Monday.com and Smartsheet are team project management applications designed to help co-workers plan projects, assign tasks, track progress, and share information. Both products offer multiple ways of viewing projects and tasks, including Gantt charts, calendar views, and kanban boards. However, Smartsheet uses spreadsheets as the fundamental building blocks of projects, while monday.com has a custom UI with only a passing resemblance to tables or spreadsheets. monday.com is used primarily by small businesses, likely because it is slightly cheaper and its feature set is aimed at smaller-scale projects and teams. Smartsheet is primarily used by mid-sized companies and has a significant enterprise-level user base, likely because its spreadsheet-based design lends itself to larger-scale teams and projects.
Features
Both monday.com and Smartsheet offer core project management functionality, but they each offer unique benefits to their users.
monday.com is designed to be quick and easy to pick up and use. The software offers a single board for each project, giving managers and team members a quick overview of the project’s status. Each project board can be customized to display the most relevant data for that project. Users appreciate the automation tools to create tasks, move tasks through workflow processes, and automatically assign tasks to specific users. Integration with calendar applications, thread-based communication, and quick sharing of notes and to-dos help make monday.com a slick, intuitive way for teams to communicate and keep their projects moving.
Although Smartsheet uses spreadsheets to drive project management, it also offers many ways to view, sort, and filter the information in each sheet, helping individual users and managers navigate and understand project information. Its customizable reminder system can send reminders and warnings directly to e-mail accounts, helping users stay on track and avoid missed deadlines. Smartsheet also offers generous sharing permissions and guest access, making it easy for teams to collaborate with freelancers and contractors within the software. And since the interface is based on spreadsheets, users familiar with Excel or other spreadsheet software can get up and running quickly.
Limitations
However, each product has unique limitations as well. Before choosing monday.com or Smartsheet, be sure to consider their drawbacks.
monday.com can lack the depth desired by some users, especially on lower pricing tiers. Features like automation, guest access, and recurring tasks are locked behind higher tiers, meaning that some businesses will have to upgrade their license for access to necessary tools. Additionally, monday.com doesn’t offer a free version, and their licensing system isn’t very granular: if your five-person team adds a sixth member, you’ll need to upgrade to the ten-user plan. Finally, the system overall is geared towards small- and medium-scale projects and teams. Enterprise-level users might have difficulty scaling the system to work well for their needs.
Smartsheet may be familiar to Excel users, but that can also be a drawback. Smartsheet doesn’t have all of the advanced features offered by a dedicated spreadsheet system like Excel, leaving some users wishing for more complicated formulas or formatting options. Importing sheets to and from Excel files can be clunky and frustrating, with conditional formatting and other customizations getting lost in the process. For some users, Smartsheet did not explain its features properly, leaving them frustrated at the apparent lack of features such as Dropbox integration or the ability to save a copy of a sheet to a new file. If you choose Smartsheet, you may need to implement a robust training program to avoid these sorts of problems.
Pricing
Both monday.com and Smartsheet offer tiered subscription plans for pricing.
monday.com starts with the Basic tier at $8.00 per user per month and includes the core product functionality with 5 GB of storage, one project board per dashboard, and a Kanban view option. The Standard tier is $10 per user per month and adds automation features, Timeline and Calendar viewing options, up to 3 project boards per dashboard, and 50 GB of storage. The Pro tier is $16 per user per month and adds more automation capabilities, a Chart view option, up to 10 boards per project dashboard, and 100 GB of storage. The Enterprise tier is priced by quote and adds more automation and integration options, up to 50 boards per dashboard, and priority customer support.
Smartsheet’s pricing is divided into Standard and Enterprise plans. Standard plans begin at the Individual tier, which is $14 per month for a single user and allows up to 10 sheets with automation and Gantt, calendar, and kanban views. The Business tier is $25 per user per month and adds reporting, progress tracking, user management, and custom branding features, with up to 100 sheets per user. Enterprise plans are priced by quote and allow unlimited sheets per user and add features such as SSO and integration with user directory systems. Finally, the Premium tier is priced by quote and adds features like dedicated calendar applications, connectors for CRM products, and high-priority customer support.
