The Best Alternatives To Smartsheet
We take an in-depth look at the pros & cons of the following tools in this review:
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ScreendragonBest Smartsheet alternative for scaling marketing & agency teams
- Kintone
Organize your communication by topic, project, or even specific data point
- monday.com
Best Smartsheet alternative for a cheaper cost
- Rocketlane
Best client & stakeholder portals with shared project views
- Wrike
Best Smartsheet alternative for teams for a free plan
Below you’ll find an overview of the top Smartsheet alternatives on this list, with screenshots, feature overview, and pricing.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet pricing and paid plan information.
- 30 days free trial
- From $7/user/month
Enterprise-scale businesses, portfolio and project managers, spreadsheet and Excel lovers—these are ideal Smartsheet users. Smartsheet is the perfect solution to manage large teams and workloads. Smaller teams, on the other hand, will have a harder time getting used to the complicated organization of this project management tool.
In this article, I’ll go over 5 of the best Smartsheet competitors to help you choose a more suitable design at a reasonable price.
Why Might You Need A Smartsheet Alternative?
Your team’s not enjoying the interface of your current project management tool
Members who are used to team collaboration using spreadsheets and database-like tools won’t have an issue with Smartsheet’s design but others will find the UI clunky. For a more enjoyable daily experience, you’ll want to look for customizable and colorful project management tools that meet today’s standards for what modern software should look and feel like.
You need to invoice clients
Smartsheet has a budgeting option so you can track time, budgets, and expenses using their 10,000ft panel but there’s still no way to send invoices directly from the app. 10,000ft is also sold separately from Smartsheet as a premium add-on product.
You’re finding it too expensive
Smartsheet is indeed one of the most expensive project management solutions on the market. This is in part due to its extensive project management features and enterprise-level target market, but you can find similar functionalities at a much lower cost.
Key Features For A Viable Smartsheet Alternative
Time tracking
Basic time tracking options are available through their 10,000ft integration, which costs extra, so you might want a tool with native time tracking capabilities that include timesheets and time reporting.
Task and workflow management
In spite of Smartsheet looking like just another database, the tool does come with advanced task management and view options like a Gantt chart and Kanban board. When picking an alternative, you’ll want to consider solutions that let you add subtasks, task priorities, and dependencies to handle complex projects without overcrowding a spreadsheet.
A friendlier interface
Talk to your team to see what kind of UI they would prefer to replace the traditional spreadsheet-style appearance. Specifically, you’ll want advanced features like custom fields, a design any user can personalize, and a variety of add-ons to make use of on top of your team’s workspace.
Custom reporting
Smartsheet boasts a strong real-time report builder feature. For teams working with lots of data or needing to provide proof of their work to clients, you’ll want an alternative that nails reporting too.
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5 Best Smartsheet Competitors Compared
Next, we’re jumping over to the advantages and disadvantages, free trial information, cost, and expert opinion for 5 Smartsheet alternatives. We’re comparing each one of these primarily based on look and feel, pricing, and extra functionalities.
Best Smartsheet Alternatives
Screendragon
Best Smartsheet alternative for scaling marketing & agency teams
Screendragon and Smartsheet may have some functionalities in common with regard to creative workflow management, however, Screendragon differs by providing a lot more advanced features in the area of project, resource and workflow management. Typically, Screendragon is more suited to scaling agencies and marketing teams who may require more flexibility. It offers a seamlessly integrated platform so users can work in a more fluid way, rather than needing to jump between different modules and views or integrating with external tools as can often be the case with Smartsheet. Screendragon’s UX is very user-friendly, offering customization with personalized dashboards, project status views and permission levels.
In fact, Screendragon offers free access to an on-demand webinar detailing exactly how it compares and differs to Smartsheet in five key areas: Project Management, Briefing & Scoping Workflows, Resource Management and Digital Proofing & Approval Processes. You can access this webinar and find out more about Screendragon here.
Kintone
Organize your communication by topic, project, or even specific data point
Kintone is an all-in-one project management platform that allows managers to track, prioritize, and review their team’s tasks for any given project workflow—no matter how complex.
What sets Kintone apart from Smartsheet?
- Organize your communication by topic, project, or even specific data point
- Simple, intuitive user interface
- Flexible structure of your data
- Support included in all plans with a dedicated support rep
- Secure your data with SSO, SAML, IP Address Restriction with no additional cost
Spend more time doing the work and less time managing the process to get there. With Kintone, you can stay focused on getting things done on time, completely, and systematically. Hello, stress-free productivity.
