Looking for a Smartsheet alternative? This one is written for enterprise PMOs running a real evaluation. Eighteen requirements, the plan each capability actually ships in, both vendors’ published prices, and the places each product is the weaker choice.
Commercial disclosure: PPM Express produced and funded this comparison. It evaluates publicly documented product capabilities against a defined requirement set; it is not independent analyst research or a benchmark test of both systems on the same dataset.Read the method
Comparing Smartsheet at Enterprise rather than Business is the fair comparison, and it changes the picture: Portfolios, Scenario Planning and SAML SSO all arrive. What arrives with them is a quoted price and a set of premium applications that still sit outside the plan, including Resource Management for time and capacity, and the Jira and Azure DevOps connectors. Pick PPM Express if you want the portfolio layer in one subscription. Pick Smartsheet Enterprise if the no-code platform is the point and you are willing to assemble the rest.
Primary trade-off: Smartsheet is the more flexible everyday work surface, and unlimited free guests let people participate without a paid seat.
Primary trade-off: Enterprise is quoted and still per member, and several capabilities this requirement set treats as mandatory, time tracking, capacity planning and the delivery-tool connectors, are separately priced applications rather than plan features.
The default scenario is an enterprise hybrid PMO with 250 modeled users, 75 to 250 active initiatives, several delivery systems in play, and a need for centralized portfolio, resource, financial and executive reporting.
Wants everyone in the portfolio, governance across the tools teams already use, resource and financial control, and a cost that does not move when headcount does.
Leads at the default 250-user benchmark because the $24,000 annual plan includes unlimited users and broad participation is mandatory.
Enterprise covers portfolio roll-up and governance. Financials, time and the connector add-ons are what still cost it here.
Map initiatives to strategy and track progress against objectives or key results.
StrategyCentralize initiatives and provide governed portfolio-level health, status, dates, risks, and decisions.
Portfolio governanceCollect requests, score them consistently, and move approved initiatives into delivery.
Intake & prioritizationModel competing investment mixes using strategy, budget, capacity, timing, targets, and dependencies.
Portfolio modelingBalance demand and capacity across roles, named resources, teams, projects, and time periods.
ResourcesProvide portfolio and project financial control and connect spend to expected value.
Financials & benefitsAllow teams to use native schedules or external delivery tools without losing portfolio governance.
DeliveryCapture actual effort for projects and tasks and use it in reporting and resource analysis.
TimeCreate standardized executive reports with AI narratives and scheduled PDF or email delivery.
Executive reporting & AIAsk portfolio questions, identify risk, generate plans, summarize health, and automate routine management work.
AIRoll up work from Jira, Azure DevOps, Planner, Project, Smartsheet, monday.com, and other systems into a portfolio view.
IntegrationsCreate or update connected tasks and work items while preserving team execution in the source system.
Bidirectional integrationEnable enterprise reporting, data export, integration, and repeatable process automation.
Data & automationAllow PMO administrators to adapt fields, views, templates, rules, and workflows as practices mature.
AdministrationProvide access controls, auditability, protected work, sandboxes, and environment options where required.
Security & governanceGive employees, executives, team members, and viewers access without annual cost increasing for every additional user.
Commercial modelManage client delivery, billable utilization, time, costs, charges, and profitability as an integrated operating model.
Professional servicesVisualize initiatives, dependencies, capabilities, outcomes, and architecture relationships across the enterprise.
Enterprise architectureHow the score works: Meets = 1, Partially meets = 0.5, Does not meet = 0. Mandatory requirements weigh more than Important ones, and Important more than Optional. Read the table. The percentage is a summary of it, not the result.
Enterprise brings Portfolios, Scenario Planning and SAML SSO into the plan. Resource Management, Data Shuttle, Control Center and the Jira and Azure DevOps connectors stay outside it. Build the quote from the whole list, not the plan line.
Unlimited guests and contributors are a genuine advantage for broad collaboration and worth crediting. Anyone who owns or edits work still needs a paid member seat, and Enterprise is quoted per member, so the bill still tracks headcount.
Budgets, forecasts and benefits can be built in sheets and formulas, and many teams do exactly that. It stays a build rather than a product capability, and it needs an owner for as long as you run it.
A comparison that only lists strengths is a brochure. Check each of these against your own operating model, the integrations you actually need, and how much implementation capacity you have.
Packaged enterprise PPM. One price, no seat count.
A no-code work platform, quoted per paid member.
The short version: Smartsheet Enterprise if the no-code platform is the point and you will assemble the portfolio layer on top of it. PPM Express if you want that layer in one subscription at a published price.
Every figure here is an annual cost at 250 users. Enterprise Ultra is the plan being compared; PPM Express Enterprise appears as a price reference only. Smartsheet does not publish Enterprise pricing, so the rows below use a planning floor rather than a quote. Enterprise is still priced per paid member, and unlimited guests and contributors are free. The $100,000 figure is a planning floor for budgeting, not a quote, and it is the one number on this page that is an estimate rather than a published price.
Pricing was verified from each vendor’s public website on August 21, 2026.
Default summary scenario: 250 users. Official pricing sources: PPM Express [12] and Smartsheet [8].
Calculation assumption: Smartsheet does not publish a list price, so the rows above use a $100,000 annual planning floor rather than a quoted figure. The same floor is shown at 100, 250 and 500 users because a quoted enterprise agreement does not scale linearly the way a per-seat price does; your actual number depends on modules, users and term. PPM Express Enterprise Ultra remains $24,000 per year with unlimited users. Taxes, discounts, implementation, migration, integrations, support and professional services are excluded on both sides.
Illustrative product image from the PPM Express website. Product interfaces change over time.
Explore PPM ExpressThis is not a bake-off. Nobody loaded the same dataset into both products. What it does check is whether each vendor publicly documents a capability that meets the requirement, and what edition, integration or service you need to get it.
Requirement coverage, plans, integrations and published pricing.
They solve different problems that often compete for the same budget. Smartsheet is a work platform teams shape themselves; PPM Express is a portfolio platform with governance built in. If your gap is team execution, Smartsheet is the alternative. If it is portfolio control, PPM Express is.
Because Business cannot meet the requirement set. Portfolios, Scenario Planning and SAML SSO all start at Enterprise, so comparing Business would have measured Smartsheet against a plan no enterprise PMO would actually buy. Enterprise is the fair comparison, and it scores meaningfully better.
Smartsheet does not publish Enterprise pricing, so there is no arithmetic to show. Budget from a $100,000 annual floor, remembering it is still per paid member and that Resource Management, Control Center and the connectors are priced on top. PPM Express Enterprise Ultra is $24,000 a year with unlimited users.
The ones that matter most for this requirement set: Resource Management, which supplies time tracking and enterprise capacity planning; the Jira and Azure DevOps connectors; Data Shuttle; and Control Center. Price the whole list before comparing totals.
No. Enterprise closes the portfolio and security gaps, but several capabilities this requirement set treats as mandatory remain separately priced applications. The pricing rows compare a published subscription against a planning floor.
Where funding, scoring, gates and benefits live. Strategic portfolio management
The constraint most portfolios actually fail on. Resource capacity planning and utilization
Test a funding mix before you commit to it. Portfolio what-if scenario planning
All material feature and pricing statements are based on public vendor sources accessed on or before August 21, 2026. Product packaging and functionality may change.
.svg){kind=small}
