12 Smartsheet Alternatives: Finding the Right Fit for Your Project Needs

To thrive in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace, you must have effective project management and smooth collaboration in your organization. Fortunately, Smartsheet is available, which is a popular tool among professionals due to its effective project management and collaboration features.

Smartsheet offers a multitude of features and a flexible user interface that assists teams. Thus, they can simplify their workflows, enhance communication, and succeed in projects.

However, there are many alternatives available when it comes to project management tools. So, you shouldn’t avoid exploring other options to ensure the right tool fits your project objectives. 

In this article, we will discuss why you should consider the Smartsheet alternative. Then we will examine some Smartsheet alternatives that can work as a strong substitute with outstanding features. These tools can boost the productivity of your team and ultimately satisfy your project’s requirements. 

Why consider the Smartsheet alternatives

By exploring Smartsheet alternatives, you can compare several tools based on their distinct advantages and disadvantages. This is how you can find the best match for your project’s requirements. But don’t forget about your specific requirements, team dynamics, and long-term objectives.

Here are a few reasons why you should consider Smartsheet alternatives:

Alternative Feature Set 

In Smartsheet alternatives, you will get a wide variety of capabilities that are adapted to various project management requirements. Therefore, you will be looking into tools that will offer features tailored to your sectors of business or project type, increasing productivity and efficiency.

Budget Friendliness

Although Smartsheet provides several price options, substitutes may offer more affordable choices that better fit your budget. Hence, you will get a solution that offers outstanding value for money due to having different tools in front of you. 

User Experience & Usability

Each project management solution offers a unique user experience and learning curve for different users. So, with each alternative, you can choose a tool that will provide a unique interface and workflow. As a result, it complements your team’s preferences, lowers the learning curve, and promotes easy adoption and higher productivity.

Integration Options

Evaluate Smartsheet solutions that enable simple integration with other programs and platforms used by your team. Workflows may be optimized, and cooperation can be improved by integrating with well-known technologies. For example, document management systems, communication platforms, and CRMs.

Scalability and customization

Alternative tools may provide more customization options, enabling you to modify the tool to meet the needs of your particular project. Scalability is another vital aspect to consider, particularly if you expect the size of your project or team to increase in the future.

Let’s explore and evaluate some of the top-notch Smartsheet Alternatives crafted to suit your unique project requirements.

Trello

Trello is the talk of the town when it comes to highly popular and versatile project management tools. It offers a visually appealing user interface that allows users and teams to organize, collaborate and monitor their projects productively.

This tool is packed with powerful features to enhance the productivity of your organization, whether you are a small or large organization.  

Key Features:

• Offers a unique Kanban board system to help you organize tasks. Boards include lists, and lists consist of cards. 
• Cards showcase individual tasks, and you can drag and drop them between lists to view progress.
• Checklists can be attached to cards to divide activities into smaller, more manageable chunks. Due dates can be placed on the cards to monitor scheduled tasks and their deadlines.
• Users can add tasks for specific individuals, add comments and attachments to cards and get real-time updates. 
• PowerUps feature includes a calendar view, voting system, automation, and integration with various tools.
• Offers mobile apps for ios and Android users   
• Integrates with various external tools and platforms, such as Slack, Google Drive, and Jira.
• User-friendly interface and intuitive design that enables individuals and teams to start right away.  

Jira

Jira by Atlassian is a robust project management and issue-tracking tool. It is developed to simplify workflows and boost team collaboration in any organization. Jira is specially engineered to support a wide range of project management requirements within different industries.

Thus, your organization and its team will move rapidly, stay oriented, and build exceptional together. 

Key Features: 

• Centralized and user-friendly dashboard to manage the overall project management. 
• Create stories, issues, and tasks to minimize large concepts into manageable parts.
• Ensure a complete visual at each and every level of your projects to improve task priority and facilitate proper discussion.
• Accelerate the delivery process and rely on your progress to ensure real-time information.
• Represents live visual data which boosts team performance with a contextual framework. 
• Automate the entire workflow with a no-code environment, which optimizes time management and team focus.
• Pre-built templates (Scrum, Kanban, Bug Tracking, Dev Ops) to get you started right away.
• Customize the workflow as you move on through the project management process.
• Integrates with most of the popular project management and communication tools. 

Zoho Projects

Zoho is a cloud-based project management tool aimed at providing assistance for project management. You can effortlessly plan, track, and collaborate with your team and meet your project requirements. So, you can improvise your project management workflow since it offers observability, collaboration, and productivity capabilities. 

