MindManager vs. Smartsheet vs. Wrike

It is well suited for a quick prototype of product/development planning to show relationships amongst the APIs used. This helps developers understand the impact of the product changes and identifies the need to update integration components to avoid erroneous deployments. I have not personally experienced a less appropriate scenario at the moment.

Incentivized

Smartsheet shines for collaboration. When you have multiple people involved with planning events Smartsheet makes it easy to share and collaborate. For instance, multiple people can be in Smartsheet working at the same time. Also setting permissions for exactly those who need to know is quite easy with Smartsheet. For data analytics and general spreadsheet purposes Excel is better but for project management and event planning Smartsheet is superior

Incentivized

I believe it's well suited if you have multiple jobs/projects that you need to keep organized. We work with multiple job types from print/creative to web, copy and digital ads so it helps us stay organized. I don't think it would be suitable for a company that doesn't have a lot of jobs to manage. We average over 1,200 requests a year.

Incentivized

• Allows me to learn by organizing notes.
• Enables me to create and present strategic plans.
• Empowers me to present complex concepts in a different and straightforward way.
• Captivates my audience when I prepare and present a conference, a class, or a seminar in MindManager.
• Allows me to share mind maps in a variety of formats like JPG, PDF, and HTML.

Incentivized

• Its hard to overstate the value of familiarity. Being able to use a tool that has some familiarity takes away the time needed to train and orient employees on a new tool and allows an organization to hit the ground running.
• Smartsheet covers most of the basics of a project management tool, the usual tasks, milestones and project viewing options.
• For data viewing, you get multiple data viewing options including a calendar view (good for marketing teams and those who work around scheduling), Kanban, Gaant etc

Incentivized

• Excellent dashboards that are easy to use and give amazing insights.
• User friendly interface that is also easy to interact with.
• Lot of integrations.
• Robust project and task management features.
• Facilitate seamless team collaboration and communication.
• Highly customizable and multiple project views.

• There should be some more functionality in the Notes window, such as a "Paste Special " Icon in the notes area to maintain format control.
• Although I create many of my own Web export templates, an add-on for web export design would be great, as I regularly create Interactive Electronic Technical Publications (IETP) in HTML export format.
• The ability to sync Map shortcuts between devices would also be welcome. I use MM on three devices, and I have to add or amend the Map list individually. My maps are on OneDrive, so using them should not be that hard if they are cloud-based.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• Email alerts sometimes send too slowly.
• If you put a project on hold, it can be hard to find it once you are ready to return to it.
• Sometimes there are too many steps/tasks and the main page can get cluttered.

Incentivized

I feel the main issues of the old Mindjet seem to be gone with the
Corel purchase. With the huge advance of sharing via browser HTML even 1
user can affect many. And, actually, using MM kind of forced my rigid
brain to rethink how I categorize and classify information/projects.

The
idea of paying $69USD for an annual cost is more than fair and a great
model for Corel/Mindjet to keep rolling out improvements!

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I wish that Wrike had more drag and drop functionality that would be connected to assignee and also I wish that the finish date of a task would update to the date where you checked completed. It does not do that. Also finishing a task doesn't move the start date of the next task it "protects your time in that way", but our management team wants us to quickly see what we have down the pipeline rather than having to scroll down the list of upcoming tasks.

Incentivized

MindManager is very intuitive. The user interface is not cluttered and the ribbon icons are easy to understand. Several excellent "how-to" videos are available on the MindManager site as well as on YouTube. MindManager starts quickly and the user interface is very responsive. Launching other programs from MindManager such as Excel is very fast and issue free. The browsing feature is lightning fast. The drag-and-drop capability is also very fast and reliable.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

It does take some time and work to really understand and use it properly, but I think the accessibility to help and documentation make that completely feasible. Once you know how to use it, I find it to be very user-friendly, and have very few complaints.

