Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Microsoft Project vs Planview Portfolios comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Project
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Project Management Software (3rd)
Planview Portfolios
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (11th), Project Portfolio Management (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

Jacob-George - PeerSpot reviewer
Domain Consultant at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
Improved project scheduling has maximized resource utilization and has reduced delays
I think the licensing structure presents a significant area for improvement. The full features are not offered on the standard E4 license. This becomes problematic when distributing the project plan. I can export the plan as Excel and CSV files, but then I lose all the rich features, including dependency mapping. To recreate all that functionality without proper licensing is challenging. Microsoft Project offers a light version available for free, but when I try to distribute a project plan, it requires separate licensing. Microsoft Project Central used to be more of an enterprise product. Microsoft Project currently focuses on very low-level task management, and it could do much more. I do not see significant advancement happening because there is confusion about where Microsoft Project is heading. I believe Microsoft should bundle the license with Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This approach would result in more people using Microsoft Project. That is my opinion on how to improve adoption and the product offering.
it_user1684173 - PeerSpot reviewer
PM Systems Analyst at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Increases our on-time completion rate and helps in managing the demand and capacity, and we get excellent service in terms of feature requests and support
We've been encouraging our users to manage their schedules directly in the Work and Assignments module. So far, it has been good, but we've been in conversation with the vendor product team to improve the performance of the Work and Assignments module. Right now, it is a bit slower. We don't use the Progression feature. We will use it at some point in time. Until then, we want to have a way to set time to help decide what's in the past, present, and future. It is one of the things we've been discussing with Planview. It provides flexibility for configuring assignments, but one of the things about which we've been talking to Planview is related to certain resources that are associated with a project. When the project extends, their demand also equally goes up. There are also resources where if a particular task has to crash, it may need additional effort. So, it is between the fixed effort versus fixed duration. Planview is more duration-based. For example, if you crash a task, the system rightly thinks that you're crashing the task, and you need to finish the work by doing overtime or working additional hours. If you are taking 30 hours to finish a task in three weeks, and for whatever reason, you have to crash the task into two weeks, 30 hours need to be fulfilled within those two weeks. If the task moves to four weeks, instead of three weeks, you still have 30 hours that get distributed among four weeks, so you will be able to finish the task. That makes sense for those resources that are associated with the task, but there are certain resources, such as a project manager or project administrator, for whom when a project extends, the demand also equally goes up. So, if somebody is assigned 50% for a project, and assuming that the project is moving out by a month or two or three months, the effort shouldn't go down. Currently, the allocation goes down, and our resource managers have to go and update the effort back up to 50% or whatever the demand is. We are interacting with Planview to provide a solution. Right now, we have to go and update the additional demand because of the change in the project.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One of the best features is that it is easy to use."
"We have not had any problems with Microsoft's technical support. We are happy with the support."
"I have found that the chart reporting feature is very helpful for us currently."
"It comes with our Office 365."
"The best features of Microsoft Project include the ability to cross-reference information, such as the cost for milestones or cross-information with different work packages."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Project is the reminder feature. This feature allows for the system to send notifications or reminders to individuals who have a task to complete once someone has finished their task. This has been especially useful in situations where multiple people are involved in a task. For example, if I have completed my task and the next person is just beginning, the system will send them a reminder to notify them of my completion. This feature has proven to be very beneficial and convenient for me in my tasks."
"The daily tracker is valuable."
"It is easy to check project costs in the solution."
"The resource management and assignment features are valuable. The timesheet management is also valuable because that is a requirement for us. So, the ability to see timesheet forecasting and timesheet actual submission from resources has been very useful and valuable to us."
"The solution view into resource capacity and availability helps us to manage work."
"We can easily see which functions are overcapacity. Before, we did not have visibility into that."
"Our transparency is increasing a lot. It is helping us to get people together. There are no dark rooms anymore. In some areas or concepts, we want to add more light to every single concept. That's the big impact that the tool is having. It allows conversations between people."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the completeness of the standard, underlying metamodel."
"It has been effective for our delivery. It's given us much better visibility into what is being delivered and when."
"We are able to see where everyone in the team is in terms of hours, where there is capacity, and where we can actually add them, e.g., other projects that they're not currently staffed to."
"We use expenditures quite a bit. We put in forecast expenditures and then we actualize them below the line in the little box in the bottom tray. Being able to track the project with relevant milestones is also valuable. Milestones are valuable because it helps us to keep the project on track. The expenditures are valuable because we need to be able to understand expenses that are beyond the regular resources in the projects."
 

