Smartsheet vs. Asana vs. SmartSuite: Which One Is Better? [2025]

Smartsheet and Asana are both popular options on the market when evaluating project management tools in 2025, each offering unique capabilities and use cases.

In this buyer guide, I’ll break down the key features, pricing, and user feedback for each tool to help you make a better-informed decision.

➡️ I’ll also introduce you to an alternative to both tools that covers both Smartsheet’s and Asana’s weaknesses with its all-in-one project management capabilities: SmartSuite (that’s us).

TL;DR

• Smartsheet uses a grid-first approach that resembles a spreadsheet. The platform offers Gantt, card, and calendar views, which makes it ideal for teams managing large datasets or portfolios that need structured data editing.

➡️ Choose Smartsheet if you manage enterprise-level projects that require strict control, data governance, and portfolio reporting.

• Asana uses a task-based model. Tasks are the main unit, organized into projects. The platform offers list, board, timeline, and workload views, which I think is ideal for teams that want fast setup and clear task tracking.

➡️ Choose Asana if you need a simple, user-friendly platform to organize daily work, track tasks, and collaborate efficiently.

• SmartSuite combines database-style records with task management, workflow automation, dashboards, and built-in collaboration features. The platform is designed to be a flexible, no-code platform for managing any type of work, from CRM and onboarding to project tracking and IT service management.

➡️ Choose SmartSuite if you want to build flexible, no-code systems that connect teams, clients, and operations in one platform.

Smartsheet vs. Asana vs. SmartSuite: Features

TL;DR

• Smartsheet offers spreadsheet-based flexibility with advanced formulas, multiple views (e.g., Grid, Gantt, Calendar, and Card), rich dashboards, and enterprise-grade automation capabilities.
• Asana offers a comprehensive range of features, including customizable dashboards, workflow automation and dedicated portfolios, but the tool lacks collaboration functionality.
• SmartSuite offers an all-in-one project management solution for teams to plan, manage, and track projects, resources, and stakeholders. It comes with built-in collaboration (comments, chat, and document sharing), a modern and intuitive interface, and a no-code automation builder.

Let’s go over the 3 tools’ features, starting with Asana: 👇

Asana’s Features

Customizable Dashboard & Data Visualization

With Asana, it’s possible to create detailed custom dashboards with visual elements like line charts, bar graphs, tables, progress bars, and more. 

Each dashboard can be customised, allowing you to present project information most effectively to your team members and external stakeholders.

You can pull data from multiple sources, and each chart gets updated in real-time.

Workflow Automation

Asana gained recognition for its automated workflows. The tool lets you create and manage automated processes to eliminate manual tasks. 

It’s also possible to create automation bundles catering to specific projects and use the same automation across projects, standardizing the work.

Goals & Reporting

Through Asana’s detailed reporting features, your team can create project and company-wide goals and track progress over time. 

The project management software helps you connect each task to the bigger goals, provide visibility into how milestones and portfolios contribute to objectives, and keep you focused on tasks with the highest impact on the bottom line.

Dedicated Portfolios

Your team can set up Asana’s dedicated portfolios, where your team can organize multiple projects if you’re a professional services company looking for project management software.

Each portfolio can be customized to your clients and provides an overview of work status and go-live dates.

Asana is best suited if:

✅ Your company prioritizes goal-setting and aligning work with objectives.

✅ You are looking for advanced data visualization and reporting capabilities for project insights.

✅ You need a clean, intuitive interface with a focus on task and project management.

Asana may not be ideal if:

❌ You're working with a tight budget, as Asana can be expensive for large teams.

❌ Your organization needs extensive collaboration tools.

❌ Your team needs extensive offline access.

💡 Check out affordable and collaborative alternatives to Asana.

Smartsheet’s Features

Advanced formulas and functions

As a spreadsheet-focused project management solution, Smartsheet offers some of the most advanced and dynamic formulas and functions on the market. 

The platform lets you perform complex calculations and fetch relevant data within a single or multiple sheets at once.

Team collaboration

Smartsheet lets you build a library of files, loop in stakeholders for proofing, share attachments, and leave comments. 

Admin control to share access is flexible and allows collaboration with internal and external users.

The platform supports file types such as .jpg, .png, .gif, .pdf, .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx and lets you upload content from Brandfolder, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and more.

Dashboards

Dashboards in Smartsheet help you consolidate your work and build a visualization for the project's performance. 

You can add interactive widgets, which are the building blocks of a dashboard. Some common widgets include reports, charts, metrics, images, and web content.

It’s also possible to share dashboards with team members who might not have the actual report, allowing you to maintain complete control over privacy.

