Smartsheet vs monday.com – Price and Features Comparison 2022 – Tech.co
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monday.com is better for project management than Smartsheet, although both services are great. With monday.com, you will find more features, slightly more customer support options, and plans that start at $6 per user, per month, which is a full dollar less costly than Smartsheet’s starting price.
However, Smartsheet is no slouch. We found the interface is easier to navigate than monday.com’s because the spreadsheet view is more adaptable than any other project management software and it will appeal to spreadsheet experts.
Our researchers have studied business software for years to bring you the best data insights on its functionality, hidden costs, and ability to work with your existing software. Smartsheet and monday.com are two of the best — even if, again, monday.com is better.
In this guide:
Smartsheet
monday.com
Ease of use
Customization
Unlimited (all plans)
A great tool for spreadsheet-natives, which can take your Excel-based task planning to the next level, and there’s a free trial, too.
A great task management system due to strong customizablity and support team, with a generous Free Trial period.
While both services are excellent, our researchers found Smartsheet to be better than monday.com in one category, while monday.com was better than Smartsheet in four categories. Smartsheet is easier to use than monday.com, but monday.com offers more features, better value for its cost, better customer support, and has a higher customer favorability than Smartsheet.
Overall, monday.com is a better pick for a modern design that will meet the need of most companies: We give monday.com a solid score of 4.7/5, slightly higher than Smartsheet’s 4.6/5 score.
Smartsheet will handle all of your company’s project management needs, from setting tasks and milestones to gathering feedback once the job is complete. It is very easy to learn and use, thanks to a flexible spreadsheet interface, powerful chart building tool with custom data fields, and a simple instant-messenger chat function.
Despite this general ease of use, though, the service won’t offer preset charts, so figuring out the chart building tool is a must rather than a maybe. Plus, the lowest plan tier limits its data visualisation tools. While we favor monday.com on the whole, we would recommend Smartsheet for any Excel or Google Sheet experts, since it is the best spreadsheet alternative on the market.
Pros
Cons
With monday.com, businesses will get the features and customer support they need at a price that’s lower than Smartsheet (though it’s not the lowest on the market). Highlights of the service include an automation builder for better customization, along with the functionality needed for fast project setup and project updates. A free plan is available, too, although automations are limited.
Downsides of monday.com include a slight learning curve for handling the form builder, as well as a few plan-specific restrictions for integrations and Gantt charts. Most modern businesses will find it delivers the right combination of functionality, ease of use, and affordability.
Pros
Cons
monday.com offers a better value for its cost than Smartsheet. This is because monday.com’s starter plan, Basic, costs $6 per user, per month, while Smartsheet’s comparable starter plan, Pro, starts at a dollar more, for $7 per user, per month.
monday.com also undercuts Smartsheets when it comes to the two high-end (non-Enterprise) plans, as monday.com’s $22 per user, per month plan costs less than Smartsheets’ $25 per user, per month plan.
That said, the two services offer a different range of features under all their plans, so the best option will depend on the needs of your business. We still rate Smartsheets higher in usability — one big reason is the lack of automations or integrations under monday.com’s Basic plan, given that the similar Smartsheets Pro plan offers 250 automations per month.
It’s worth noting that our researchers found more than a few other project management software options to offer a higher value for the price: ClickUp, Favro, Jira, Trello and Zoho projects all fared better in this category.
Smartsheet offers three plans: Pro, for $7 per user, per month when paid annually or $9 per user, per month paid monthly; Business, for $25 per user, per month when paid annually or $32 per user, per month paid monthly; and Enterprise, for a custom quote.
Smartsheet doesn’t offer a permanent free plan, but it does have a 30-day free trial and, like most project management products, will allow a third-party to collaborate with a paying Smartsheet user as a guest.
Pro
Business
Enterprise
$7/user/month
$25/user/month
Custom
1 – 10
3 – Unlimited
Unlimited
10
100
Unlimited
20 GB
1TB
Unlimited
Pro offers a fairly high user cap of 25, but comes with other restrictions — users get just 10 projects and 10 guests (both are unlimited across all monday.com plans) along with caps of 20GB storage and 250 automations per month. These caps are better than monday.com’s own starter plan restrictions of 5GB storage and no automations. Users are also limited to one dashboard and five custom chart builders.
Pro users get all the big mangement tool options: Gantt Chart, Kanban Board, a spreadsheet-type view, sub-tasks, milestones, task dependencies, and custom fields, as well as both pre-built and custom automations and project templates. They’ll get email support and an online knowledge hub, but won’t receive phone, live chat, or 24/7 support.
Collaboration features include a calendar, team messaging, and task comments, but do not include resource management, an online whiteboard, or document editing tools.
Business has everything in Pro, and removes most caps: Users, guests, automations and integrations are all unlimited, although there is a three-user minimum, while the storage limit is boosted to an impressive 1TB (matching monday.com’s Enterprise storage), and projects are capped at 100 per user.
