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 pricing is pretty good on the enterprise agreement we have."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Project is scheduling. The solution is useful on a daily basis."
"The solution is stable."
"I especially like the reporting tools, which are visual tools and offer visual reports."
"It is easy to define timelines with Microsoft Project."
"The user interface is very clean."
"The most valuable features of this solution are dependency management, milestone progress, multiple resource rates, and RAG views."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is straightforward. Whenever a requirement arises, we create three things in Smartsheet: a project plan, a dashboard, and internal documents. It is done through the form and Smartsheet's automation services. This process shortens the time to market from seven days to less than 12 hours."
"The most valuable features of Smartsheet are its collaboration tools, the ability to centralize and prioritize projects, and robust reporting capabilities."
"It operates as an enhanced and versatile version of Excel, offering a wide range of capabilities that allow you to accomplish various tasks and operations."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"The solution is scalable."
"Smartsheet offers more than Project because it's similar to a table-based, database-type system. It's like a hybrid between Excel and project software. We were able to enter the formulas and do much of the automation. We added budgets to it and linked them to a vendor page. Smartsheet let us integrate the budget into the project seamlessly. With Project, we needed to open up Excel."
"The tool reduces manual labour and it is user-friendly."
"This solution provides easy collaboration and allows non-building users to use the system without requiring a license."
"In the next release, Microsoft should include cross-project integration."
"The collaboration has room for improvement."
"It has a bit of a learning curve since there are a lot of features in it, and we haven't really gotten a chance to train through the whole product."
"Its price can be improved."
"It is positioned at the more high end. Sometimes it's more complicated than we need."
"The setup and scalability can be somewhat difficult for new users until they gain knowledge."
"When a project plan becomes huge, it is painful to arrange and structure the project in Microsoft Project. Currently, you require a separate product for managing agile projects, and people are using Jira and Rally to manage stories in agile. Primarily, on the software development side, people are kind of moving away from Microsoft Project."
"I would like to see both Time and Team based options improved."
"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."
"If there was some way to store more complex files in the system, or if there was a back-end structure where you could store files, that would be ideal."
"Smartsheet could be improved to be a ticketing system. It would be nice to have a system to do everything."
"I'd like to see them add more features to their automation."
"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."
"Smartsheet could improve by having seamless integration with Azure Board."
"A room for improvement I found in Smartsheet is the view, as it's currently row-wise. I should have the opportunity to view a full scale, top down list instead of just a column driven list. I shouldn't have to go just left or right. I should be able to view it top down."
"The product must include more modules for project management."
Microsoft Project is ranked 2nd in Project Management Software with 77 reviews while Smartsheet is ranked 4th in Project Management Software with 33 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.
See our list of best Project Management Software vendors.
We monitor all Project Management Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
@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.