The Best Smartsheet Alternatives for You and Your Team
Smartsheet is a great work execution platform which works very well for teams of all sizes when it comes to managing, planning, automating and reporting collaborative work. You might have the best digital marketing tools but unless you find a way to streamline your workflow, you will not be able to execute your projects successfully. Smartsheet provides a wonderful combination of a familiar spreadsheet format with work management and collaboration capabilities and includes projects and task lists, customer information and sales pipelines, to name a few. However, Smartsheet isn’t the one and only tool for the job. There are a lot of Smartsheet alternatives available today. For teams looking for software that offers an end-to-end solution, there are a lot of Smartsheet alternatives to consider. If you are wondering why, here’s why: Smartsheet doesn’t provide a full set of project management features, nor does it currently offer any time tracking feature. As such, if you need to manage all aspects of your projects and/or business in one place, there are some great alternatives to consider. To make the decision process easier for you, we have gathered together our best picks.Â
Table of Contents
Here are the best Smartsheet alternatives available today:
Before we dive into the names, let’s discuss some important facts about them. Every Smartsheet alternative listed here has a set of unique features that stand out from other tools. It is also a trustworthy provider, with regular updates and high security. And most importantly, all these alternatives are easy to use and require a very small amount of time for set up. We have divided the list into three categories:
- Work Management Softwares
- Project Management Softwares
- Collaboration and Team Management Softwares
Work Management Softwares
These more comprehensive solutions are the best option for teams that prefer to manage the majority (if not all) of their work in a single platform. This way, everyone will have a better overview of the projects and there is no need to shuffle between dozens of different apps and software.
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 kicks off our list of smartsheet alternatives. It offers a complete suite of social collaboration, communication and management tools for your team. It’s a wonderful business management software in the CRM category.
Top features:
- Social intranet for internal communication
- Gantt charts
- Employee workload management
- Customer relationship management
- Telephone integration
Tool USP: Bitrix24 has a broad set of features, from traditional project management to integrated telephone and HR system, or internal email.
Pricing: Free plan, paid plans with more storage from $48.30 per month.
Celoxis
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Celoxis. It provides enterprises with project portfolio management softwares.
Top features:
- Advanced scheduling
- Interactive Gantt charts
- Project tracking
- Financial management
- Reporting analytics
- Different custom field types
Tool USP: Celoxis offers both SaaS and On-Premise options for teams based on their specific needs.
Pricing: From $21.25 user/month for cloud solution, $450/user for on-premise solution.
Proofhub
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is ProofHub. It is a SaaS-based work management software that offers a replacement for conventional emailing and other tools, bringing project management and team collaboration under one roof.
Top features:
- Assigned user roles
- Online team discussions and chats
- Reporting and tracking project history
- Secure file storage
- Task delegation and assignments
Tool USP: ProofHub has a well-designed user interface that helps the team to collaborate more efficiently.
Pricing: Ranges from $45/month (maximum 40 projects) to $150/month (unlimited projects).
Mavenlink
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Mavenlink. It is a work management software that brings your project management, time tracking and resource planning together into one solution.
Top features:
- Customizable templates
- Project and task management
- Resource planning
- Time & expense tracking
Tool USP: Create project templates that you can reuse after a successful project.
Pricing: From $39 month/user for teams.
Asana
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Asana. It combines elements of project management, file storage, and collaboration and helps to manage projects across a team without the need for endless email threads.
Top features:
- Break your work down into projects and tasks
- Share projects with your team
- Assign tasks to team members
- Get notified of projects updates
- Use a mobile app to access Asana from everywhere.
Tool USP: Asana is an easy-to-use tool perfect for small teams with not too complex projects.
Pricing: Free for up to 15 members, Premium from $10.99 user/month.
Scoro
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Scoro. It is a powerful end-to-end solution that combines all the features you might need to manage your business. It includes projects & tasks, contact management, quotes, team collaboration, billing, and reporting.
Top features:
- Manage every aspect of your project on one page (including time spent & billed, planned tasks & meetings, invoices and expenses, comments and files).
- You can separately allocate billable and non billable work to see how your team performs in real time.
- Options to create project budgets and compare the projections with actual results.
- The Scoro dashboard displays real time data which can help you with tracking your firm’s KPIs and performances.
Tool USP: Scoro streamlines work progress very well. Because of that, task execution doesn’t require a lot of different tools. A central place holds all the essential information.
Pricing: From $26 user/month.
Project Management Softwares
In case you are only looking for an excellent project management solution, then it might be worth your time to check out the following alternatives.
ZOHO
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Zoho. This project management software equips you with all the tools you need to create, collaborate, and communicate with your teams.
Top features:
- Manage and organize projects with milestones and task lists.
- Manage files in the cloud from your phone or tablet
- Collaborate seamlessly with your team and clients with the collaboration tool.
- Use Gantt chart for a better overview.
Tool USP: Zoho projects can be integrated with other Zoho bundles such as CRM, Finance, and Recruit for better work management.
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $24 user/month.
Microsoft Project
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Microsoft Project. It helps to streamline the project, resource, and portfolio management. Integrated planning tools are there to help keep you organized and track your project.
Top features:
- Project scheduling & costing
- Resource management
- Reporting & business intelligence
- Built-in project templates
- Project timelines
Tool USP: Microsoft Project provides you with templates and shortens the time you spend on putting things in place.
Pricing: From $8.25 a month/user.
