Replacing Smartsheets with Sharepoint Lists

[crodamer]

Hi all,

We are considering switching from Smartsheets to using Sharepoint Lists for same project mgmt. functionality. (Smartsheets is increasing our legacy pricing by 200%)... We currently use Office 365 and Sharepoint. Has anyone done this? Any pointers? Would Sharepoint lists offer close to the same functionality as Smartsheets?

It seems that the "modern" sharepoint lists don't presently support or have same functionality has the old version. i.e. no gantt chart, etc. So likely we would have to use the non-modern format for this purpose, right? Are there any apps that can work with Sharepoint lists to give us more "Smartsheet-like" functionality.

We are also looking at the relatively new MS Project for the Web... which we already have too and it offers kanban and gantt, but may be too limiting in other aspects.

Anyone who has any thoughts or suggests about what we can try, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks - Clayce

[#2]

If you use Smartsheets for PM functionality, I would recommend instead looking at Project, Planner, or Azure DevOps depending on your requirements and the maturity of your PM organization.

DevOps is largely free (access to file repos require a Basic or VS license) and there are 3rd parties which extend DevOps for portfolio views into your projects. One example which I'm aware of but don't have direct experience with is https://ppm.express/ppm-for-azure-devops-vsts.

[#3]

@Trevor Seward thanks for the feedback. Are users really like the "spreadsheet" like nature of smartsheets and its ease of use. Planner is too basic and Project and DevOps are too complex for most of them... really just looking for a product that allows users to work in excel like worksheet, can easily add fields, share with others, but then also have gantt chart and dependencies between tasks. Project for the web might be a solution, but that too is still pretty feature limited... Sharepoint Lists seems to come the closest, but only available in the non-modern version, so may end up having to go with that.

thanks again- Clayce

[#4]

@crodamer did you have any luck finding something or someone that was able to migrate your sheets/templates over?  We are in a similar situation and knowing that lists/planner can do most of what SS does seems like we are wasting money.

Thanks for any info.

[#5]

@crodamer, were you able to find any solution? I am on same boat and looking for recommendations.

[#6]

I'm in the same situation. We have Sharepoint and I'd like to use it, if possible.

[#7]

Looking for a similar solution. Have you found anything yet? @crodamer 

[#8]

@skhenderson - I have not.

[#9]

Monday.com is Smartsheet competitor.

[#10]

We're also looking at giving up our Smartsheet license and switching over to Lists or Excel. Do you have any updates on what direction you went in with this?

[#11]

How does Monday.com compare to Smartsheet? Does it allow you to create anything similar to a spreadsheet format (such as Smartsheet, Lists, Excel)?

[#12]

we negotiated hard and have now reached a deal with SS. We have managed to retain on the legacy pricing model so no rising costs!

[#13]

it was way more expensive so this was ruled out. Its basically exactly like SS but with a fancier UI however it does not have a calendar app function like the premium add on SS offers.

[#14]

we use MS Forms and Sharepoint lists for stand alone user requirements and its great just takes a lot longer to configure. We use a mix of technology now.

[#15]

Thanks for the update! SS recently changed their licensing platform and for that reason it really isn't a fit for us anymore.

[#16]

yes they tried to do the same for us and we refused and they have since accomodated by allowing us to remain on the legacy platform. Worth a shot!

[#17]

@CKWGA We ended up staying with SS... for now.... users are too wed to the worksheet like functionality + Gantt charts... would have loved to use MS product, but unfortunately these don't really have anything that is similar... we did significantly reduce the number of paid licenses. We took an approach that only a couple people in each dept. can author pages, then everyone else uses free licenses. So we basically stayed at the say annual cost but cutting licensed users. Can't believe this as been a good move for SS as far as paid user license counts. 

[#18]

We recently learned that the type of SS license we have is no longer available. Two SS employees told us that we would not lose any functionality if we switched to a different SS license; unfortunately, that did not turn out to be the case as when we switched to a different license platform last week, we lost functionality that we needed and SS says that can't switch us back to our previous license.

[#19]

Did you ever do this move?...we are in same situation...wondering if we can leverage something users already get in 365 instead of paying for smartsheet @crodamer 

[#20]

@Mainemonty We remained with Smartsheet after some hard negotiations. We also use SP Online and lists but Smartsheet is so much easy for non technical users to pick up.