas Zoho’s most expensive starting price is $10 per user, per month.

Zoho also includes a free plan, although it’s fairly limiting with a storage limit of 10MB, and a user limit of three. However, this could be suitable for small scale-projects that don’t warrant a big budget for software.

Zoho Projects 

Smartsheet

Is Zoho Projects really Smartsheet’s best equivalent?

The only area in which Zoho trumps SmartSheet is pricing. In every other area including usability, features, and customer score, SmartSheet wins out.

Zoho definitely lacks in the post-project department because it cannot be used for this function, Smartsheet, on the other hand, provides solid features for retro sessions.

Zoho includes other drawbacks, such as the inability to provide a snapshot of project progress vs time remaining. It’s also complicated to update budget info because this can only happen via employees logging their hours. Smartsheet, on the other hand, is fairly easy to update, and budget updates can be done easily through the spreadsheet view.

Overall, SmartSheet is a better option than Zoho. But, for those with tight budgets, Zoho is still a good option because it receives high scores for features, usability, and customer support.

Asana – Best for Integrations

Asana vs Smartsheet – Pricing

Asana provides a free plan, which has an unlimited amount of storage, and a user limit of 15. Smartsheet lacks a free plan, although its paid plans start from $7 per user, per month compared to Asana’s lowest of $10.99 per user per month.

All of Asana’s plans include an unlimited number of users, projects, and storage. Smartsheet only offers this on its Enterprise plan, where pricing is tailored.

Asana 

Smartsheet

Is Asana Really SmartSheet’s Best Equivalent?

Asana shares some similarities with SmartSheet’s spreadsheet design because it has a ‘List View’ for projects that resembles a spreadsheet. It provides a system of custom rows and columns that are easily edited.

Asana has a dashboard functionality to create and present data visualizations. Doing this is a bit trickier with SmartSheet because you’ll need to learn how to build charts within the platform to showcase project data. However, once you’ve picked this up, you’ll be able to view project data. It is unfortunate that Smartsheet just lacks preset charts to easily set this up. 

Both offer similar capabilities for post-project feedback sessions, so neither one trumps the other in this department. Overall, both offer a range of features, are easy to use, and are similarly priced. However, Asana does have a free plan and a larger number of integrations when compared with SmartSheet.

Jira Software – Best for Customer Support

Jira vs Smartsheet – Pricing

Overall, Jira is cheaper than SmartSheet, and its Enterprise plan is transparent, whereas Smartsheet’s Enterprise pricing plan is tailored. Unlike SmartSheet, Jira offers a free plan that includes an unlimited number of projects and users, and a storage limit of 2GB.

Jira

Smartsheet

Is Jira Really Smartsheet’s Best Equivalent?

SmartSheet is fairly easy to set up, especially for users who are familiar with using spreadsheets, whereas Jira has a steep learning curve. Jira’s system is a little more complex than SmartSheet’s, for example, it’s difficult to set up basic workflow notifications.

SmartSheet is a better choice for team collaboration, offering a feature called ‘Conversations’ found on the sidebar, which enables you to quickly send a message to other team members. Team collaboration on Jira is limited to sending comments on certain tasks.

Jira lacks a guest access feature, so anyone who needs to see the project counts as a ‘seat’ and incurs an additional charge. However, SmartSheet does not have this restriction. You can easily share the project with others and restrict editing access.

Jira triumphs over SmartSheet in the customer support department, scoring a 4/5, compared with SmartSheet’s 2.5/5. Jira offers more options, including live chat, and its Enterprise plan goes all in and offers 24/7 live chat, phone, and email support.

Jira is a good choice if you’re concerned with customer support and want to utilize Agile project management, however, SmartSheet’s software performs better overall.

Is a SmartSheet Competitor the Right Option for Me?

Our research scores place two providers above SmartSheet: monday.com and ClickUp. We’ve included three other competitors in our list above to give you more options to choose from. Zoho Projects, for example, scores lower than SmartSheet in our research, however, its price can’t be beaten by any other provider we’ve looked at.

We recommend SmartSheet for users who are transitioning from using spreadsheets and don’t want a huge learning curve. As a bonus, SmartSheet has a high usability score of 4.3/5. The highest of the 14 different providers we looked at.

Of these 14, SmartSheet came third, making it one of the best on the market. There are, however, better options based on our research, so the final decision rests on your project management needs and other requirements, such as price, features, and customer support.

What’s the Best Free Alternative to SmartSheet?

We recommend ClickUp’s free plan as an alternative to SmartSheet. ClickUp’s free version includes an unlimited number of users, five projects, and a storage limit of 100MB. While 100MB is fairly low, it’s handy for small-scale projects, and the unlimited number of users is super handy because it means multiple people can have access to the project.

The free plan doesn’t include custom chart and widget builders, however, for smaller projects, this might not be necessary. ClickUp’s free plan includes more customer support options compared with that of SmartSheet, as well as 100 uses of ‘Resource Management’, which is only available on SmartSheet’s higher tiers.

You can use the free version as a trial if you want to test out the software for an extended period of time. However, it does have some limits, such as only allowing 100 actions per month. But if the free version works well, upgrading to a paid plan only starts from $5 per user, per month.

How did we find the best alternatives to SmartSheet?

Our team of researchers searched far and wide for the best in the project management industry. After comparing 14 different project management software platforms, our researchers compare the software to find the best of the bunch. The areas of research include:

• Cost – How much will this software cost a business over a period of time? Free plans were also taken into account because they incur no cost to a business.
• Features – The number and range of features that each provider offers contributes to its final score. Features are split into categories, such as collaboration and data visualization, because these are key to effective project management software.
• Customer support – The more options a provider offers, the higher it scores. In this case, we compare the available options against SmartSheet’s range of customer support.
• Usability – Our research team tests each system and attempts to complete several tasks.  The usability of the software is based on how easy, or complex, it is to carry out the tasks.

Our team combines all of this knowledge and data with the scores it receives in each area to give every provider an overall score.

From the first batch of 14, our researchers whittled it down to the final five providers that are comparable to SmartSheet.