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Notion vs Smartsheet comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

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

Notion
Ranking in Project Management Software
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Knowledge Management Software (2nd), Document Automation Software (4th)
Smartsheet
Ranking in Project Management Software
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Project Management Software category, the mindshare of Notion is 1.9%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Smartsheet is 4.3%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Project Management Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Smartsheet4.3%
Notion1.9%
Other93.8%
Project Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

Iván Fanego - PeerSpot reviewer
Creates customizable systems and improve team collaboration
Notion is a very flexible and customizable platform, allowing users to create whatever they need. The most impactful feature for project management is the ability to invite multiple client stakeholders without complication. Once I understand the basics, it's easy to use despite an initial learning curve. It also significantly improves team collaboration through customized views and visualizations of data.
PaulDiaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Needs to improve baselines and changing dates can be frustrating
I like the dashboarding feature best, as it lets me assemble a workspace with source sheets, dashboards, and reports simultaneously. The standard reports and worksheets are most useful for team collaboration. People look at dashboards during presentations, but they go to the sheets to update projects, add comments, or make notifications. It's automated, so changes come to me or whoever needs to see them. I can send notifications from specific line items. The worksheet is key for tracking project progress, though we track it at a higher level rather than detailed work breakdown structures. Subject matter experts say when they'll deliver things, and that's what we track.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Notion is a very flexible and customizable platform, allowing users to create whatever they need."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The ability to structure data is one of the most essential functions of Notion."
"The ability to create and organize notes, plans, and technical content in a single platform is the product's most valuable feature."
"Notion is an all-in-one product, allowing us to do many things in a single place."
"The product has a valuable feature for databases. It has a table and a calendar view and saves various documents in the system."
"I rate Notion a ten out of ten."
"Notion is heavily used in my workflow."
"The solution has subtasks and a rollup."
"This solution provides easy collaboration and allows non-building users to use the system without requiring a license."
"The dashboard feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"Smartsheet does a really good job of creating Gantt charts. Export to Excel feature was also very useful."
"It operates as an enhanced and versatile version of Excel, offering a wide range of capabilities that allow you to accomplish various tasks and operations."
"What I found most valuable in Smartsheet is its project customization feature. It's a great solution because you can add in your own WBS. You can see it in Jira style, Kanban, and you can even do Agile and Waterfall. Another feature that's valuable in the solution is when you have those connections, you have that API, you have a sandbox, and you can make a solution, it's a tremendous product because you can pull data."
"The most valuable features of Smartsheet are its collaboration tools, the ability to centralize and prioritize projects, and robust reporting capabilities."
"Smartsheet is stable."
 

Cons

"If the internet or Notion's servers are down, I cannot access information. This is a big disadvantage."
"Notion's UI could be better."
"It can be difficult to contact the people at Notion."
"User management needs improvement. It's difficult to determine what information is private. It's a bit complicated for me."
"Notion's UI needs improvement."
"The only problem I experience is that it often hangs."
"The only problem I experience is that it often hangs. I might find myself trying to load a new page, but I am unable to move from one page to another due to frequent hanging."
"The platform's documentation feature needs improvement."
"It would be beneficial to enhance user-friendliness and make it less complex while maintaining its overall excellence as a product."
"The main challenge with Smartsheet is that when you start putting components on the Smartsheet dashboard, they don't know about each other. So, if I filter something in one widget, or if I click on a region or a project ID, the other widget or component and the visualization that's on that dashboard don't change. It doesn't know about the other component."
"The system can become more challenging to use in more complex scenarios, requiring additional add-ons that can be quite costly."
"More intuitive access without constant logins would be beneficial."
"Smartsheet could improve by having seamless integration with Azure Board."
"Smartsheet could improve the UI and integrations. Some of Smartsheet's competitors have more than 2,000 integrations while Smartsheet only has approximately 40 integration applications."
"Areas for improvement in Smartsheet include better integration capabilities with other technologies through APIs and addressing limitations in reporting functionalities."
"They provide a limited number of sheets which is not enough."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product's pricing a three out of ten. We only need to pay for it if we use it in the workspace."
"The product has good pricing."
"Notion offers a free plan that covers most functionalities. Clients are only prompted to upgrade if they require AI capabilities, priced at $10 for unlimited usage, or if they need to add team members, typically around $10 per member."
"The product is affordable compared to other platforms."
"The pricing structure is quite reasonable, and the basic plan covers the most essential features."
"Notion is free to use."
"It's pretty affordable."
"The solution's pricing can seem steep, especially when you work with a lot of people. If you are working on your own or for another business, the solution's price won't affect you much."
"I would assume there is a licensing fee. I don't think that it is free."
"For a normal license, like the one I had: I had my own Smartsheet because I wanted to play with it and I didn't want to mess with what I was doing in Verizon, so I paid $200 monthly, and it gave me all the same functionalities, so I could do whatever I wanted for $200. The problem is if you have anyone else working on it or deploying on it, it's $200 a month for every single person who's deployed on it, that's working on it as an owner or an administrator, so owners and administrators are the only ones who can change, edit, and add data to worksheets and columns. Depending on the size of your organization, Smartsheet can be costly. As for implementing its Control Center, Smartsheet forces you to have three people come in: it's a minimum of three people from Smartsheet for three months who will provide you the solutions for the Control Center side, and that's $150 an hour, so it can become very expensive. For my company, not having the Control Center would save on the setup fees and then the $20,000 a year, because the Control Center of Smartsheet is a yearly subscription of $20,000."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"Smartsheet can be low-priced, with personal subscriptions around eight dollars a month, but I imagine it gets pricier for enterprise systems. Microsoft Project can be more expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution is too expensive."
"If I'm not mistaken, it was pretty manageable. It was about 200 bucks a seed. The business really felt a strong need for it. So, it was viewed as a safer and more straightforward cost that we were willing to pay as compared to Domo, which took some convincing."
"Smartsheet only requires licenses for project managers. When we were using Asana, we had to purchase a license for everyone who wanted to access their tasks and use the system. That gets costly fast. It was one of the main reasons we left Asana. As Asana and these other tools scale, they become way more expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Notion?
I like the high level of customization in Notion.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Notion?
The licensing and setup cost for Notion is affordable for us as a small company.
What needs improvement with Notion?
The main problem with Notion is that it's not flexible enough for all of the use cases we intend to address. For instance, it is challenging to focus on a single KPI as it's mandatory to have a cha...
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 Smartsheet?
The tool creates shareable dashboards. These dashboards allow us to display project deliverables' status, their position in the queue, expected delivery timelines, and more. The best part is that t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Smartsheet?
The pricing is great and reasonable enough that I maintained my copy and bought it for my team independently.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Startups like Loom, Mixpanel, Blinkist, Adobe, Deel and Education facilities such as USC, Dartmouth and The University of Chicago.
Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about Notion vs. Smartsheet and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.