Features are expanded slightly, with a focus on team management: User permissions, resource management and document editing are added, phone support is available for an additional fee, and dashboards and custom chart builders are now unlimited.
Enterprise removes any remaining restrictions on projects per user and storage, while also including 24/7 phone support at no extra charge. It also adds single sign-on for better security, but no major features are added beyond that. In contast to monday.com’s enterprise plan, Smartsheet’s plan doesn’t include any onboarding assistence.
Check out our full guide to Smartsheet pricing for a full breakdown of how far your money will go.
monday.com offers five plans: Individual, the free plan; Basic, for $6 per user, per month when paid annually or $8 per user, per month paid monthly; Standard, for $10 per user, per month when paid annually or $12 per user, per month when paid monthly; Pro, for $22 per user, per month when paid annually or $27 per user, per month when paid monthly; and Enterprise, for a customized plan.
There’s no free trial, but that’s because users can just get the free Individual plan to test drive the platform.
Individual
Basic
Standard
Pro
Enterprise
Free
$8/user/month
$10/user/month
$16/user/month
On request
Free
$10/user/month
$12/user/month
$20/user/month
On request
2
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
500 MB
5 GB
20 GB
100 GB
1,000 GB
24/7
24/7
24/7
24/7
24/7
None
None
250 actions per month
25,000 actions per month
25,000 actions per month
None
None
250 actions per month
25,000 actions per month
25,000 actions per month
The monday.com Individual plan is free and, like all permanent free plans, it’s too limited to work for most needs. There is no longer a project limit, but users are capped at two, while no automations or integrations are allowed at all. Storage is limited to 500MB as well.
Individual users will get access to email support as well as all of the features offered under the Basic plan. Still, without access to automations, the service won’t save you much time, and you’ll also bump up against the storage cap fairly quickly.
Basic offers unlimited users and expands the storage limit to 5GB, but automations or integrations are still not offered.
Task management tools include a Kanban Board and spreadsheet-type view, sub-tasks, and custom fields, but no Gantt chart or task dependencies. Milestones can be measured with a workaround, but aren’t included as a main feature in the Basic, or in any plan. Preset and custom project templates are available, and data visualization tools include dashboards, a widget builder, and preset charts and widgets. You’ll also get task comments, an online whiteboard, and document editing, but will not have access to resource management tools, team messaging, calendars, or a project message board.
Security features include two-factor authentication and user permissions. Email support is offered, but (like all monday.com plans) it’s not 24/7 and there’s no phone or live chat option.
Standard doesn’t add much to the Basic plan. The big additions are automations and integrations, both capped at 250 actions per month. You’ll also get the Gantt chart view and the ability to offer guest access, as well as a calendar — which is useful for scheduling when collaborating with colleages.
Pro increases the storage limit to 100GB and dramatically expands the automations and integrations to 25,000 actions per month. New features include task dependencies, budget management (using the ‘Formula Column’ feature), a custom chart builder, resource management, and time tracking.
Finally, Enterprise adds onboarding assistance and the largest caps yet, as well as 1,000GB storage and 250,000 actions per month for automations and integrations. Much like Smartsheet’s enterprise option, it’s a plan for big companies that have outgrown the previous plan.
Check out our full page on monday.com’s pricing for an in-depth breakdown.
monday.com offers a better free plan than Smartsheet because it includes all the features available from monday.com’s paid Basic plan, although extra limitations are included. monday.com’s free plan may be called “Individual,” but it actually supports up to two users.
Meanwhile, Smartsheet doesn’t offer a full free plan, but does allow users to share projects with guests, who can then view, edit, and update the projects as if they are a user.
In the end, though, neither free option is likely to cut the mustard for any growing company. Starting out with monday.com’s Individual plan isn’t a bad idea, but the benefits of project management software kick in when you start using automations to make repetitive actions less time-consuming, and add integrations to help you handle all your software needs from one hub.
Once a paid plan has saved you a few hours of work across an entire month, it has likely paid for itself.
Both monday.com and Smartsheet are easy to use, but Smartsheet comes out on top in this category. Our researchers tested usability across multiple subcategories such as responsiveness to changes and closing stages, including gathering feedback or giving access to guests.
Smartsheet really pulls ahead in the responsiveness subcategory. Updating a spreadsheet is a fast process, whether you’re reassigning tasks or tweaking budgets. Smartsheet also has a sidebar for extra tools, such as team messaging.
Smartsheet doesn’t offer any preset charts for viewing project data, so users will have to build them. While this does add a learning curve, it also allows for more customization. In contrast, monday.com requires setup as well, yet doesn’t offer some project data views at all: even our researchers couldn’t satisfactorily figure out how to measure project progress vs remaining time.
While both options are customizable and fairly easy to use, Smartsheet wins in the end.
