20 of the Best Smartsheet Alternatives & Competitors for Project Management 2025

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Looking for the best Smartsheet alternatives?
While Smartsheet is a capable platform with basic project management features, it has some serious drawbacks. Smartsheet is known to be a little clunky when updating or generally managing projects that have a bit of complexity. Secondly, it is an expensive option for agile projects and resource tracking, which you can find in many Smartsheet alternatives.
If you’re not a fan of managing projects through spreadsheets, there are options available! That’s why we’re here—to showcase the best tools that not only help you organize projects but platforms that can do it using different views.
Here are the 20 best Smartsheet alternatives you have to consider (including detailed information on every tool’s main features, pros and cons, pricing, and customer ratings).

Smartsheet is essentially spreadsheet software. But it can be used for project management. And that’s a major drawback because there’s only so much you can do with this specific view.
Simply put, spreadsheets are impractical for modern project management where—let’s face it—we’re hyper-focused on productivity. If you’re looking for a wall-to-wall solution to help teams improve productivity, Smartsheet isn’t always your best option.
However, if you want to manage massive amounts of data (and dig through it all 😬) or rely on manual data entry to scale enterprise project portfolio management, then this might be your tool. But for most, it’s super inconvenient to work through cells and columns for everything, especially if project collaboration is essential to your organization.
Collaborative teams just perform better. In fact, survey data shows the No. 1 reason why employees and organizational leaders believe a project had failed was due to poor collaboration.
A comprehensive project management tool needs to be equipped with built-in chat and comment features to keep everyone in the loop. Smartsheet requires more email communication, which causes bottlenecks by having to hunt down information.

At the same time, reporting features on project progression are equally as important. But with Smartsheet, you have to input everything manually when creating detailed Gantt charts.
While Smartsheet has a team reporting feature, it’s not very user-friendly. For effective project tracking, you need an easier view by using Velocity, Burnup, and Burndown charts, which you won’t find in Smartsheet.
Every project manager needs a time tracking feature in their toolbox.
Why?
These project management tools allow teams to be more flexible so they can estimate productivity, implement effective resource management, measure billable time, or roll up time spent across multiple tasks and projects.
So what about Smartsheet?
Unfortunately, Smartsheet doesn’t come with advanced and automatic time tracking features. That means you have no way to determine the time you’ve spent on a particular task.
First off, Smartsheet doesn’t offer a Free plan.
The Pro plan starts at $9 per user per month (up to 10 users), while the Business plan is $32 per user per month (minimum of three users). That’s $96 per month for the cheapest Business plan. Smartsheet does offer an Enterprise plan with custom pricing too.
The bottom line, Smartsheet gets expensive without in-depth resource management, multiple project views, and time-tracking features. If you’re using Smartsheet AND another productivity tool in your organization, it might be time to reconsider your options.
ClickUp is a comprehensive project management tool that includes powerful project management, reporting, tracking, and collaboration features, you’ll have everything you need.
Here’s why ClickUp is No. 1 in this list of Smartsheet alternatives and how its free version can do more than Smartsheet’s paid plans! ClickUp Views let you visualize your project workspace exactly how you like it.
Whether you want to see a List, Box, Gantt chart, Kanban board, or Calendar, ClickUp is customizable so all your different teams can work from a view that makes sense. Imagine having your sales team in the CRM, the content marketing crew in Kanban, IT in the list view, and your product team in the calendar view—all connected without ever leaving the platform!
Every task in ClickUp has a built-in Comment section for project-relevant discussions. Whether you want to share a file or use Assigned Comments to tag any team member to a task, ClickUp is the ultimate collaborative solution.
And unlike Smartsheet, ClickUp’s built-in Time Tracking feature monitors your team’s work, tracks billable hours, or gathers collected time spent on projects. ClickUp also integrates perfectly with almost any third-party time tracking tool, like Time Doctor, Timely, and Everhour.
The ClickUp Spreadsheet Template helps you organize and manage data in a structured format with added collaboration and project management features.
ClickUp is constantly working to overcome such minor flaws. Learn more about ClickUp’s product roadmap here and get our list of the best ClickUp alternatives.
📮ClickUp Insight: Only 7% of professionals depend on AI primarily for task management and organization. This could be because the tools are restricted to specific apps like calendars, to-do lists, or email apps.
With ClickUp, the same AI powers your email or other communication workflows, calendar, tasks, and documentation. Simply ask, “What are my priorities today?”. ClickUp Brain will search across your workspace and tell you exactly what’s on your plate based on urgency and importance. Just like that, ClickUp consolidates 5+ apps for you within a single, super app!

Basecamp is an agile project management tool and collaboration tool targeted toward small to medium-sized businesses. While Basecamp aims to be a single platform catering to all project needs, it does have some drawbacks though.
Flat $99 per month for unlimited users and unlimited projects with 500 GB of file storage.
Check out these Basecamp Alternatives!

Asana is a simple project management software solution that’s quite popular among project managers. With an easy-to-use UI and tons of integrations, Asana is a Smartsheet alternative that’s more suited to smaller, simpler projects.
Compare Asana Vs Smartsheet!
The Asana platform gives you four options to choose from:
Check out these Asana alternatives!

Trello is a well-known Kanban-based management tool that can handle simple projects with its automation and integrations. Let’s see why this SaaS solution is one of the better Smartsheet competitors:
The Trello platform has three options:
Check out these Trello Alternatives!