Key Features: 

• Gantt charts are available to keep you aware of your essential tasks and their dependencies. 
• Manage tasks by creating tasks, setting due dates, and assigning them to the team members. 
• Easily track your work hours, whether manually or with timers, to generate invoices through timesheets.
• The User-friendly drag-and-drop user interface enables you to create and showcase new automation for any complex workflow. 
• Zoho Project flawlessly integrates with various tools, which enables your productivity. 
• Includes a built-in chat function and document collaboration features to enable better communication. 
• Generate reports on project progress and assist you in tracking team progress and exploring areas for improvement.
• Teams can also be managed through mobile apps and third-party integrations. 

nTask

nTask is an allrounder when it comes to project management software. This tool will enable you to implement seamless collaboration, effective planning, insightful analysis, and proper task management for teams.

Users can divide complex projects, improve plans and allocate resources, manage task dependencies, and create financial reports efficiently. As a result, the project output becomes satisfying with less effort. 

Key Features: 

• Powerful task management abilities to schedule tasks rapidly with team members.
• Clutter-free Kanban boards provide a seamless and intuitive way to visualize workflows. 
• Task prioritization feature to keep your team members aware of the critical tasks. 
• Set start and end dates for tasks before starting a project for effective scheduling and monitoring. 
• Effectively track, assign, prioritize, and resolve bugs using the issue management software.
• Integrated timesheets to enable you to gain valuable insights and explore the Lackings in your workflow. 
• Planning,  managing, collaboration, and report visualization all in one tool. 
• Handle project risks by defining their likelihood and current status for your project team.

Box

Box is a cloud project management software that will minimize your content management effort, foster collaboration, and ensure secure file sharing. The tool facilitates teamwork and alignment by enabling you to share, store, and organize various file types. 

Moreover, admins can access and control files and folders with unparalleled security measures.  No matter the device type you use, this tool offers file previews for over 120 file formats to enhance your productivity significantly.

Key Features: 

• Simplifies project management in a centralized content management dashboard.
• Secure file-sharing options for easy and reliable collaboration. 
• Box Note feature allows easy project planning, task list creation, task progress, and stage setting.
• Admins have control to provide access to the users for files and folder sharing. 
• Ensures file security and compliance by supporting HIPAA, FEdRAMP, FiNRA, and more.
• Allows to open and co-edit files online using preferred productivity apps such as Office 365 and Gsuite. 
• Task automation enabled assigning tasks, setting deadlines, and monitoring progress. 
• Box Relay feature for automating repetitive tasks. 
• Real-time content-sharing options for rapid collaboration and productivity. 

Monday Work Management

Monday Work Management tool offers a full package of solutions for managing all work-related tasks from a single point.

Monday.com enables teams to focus on their project goals, task, and process management effectively. As a result, organizations can efficiently gain their goals within the estimated timeframe. 

Key Features:

• Templates for Goals & Objectives (Goals & Strategy, Portfolio Management, Resource Management).
• Templates for Projects & Processes (Project management, Business operations, Requests & approvals, Client Projects).
• Templates for Tasks (Task Management, To-Dos).
• Multiple visualization options (10+) for tasks and projects according to your tasks.  
• A real-time dashboard that comes with 30+ widgets to show relevant information and make better choices.
• Create a process for every aspect of your work and company needs without any coding components.
• 200+ automation recipes that are included to enhance your workflow 
• Connect preferred tools that you work with in one place and expand your capabilities within this platform.  

Asana

Asana claims to be one of the best platforms when it comes to cross-functional work environments. No matter the organization or team type, the tool offers flexible work management features. As a result, you can boost efficiency inside the organization by producing high-quality work that is timely and collaborative. 

Key Features:  

• Asana Intelligence uses AI to boost workflow by enhancing your team’s impact.
• Coordinate teams by creating workflow through automated workflow builder. 
• Centralized Calendar for sharing your team’s work.
• List view to showcase tasks that have priority and due dates.
• Timeline view to showcase time maps, managing dependent, overlapping, and unscheduled tasks.
• Board view to simplify the tasks that are currently in hand and define stages of work. 
• Real-time insights on work progression from any work type 
• Easily gather information and showcase data for incoming requests
• Risk and dependency management on the organization for better collaboration with leadership.

Microsoft Project    

Microsoft Project helps you manage your projects more effectively to boost your production. It keeps your workflow focused, organized, and in control for on-time delivery. This tool is simple to use that will let you oversee projects straightaway. 

However, to facilitate project management and collaboration, Microsoft Project and Microsoft Teams are integrated. Thus, it enables file exchange, chats, meetings, and other features for better project management. 

