Every person who edits a sheet is now a license you pay for. PPM Express is the opposite: one flat price, unlimited users — and a switch you can undo, on published terms your procurement team can verify.
Under Smartsheet’s User Subscription Model, anyone with editor access must hold a paid Member license — and provisional users can be converted to paid seats automatically, with the adjustment appearing at true-up. Teams that licensed six people are discovering they now need twenty. The better your adoption, the bigger your invoice.
That’s the part that stings: you’re not being charged for value. You’re being charged for collaboration — the thing you rolled Smartsheet out to create. And the license line is only the visible part: portfolio-level capability sits in premium apps and bundles priced in the tens of thousands per year on top of seats.
*$19 per Member per month, billed annually, before Enterprise-tier uplift, premium apps, or true-ups. Enterprise pricing is custom and typically higher. Prices change — check smartsheet.com/pricing for current rates.
The break-even is around 100 editors. Past that, every person who adopts Smartsheet costs you money. With PPM Express, adoption is free — invite everyone.
Smartsheet is a capable work-management tool. The problem is what happens when you ask it to be a portfolio platform: the licenses multiply, the premium apps stack up, and the executive questions still take days of manual roll-up to answer.
What you’re leaving: a per-editor licensed grid, where adoption raises the bill.
What you’re switching to: live resource utilization across the whole portfolio — with unlimited users at no extra cost.
PPM Express is built for the portfolio layer: executive dashboards and automated status reports, resource capacity planning, what-if scenario funding, AI access from Claude, ChatGPT, or Microsoft Copilot — and your delivery tools, Smartsheet included, stay connected while teams keep working where they work.
The Switch isn’t a leap — it’s a handover. During your Deferred Billing period you run PPM Express and Smartsheet side by side at no extra cost, move teams over at your own pace, and retire Smartsheet when your contract ends — at any point within 12 months of signing.
Prefer to keep Smartsheet permanently and add PPM Express as the portfolio layer on top? We support that well — on our standard published plans. The Switch terms exist for one thing: making an actual switch risk-free.
These terms are identical for every qualified customer. Your procurement team can verify that no one got a better deal — because no one did.
Within 15 business days of kickoff, your executive portfolio view is live: integrations connected, dashboard populated, first status report generated. We agree the checklist with you at kickoff, so “done” isn’t our opinion — it’s a list. Miss it, and you owe us nothing.
Any time in the first 12 months: pro-rata refund of the unused months, and our engineers export all of your data in open formats, free. Not “here’s a CSV button, good luck” — assisted, complete, usable.
We can make the second promise because migration engineering is what this team did for a decade before building PPM Express. Moving portfolio data between systems is our core competency, in both directions. Vendors who make leaving impossible are telling you something about their product. So are we.
Connect read-only access — we populate a working PPM Express tenant with your actual projects. Evaluate the real thing, not a demo built to impress you.
No negotiation cycle, no procurement marathon — the terms above are the deal. Billing waits for your Smartsheet renewal date; access doesn’t.
Fixed-fee implementation against an agreed checklist. Run PPM Express in parallel as long as your deferral lasts — by the time Smartsheet calls about renewal, the switch already happened.
The Switch — including Deferred Billing — is for organizations retiring Smartsheet: you’re replacing an active contract and committing to end Smartsheet use within 12 months of signing. We’ll ask for a redacted renewal notice or invoice showing the vendor and end date; amounts can be blacked out. Planning to run both platforms permanently, or starting from scratch with no incumbent? You don’t need the Switch — you need our standard published plans.
During the transition, yes — the Deferred Billing period exists so you can run both while you move. The Switch terms do assume you retire Smartsheet within 12 months of signing. If you want to keep Smartsheet permanently and run PPM Express as the portfolio layer above it, we support that configuration well — on our standard published plans rather than Switch terms.
Projects, tasks, dates, assignments, and portfolio structure. We map your Smartsheet workspaces to a portfolio structure during implementation, and the 15-day checklist includes verifying the migrated data with you. Sheets you keep can stay connected to the portfolio.
You sign a 24-month agreement now at today’s locked price, and billing starts on your Smartsheet contract end date — up to 12 months out. Between signing and that date you have full product access at no charge, so you can run both systems in parallel and move at your own pace. In return, you commit to retiring Smartsheet within those 12 months — that commitment is what unlocks the Switch terms.
You pay nothing — the implementation fee and your first invoice are waived, and we return your data. The checklist is agreed in writing at kickoff, and the clock starts when we receive system access, so both sides know exactly what “day 15” means.
You tell us. We refund the unused months pro-rata and our engineers export your complete data set in open formats, at no cost, with assistance until it’s usable in whatever comes next. It’s in the agreement, not a blog post.
Flat means flat: unlimited users, all core platform capability, integrations included. There is no per-seat meter to true up and no premium-app catalog waiting behind the pricing page. Larger enterprises with advanced scope needs are $24–36K — also published, also flat.
The opposite — mid-contract is exactly when the deferred start matters. Evaluate now with your real data, sign at locked pricing, and let billing wait for your renewal date. Waiting until renewal quarter is how organizations end up signing another year under deadline pressure.
The add-ons extend a work-management tool upward — more sheets, more views, more licenses. PPM Express is a portfolio layer by design: capacity planning, scenario funding, executive reporting, and AI access are the product, not the bundle. And the pricing model doesn’t punish adoption.
Then the Switch isn’t your offer — the standard plans are. Permanent side-by-side use of Smartsheet and PPM Express is a configuration we support well (many customers run PPM Express as the portfolio layer over their sheets), but it’s priced on regular contract terms: $24,000 per year for the enterprise plan, published on the pricing page. Switch terms — Deferred Billing, the locked price, and the guarantees — are reserved for organizations actually leaving Smartsheet within 12 months.
See your own portfolio in PPM Express this week. If the numbers and the product don’t make the case on their own, keep what you have — the trial tenant deletes itself and nobody calls you twice.
Comparison references Smartsheet’s published list pricing and publicly reported licensing changes as of August 2026. Smartsheet is a trademark of Smartsheet Inc.; PPM Express is not affiliated with Smartsheet.
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