Smartsheet vs Trello comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Smartsheet and Trello 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.
To learn more, read our detailed Smartsheet vs. Trello Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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.""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.""It is a stable and scalable solution.""The ability to build a quick dashboard and give management insight into the progress of the project itself is probably one of the most beneficial pieces.""Smartsheet is a really good tool for collaboration.""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.""It is my favorite project management tool. The reason for that is that it is very flexible. It is much easier to use than Microsoft Project in terms of creating custom fields. It is very similar to Excel. So, people understand it, which makes it a little bit easier to use for most users.""Smartsheet is stable."

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"Project management and work collaboration solution with amazing scalability and stability. Its user interface is modern and easy to understand, with drag and drop functionality.""Kanban is the best feature of the tool.""All the features are valuable but the data extraction is extremely helpful for automation.""Trello is quite easy to learn. The features that are available in the current version are enough to do your basic documentation and management.""I think task management, prioritization, rankings, and collaboration features are useful.""Trello is not as complex as most of the other products are.""Projects do not take as long and meetings take less time, since you know the status of developments or tests.""I like how user-friendly, visual, and intuitive it is. It doesn't take a lot of time to figure out how to make it work for you."

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Cons
"The product must include more modules for project management.""They provide a limited number of sheets which is not enough.""It would be beneficial to enhance user-friendliness and make it less complex while maintaining its overall excellence as a product.""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.""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.""The long-term timelines could be improved, especially the visuals on the projection Gantt chart.""The system can become more challenging to use in more complex scenarios, requiring additional add-ons that can be quite costly.""Smartsheet needs to improve the user interface."

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"It's really simple, which is a good thing, but it only does one thing for us.""The product is not easy to use.""It is not a scalable product.""Being able to export reports from Trello, general reports, or board reports, would improve the solution for me as a manager.""Users should be able to log their time against the tasks and visual reports should be available in Trello for time spent.""Trello has become complex over the years.""The dashboards and flexibility to adjust the timeline view for each task are areas with shortcomings in the solution that need improvement.""Trello wasn't a tool that offered lightning-fast speed like users wanted it to be for them."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "This licensing is straightforward and they charge per user."
  • "Its licensing is on a yearly basis. I was responsible for negotiating the price with the Smartsheet team, but I don't remember what the price was. Its standard license probably was around 5,000 to 6,000 a year. The enterprise version is significantly more expensive."
  • "Smartsheet only requires licenses for project managers. When we were using Asana, we had to purchase a license for everyone who wanted to access their tasks and use the system. That gets costly fast. It was one of the main reasons we left Asana. As Asana and these other tools scale, they become way more expensive."
  • "There would be more extensive usage if the solution were cheaper. It's really expensive right now, and that's why we provide a few licenses for admins. The rest of them are just users without admin privileges."
  • "I would assume there is a licensing fee. I don't think that it is free."
  • "It is less expensive than Microsoft Project for enterprise or Oracle Primavera by an order of magnitude. If you buy a Microsoft Project license, it's probably $300 or so by itself, whereas Smartsheet is probably less than $50 per head."
  • "For a normal license, like the one I had: I had my own Smartsheet because I wanted to play with it and I didn't want to mess with what I was doing in Verizon, so I paid $200 monthly, and it gave me all the same functionalities, so I could do whatever I wanted for $200. The problem is if you have anyone else working on it or deploying on it, it's $200 a month for every single person who's deployed on it, that's working on it as an owner or an administrator, so owners and administrators are the only ones who can change, edit, and add data to worksheets and columns. Depending on the size of your organization, Smartsheet can be costly. As for implementing its Control Center, Smartsheet forces you to have three people come in: it's a minimum of three people from Smartsheet for three months who will provide you the solutions for the Control Center side, and that's $150 an hour, so it can become very expensive. For my company, not having the Control Center would save on the setup fees and then the $20,000 a year, because the Control Center of Smartsheet is a yearly subscription of $20,000."
  • "Smartsheet has many licensing models. You need to add the package that best suits your requirements. The license is paid per user and it is monthly. The cost was approximately $7 per PC, $15 for professional, and $33 for the enterprise plan."
  • More Smartsheet Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Maybe it would be better if they offered some extra tiers, so you don't have to go all the way up to the pro level."
  • "I use the free version of Trello, which is sufficient for my day to day use."
  • "I am tinkering with the free version."
  • "The free version of Trello covers all of the bases and all of our needs, so there's no cost involved for us. This is surprising for such a quality platform with no limitations on the key functionalities, though it also has a paid version."
  • "Its pricing is good. It is about $6 per license for what we use, but then there are other plans as well, such as $12 a month. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of pricing."
  • "The pricing for this solution is reasonable."
  • "We are currently using the open-source option."
  • "Paying for the solution's license is worth it only if our enterprise or organization can use Trello, integrated with some other solution, and we can have good reports."
  • More Trello Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:Smartsheet is a really good tool for collaboration.
    Top Answer:The solution is too expensive. For what I use it for, it's too expensive. I wouldn't pay for it myself. I would prefer to buy Microsoft Project or use Zoho Projects.
    Top Answer:All the features are valuable but the data extraction is extremely helpful for automation.
    Top Answer:Unstructured data cannot be directly used; it needs to be structured first. The recording session works well, but introducing dynamic control can cause glitches and loss of control. To address this… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    6,508
    Comparisons
    2,416
    Reviews
    26
    Average Words per Review
    693
    Rating
    8.2
    Views
    2,277
    Comparisons
    1,256
    Reviews
    26
    Average Words per Review
    442
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Smartsheet
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    Overview

    Smartsheet is the enterprise platform for dynamic work. A leading cloud-based platform for work management, Smartsheet empowers organizations and teams to dynamically plan, execute, and report on work at scale, resulting in more efficient processes, innovative solutions, and better business outcomes.

    Today over 90% of Fortune 100 companies and over 75% of Fortune 500 companies rely on the secure, scalable Smartsheet platform to connect the entire enterprise. The single Smartsheet platform gives people a solution flexible enough to adapt to the changing needs of dynamic work across a broad array of departments and use cases.

    Trello is the visual collaboration tool that creates a shared perspective on any project. Trello’s boards, lists and cards enable you to organize and prioritize your personal and work life in a fun, flexible and rewarding way.

    Sample Customers
    Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix
    Pixar, Google, PayPal, Kickstarter, National Geographic, Viewbox Holdings
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Pharma/Biotech Company16%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Insurance Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization36%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Healthcare Company6%
    Computer Software Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company28%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Comms Service Provider17%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization72%
    Computer Software Company5%
    Healthcare Company3%
    Financial Services Firm3%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise3%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise45%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise27%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business7%
    Midsize Enterprise73%
    Large Enterprise21%
    Buyer's Guide
    Smartsheet vs. Trello
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Smartsheet vs. Trello and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Smartsheet is ranked 4th in Project Management Software with 26 reviews while Trello is ranked 8th in Project Management Software with 28 reviews. Smartsheet is rated 8.0, while Trello is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Smartsheet writes "Has customization, data pulling, and cross-functional global communication features; it's a secure solution". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Trello writes "Designed for team collaboration and project management; user interface is easy to understand, with drag and drop functionality". Smartsheet is most compared with Microsoft Project, Spreadsheet.com, ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management, Adobe Workfront and QuickBase, whereas Trello is most compared with Asana, Wrike, Jira, monday.com and Zoho Projects. See our Smartsheet vs. Trello report.

    See our list of best Project Management Software vendors and best Project Portfolio Management 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.