Key Features: 

• Grid View for projects offers a better way to plan and organize projects with task lists.
• Kanban Board view helps to manage workflows and project status efficiently.
• Dynamic scheduling based on the amount of work required, length of project, and team members allowed. 
• Craft your own dashboard to view the entire work status and dig down to the details of the projects. 
• Automated workflow built for desktop and mobile devices with a flexible and secure Azure platform. 
• Task lists and timetables are updated in collaboration with stakeholders and team members.
• In-built reports to monitor progress, resources, programs, and portfolios. 
• Timesheets that highlight project and non-project times to manage payroll and invoicing.
• Allocate resources properly by requesting and approving tasks. 

OpenProject 

OpenProject is a project management tool that provides safe and effective administration of traditional, agile, or hybrid projects. This open-source tool enables you to maintain the greatest levels of data security and privacy while taking control of your data. Moreover, it allows you to deploy it on your preferred infrastructure giving you complete control and ownership of your data.  

Key Features: 

• Top-notch security and protection for your data with multiple security features (https encryption, password, two-factor authentication, and more)
• Unrestricted access to operate, distribute, study, and change OpenProject. It includes a GNU GPL version 3 license.
• Offers Enterprise cloud where you can keep your data safely in the servers in the EU. 
• Shared timelines enable you to stimulate your entire team to develop and visualize the project plan. 
• Plan and manage projects through Grid view, visual Kanban board, Gantt chart, and more. 
• Supports agile project management approaches through Scrum and Kanban for rapid project delivery. 
• Calendar where you can assign tasks on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and get a better understanding of the team effort. 

Teamwork

Using the Teamwork project management app, you can lift up the output of your project and get the most out of your team. It offers all the essential features that a project management app should include for desktop, iOS, and Android environments.

However, Teamwork will showcase all the project management elements to help you manage teams, projects, and clients. Plus, you will get all the advanced features for scheduling and resource allocation. 

Key Features: 

• Tools and resources to properly allocate resources and never miss a payable time. You will get a detailed overview of milestones, project planning, budgeting, scheduling, and more.
• Real-time team collaboration that maintains teams, clients, admins, and leaders on the same page. Thus, you can answer anyone’s question and deliver projects within the timeframe and allocated budget. 
• Multiple project representation via table, board, and timeline. 
• Import existing project data from a different platform and get started immediately. 
• Sharable project reports for everyone in an organization. 
• Pre-built templates are available for any type of project, including marketing, operations, creative, engineering, and more. 
• Integrates with a multitude of apps, including Slack, Office 365, Google Apps, and more.    

Notion

Notion has grabbed the limelight when it comes to a project management tool that removes all confusion. It offers AI-powered tools to handle any complex project and speeds up the project management process. 

You won’t be needing any third-party apps to operate this easy-to-handle tool. Therefore, you can track all the tasks in one space and manage teamwork, build a roadmap for cross-functional teams, sprint collaboratively, and also maintain meetings.        

Key Features:

• Exceptionally customizable according to user preference which lets you change colors, fonts, layouts, images, and more.
• Sharing pages, databases, docs, and more makes real-time collaboration possible.
• Everything can be edited in real-time, which is essential for teamwork in projects.
• Offers To-do lists, time setting, and progress tracking for better task management.
• Users can create wikis to centralize knowledge and share it with others. 
• Notion databases allow you to store, organize, and share data that can be filtered and expired. 
• Integrates flexibly with a range of apps and services such as Google Drive, Slack, and many more. 
• Markup is supported to format the texts in different ways, which helps in creating tables, lists, and other content types.
• Notion’s API will let you integrate with different apps and services to automate tasks and create custom workflows. 
• Mobile app for handling project management from anywhere on Android and iOS devices.

Basecamp

Basecamp simplifies project management with its refreshing simplicity. The tool assembles all the project information and embraces a centralized solution to empower your team. Thus, you can say goodbye to scattered project information and use this amazing tool to streamline workflows, collaborate efficiently, and stay organized.  

Key Features: 

• Message board to discuss small or broad topics of your project.
• Store files and assets related to your project. 
• Create a to-do list to organize and manage projects, team tasks, and responsibilities.
• Discussion boards to maintain team communication and collaboration on projects. 
• File sharing options to share files and keep track of project documentation and asset. 
• Calendars are available to track project progress, deadlines, and milestones.
• Detailed reports on projects to track progress and identify the scope of improvements.
• Real-time chat option for faster communication and team collaboration. 
• HIllcharts for visually representing project progress 
• Integrates apps and services like Google Drive, Dropbox, Slack, and more flawlessly. 

Final Thoughts 

Yes, there are a lot of Project Management tools available out there with similar features. But we’ve curated this list of alternatives to Smartsheet that offers a complete solution as a project management platform.  So, from the beginning till the end of a project, these tools can expand with the need of your organization and project. 

By leveraging one of these alternatives, you will gain a clear and comprehensive overview of your upcoming projects, setting the stage for enhanced productivity and a higher likelihood of success.