Workload Tracking

Workload tracking helps teams monitor team members’ availability and balance workloads, enhancing team performance.

Smartsheet provides you with a workload heat map as a visual snapshot of your team’s availability, while the workload schedule offers an expanded view of project assignments. 

Smartsheet is ideal if you:

✅ Need advanced formulas and functions to evaluate the project’s performance.

✅ Need a versatile project management tool with multiple views (Grid, Gantt, Kanban, Calendar).

✅ Require advanced collaboration features for real-time teamwork and file sharing across departments.

Smartsheet isn't the best option if you:

❌ Are a small team looking for an intuitive interface with a low learning curve, which is why some brands have been looking for Smartsheet alternatives.

❌ Operate with a limited budget.

❌ Need advanced data analysis and reporting capabilities.

➡️ Learn more about Smartsheet with our honest Smartsheet review, where I cover the tool’s features, integrations, and pricing structure in more detail, including customer testimonials.

SmartSuite Features

SmartSuite offers an all-in-one project management tool that lets you manage all your projects in a single platform with built-in automation and a communication centre.

But we are not trying to add to the noise of other project management tools. 

Our solution aims to create one unified no-code platform that runs the entire operation, from project management to process automation to real-time collaboration.

Comprehensive Project Management

SmartSuite’s project management capabilities help you plan, track, and manage simple to complex projects.

To simplify the process, you get numerous built-in intuitive features to execute your tasks perfectly.

Here’s what SmartSuite has in store for you.

• Smart task management: Turn any item field into a task, including a checklist item, comments, or sub-item. With this flexibility, you will be able to build a solid task list and assign it to the right person with a due date and priority status.

• Project phases and milestones: Having milestones ensures your project stays on track and moves towards the objective. With SmartSuite, you can set them, monitor through your reporting dashboard, and flag issues.
  

• Files and project deliverables: With SmartSuite, you can manage and organize all your documents. 

You can also attach project-related files, share feedback with your team, and manage version history, all within your work context.

SmartSuite supports formats like PDF, GIF, CSV, PNG, and MP4. The tool also integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and Microsoft OneDrive, making adding files to your workflows easy.

Also, you can add images directly in SmartSuite by connecting your social media and Unsplash accounts.

• Native time tracking: Monitor and evaluate task and project completion times. Built-in tracking helps group time entries, see estimates, and segment billable and non-billable entries.

💡 Interested in how other team leaders are using SmartSuite? You can check out our video walkthrough:

Native Team Collaboration

SmartSuite outperforms Smartsheet and Asana with its built-in communication and collaboration features. 

You can connect with peers in group chats or 1:1 conversations for quick feedback and keep stakeholders updated.

SmartSuite’s members’ directory provides a holistic view of the project team by examining each teammate’s details, such as availability status, job profile, and other relevant information.

Similar to Smartsheet and Asana, you can use comments and @mentions to share updates, nudge teammates, or add new people to the conversation.

Comprehensive Project Reporting

SmartSuite offers a dynamic project analytics tool with configurable charts and graphs.

The reporting dashboard helps you track project performance, understand resource allocation, and identify slow-moving projects. 

Based on these insights, you can quickly develop plans to overcome roadblocks and get the project back on track.

You can visualize reporting in Grid, Card, Kanban, Timeline, Map, Calendar, or Dashboard views. Add as many as needed to build a visual storyboard for your project’s progress.

To share reports with external teams or clients, you can make the report public and share the necessary access. SmartSuite also supports printing or exporting PDF, Excel, Google Sheets, or CSV format.

Advanced Workflow Automation

SmartSuite's no-code automation builder is one of the most intuitive, giving a neck-to-neck competition in automation.

It’s possible to assemble automation at the task and project level and automate repetitive tasks based on triggers like changing dates, sending notification emails, or updating statuses. 

There are six pre-defined triggers and 15+ actions, with options to build custom ones.

SmartSuite is the right choice if you:

✅ Need a user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop customization.

✅ Need a platform that can adapt to various business processes.

✅ Want to centralize team communication and collaboration.

✅ Want affordable and feature-packed software.

SmartSuite isn’t the best option if you:

❌ Are looking for a well-established platform with a long track record, as SmartSuite is relatively new.

❌ Need extensive third-party integrations, as SmartSuite offers fewer native integrations than Asana and Smartsheet.

Winner: SmartSuite.

SmartSuite wins out with its all-in-one work management platform that is not just for task tracking. Our platform can replace multiple tools by combining CRM, project management, time tracking, and reporting within one system.

Apart from that, SmartSuite comes with best-in-class internal and external collaboration capabilities, unified dashboards, pre-built templates, and no-code customization to get started in days without a developer required.

