Smartsheet and Monday.com are among the biggest names in work and project management software solutions. Both platforms seamlessly integrate task, resource, and portfolio management, giving you everything you need to manage your projects efficiently in a single platform. Each software also offers different plans and add-on services to suit your specific use case.
Smartsheet users enjoy spreadsheet-like functionality with powerful project management features. The platform provides granular visibility into your team’s workload and activity to enhance resource management and planning. Smartsheet also offers multiple views, activity logs, change history, and filters. Try Smartsheet risk-free with a 30-day free trial.
Monday.com is a feature-packed task and project management solution with a heavy focus on teamwork and analytics. Its customizable dashboard provides at-a-glance insights into project progress, timelines, budgets, and the project-critical metrics that matter to you. The software also offers multiple data visualization options, custom column types, and automations to suit your workflow. Monday.com offers a free-forever plan and a 14-day free trial for the paid tiers.
Smartsheet and Monday.com Compared to the Best Project Management Software
Smartsheet made it to our top list of the best project management software for its flexibility, while Monday.com is the best option for most. However, there are other options worth exploring, including our Golden Eggs, which are our three favorite project management tools:
ClickUp is designed explicitly for dispersed teams, with superior collaboration, task management, and workflow and visibility features despite being one of the market’s most affordable project management solutions. Try ClickUp’s free-forever plan or unlock more features starting as low as $7 per user per month.
Teamwork quickly handles client work with built-in billing and invoicing, team chat, company profiles, and robust project management capabilities. Take advantage of Teamwork’s 30-day free trial with no credit card required.
Asana is a powerful project management software that strikes the perfect balance between feature-rich and ease of use. Try Asana’s generous free plan, while non-profits save up to 50% off on paid plans.
Smartsheet Compared to Monday.com
It’s easy to lump project management software into one category, but that’s often a case of comparing apples to oranges. Despite many overlapping features, each project management tool brings something unique. This section provides a broad overview of Smartsheet and Moday.com to get a general sense of what the platforms offer.
Smartsheet Highlights
Smartsheet boasts more than 90% of Fortune 100 companies using its platform. It’s easy to see why Smartsheet is popular with high-performing organizations. The software provides a centralized platform to track and manage your plans, schedules, and resources.
The company’s base product is the project management platform, offering a healthy mix of capabilities encompassing resource management, workflow automation, team collaboration, content management, process management, and portfolio management. The platform delivers these capabilities in paid packages, with each upgrade lifting usage restrictions and unlocking new features and capabilities.
Smartsheet is also highly customizable, allowing you to adapt the software to your workflows rather than vice-versa. For example, the software provides customizable workflow templates for most business processes, including Human Resources (HR), software development, IT, finance, and sales. You can also automate part or all of your business’s processes using Smartsheets.
Lastly, Smarsheet offers premium add-ons to build on the platform’s native capabilities. For example, the Smartsheet Pivot App allows you to analyze and summarize large data sets and identify patterns and trends. Similarly, the DataMesh app lets you map data between sheets and reports to eliminate duplicate data and typos.
Monday.com Highlights
Monday.com is best known for its work management solution. The platform provides a shared workspace where team members can manage tasks and work on shared goals. You can create workspaces based on teams, projects, or departments.
As for workflow management, Monday.com provides customizable templates for most business processes, including sales enablement, HR, construction, finance, task management, and operations. You can also integrate your commonly used tools, including Gmail, Slack, and Excel. Monday.com also lets you automate routine tasks like updating the project owner when a project budget is approved or when a task is overdue.
Monday.com’s other features include collaboration, productivity tracking and management, and views and reporting. The company also offers separate Monday.com Sales CRM for sales and customer-facing teams and Monday Dev for development and product teams.
Monday.com’s CRM solution includes lead capturing and management, sales pipeline, contact management, and performance tracking. In addition, the Monday.com Dev solution encompasses roadmap planning, sprint management, bug tracking, release planning, feature requests, and feedback management.
Smartsheet vs. Monday.com Pros and Cons
An excellent way to compare project management software is to look at the virtues and drawbacks of each option. This way, you can identify solid reasons for choosing one over another. It’s also great to spot deal-breakers before you lock into a contract with either software.
Where Smartsheet Shines
Familiar interface for spreadsheet users: Smartsheet has a spreadsheet-centric interface similar to Excel and Google Sheets. Users accustomed to using spreadsheets will find Smartsheet to be user-friendly and intuitive. The software is also highly customizable, allowing you to create separate bespoke sheets for most business processes, including project management, inventory management, budget and expense monitoring, and campaign tracking.
Excellent data privacy: Smartsheet offers some of the market’s most robust data privacy and security assurance. The platform complies with multiple data privacy legislations and regulations, including the AICPA SOC, HIPPA, ISO, DOD SRG, CCPA, and GDPR. The company also has a stringent Vendor Privacy and Data Handling policy for vendors and other third-party affiliates.
Robust entry-level plan: Smartsheet’s cheapest plan offers more features than most competitors’ entry-level plans. For example, the Pro plan includes Card, Grid, Gantt, and Calendar views, up to 250 automations per month, and 20 GB storage. You’d need a mid-level plan or higher to enjoy similar capabilities on Monday.com.