Kintone’s project management tool also features integrations including: Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Tableau, Dropbox, Salesforce, Hubspot, and many more through Zapier.
Try Kintone for free for 30 days, no credit card required!
monday.com
Best Smartsheet alternative for a cheaper cost
Why monday.com is a great Smartsheet alternative
monday.com is the task management solution you need to make your agile team’s work a bit less burdensome. The interface is nothing like Smartsheet; it’s easy to use for anyone and requires minimal training. This makes it ideal if you’re considering switching and don’t have too much time to get used to a new platform. And it all comes at a considerably lower cost than Smartsheet, complete with a free plan if you want to give the tool an extended test run.
Rocketlane
Best client & stakeholder portals with shared project views
Running customer-projects on Smartsheet? Work can get overwhelming navigating through sheets just to stay in the know and deliver projects with the right visibility for leaders and your customers.
Rocketlane is purpose-built to run customer-facing projects. It uniquely
combines project management, document collaboration, and communication to help teams hit their project goals, accelerate time-to-value, and deliver a 5-star customer experience.
Rocketlane offers private and shared views for project plans and documents as well as a customer portal for stakeholder and client views. You can also codify your best practices with project and document templates to create them once and reuse them forever across projects.
Wrike
Best Smartsheet alternative for teams for a free plan
Why Wrike is a great Smartsheet alternative
Smartsheet doesn’t come with a free subscription option. Wrike not only has a free plan available, but also provides more-than-decent features within it, such as unlimited user numbers, task and subtask management, desktop and mobile app availability, and even a spreadsheet view so you won’t miss what you get from Smartsheet.
Need expert help selecting the right Project Management Software?
We’ve joined up with the software comparison platform Crozdesk.com to assist you in finding the right software. Crozdesk’s Project Management Software advisors can create a personalized shortlist of software solutions with unbiased recommendations to help you identify the solutions that best suit your business’s needs. Through our partnership you get free access to their bespoke software selection advice, removing both time and hassle from the research process.
It only takes a minute to submit your requirements and they will give you a quick call at no cost or commitment. Based on your needs you’ll receive customized software shortlists listing the best-fitting solutions from their team of software advisors (via phone or email). They can even connect you with your selected vendor choices along with community negotiated discounts. To get started, please complete the form below:
5 Best Smartsheet Alternatives Summary
| Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Screendragon Best Smartsheet alternative for scaling marketing & agency teams | Free Demo | From $20 /user/month | Check out Screendragon |
| 2 |  Kintone Organize your communication by topic, project, or even specific data point | 30 day free trial (no credit card required) | $24 – $15 a month per user with a minimum of 5 users | Check out Kintone |
| 3 |  monday.com Best Smartsheet alternative for a cheaper cost | 14 days free trial | From $6/user/month | Check out monday.com |
| 4 |  Rocketlane Best client & stakeholder portals with shared project views | Free 14 days trial | From $19/month/user | Check out Rocketlane |
| 5 |  Wrike Best Smartsheet alternative for teams for a free plan | 14 days free trial | From $9.80/user/month | Check out Wrike |
About Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a project management solution—with a twist.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-like project management tool. It has won a few awards for quickly becoming a favorite business app. It’s a nice project management software if you’re comfortable working in Excel but want a break from complicated formulas—Smartsheet performs all the calculations for you across multiple sheets. You can also add customized brand logos and set color themes for individual projects.
Smartsheet has useful project management features such as workflow automation and visualization of tasks in Gantt, calendar and card views. Team members get notified of critical changes in real-time, and the tool provides shared views, detail history, activity logs, automated alerts, reminders, and status reports to improve collaboration, keep everyone aligned and informed. The Critical Path feature highlights all the tasks which directly impact your project completion date to keep an eye on important milestones. Reporting is a strong feature of this tool, with editable summary reports that you can easily export to Excel.
Smartsheet integrations include Microsoft (Microsoft teams, Microsoft excel) and Google apps, as well as development essentials like Jira, and useful business apps like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Box, and Tableau. The platform is extensible through a REST API and webhooks.
Smartsheet costs from $7/user/month, with a minimum of 3 users and a maximum of 25 users. They also offer a 30-day free trial.