Teamweek
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Teamweek. It is a timeline-based project management tool that provides a swift and exact overview of all of your team’s current work and upcoming projects.
Top features:
- Simple Gantt-chart interface
- Shared calendar for scheduling upcoming tasks and meetings
- Overview of your team’s schedule to deliver projects on time
- Drag-and-drop task management
- Forecasting for new clients and projects.
Tool USP: Teamweek serves as an add-on to more comprehensive project management tools, making time-scheduling super easy.
Pricing: Free plan for up to 5 people, paid plans from $35/month.
Insightly
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Insightly. It is first and foremost a CRM tool for teams that includes a set of different project and business management features.
Top features:
- Manage leads, contacts, organizations, partners, vendors and suppliers
- Track project activity and performance against milestones
- You can track your business with the help of reports, activity sets and a wonderfully holistic task dashboard.
Tool USP: Insightly CRM is tailored for any level of experience – from first time CRM users to sales experts.
Pricing: From $29 month/user for teams.
JIRA
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is JIRA. It is a powerful bug tracking software that works across platforms and features advanced project management capabilities and features.
Top features:
- Create user stories and issues, plan sprints
- Distribute tasks across your software team.
- Prioritize and discuss your team’s work
- Centralize your team communication
- See real-time reporting on your team’s work
Tool USP: JIRA is designed for software development teams, making it the perfect IT project management tool.
Pricing: Starting from $8 per month (up to 10 users).
Paymo
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Paymo. It is a simple and powerful tool that combines the holy trinity of project management, work reporting and time billing.
Top features:
- Billing customers for completed tasks
- Dashboard to see your team’s performance
- Integrated project accounting
- Tracking the time spent on tasks and projects
- Thorough work reports
Tool USP: With Paymo Plus, you can automate your time tracking completely. What you need for availing that feature is get the desktop app and let it track your PC usage. At the end of the day, just remember to categorize all your time entries.
Pricing: Free and paid plans from $9.56 user/month.
Collaboration & Team Management Softwares
These six alternatives add considerable value to teams that are looking for an effective way to collaborate with their team.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a wonderful business management tool in general. It appears on our best Smartsheet alternatives list as well. It features a fantastic modern social media style interface and comes with great team collaboration features.
Top features:
- Projects can manage the work of multiple contributors
- New ideas can be discussed on message boards
- The team can collaborate within the app
- Project performance is reported
- Separate dashboard for the purpose of displaying things to clients
- Notifications sent via email and on the desktop
Tool USP: Compared to many other project management alternatives, Basecamp doesn’t charge you per person. It also has exclusive deals for teachers, students and non-profits.
Price: $99/month for unlimited users.
Liquidplanner
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is LiquidPlanner. It is a great collaboration tool that brings project management and time tracking together. This makes it easier for team members to communicate and share ideas.
Top features:
- Estimating a realistic duration of task completion
- Commenting option on various tasks and schedule
- Task-specific collaboration boards
- Resource management/scheduling screen
- Option of adding extra notes to projects
Tool USP: LiquidPlanner has an interesting methodology for project management – it helps teams to set realistic deadlines based on best-case and worst-case scenarios.
Pricing: From $45 user/month (minimum 5 users).
Podio
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Podio. It is a flexible and highly customizable social work platform for work and team communication.
Top features:
- Assigning all tasks, attaching files and discussing the solution’s intricate details.
- Option to share large and encrypted files
- Sales pipeline automation and project budget tracking
- Visual dashboards provide a company overview
- Workflow automation
Tool USP: Podio enables you to add if-this-then-that logic to Podio apps. What that means is that you can instruct your app to create a task or comment whenever an item is created, or a particular update is made.
Pricing: From 19.20$ month/user for the complete package.
Avaza
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is Avaza. It is a simple and powerful project management tool that helps you collaborate with both your team and customers while working on any given project. Besides, you’ll be able to track your time and bill your customers.
Top features:
- Task management on a cardboard-style interface
- Automatic task reminders
- Flexible time tracking and timesheet approvals
- Sending quotes & invoices in moments
Tool USP: Each project in Avaza has a user-friendly email address. All you need to do is forward your emails from your Avaza registered email address to convert them into tasks.
Pricing: Start free with up to 5 projects, $39.95 for unlimited projects.
ActiveCollab
Next on the Smartsheet alternatives list, is ActiveCollab. It is a project management and collaboration tool that helps your team stay organized in your daily work.
Top features:
- Time tracking and invoicing
- Gantt-like timeline for planning
- Kanban cards
- Creating tasks with multiple users and deadlines
- A shared team calendar for collaboration
What’s interesting about this tool: ActiveCollab includes many beneficial collaboration features such as file sharing, subscriptions, reminders and project notes, real-time communication and discussions.
Pricing: From $6.25 user/month for annual billing.
Slack
Rounding off our smartsheet alternatives list, is Slack. It is the perfect collaboration tool for teams who need to be in constant communication.
Top features:
- Team communication and chat
- Integrate with Google Drive or Dropbox to share files
- Set up reminders
- Highlight words to be notified as they appear in conversations
- Use @everyone tag to send a message to the entire team
Tool USP: In addition to popular chatting features, Slack has many shortcuts and hacks that help to increase the productivity levels of your team collaboration.
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $6.90 user/month.
So these were some of the best Smartsheet alternatives available today. Go through the features and pick the one that best suits the needs of you and your team. These Smartsheet alternatives can go a long way in streamlining your business and helping you manage your workflow.