Incentivized

We have had no issues with the application's availability

Incentivized

Over two years of (almost) daily usage without outages. Don't remember any errors. I give it 9 only because some Wrike plugins (for online document edit) are based on NPAPI architecture. These types of plugins are being phased out in new browsers, and NPAPI plugins are disabled by default in recent versions of Chrome so you have to do some browser adjustments when you switch browsers or move to another computer.

The application is quick and responsive. We are able to produce mindmaps and reports with ease. The program is not complicated at all and integrates well with software and programs like Microsoft Outlook and Teams, which we truly appreciate.

Incentivized

Wrike tasks loads fine, but I hate clicking files and wait for a bit of time since it is powerpoint or word, Wrike assumes I want to open those on Wrike. My suggestion is to link it to office 365 so we do not need Wrike based decoder for PPTX and DOCX

Incentivized

I have called technical support a few times. During the COVID Crisis, I called a few times repeatedly due to a rush request. The technical support guy called me back in minutes. He somehow knew that I had called repeatedly and wanted to make sure my issue was resolved immediately

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

During my learning phase with Wrike, I initially struggled with setting up automation rules and request forms. However, Wrike support was always my go-to, resolving issues within seconds or minutes. Their assistance made the learning process much easier. My best experience was receiving step-by-step screenshots to follow, with the support team on standby until I was completely satisfied.

Incentivized

We had staff in person provide some training

Incentivized

There is a wide range of online training through webinars led by expert users. They are particularly useful for explaining how to use new features and using MindManager 'in the real world' for projects, tasks etc.

Incentivized

I love the Wrike training options. Wrike Discover has tons of courses, learning plans, certifications, etc. This is an area where Wrike definitely shines! I wish these resources were more in your face for new people, because it seems like a lot of coworkers didn't know all of this training was available to them.

Incentivized

better backup and exporting functions

Incentivized

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.

There are a lot of bells and whistles in Wrike, and not all of it is easy or intuitive to understand once it's plopped in your lap. It's easier when there are a few choice people who understand Wrike as a platform and articulate it in such a way where it makes it easy to pass it along to others in the group

MindManager stands out for its wide range of export options, customization and how they have enriched the format over time. As a constantly evolving tool, and having tried others, I consider it superior for the abovementioned reasons. Its cross-platform nature has been decisive, and although there are many alternatives in the form of web applications or the like, MindManager presents itself as a more complete and robust option.

Incentivized

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!

Incentivized

Jira did not at all help us get our work done as content creators. I think that was because Jira wasn't quite right for our uses. Wrike fits our needs so much better. I can't tell you enough the relief I felt when we adopted Wrike and I never had to use Jira again.

Incentivized

company purchase

Incentivized

A team can collaborate on the same project but cannot create a shared project file. It would be helpful for that feature to be added.

Incentivized

The sky is the limit for what can be done in Wrike. We started with 1 use case and within 5 months we migrated several key business practices over to Wrike because they were easier to manage. Use cases so far: process improvement, management review, corrective actions, maintenance requests, month-end financial closing, and document management. As we grow, it's easy to imagine putting even more into Wrike where it becomes a cornerstone for how we do business

I do not use professional services.

Incentivized

• For a single person business presentation it is a plus.
• Project difficulty is well assessed using the map.
• Giving away a paper version of a map is a positive gesture. People like the map, the look, and what it says, and it may also be a way to promote MindManager to them.
• Keep the PDF or JPEG saving capabilities for small customers like me. It's important.

Incentivized

• This has really opened up collaboration across teams. A lot less working in silos.
• It hasn't fully replaced any one tool so it means having to go to another place. Hopefully, we can eliminate a tool or two in the next six months.

Incentivized

• Different teams (e.g., contracting, compliance, provider relations) can view updates in real time, comment directly on tasks, and escalate items when needed.
• Wrike allows us to template the contracting process (from intake to signature) to ensure consistency across payers and reduce administrative overhead.
• Leadership can see the status of negotiations at a glance, identify bottlenecks, and prioritize resources accordingly.

Incentivized