Integrations: Smartsheet vs. Asana vs. SmartSuite

Smartsheet Integrations

Smartsheet integrates with enterprise systems like Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, and Jira. The platform also offers data connectors that support large organizations and data synchronization.

In addition to these, there are 100+ native integrations, including Google Workspace, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Tableau.

Other noteworthy integrations include:

• Okta.
• Power BI.
• Oculus.
• Miro.
• DocuSign.

Asana’s Integrations

Asana has one of the largest integration ecosystems, connecting with hundreds of popular tools for communication, file sharing, and development workflows.

Compared to the other competitors on the market, Asana casts a wider net with its connectors, including Clari Connect, portable, Workato, Power BI, Tableau, and Microsoft Power Automate.

The tool also offers an open AI for custom integrations. Here are Asana’s key integrations:

• Figma.
• Salesforce.
• Hubspot.
• Bynder.
• DocuSign.
• Notion.

SmartSuite Integrations

SmartSuite integrates with major platforms, including five connectors, such as Zapier, Ply, Integrately, Relay, and Make, to connect with 1,000s of apps to transfer data.

Some of the notable integrations include:

• Salesforce: Create and update records in Salesforce as part of your workflow.
• Slack: Get notified on Slack when something is going on in SmartSuite.
• Twilio: Send SMS messages from Twilio to keep mobile users informed.
• Open AI: Use AI to generate or improve text inside our SmartDoc field.
• Jira Cloud: Use SmartSuite automations to create or update Jira Cloud issues.
• HubSpot: Sync contacts and activities with HubSpot contacts and more.
• Intercom: Sync Intercom contacts with your SmartSuite projects and workflow.

Winner: Asana

Asana wins with its 200+ native integrations with various productivity platforms, while SmartSuite and Smartsheet have to rely on third-party connectors like Zapier.

Pricing: Smartsheet vs. Asana vs. SmartSuite

Smartsheet pricing

Unlike SmartSuite and Asana, Smartsheet doesn’t offer a free plan or trial. 

For pricing plans, Smartsheet charges based on the number of users and offers four paid plans:

• Pro: Starts at $9/seat/month when billed annually, including private sheet creation and unlimited form access with a 10-user limit.
• Business: Starts at $19/seat/month with a minimum of 3 user seats when billed annually, which adds unlimited automated workflows, PowerBI, Tableau, and Adobe Creative Cloud integration.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, which adds unlimited storage, enterprise plan manager, and AI tools.
• Advanced work management: Custom pricing, which adds portfolio management and a premium support package.

Asana Pricing

Asana offers a free tier for up to 10 users with unlimited file storage (100MB per file) and three task views: board, list, and calendar.

The tool has four paid plans with a 30-day free trial:

• Starters: Starts at $10.99/user/month for up to 500 members, which includes Asana AI, private projects and teams.
• Advanced: Starts at $24.99/user/month, which includes 25,000 automations/month, 100 portfolios, universal reporting, and goal tracking.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, which includes advanced integrations, unlimited seats, portfolio, and automation bundles.
• Enterprise +: Custom pricing, which includes audit log API, HIPAA compliance, and data loss prevention integrations.

➡️ Feel free to check out our in-depth Asana pricing guide to learn more about what’s included in each paid tier.

SmartSuite Pricing

Unlike Smartsheet, SmartSuite offers a forever-free plan, which is among the most generous on the market.

The free tier gives you 100 automated triggers, team collaboration tools, 7+ task views (Dashboard, table, boards, cards, list, calendar, and grid), time tracking, and more.

We offer four paid plans, each with a 14-day free trial.

• Team: Starts at $12/user/month when billed annually, including 8+ dashboard views, 5,000 automation runs, time tracking, and collaborative SmartDocs.
• Professional: Starts at $30/user/month when billed annually, including two-factor authentication, Gmail & Outlook integrations, and unlimited editors.
• Enterprise: Starts at $45/user/month when billed annually, including audit logs, data loss prevention, and 50,000 API calls monthly.
• Signature: Customized plan tailored to your organization’s needs and team size.

Winner: SmartSuite

SmartSuite wins with its generous freemium plan and lower entry point for business-grade paid plans. The price-to-feature ratio is well distributed across paid tiers when compared to Smartsheet and Asana.

What are Customers Saying about Smartsheet, Asana, and SmartSuite?

TL;DR:

• Smartsheet reviews praise the customizability and collaborative features, but are not satisfied with its complicated automation setup, group-based pricing, and interface that can feel cluttered.
• Asana customers are happy with its clean and intuitive interface, but are not satisfied with the platform’s lack of native time doc functionality and confusing timeline view.
• SmartSuite users are satisfied with its intuitive interface, built-in communication features, customization options, and overall value-for-money. However, some users are not happy with SmartSuite’s range of integrations.

