Spreadsheet Project Management for the Rest of Us - How Smartsheet compares to Excel and other spreadsheet tools
June 30, 2021

Spreadsheet Project Management for the Rest of Us - How Smartsheet compares to Excel and other spreadsheet tools

Abigail Selebe | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Smartsheet

We primarily turned to Smartsheet as a way to manage our projects using a familiar interface to Microsoft Excel. A number of users in the organization were proficient with Excel and we wanted a tool that would allow us to be able to have some familiarity of Microsoft Excel but also gave us the flexibility to customize it to our liking. We were able to tackle the early learning curve with this approach and achieved a good adoption rate across the staff whom the tool was deployed to.
  • 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
  • Smartsheet can feel like a clone of Microsoft Office especially with 365 being a valuable option for most businesses, in this regard it is hard to justify the separate cost for it.
  • Zapier is available for outside integration but you have to pay to use it, it would be good if some integrations were built into Smartsheet itself.
  • The similarity to Excel is very helpful to us and users in the organization as they felt comfortable using it.
  • The ability to use it as a spreadsheet productivity tool and instantly change the view to something more suitable for other users is very valuable.
  • The reduced learning curve for most users was very important to us because of the time saved. It is hard to quantify the amount of money saved on time alone.
  • Smartsheet allowed our users to feel empowered to do their best work without having to spend a lot of time changing their workflows, this was very good for employee satisfaction.
Smartsheet is a dedicated project management tool that is built on spread sheet principles. When compared to Microsoft's own offering, Smartsheet came out on top in some areas like dedicated project management features vs having to build custom features to Microsoft 365. However when you compare them on price, Microsoft 365 definitely has more value than Smartsheet.

Do you think Smartsheet delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Smartsheet's feature set?

Yes

Did Smartsheet live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Smartsheet go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Smartsheet again?

Yes

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Basecamp
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 Feature Ratings

Task Management
7
Resource Management
6
Gantt Charts
6
Scheduling
7
Workflow Automation
4
Team Collaboration
5
Support for Agile Methodology
5
Support for Waterfall Methodology
4
Document Management
4
Email integration
5
Mobile Access
6
Timesheet Tracking
6
Change request and Case Management
Not Rated
Budget and Expense Management
5
Project & financial reporting
6
Integration with accounting software
6