Brightpod is a cloud-based project, task and content management software built with marketing & creative teams in mind. Brightpod helps bring visibility to all the work across teams.
With Brightpod, teams can create workflows, delegate tasks, setup their editorial calendar, and manage digital content strategies in the cloud.
A few practical uses include i) collaboration on an upcoming social media campaign, ii) keeping a working editorial calendar, iii) creating workflows to help similar…
$19
per month
Smartsheet
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Smartsheet is an online project management and collaboration tool. It includes automated alerts, instantaneous updating and sharing across team members, resource management, nested tasks organized in a hierarchy, a Gantt chart view, exportable and automated reports, and integration with email.
I like Brightpod. We used their previous product, DeskAway, which we actually liked a bit more for our needs (cannot remember why now as we've found workarounds over the last three years!). It is good for us, and we need to organize multiple task lists for multiple clients. We need to be able to monitor task progression and completion, as well as to track time by resource. We need to prioritize and focus our resources, and we need to review time tracking/performance reports. All possible in Brightpod. We especially like the access we can give to clients, which is on a task list basis, so they can see some task lists in their pod but not others, which allows us to not overwhelm them with unnecessary info, but at the same time, accomplish the detailed tracking we need.
For teams and users who are very familiar with Excel and its mode of operation, Smartsheet will feel like a walkover. If you have a number of users who use Excel or Google Sheets for their personal project management then you will find this tool to be very useful and somewhat familiar.
Teams that may be used to other project management suites or styles would find Smartsheet a bit challenging to adapt to, as formulas and formatting can be challenging to adapt to.
Smartsheet set up is similar to Excel, yet when you upload an Excel file, things like conditional formatting are lost. Smartsheet has its own conditional formatting, and you have to reinstate the rules. It would be great if those would apply automatically once a file is uploaded
Some Smartsheet management and access rules can take some tweaking to work properly. This may be a case of offering more info to admins so they can apply these better and with more efficiency
It definitely meets our needs as far as organizing and archiving our tasks and files. As we train more staff to view it, I see opportunities for more improvement, which I am sure this program can handle. I look forward to seeing continued improvement from Smartsheet on their capabilities and functionality.
Brightpod is easy to use. We have several levels of users, some are from outside the USA and some are here. We needed something that could be used by programmers, coders, technical project managers, marketing individuals, and administrators. We get a thumbs up from all these user types. The system is hardly ever down, so we are able to use 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
Smartsheet is very easy to learn. However, while I have been able to pick it easily, Microsoft Excel and Project super users that I have trained on Smartsheet get bogged down in the differences and can find it frustrating. Explaining the differences ahead of time and why Smartsheet is being chosen instead of a different software seems to counteract those reactions
I give this rating because it fills a niche in the market. MS Project scares many away from proper task management but there are limited tools our there, especially cloud-based that are mobile-friendly. Smartsheet fills this market gap, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. IT is not fair to compare it to MS Project, but fairer to see what gaps it fills.
It's absolutely paramount to take a few minutes to actually play with the software. It's nearly impossible to do anything wrong or make a mistake which cannot be fixed easily. Under the help menu is Live Training option. After you familiarize yourself with the commands, watch the live training for some in depth understanding of how to make the software fit your needs perfectly.
Brightpod was definitely the most attractive and we felt like it had the least amount of clutter. We hated how Wrike handled recurring tasks. ActiveCollab just seemed to have some complexity that we didn't need. The Brightpod developers are very responsive and were able to fix bugs quickly.
Jira and Redmine are much more robust and technologically advanced project management solutions. I enjoy using either when managing a very large project. However, I prefer to use Smartsheet for my smaller to medium sized projects. As for Google Drive - I would say that Google sheets and Smartsheet are almost identical in my opinion when it comes to functionality. Personally I prefer to manage smaller projects via Google Drive, but it is a personal preference!
