Smartsheet

What it is

Smartsheet is a work-management platform built on a spreadsheet grid. Every project starts as a sheet of rows and columns, and Gantt, board, calendar and dashboard views sit on top of that grid. Above the sheet level it sells portfolio and PMO tooling: Portfolios on Enterprise, and Advanced Portfolios, Dynamic View, Data Shuttle and DataMesh as add-ons or inside the Advanced Work Management (AWM) bundle. The category leader it most resembles is Asana, but the working unit is a row in a grid, not a task card.

Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners took it private for about $8.4B in January 2025. Rajeev Singh, a Concur co-founder, became CEO on 6 October 2025 after Mark Mader stepped down. Since then the product has moved fast on AI. The MCP server reached general availability on 24 March 2026. On 11 June 2026 Smartsheet made Smart Assist, an in-product AI companion that answers questions and runs tasks against live sheet data, available to all customers, and added ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Gemini Enterprise connections next to Claude. At ENGAGE on 4 November 2026 it shipped a Creation Agent that builds sheets, dashboards, reports and automations from a plain-language goal, a Data Quality Agent, Agentic Workflows, and native ServiceNow, Dynamics 365, HubSpot and Workday connectors.

The fork it resolves

The question this page answers: Smartsheet, Asana or Airtable for running ops programs, now that Smartsheet is private and agent-enabled?

Pick Smartsheet when the work is a plan you report up: rollout trackers, resource plans, PMO intake with portfolio rollups, programs where a sponsor reads a dashboard every Monday. Its grid, cross-sheet formulas and portfolio layer handle that better than Asana’s task model. Pick Asana when the work is a stream of requests to triage and route. Pick Airtable when you are building an app on relational data rather than tracking a plan.

The MCP server changes how teams use it more than Smart Assist does. Smartsheet reports more than 9,000 weekly active MCP users and 700,000 tool calls a week by June 2026. An ops lead can ask Claude to update dates across a rollout sheet or to summarize risks from three program sheets, without opening the grid.

A use case worth buying it for

A 6-person RevOps or Legal Ops PMO running 40 concurrent system rollouts, each with a project sheet built from one template. Portfolios roll status, budget and risk into one dashboard for the COO. Program managers update rows through Claude over MCP or through Smart Assist. Business units that only read and comment stay free as Contributors.

Pricing reality

Pro lists at $9 per member per month billed annually ($12 monthly), capped at 10 members and open to new customers only. Business is $19 annually ($24 monthly) with a 3-member minimum. Enterprise and AWM are quoted. There is no free plan, only a 30-day trial. Smart Assist, Smart Columns and the AI dashboard builder are listed on every plan. The external AI connectors, including the MCP server, start at Business. Portfolios, SAML SSO and Work Insights start at Enterprise.

What teams pay is driven by add-ons and seat counts. A 25-member Business plan lists at $5,700 a year. Dynamic View starts at $125 a month and Data Shuttle at $100 a month on Business or Enterprise. Resource Management and Brandfolder are quoted separately. Vendr’s February 2026 data puts the median contract at about $22,500 a year, with typical discounts of 15-30% off list.

Since 2025 every plan runs on the user subscription model. Free collaborators who used to edit for nothing now map to paid Members, free Contributors or free Guests. Anyone who edits becomes a provisional Member and is billed at reconciliation once the account passes its purchased Member count.

Best for

The PMO lead or ops program manager at a 200-5,000 person company who reports portfolios of 20 or more concurrent projects to leadership, whose stakeholders already think in spreadsheets, and who wants AI access through the assistant they already use rather than a new interface.

Not for

A team under 10 people running request intake, product and engineering teams that live in issues and sprints, or anyone who needs a relational database for an internal app.

Versus the alternatives

• Asana — the closest public rival in product shape (NYSE: ASAN). Pick it when the work is cross-functional request intake and routing, and you want AI triage with AI Studio inside the work tool.
• monday.com — the share leader by revenue, about $1.5B ARR. Pick it when the same team also wants a CRM or service desk on the same boards.
• ClickUp — the fastest-growing challenger, bundling docs, chat and AI into a cheaper seat. Pick it when cost per seat and one-app consolidation outweigh portfolio reporting.
• Airtable — pick it when the job is a relational ops database or internal app, not a project plan.
• Rocketlane — pick it for customer onboarding projects with a client-facing portal.

For the full field, see best project management tools.

Watch-outs

• The user model bills editors, not just named buyers. Guard: before renewal, export the user list, convert people who only view, comment or submit forms to Contributors, and negotiate a Member cap and true-up price in the contract.
• The MCP server needs Business and does not cover Gov. It is not on Pro, and it runs only in the commercial US, EU and AU environments. Guard: confirm plan and region before promising an AI-driven rollout, and test write actions on a copy of a production sheet first, because the server can change dates, columns and statuses with the user’s permissions.
• Copilot and ChatGPT connections reached the US first. At the June launch they were US-only, with EMEA and APJ due later. Guard: check current availability in your region before standardizing a team on either assistant.
• The PMO layer is priced as add-ons. Dynamic View, Data Shuttle, Advanced Portfolios and Resource Management can outweigh the seat cost. Guard: price the full bill of materials, and compare it with the AWM bundle quote before signing.
• Private-equity ownership changes how you negotiate. No public filings means no revenue or retention data to read the business by. Guard: take a term of one or two years and write data-export and price-increase caps into the order form.