Built-in dynamic forms: Smartsheet has a built-in form builder with conditional logic. It’s a handy feature for creating shorter forms, personalizing the forms’ experience, and reducing the number of choices per question. It’s a nice touch if you regularly use forms for internal and external business processes. Many alternatives, including Monday.com, don’t offer dynamic forms, instead requiring an integration like Typeform.
Excellent Collaboration Features: Smartsheet makes it easy to review and approve various content types, including images, videos, PDFs, and Microsoft Office documents. Teammates, clients, and vendors can make annotations, pin comments, discuss feedback, and input their approval decision on the proof. It’s an essential collaboration feature that isn’t available on some PM software, including Monday.com.
Numerous integrations: Smartsheet offers 100+ connectors and integrations to advance its capabilities. The possibilities are near limitless and cover communications, data visualization, automation, content creation, and security integrations.
Where Smartsheet Needs Improvement
Lacks native time tracking: Unlike most other project management software, Smartsheet doesn’t have built-in time tracking. However, Smartsheet offers a premium add-on called Resource Management that you can link with your account to access three different types of time tracking. On the downside, you’re paying extra for a feature that Monday.com and many other PM software include in your subscription.
No free-forever plan: Smartsheet doesn’t offer a free plan, so it’s out of the question if you’re looking for lightweight PM software for personal projects. Monday.com has a free plan with essential features like project boards and templates, activity logs, whiteboard collaboration, and shareable forms. However, Smartsheet has a 30-day free trial if you need to test it before buying.
Where Monday.com Shines
Highly scalable platform: Monday work management offers multiple add-on products to unify various processes. You can opt into additional solutions like Monday Marketer, CRM, Projects, or Dev to create an end-to-end solution. For example, you can easily add lead capturing, contact management, bug tracking, and roadmap planning to your base Monday work management instance.
Document co-editing included: Many project management tools overlook document synchronization, so it is refreshing to see Monday.com’s work docs. The feature lets you co-edit documents in real-time, where each contributor gets their own space to contribute ideas without disrupting others’ work. Contributors can add boards, widgets, visual task lists, and charts to create more interactive and engaging brainstorming sessions.
Easy-to-use automations: Monday.com automations follow three simple steps. These include choosing a trigger, selecting a condition, and setting an action. The feature is easily accessible within your project. Plus, the logical automation builder makes creating custom automations a breeze.
Panic button: Monday.com has a panic button in case you spot suspicious activity on the account. Activating panic mode locks out all users, including admins. You’ll need to contact support for an assessment and account reactivation.
Offline mode for mobile: The Monday.com mobile app lets you work without an internet connection, which is helpful on an airplane, subway, or in locations with weak or no cellular coverage. You can perform up to 70% of board actions, including editing boards, viewing notifications and updates, changing column values, and creating new items.
Native integrations with other work management tools: Dev teams are notorious for their allegiance to specific work management tools such as Jira and Asana. Monday.com supports native integrations with most work management tools to minimize context switching. Smartsheet requires connectors and other third-party integrations for popular work management platforms.
Where Monday.com Needs Improvement
Low storage limits for the entry-level plan: Monday.com allows unlimited seats for all its paid plans. However, every plan has a storage limit, starting from 5 GB with the entry-level plan, and this storage threshold can limit the number of people using the entry-level plan. By contrast, Smartsheet’s entry-level plan offers 20 GB of storage space.
Batched pricing: Unlike Smartsheet, Monday.com charges per group of seats rather than per seat. Therefore, you might pay for more seats than you need. The seats are only available in increments of five.
For example, you’ll need to purchase ten seats even if you only have seven, eight, or nine users. The pricing structure can also be confusing, and you must also contact Monday.com for custom pricing if you purchase 50 or more seats.
Lacks built-in chat feature: Monday.com offers multiple collaboration tools. However, the platform doesn’t support one-on-one or group chat. Instead, you’ll need to rely on a different messaging platform like Slack or iMessage, which can introduce unnecessary context switching. It’s also easier for important communication to fall through the cracks using disparate project management and collaboration software.
The Last Word on Smartsheet Compared to Monday.com
Smartsheet and Monday.com offer enterprise-grade solutions to help you manage your workflows better. Both platforms allow you to create milestones, plan tasks, visualize data in your preferred format, set task dependencies, and collaborate with teammates. Both software tools are terrific options, depending on your use case and project management requirements.
Smartsheet is the preferred option for teams accustomed to spreadsheet workflows but who also need advanced customization, planning, tracking, and reporting on key workflows. Smartsheet is also a good option for organizations beholden to data privacy laws and regulations such as CCPA, HIPPA, and GDPR.
On the other hand, Monday.com is suitable for small to medium-sized businesses looking for a highly visual and user-friendly platform for simplifying work management. The platform has a simple text-based automation builder, highly customized workflows, and free onboarding support for enterprise users. Monday.com also provides extensive features for the price, with the option of scaling with additional purpose-built solutions.
Still not sure which project management solution to choose? We have a comprehensive post comparing the best project management software on the market. You’ll also learn how each software scores on essential criteria such as pricing, onboarding, ease of use, task management, collaboration, workflow, and visibility.
