Smartsheet review
Bottom line
Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-style work management platform that adds automation, dashboards, and enterprise governance to project tracking. Its clearest strength is how quickly teams can move from spreadsheets to structured, automated workflows, with a free trial available before buying. The main costs to watch are the lack of a free plan, the Pro tier being limited to new customers, and governance features such as SAML SSO and portfolios requiring the Enterprise tier. Teams of three or more that want automation and reporting without heavy IT involvement should choose Business, while larger organizations with compliance needs should evaluate Enterprise.
What is Smartsheet?
Smartsheet is a web-based work management platform for planning, tracking, and reporting on projects, programs, and business processes. It addresses the problem of work scattered across spreadsheets, email threads, and separate tools by putting tasks, files, forms, and dashboards in one place. Its sheets look and feel like spreadsheets, so teams adopt them quickly while gaining dependencies, automation, and governance that plain spreadsheets lack.
Day to day, users work in Grid, Gantt, Calendar, Table, and Board views, with Timeline added on Business and higher plans. Automated workflows send alerts, reminders, update requests, and approval requests when dates or statuses change. Forms collect intake requests directly into sheets, and dashboards and reports pull data from multiple sheets. Smartsheet AI can build dashboards from live data, summarize and translate rows, and answer questions in conversation. The Android and iOS mobile apps are included on every plan.
Teams of all sizes use Smartsheet, from freelancers and small businesses to mid-size companies and enterprises. Pricing is per member per month. Pro costs $9 per member per month billed annually and supports up to 10 members with unlimited free contributors. Business costs $19 per member per month billed annually for teams of three or more, and adds workload tracking, admin capabilities, and 1 TB of attachment storage. Enterprise and Advanced Work Management are custom priced and add SAML-based SSO, portfolios, and scenario planning.
Compared with typical spreadsheet-based tools, Smartsheet puts more weight on connectivity and governance. It offers pre-built integrations with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, Salesforce, Jira, Power BI, and Tableau, along with Zapier and MCP server connections to AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot. Its security stack includes SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, FedRAMP, and HIPAA (BAA) certifications, SAML and OAuth 2.0 single sign-on, SCIM provisioning, and AES-256 encryption at rest.
Who it's for
- Teams moving project tracking out of spreadsheets
- Operations and PMO groups that need approvals and dashboards
- Organizations with compliance requirements such as HIPAA or FedRAMP
Who should look elsewhere
- Individuals who need a permanent free plan
- Small teams that want the lowest possible per-seat price with no extras
Typical uses
- Project and portfolio planning across multiple teams
- Automated approval and request workflows
- Executive dashboards built from live project data
- Client delivery tracking and collaboration portals
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