Both Smartsheet and Airtable are excellent project management tools that can be customized to unlock advanced capabilities. Each caters to individuals and businesses that want a little bit more out of their PM tool than just keeping track of tasks. Smartsheet is best for those wanting more advanced project management features while Airtable is best suited for those who are looking to customize a complete solution.
Smartsheet
Starting price
$7
per user per month (billed annually)
Integrations available
Skype, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Power BI, Slack and more
Starting price
$7
per user per month (billed annually)
Integrations available
Skype, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Power BI, Slack and more
Why We Picked It
Smartsheet is spreadsheet-based cloud software that aims to help teams plan, track and manage their projects. It offers an array of traditional project management tools in an easy-to-use interface that many people will find familiar. The tool offers a number of collaboration tools to help project managers and teams work efficiently on similar tasks and specific subtasks.
Whether you’re looking for a simple or more robust project management tool, Smartsheet could potentially be the right solution. While it can work pretty well right out of the box, it also has a number of integration and customization options that can help take your project management to the next level.
Pros & Cons
- Easy to learn and use
- Strong customer support
- Strong traditional project management features
- Basic tier is limited
- Less third-party integrations
- Can’t work offline
Airtable
Starting price
$10
per user per month (billed annually)
Free version available
Yes (limited but forever)
Integrations available
Basecamp, Google Workspace, GitHub, Asana, Dropbox, Slack, Mailchimp and more
Starting price
$10
per user per month (billed annually)
Free version available
Yes (limited but forever)
Integrations available
Basecamp, Google Workspace, GitHub, Asana, Dropbox, Slack, Mailchimp and more
Why We Picked It
Airtable is a cloud-based solution that targets small to midsized businesses, individuals or smaller teams within a larger business. The product focuses on collecting, organizing and collaborating on specific data. The spreadsheet format for collecting and organizing the data is familiar to many and is easy to maneuver.
Where Airtable really shines is its ability to be customized to fit your needs. The software integrates with numerous other products as well as offers a huge variety of templates to choose from that have been built by the company and by Airtable’s large community. While it can be difficult to learn how to properly customize the software, once you do, it’s easy to use and a very powerful and satisfying tool to use.
Pros & Cons
- Large database and community of templates
- Easy to use, once you learn it
- Powerful customization and capabilities
- Less project management-specific features
- Learning curve to get the most out of it