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With so many different Smartsheet alternatives available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want to find the best alternative so you can manage your projects and collaborate with your team more effectively but need to figure out which tool is best. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different Smartsheet alternatives with a variety of teams and projects, with my picks of the best Smartsheet alternatives.

What Are Smartsheet Alternatives?

Smartsheet alternatives are project management and collaboration software solutions. They offer functionality similar to Smartsheet but differ in features, user interface, and pricing. These tools help in task management, project tracking, and team communication.

The benefits and uses of Smartsheet alternatives include a range of customization options to fit specific team needs, provision of unique features for different project types, and often more cost-effective solutions. They enhance team collaboration, are scalable with business growth, and typically offer diverse integration capabilities with other business tools.

Best Smartsheet Competitor Overviews

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 alternative for a cheaper cost

  • 14-day free trial + free plan available
  • From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats)
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Rating: 4.7/5

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.

Best Smartsheet Alternative for business plan management with strategy experts

  • Free demo available
  • From $70/user/month
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Rating: 4.4/5

Why AchieveIt is a great Smartsheet alternative

AchieveIt is a good Smartsheet alternative for several reasons. AchieveIt is specifically designed to help businesses manage strategic initiatives and goals, while Smartsheet is a more general project management tool. This means that AchieveIt offers a more focused set of features and functionalities for managing strategic planning and execution. They collect and visualize multiple business plans across your organization and then deliver the data visualizations that matter most to your inbox every morning. AchieveIt also offers strategy consultations with certified experts on planning and reporting goals, which makes it stand out from virtually every other item on this list. 

Best Smartsheet alternative for streamlining digital projects

  • 14-day free trial + free plan available
  • From $99/month (unlimited users)
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Rating: 4.6/5

Why Pneumatic Workflow is a great Smartsheet alternative

Pneumatic Workflow serves as a viable alternative to Smartsheet, offering a range of features to streamline and automate business processes. Though Smartsheet works well as an all-in-one project management platform, Pneumatic Workflow focuses in on creating excellent workflows by helping businesses to automate task assignment, track progress, and manage workflows effectively. The tool provides customizable templates for different departments and functions, allowing users to create and manage workflows tailored to their specific needs, including approval workflows. Pneumatic Workflow also offers collaboration features, enabling team members to communicate, share files, and provide feedback within the workflow. Overall, Pneumatic Workflow's high level of automation, easy-to-use interface, and range of features make it perfect for helping workflow-heavy digital project run efficiently.

Best for project management with built-in KPI tracking

  • Free plan available
  • From $26/user/month (min 5 seats) (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.5/5

Why Scoro is a great Smartsheet alternative

Scoro’s price tag may be a bit hard to swallow but there are some instances where it just can’t be beat. They have all the project management tools you come to expect (Gantt charts, calendars, collaboration, subtasks) as well as some you don’t, like detailed user-based or team-based key performance indicator tracking reports. They offer a huge amount of ready-to-digest information for the user, including outstanding invoices, number of new leads, monthly revenue, and hours worked.

Easy-to-use Smartsheet alternative with a generous freemium plan

  • 30-day free trial + free plan available
  • From $13.49/user/month
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Rating: 4.3/5

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.

Smartsheet alternative with a flat monthly rate, no matter your team size

  • 30-day free trial
  • From $15/user/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.1/5

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.

Intuitive Smartsheet alternative for startups and SMBs

  • Freemium plan available
  • From $7/user/month
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Rating: 4.7/5

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.

Best client & stakeholder portals with shared project views

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $19/user/month
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Rating: 4.8/5

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.

Organize your communication by topic, project, or even specific data point

  • 30-day free trial
  • From $24/user/month
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Rating: 4.6/5

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.

Best for in-app sales management

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $11/user/month
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Rating: 4.7/5

Why Productive is a great Smartsheet alternative


Productive offers tools that specifically cater to project budgeting. Productive's financial management tools make it easier for businesses to manage their finances. The software has a built-in invoicing system that sends automatic invoices to clients and tracks payment schedules. Additionally, it offers features directed toward revenue forecasting, helping users plan and make informed decisions. However, the biggest advantage over Smartsheet is that it has a sales module built into the platform which helps you follow up on leads through your sales funnel and forecast potential sales revenue.

10 Best Smartsheet Alternatives Comparison Chart

Here is a table where you can compare all of these Smartsheet alternatives.

Tools Price
monday.com From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats)
AchieveIt From $70/user/month
Pneumatic Workflow From $99/month (unlimited users)
Scoro From $26/user/month (min 5 seats) (billed annually)
Asana From $13.49/user/month
Basecamp From $15/user/month (billed annually)
ClickUp From $7/user/month
Rocketlane From $19/user/month
Kintone From $24/user/month
Productive From $11/user/month
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	Compare Software Specs Side by Side</h2>

Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.

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About Smartsheet

This 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.

Screenshot Of Smartsheet Alternatives

Additionally, it 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.

This tool 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.

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. However, 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.

smartsheet alternatives logos list

What's Next?

Here are more alternatives and competitors lists for other software you might be interested in.

By Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. I'm a Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2 Practitioner and productivity nut!