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."We use Microsoft Project for its timeline and task management capabilities. The primary advantage is the easy application of tasks in sequence, confirming dependencies, and establishing relationships between tasks. It simplifies handling conditions, significant dates, and dependencies between various tasks."
"The Gantt chart view is great."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is time management."
"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."
"The standard project planning features and charts are most valuable."
"The reporting features are quite strong. Being able to do team reports and find out what work is pending, what work needs to be done are key in my day-to-day management of the team. The earned value analysis capabilities and critical path capabilities inside the tool help me make sure that I'm keeping the projects on track."
"The user interface is very clean."
"The tool has a simple and excellent approach."
"Their support is awesome. We are on an enterprise plan and there is a customer success at Smartsheet and anyone from our licensed users can just send an email to them and they respond as soon as possible."
"The solution has subtasks and a rollup."
"The dashboard feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"What I found most valuable in Smartsheet is its project customization feature. It's a great solution because you can add in your own WBS. You can see it in Jira style, Kanban, and you can even do Agile and Waterfall. Another feature that's valuable in the solution is when you have those connections, you have that API, you have a sandbox, and you can make a solution, it's a tremendous product because you can pull data."
"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."
"Smartsheet does a really good job of creating Gantt charts. Export to Excel feature was also very useful."
"Smartsheet is stable."
"The solution is scalable."
"The Gantt set needs to be improved. The grid lines needs to be more interactive."
"The licensing cost is expensive and has room for improvement."
"I'd like the solution to be less expensive."
"The tool's most valuable feature is scheduling."
"The full suite would be pretty expensive."
"It would be better if Microsoft Project were included in the DevOps stack. That is, I'd like to see this tool integrated to a different stack of the applications that we normally use in DevOps, such as in Jira, for example, to deploy a different version related to the different tasks that are included in Microsoft Project."
"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."
"They could also work on integrations with solutions like Teams. We have all of our project files in Teams and it is much easier to use for communication than MS Project, but there is no integration of the two solutions."
"There are some pain points for me. Other people use it a little differently, but I would like to be able to do a little more with it. I would like database functionality with it wherein if I bring in several Excel spreadsheets of data and load them into Smartsheets, I should be able to make a correlation between an index field and run a report against those two. I can do it, but it's a little clunky. So, I need a little more experience to feel comfortable doing that."
"The dashboard is not user-friendly, it needs improvement."
"The integration with Microsoft products should be improved."
"I would like if Smartsheet allowed more formulas in its sheets. I don't think working with formulas is as intuitive as it is in Excel. I use Vlookups and index matches in some of my sheets, and I had to find an outside consultant to help me build out those formulas."
"Areas for improvement in Smartsheet include better integration capabilities with other technologies through APIs and addressing limitations in reporting functionalities."
"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."
"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."
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, monday.com and Broadcom Clarity , whereas Smartsheet is most compared with ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management, Spreadsheet.com, Adobe Workfront, monday.com and Planisware. 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.