Jira is a bug tracking and project management software solution targeted toward Agile and Scrum teams. Unlike some other tools, you can even use its open-source version for added customizability.
Let’s take a look at why this tool makes the list of top Smartsheet competitors.
Check out these Jira alternatives!

Wrike is another powerful project management software and one of the top Smartsheet alternatives. Its enterprise-level features have made it a popular choice among project managers worldwide.
Here’s why it’s a good Smartsheet alternative:
Wrike has three variants to choose from and offers a limited free trial for their Professional plan with no credit card required.
Check out these Wrike Alternatives!

Workzone is a popular project management tool that’s been around since 2000. Its simple project management capabilities make it a great Smartsheet alternative.
Workzone offers you a 14-day free trial with no credit card needed and has three different account types:

Microsoft Project, or better known as MS Project, is a spreadsheet platform and one of the market’s oldest and most robust project management tools. You can use MS Project to manage simple projects, but it’s better for complex projects or larger enterprises.
However, one of MS Project’s major drawbacks is the steep learning curve. This tool will not be an ideal fit if you’re looking for a project management tool that lets you hit the ground running.
Microsoft Project offers two pricing features. There’s the cloud-based pricing model and the on-premise pricing model.
Cloud-based solution
On-premise solution
Check out these Microsoft Projects Alternatives!

One of the more simple Smartsheet alternatives is Google Sheets. It’s a free spreadsheet tool by Google with various uses such as data management and even project management. Google Sheets was built with the same concept as Excel, but it’s simpler and has a cleaner interface.
While it is free, Google Sheets has many drawbacks as a project management tool. It might not be a good fit if you’re looking for a robust tool to handle modern project management.
Check out these Google Sheets Alternatives!

At its core, Podio is a low-code tool to help businesses customize work and communication. How exactly does Podio fit as a project management tool? Well, Podio lets you align all your project data, conversations, and workflows into a central hub for collaboration.
Podio has both paid and free plans. However, the free plan only offers the bare minimum for project management tasks.

Unlike other Smartsheet alternatives on this list, Assembla is purely a project management system for software development teams. This software development platform allows you to host on Assembla or your own servers. Since it’s dedicated purely to software development management, Assembla works incredibly well for Agile and Scrum teams.
Assembla does not have a free plan but offers users a free 14-day trial.

Teamwork is an easy-to-use Smartsheet alternative for a project management system. This client management app is modern, intuitive, and has the right balance between simplicity and functionality.
Teamwork offers a free plan and several paid plans.

If you’re a small team looking for a time tracking and task management tool, Intervals might be the tool. Intervals is on our list of Smartsheet alternatives because it gives you crucial insights into how long you take to perform project tasks and make decisions based on this.
Intervals’ pricing model is flexible, with a lot of packages to choose from. Here’s the breakdown:

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet management tool that, with customizations, can function as a project management tool. However, since its default purpose is not project management, Microsoft Excel isn’t the most versatile of the Smartsheet alternatives out here. That said, MS Excel has some handy features to help you manage projects.
Like Microsoft Project, MS Excel is part of the Microsoft Workspace package. However, unlike MS Project, you can purchase MS Excel as a standalone product.
Check out these Microsoft Excel Alternatives!
Workfront is an online system to manage work across your organization. Furthermore, of the Smartsheet alternatives, this database platform ensures executives receive real-time communication about projects, resources, and people.
All of Workfront’s pricing plans are custom with different features and add-ons.
Check out these Workfront alternatives!

Celoxis combines modern agile trends, customization functionality, and workflow automation so its project management features remain flexible. This Spreadsheets alternative is detail-oriented with powerful dashboards and reporting capabilities to fit teams of any kind.
With Celoxis, you can opt for the on-premise package or the annual cloud package.

One of the more popular Smartsheet alternatives is Zoho Projects. This tool has cloud-based project management features and is a part of Zoho Suite. The online tool combines task management, collaboration, and project workflow automation to create a potent project management software.
Zoho has one of the most straightforward pricing models on this list.

Scoro is a work management software that avails crucial project data to help your team scale faster. This work management tool also automates billing and resource utilization. More importantly, of the Smartsheet alternatives in this list, Scoro features an inbuilt CRM to ease billing and revenue forecasting.

Also making our list of the best Smartsheet alternatives is nTask. Of the best project management tools, nTask focuses on task and issue-monitoring for a wide variety of teams. This tool is not only lightweight, but it offers robust features to track tasks in real-time.

Primarily, Airtable is a spreadsheet and database management software. But, with a few customizations, you can convert the platform into a project management tool. One upside of Airtable is how versatile it is. It’s more of a blank canvas that can fit any team, project, use, and organization with well-structured modifications.
Check out these Airtable Alternatives!
While Smartsheet could help you, it’s hardly the best solution to rely on for its project management features.
Why settle for a spreadsheet when you have a project management tool designed to give you options and the customization to fit all your teams?
In steps ClickUp. Not only does ClickUp offer all these features that the other tools have, but it brings more to the table with Task Priorities, Resource Management, Dependencies, and much more.
The best part is most of the ClickUp features mentioned here are 100% FREE and super-fun to use!
So sign up with ClickUp today and take your productivity to the next level!
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