We performed a comparison between Microsoft Project and Smartsheet based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Project Management Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The solution is well established and runs very accurately."
"Microsoft Project offers comprehensive project overviews and the ability to rate down what we have and what we need in terms of software."
"The most valuable feature is probably the Kanban diagram. People are familiar with the Kanban tools. When they do their scrum meetings, they have that Kanban board where you can see the different tiles for all the queries and move them from left to right. IT is familiar with that because, for development, most of the tools have that capability. It could also be more graphical, like Asana."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is time management."
"The tool has a simple and excellent approach."
"It has a nice interface that aligns with Excel and Word."
"The most valuable features of this solution are dependency management, milestone progress, multiple resource rates, and RAG views."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the product's GUI is very good...The product's scalability is good."
"Smartsheet is stable."
"The most valuable feature of Smartsheet is its intuitiveness, ease of use, and overall simplicity."
"The most valuable feature of Smartsheet is it can be highly customized."
"As I am in the corporate legal department, I have to deal with a number of contracts and sometimes it's hard to keep up with email transactions. Having the tracker sheet and being able to build dashboards and workflow has been quite valuable."
"The tool creates shareable dashboards. These dashboards allow us to display project deliverables' status, their position in the queue, expected delivery timelines, and more. The best part is that these dashboards can be shared with our clients without a license."
"The solution has subtasks and a rollup."
"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."
"The dashboard feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"I would like to see more integrations with another software tool."
"It's hard to reach technical people to get the help you need."
"It is a traditional Waterfall-based solution, so it doesn't lend itself particularly well to Agile development. You can record Agile sprints within it, but it is not really an Agile-based product. It can store the basic information about budgets that an Agile set of work is looking to use, but that's about it."
"Tracking timeline, resource allocation, and monitoring are areas of concern for the tool where improvements are required."
"When you start getting into the more advanced features, it can become unstable. The more you use the advanced features, the more exposure you have to an unanticipated result. I think we need to add the Kanban Board capability to the product that would help them advance that board into the project management methodology that's being used in the industry today. Being able to depend on Scrum management is key."
"It needs to be more comprehensive."
"The dashboard could be improved."
"They should assist with tedious tasks."
"The integration with Microsoft products should be improved."
"With a large quantity of data, the solution lags a bit."
"It would be beneficial to enhance user-friendliness and make it less complex while maintaining its overall excellence as a product."
"The product must include more modules for project management."
"The long-term timelines could be improved, especially the visuals on the projection Gantt chart."
"The solution should include integrations with other platforms or software."
"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."
"It already has a really powerful Export to Excel feature, but it can have an Excel add-on. The way to set up single sign-on wasn't too easy in the beginning, and it was hard to get hold of customer service. They should make it easier to set up SSO. Smartsheet's customer service also definitely needs to be improved."
Microsoft Project is ranked 2nd in Project Management Software with 77 reviews while Smartsheet is ranked 5th in Project Management Software with 34 reviews. Microsoft Project is rated 8.0, while Smartsheet is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Project writes "A stable solution that very accurately runs projects". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Smartsheet writes "Has customization, data pulling, and cross-functional global communication features; it's a secure solution". Microsoft Project is most compared with Asana, Jira, Microsoft Project Server, Broadcom Clarity and monday.com, whereas Smartsheet is most compared with ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management, Spreadsheet.com, Adobe Workfront, Planisware and Broadcom Clarity . See our Microsoft Project vs. Smartsheet report.
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@Eire Zimmermann,
Smartsheet is amazingly flexible. You can configure a template project plan, and view it either as a traditional Gantt chart or as a kanban style board with multiple simultaneous swimlanes derived from any column that is configured as a drop-down list. This allows you to work with the same plan in multiple ways based upon the type of team or preference of the team.
The only thing of note that Smartsheet cannot do (or at least I did not find it yet) is to level a plan based upon resources and task priority. With the workflow engine, you can automatically send emails based upon any rule you configure. I had RACI columns for every task so I could auto-notify folks when the task was done. Very cool stuff.
Dashboards are okay but not as powerful as other tools in that each component on the page does not know about any of the other components to auto filter. Pretty limiting. I export data to another external visualization tool like Domo if the budget allows it.
Hi @Eire Zimmermann,
I helped an organization evaluate both MS-Project and Smartsheet when they were conducting their PM tool RFP.
The short of it is this, MS Project is not caught up with the modern automation and low-code capabilities that you will see in many SaaS PM tools today (Smartsheet, Asana, Workfront, etc.).
Being able to add simple automation with logic like, "If 'Project Status' = 'Red', then Alert XYZ Stakeholder" is made simple with Smartsheet. With this type of low-code functionality, you can begin to remove that robotic, manual work of typing up emails and sending messages from your day-to-day.
Moreover, Smartsheet's reporting capabilities are something that I have yet to see any other PM tool on the market compete with. Think reports for important launch dates, milestones, past due tasks, or at-risk items.
Then when you add the capabilities of the Smartsheet's logic-driven forms for project intake, you really have a system that can become a pseudo-ERP/workforce management tool. Not to mention Smartsheet's cost is much lower compared to MS Project since you only pay for licenses that manipulate data.
Hope this helps in some regard,
Ian
Unfortunately I have never used Microsoft Project so I can’t compare. My use with Smartsheet was pretty basic and more for project plans.