Cons

"When a project plan becomes huge, it is painful to arrange and structure the project in Microsoft Project. Currently, you require a separate product for managing agile projects, and people are using Jira and Rally to manage stories in agile. Primarily, on the software development side, people are kind of moving away from Microsoft Project."
"I find the setup a little bit cumbersome."
"The critical path evaluation features in Microsoft Project could be improved."
"The technical support could be improved. They are okay, however, they could be much better."
"I'd like the solution to be less expensive."
"We'd like to have more resource allocation and monitoring features."
"Could be more user-friendly, and forecasting could be better."
"Tracking timeline, resource allocation, and monitoring are areas of concern for the tool where improvements are required."
"The UI needs improvement. The UI should have more possibilities for users who are not specialized in using Planview. At the moment, it is more of a technical UI. I would like it to be an open user UI."
"There's still a lot of reluctance within the organization. We're not using all of the capabilities that we have today. We're still doing our strategic and capital investment planning on spreadsheets rather than using the capabilities that exist within Enterprise One. I definitely need to leverage the experts here at Planview to help drive a culture change. There's just a lot of reluctance on behalf of people within the company to put data into the tool."
"Their off-shore support is something new that they're laying out and the team just needed some development in terms of skill and experience."
"The outcome management and work resource management in terms of teams needs improvement. Team handling, how team requirements are generated, and how the resource managers can work with teams needs to be improved."
"There are some issues with how long it takes to load the data to Planview, It just depends on what your setup is. If there was a way Planview could maybe make the loading faster, in case you do have a lot of things going on with your setup."
"The number one thing that needs improvement is the UI. It should be easy for a casual project manager. It should provide customizable screens that can be a choice for project managers to choose as a professional level, medium level, and a very easy level."
"The biggest room for improvement are the scripted dialogues. The scripted dialogues are a logic that you set up to force a certain workflow or process to happen. It's very old in respect that there are no clauses that you can apply to that logic. That definitely can use a lot of room for improvement."
"The technical people are very competent, but there is so much turnover in the people that we talk to, and that's frustrating. They will say, "We can make this work." Suddenly, that guy has left, and we have no one. Then, we have to start all over."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have to pay for a yearly license for Microsoft Project."
"Microsoft Project is an expensive solution."
"I do not remember the exact cost we paid but usually, they charge per user per month."
"I believe the licensing for the solution is based on an annual fee."
"The solution is expensive."
"The license is a one-time payment but it is expensive."
"It probably was $30 per license on a monthly basis. There is no additional fee."
"Its price could be reduced a little."
"We have unlimited licenses for all of our functionalities. Since we went global, we went with that model."
"In the time that I've used it, we've doubled up the amount of dollars on our intended projects."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $50,000 USD annually."
"Our licensing costs are about a quarter of a million dollars per year."
"When we went through that process, I believe it is competitive with others on the market. However, there are less expensive options available. It's a more premium offering at a higher price."
"We have portfolio managers, resource managers, project managers, and time reporting licenses. These are the licenses that we have."
"We overbought our licenses. We looked at our needs three to four years down the road and tried based our contract on that. However, we were over aggressive. We use about a third of the licenses that we have. We're looking to adjust the makeup so we can start utilizing the amount of money that we are spending. Right now, we're overspending, and my organization is not seeing the value in Planview because we are paying so much for licenses that we're not using."
"I think all in we are at $33,000 a year and that includes Projectplace and Planview. We used to have the integration to JIRA, but we don't pay for that anymore."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Project Management Software solutions are best for your needs.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise41
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise59
 

Questions from the Community

Has anyone moved from Microsoft Project to Smartsheet? How has your experience been with Smartsheet?
Hi @Eire Zimmermann, I helped an organization evaluate both MS-Project and Smartsheet when they were conducting their PM tool RFP. The short of it is this, MS Project is not caught up with the mo...
What do you like most about Microsoft Project?
The product's initial setup phase is easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Project?
I would say Microsoft Project is affordable, but the standalone Project license should be included in the Office price to increase adoption.
What do you like most about Planview Portfolios?
Planview Management integrates seamlessly with other tools and systems used within the organization, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, customer relationship management (CRM) syst...
What needs improvement with Planview Portfolios?
Enhancements are needed in: Advanced reporting and analytics: While Planview Management provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, further enhancements could include more advanced data v...
What is your primary use case for Planview Portfolios?
We use Planview Management to assess the current project portfolio, evaluate resource availability, and prioritize projects based on strategic objectives, ROI, and risk factors. Planview Management...
 

Also Known As

Project Pro, MS Project
Planview Enterprise One, Troux
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aston Martin, ABANCA, Airbus Group, Capita, Cardiff University, City of Saskatoon, Intel, Pegasus Airlines, South Australia Power Network (SAPN), Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing
UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Project vs. Planview Portfolios and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.