Spreadsheet and monday.com are neck-and-neck for setting up projects.
Again, monday.com is very customizable, using a system called “Items” with rows to represent each task. Editing takes such a few clicks, speeding up the project setup process that any manager is familar with by avoiding the need to fill in endless fields. Automations are limited to between 250 and 250,000 actions per month, depending on the plan.
Smartsheet’s setup process is easy, too, with a design similar to Excel or Google Sheets. The service’s project management templates pre-populate columns for the name, duration, assignee, and start and finish dates for a task. Custom workarounds can be added quickly for features Smartsheet doesn’t offer, like budgeting — which is good, since the limited amount of preset templates means that most users will eventually need to build their own.
Both monday.com and Smartsheet come with the essential task management tools: Gantt charts, Kanban Boards, a spreadsheet view, sub-tasks, task dependencies, and custom fields. Milestones can be set up in both services: Users on monday.com can use the ‘Groups’ feature, with each Group’s collection of tasks comprising one milestone.
monday.com’s “Items” system of rows and columns lets users set up each task, while Smartsheet uses a pre-populated spreadsheet.
Creating custom automations is a more simple process with monday.com, since the service offers an undemanding text-based creator, compared to Smartsheet’s complex flow-chart style builder.
Both monday.com and Smartsheet offer great support for their customers, although monday.com is ultimately ahead by a nose.
Users for both services will get an online knowledge base and community forum for solving quick issues and common questions, as well as email-based support for tougher problems.
Smartsheet does make 24/7 phone support available, while monday.com does not. However, it’s only for Smartsheet’s Business and Enterprise plans, and it’s a paid add-on for the Business plan as well. Smartsheet does not offer onboarding support, while monday.com includes it free for Enterprise customers.
Neither Smartsheet nor monday.com will give you the absolute best bang for your buck. Smartsheet starts at $7 per user, per month, while monday.com starts at $6 per user, per month. That’s not the worst cost and may be below the industry average, but it’s not the lowest cost either.
Here are three top project management software services that our researchers have found will deliver the goods for less. Alternatively, if you’d like to see how Smartsheet stacks up against a database management tool, check out our Smartsheet vs Airtable comparison.
Zoho Projects offers the best value: It starts at $4 per user, per month when paid annually, and offers a free tier as well. It delivers a functional platform with two different automation builders (simple and complex), plenty of collaboration features, and — unlike monday.com or Smartsheet — dedicated budgeting tools.
That said, it does not offer the strong customization or usability you’ll get from both monday.com and Smartsheet, so you’ll have to learn how to navigate a somewhat finicky system with a lot of menus to sort through. You can learn more about Zoho Projects in our full pricing guide.
Pros
Cons
ClickUp’s starter plan costs $5 per user, per month when paid annually, and it has a free plan, too. Top benefits include quick setup, an instant-messenger functionality, and the 24/7 live chat support that you might be missing from both monday.com or Smartsheet. But you’ll face plan-based restrictions on how many times you can use certain features, with automations restricted heavily under the first two plans, and the service isn’t built for post-project feedback discussions. Our full review of Clickup has the rundown.
Pros
Cons
Favro isn’t quite as inexpensive as Zoho Projects and Clickup, since the lowest plan starts at $10.20 per month, which covers two users. Costs will increase in tiers rather than the typical per-user pricing, with 3-5 users costing $25.50 per month, 6-10 users costing $51 per month, and so on. You’ll get an easy-to-use interface for setting up tasks quickly, along with a straightforward burndown chart creator. Task dependancies can be complicated to set up, though, and Excel experts will miss being able to use formulas within the spreadsheet-style interface, as they are not supported.
Pros
Cons
Tech.co’s researchers are unbiased, with years of experience under their belt, and frequently revisit all scores to chart evolutions in software features or pricing. For the project management software category, we have tested and analyzed 14 products, all using the same five criteria, each of which might be further broken down into subcategories. These are:
In the end, we ranked every software on a scale of 1-10 stars under every criteria, and then added them all up and divided by the number of criteria to arrive at a single five-star final score that displayed the total value of each service.
That said, Smartsheet and monday.com are both impressive tools, offering easy-to-use and highly customizable interfaces, as well as — depending on the plan — all the features you’ll need. Either option should serve you well.
They’re not the only project management tools worth considering, though. From ClickUp’s unbeatable featureset to Zoho Project’s low $5 per user price, there’s a software for every business.
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Adam is a writer at Tech.co and has worked as a tech writer, blogger and copy editor for more than a decade. He’s also a Forbes Contributor on the publishing industry, for which he was named a Digital Book World 2018 award finalist. His work has appeared in publications including Popular Mechanics and IDG Connect, and he has an art history book on 1970s sci-fi coming out from Abrams Books in 2022. In the meantime, he’s hunting own the latest news on VPNs, POS systems, and the future of tech.
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