Smartsheet Reviews

G2 Rating: 4.4/5.

What users love:

• Customizability and adaptation to the customer’s business processes.
• Ease of collaboration across the organization.
• Ease of use due to spreadsheet-like interface.
  

‘’I like using Smartsheet to keep track of hundreds of individual projects that my team is working on at any given time. I like that everything is customizable, and I like using automations to move completed projects to a different spreadsheet. I also frequently use the filtering feature to see which projects are assigned to me specifically.’’ – G2 Review.

‘’Collaboration features are great for teamwork and managing workloads. There are loads of features and options to work with many different types of teams.’’ – G2 Review.

Common complaints:

• Complicated automation setup with no version history to track changes.
• Performance issues when working on dashboards.
• Limited native integrations.

‘’One major issue is that Smartsheet can break often, especially when using metrics on dashboards. The data sometimes fails to display correctly, making it look like the dashboard is broken. I even had a sheet become completely inaccessible, which really slowed down productivity for my team. This can be very frustrating.’’ – G2 Review.

‘’Smartsheets have a very limited format for export dashboards. Facing slowness issues when there are many users logging in at the same time. Limited functionality and integration.’’ – Gartner Review.

Asana Reviews

G2 rating: 4.4/5.

What users love:

• It has a clean and intuitive interface.
• Strong goal-tracking features.
• A really good mobile app.
• Excellent for task dependencies.
  

‘’One of my favorite pieces of Asana is the dashboard. It's customizable with different widgets so you can organise your workspace with a quick view to things like assigned tasks, pending statuses (color-coded by severity), forms, projects, a private notepad to jot down notes, and others. You can flip between a weekly view and a monthly view. It has a functional app that mirrors the desktop version.’’ – G2 Review.

Common complaints:

• Limited to one assignee per task.
• No native doc functionality in comparison to other alternatives on the market, such as SmartSuite.
• Higher-tier plans are needed for essential features.

‘’No doc functionality; it's good for many things, but it's not easy to combine both table and doc functionality, which can be very useful, especially for creating nested pages.’’ – G2 Review.

‘’There is no timeline view of the various tasks, since each task is tracked on a separate line item. I wish we could turn all the tasks into a Gantt chart of some sort, so we can track progress and due dates.’’ – G2 Review.

SmartSuite Reviews

G2 Rating: 4.9/5.

What users love:

• Intuitive interface and quick setup.
• Built-in communication features.
• Flexible customization options.
• Value for money compared to competitors.

‘’I love how intuitive SmartSuite is from the moment you log in. It's easy to navigate, and the templates really made it simple to quickly realize all the potential ways to utilize the software. I love how easy it is to see progress on a project at any point, and how all files, communication and calendar are tied in within the task. So insanely simple, but there is so much you can do.’’ –Capterra Review.

‘’I love how integrated my team can be when we work on projects together. It's really easy to delegate tasks, collaborate in real time, and work across time zones without missing notes from each other.’’ – G2 Review.

Common complaints:

• Limited integration options compared to established competitors.
• Some advanced features are still in development.
• There’s a lack of a mid-tier between the Team and the Professional plans.

‘’The lack of a mid-tier between the Team and the Professional plan. Also, although it has an amazing customer support, for European customers like myself, a bigger team of support for the European Market would be really appreciated.’’ – G2 Review.

Smartsheet, Asana or SmartSuite: Summary

Get Started with SmartSuite For Free Today

Smartsheet and Asana have left some customers concerned with their pricing, on top of their subpar collaboration capabilities and lack of doc functionality.

SmartSuite combines the best of both worlds: offering flexibility, collaboration, and simplicity, making it an excellent choice for teams that want a scalable, easy-to-use platform that centralizes their work.

Here’s what's in it for your team when you try SmartSuite:

• Access to a generous free plan with features including multi-board views (Kanban, Chart, Map, Timeline, Card, and Calendar), 100 automation/month, and 40+ field types, including formula and linked record fields.
• No-code automation builder to set up to 500,000 trigger/action workflows.
• Built-in productivity tools, including time tracking, status tracking, and checklists.
• Team collaboration and planning tools such as whiteboards and SmartSuite docs (unlike Asana, which does not have them).
• Resource management across projects and teams.
• 40+ field types, including the option to add your custom fields.

Sign up for a free plan to test the water or get a 14-day free trial to explore all its amazing features.

Or, if you’d like to talk to our team of experts, schedule a demo.

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