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Planview AdaptiveWork 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

Planview AdaptiveWork
Ranking in Project Management Software
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Smartsheet
Ranking in Project Management Software
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Project Management Software category, the mindshare of Planview AdaptiveWork is 1.1%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Smartsheet is 4.6%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Project Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

VishalSingh11 - PeerSpot reviewer
Has resources management and timesheets but could be more flexible
Compared to Broadcom Clarity, there was some flexibility with blueprints, etc. You can create a blueprint for different business groups or different customers. Planview AdaptiveWork doesn't have something like that. If they can build up something like a view price. It's still a traditional way where you have to create different instances for different customers. The PPM solution uses queries if I'm rolling out for different divisions. In that case, I have to create different instances for each region because each division may have a different look and feel. But if I have a blueprint, then it's very convenient. I can create multiple interfaces for different processes. Broadcom Clarity has some access control on those viewpoints.
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

"Clarizen Slide Publisher has helped increase transparency and communication with project stakeholders for us."
"Clarizen's strength is reporting. Aside from reporting, I also like the ability to create customized workflow and custom actions. The workflow rules are handy. For example, you can create custom fields and dependent picklists."
"I like the project management solution. It's really nice."
"The feature that has improved our project planning the most is the ability to create custom workflows, which allows us to automate manual tasks that project managers need to perform. The collaboration feature enhances our team's productivity by allowing individuals to see the impact of their decisions on projects owned and managed by other teams."
"The most valuable feature of Smartsheet is it can be highly customized."
"The deployment is very easy. All you need to do is log in."
"To me, one of the most powerful features of Smartsheet is being able to email others."
"The most valuable features of Smartsheet are its collaboration tools, the ability to centralize and prioritize projects, and robust reporting capabilities."
"Smartsheet offers more than Project because it's similar to a table-based, database-type system. It's like a hybrid between Excel and project software. We were able to enter the formulas and do much of the automation. We added budgets to it and linked them to a vendor page. Smartsheet let us integrate the budget into the project seamlessly. With Project, we needed to open up Excel."
"The ability to update in real-time before meetings is great."
"The solution has subtasks and a rollup."
"It's stable and simple to use."
 

Cons

"One specific area for improvement could be implementing a development environment to test workflows with live production data."
"If I start customizing too many things, Clarizen tends to get really slow in our environment and especially if I'm tunneled in an environment, like if I'm connected to my VPN."
"I felt like the slide publisher isn't that user-friendly. I think it wasn't that easy to use or to figure out because of formatting constraints, or maybe we need to get better at understanding some of its limitations."
"It could be more user-friendly. I think it is too overwhelming, initially, in terms of possibilities and so on."
"I want to improve baselines, predecessor-successor relationships, and the ability to use manual starts and stops while keeping relationships intact. Changing dates and durations can be convoluted, unlike in Microsoft Project. There are many things I'm used to in other software that don't happen in Smartsheet. It's offset by how easy it is to link sheets and pull data at higher levels, but figuring out why I can't change data sometimes can be frustrating."
"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."
"Lacks the ability to edit attachments within the solution."
"The long-term timelines could be improved, especially the visuals on the projection Gantt chart."
"If there was some way to store more complex files in the system, or if there was a back-end structure where you could store files, that would be ideal."
"The system can become more challenging to use in more complex scenarios, requiring additional add-ons that can be quite costly."
"Asana has a modern look and feel, particularly its agile project management interface featuring movable cards between columns."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Smartsheet has many licensing models. You need to add the package that best suits your requirements. The license is paid per user and it is monthly. The cost was approximately $7 per PC, $15 for professional, and $33 for the enterprise plan."
"This licensing is straightforward and they charge per user."
"There's a trial version and a free version. Each license costs a decent amount, $25 per month or something."
"The solution is too expensive."
"I would assume there is a licensing fee. I don't think that it is free."
"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."
"It is less expensive than Microsoft Project for enterprise or Oracle Primavera by an order of magnitude. If you buy a Microsoft Project license, it's probably $300 or so by itself, whereas Smartsheet is probably less than $50 per head."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. I was responsible for negotiating the price with the Smartsheet team, but I don't remember what the price was. Its standard license probably was around 5,000 to 6,000 a year. The enterprise version is significantly more expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
57%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Educational Organization
43%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Planview AdaptiveWork?
The feature that has improved our project planning the most is the ability to create custom workflows, which allows us to automate manual tasks that project managers need to perform. The collaborat...
What needs improvement with Planview AdaptiveWork?
One specific area for improvement could be implementing a development environment to test workflows with live production data.
What advice do you have for others considering Planview AdaptiveWork?
Integration with other tools can sometimes be a hiccup, but this isn't necessarily a limitation of Planview AdaptiveWork. It's more often a result of company policies regarding integration with oth...
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.
 

Also Known As

Planview Clarizen
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cisco Capital, JLL, Conagra Brands, Cargill, JLL, IBM, IIROC, Siemens Energy
Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about Planview AdaptiveWork vs. Smartsheet and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.