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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monday.comBest Smartsheet alternative for a cheaper cost
- Screendragon
Best Smartsheet alternative for scaling marketing & agency teams
- Kintone
Organize your communication by topic, project, or even specific data point
- Rocketlane
Best client & stakeholder portals with shared project views
- Wrike
Best Smartsheet alternative for teams for a free plan
- ClickUp
Intuitive Smartsheet alternative for startups and SMBs
- Mavenlink
Best for detailed and integrated budget and expanse tracking
- Hive
Best internal chat and communication systems
- Basecamp
Smartsheet alternative with a flat monthly rate, no matter your team size
- Asana
Easy-to-use Smartsheet alternative with a generous freemium 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 10 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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10 Best Smartsheet Competitors Compared
Next, we’re jumping over to the advantages and disadvantages, free trial information, cost, and expert opinion for 10 Smartsheet alternatives. We’re comparing each one of these primarily based on look and feel, pricing, and extra functionalities.
Best Smartsheet Alternatives
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.
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? You can organize your communication by topic, project, or even specific data point. It’s got a simple and intuitive user interface. It offers a flexible structure for all your data. Customer support is included in all plans with a dedicated support rep. You can also secure your data with SSO, SAML, IP address restriction with no additional cost.
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.
ClickUp
Intuitive Smartsheet alternative for startups and SMBs
Why ClickUp is a great Smartsheet alternative
Want similar project management features to Smartsheet under a colorful interface? Your team will definitely enjoy using ClickUp thanks to its customization options and fun emojis to brighten their day. Plus, ClickUp is one of the cheapest project management apps on the market with a free plan packed with features for small teams and startups.
Mavenlink
Best for detailed and integrated budget and expanse tracking
Why Mavenlink is a great Smartsheet alternative
While both Smartsheet and Mavenlink target fairly large companies, the latter also bring the financial management features to the mix: sending invoices, tracking expenses, and creating dedicated reports for accounts receivable. Plus, Mavenlink has the integrated time tracking options you’ll miss with Smartsheet to seamlessly handle work, budgets, and time allocation.
Hive
Best internal chat and communication systems
Why Hive is a great Smartsheet alternative
Hive is more suitable for all kinds of team members and external collaborators thanks to its easy-to-understand messaging interface that resembles that of Slack. While both Hive and Smartsheet offer similar team collaboration features, Hive does everything natively while Smartsheet relies on integrations for chat and emails.
Basecamp
Smartsheet alternative with a flat monthly rate, no matter your team size
Why Basecamp is a great Smartsheet alternative
Basecamp is a great Smartsheet alternative for large teams because it does not charge a per-user rate. Instead, Basecamp offers their platform for a $99/month flat fee. This gets you unlimited projects, unlimited users, 500GB storage space, unlimited clients, project templates, and priority customer support.
Asana
Easy-to-use Smartsheet alternative with a generous freemium plan
Why Asana is a great Smartsheet alternative
Besides being completely free (for up to 15 users), Asana is great for its ease-of-use in the project management software space. They focus on a level of user friendliness that even the least tech-savvy of your team can get behind. Asana is well laid out, cleanly organized, and does away with unnecessary UI clutter.
Need expert help selecting the right Project Management Software?
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10 Best Smartsheet Alternatives Summary
| Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  monday.com Best Smartsheet alternative for a cheaper cost | 14 days free trial | From $6/user/month | Visit Website |
| 2 |  Screendragon Best Smartsheet alternative for scaling marketing & agency teams | Free Demo | From $20 /user/month | Visit Website |
| 3 |  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 | Visit Website |
| 4 |  Rocketlane Best client & stakeholder portals with shared project views | Free 14 days trial | From $19/month/user | Visit Website |
| 5 |  Wrike Best Smartsheet alternative for teams for a free plan | 14 days free trial | From $9.80/user/month | Visit Website |
| 6 |  ClickUp Intuitive Smartsheet alternative for startups and SMBs | Freemium version | From $5/user/month | Visit Website |
| 7 |  Mavenlink Best for detailed and integrated budget and expanse tracking | Not available | Pricing available upon request | Visit Website |
| 8 |  Hive Best internal chat and communication systems | Free for up to 2 users | From $12/user/month | Visit Website |
| 9 |  Basecamp Smartsheet alternative with a flat monthly rate, no matter your team size | 30 days free trial | From $99/month | Visit Website |
| 10 |  Asana Easy-to-use Smartsheet alternative with a generous freemium plan | Free for up to 15 users | From $10.99/user/month | Visit Website |
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.