Smartsheet vs Aha!

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Our analysts compared Smartsheet vs Aha! based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Project Management Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

Smartsheet is an enterprise-level SaaS management application that helps teams streamline processes through collaboration, project planning and task management. Users can set up tasks using a grid view, similar to a spreadsheet with automations, formulas, comments and mentions. 

It provides templates for projects and automations that can be modified and saved as a template to save time. Project views include a Kanban board, Gantt chart, timeline, calendar view, card view and a custom dashboard.

Its file and sheet sharing capabilities, comment feature and conversations remove team and data silos and give stakeholders insight into project details. A user-friendly interface helps managers and team members boost adoption rates, maintain consistency and increase efficiency. 

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Aha! is a roadmapping tool that helps users organize documents and spreadsheets while boosting team collaboration. It helps share and create visual roadmaps, drive strategy and prioritize projects. Users can showcase their vision and track dependencies. Any number of teams can leverage workspaces that include services, business, product, project, IT and marketing.

It offers 30 integrations and a robust API with tools in development, communication applications and file storage. Users can customize views, terminology and workflow to synchronize with the way users’ team works.
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$9/User, Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
$59/User, Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • Use Familiar Spreadsheet Formatting: Move from regular spreadsheets to spreadsheets with versatile views and much less formula knowledge required for formatting. Make adoption and training smoother because you’re not starting from scratch with processes. We especially liked the ability to enter data using a familiar cell view and then convert it to, say, a Kanban board.
  • Create No-Code Automations: Use templates or build from scratch with a trigger, condition and action automation format. Save time on admin tasks with automations for alerts, approvals, document creation and sheet changes. Choose from four starting cell-related triggers and build from there. We thought the automation building was intuitive and straightforward. Check out our test in the “See It In Action” section below.
  • Access Multiple Views: Add dynamic views to your projects and filter and customize views to meet task requirements. For example, we added a card view organized by status and a Kanban Board sorted by task assignee. Create a customizable dashboard to pull data like task progress, workload and duration using widgets.
  • Share Proofs and Additional Information: Collaborate on team documents, provide context and add proofs and files to individual tasks or the entire sheet. We set a piece of content as a task and added extra files like logos and docs along with comments for specific client requests.
  • Train As You Go: Kick your project off with a checklist outlining best practices and research material. Use pop-ups and explainer icons with video links as you work to get a better understanding of features and capabilities. We popped over to the help center to learn how to set up baselines for our Gantt chart (you need to edit the start date and end date columns).
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  • Identify Customer Needs: Identify what customers want by creating a custom ideas portal that records product ideas and tracks the best ideas to users’ roadmaps.  
  • Set Prioritization Metrics: Rank features and fix prioritization metrics on important features to objectively determine the most valuable features based on business goals.  
  • Create Visual Roadmaps: Enter data in Aha! and use one of the many templates to build roadmaps suitable for different audiences. Also, avoid creating multiple roadmaps.  
  • Analyze Product Data: Create pivot tables, reports and charts to track progress compared with users’ roadmaps to view team progress.  
  • Customized Workflows: Customize workflows to match a team’s methodology with Aha!’s integrations with popular tools to encourage information exchange between teams.  
  • Track Dependencies: Create detailed Gantt charts, set milestones, phases and dates to keep the team on track and call attention to dependencies between activities and teams to manage risk and on-time delivery.  
  • Define Best Practices: Supports project templates, creates custom fields and workflows and systemizes project management, ensuring standardization of processes across the organization.  
  • Allocate Resources: Create budget and effort estimates required for project delivery and measure available resources and timelines to help set completion dates.  
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  • Dashboards and Reports: Customize your dashboard by adding widgets like reports, project-specific charts, shortcuts, images and text. Consolidate data from multiple sheets into a summary view using system reports. Track sheet changes using bi-directional functionality. Send reports via collaborative tools and change statuses to recur.
  • Multiple Views: View your tasks using the grid view, akin to a spreadsheet, a Gantt view as an add-on to your grid view, a Kanban board where you can drag and drop tasks and group them by assignee or status, a timeline view, a card view with customizable lanes and a calendar view that displays your tasks across its duration or by start dates only.
  • Task Management: Add your tasks and subtasks into each cell and use the indent and outdent buttons to divide tasks into groups that can be minimized to provide a project overview. Create or modify custom fields with your own text, dropdown lists and symbols to show status, assignees, priority, dates and latest comment. Attach files and proofs, write comments and mention users and set reminders for tasks.
  • Automations and Workflows: Save time with custom processes and workflows you can build by modifying templates for reminders and alerts, document generation, row changes, sheet changes and updates, and approval requests. Build your own workflow automations from scratch by choosing your trigger, setting conditions and adding actions. Manage automations by deactivating, deleting, duplicating or unsubscribing.
  • Templates: Use pre-built templates ranging from event management to HR workflows and marketing to streamline project creation. View complexity, task management and process before you apply a template. Build and save your own templates by customizing pre-built templates or creating them from scratch.
  • Integrations: Drive productivity with integrations like Office 365, Dropbox, DocuSign and Google Workspace and use iCal or Google Calendar to track project statuses.
  • Team Collaboration: Communicate with team members by commenting and mentioning users in individual tasks, adding files for additional information and chatting via the conversations tool where everyone with access to the sheet can see your comments. Integrate with Slack or Microsoft Teams to receive updates about your sheet and send messages to channels.
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  • Strategy: Define value proposition and target user groups to create plans, design go-to-market plans and highlight areas of improvement and where the team is doing well. Describe services, market fit and unique characteristics of each product. Helps identify customer characteristics, track competition, set goals, track budget and identify initiatives.  
  • Plans: Build cross-functional proposals, standardize delivery, plan ahead, estimate work, manage capacity, monitor progress in real time and launch completed work.  
  • Ideas: Capture ideas, manage submitted ideas and notify submitters about the status of their ideas. View key suggestion data and enhance it using attachments, comments, tags and custom fields. Analyze idea value, promote best ideas and customize portals.  
  • Requirements: Define work centrally, organize backlogs, prioritize features and use scorecards to create maximum value. Streamline review cycles, create custom statuses, workflows and layouts. Use kanban layouts, build user maps, work with epics, create mockups and visualize dependencies.  
  • Roadmaps: Use pre-built templates for starter roadmaps, enter details and customize roadmaps. Create portfolios, strategies and custom roadmaps. 
  • Reports: Build initiative charts and visualize by revenue impact, status and volume of ideas while analyzing delivery metrics. View and create reports in lists, pivots, charts, capacities, diagrams, hierarchies and custom reports.  
  • Presentations: Create custom branded presentations in story format using any view strategy, roadmaps, reports and more. Share presentations via PDF and secure webpage. Add custom themes, font, header and footer content to match branding.  
  • Notes: Capture and store information in a centralized location. Record meeting notes, action items, to-dos lists and follow-ups. Capture background information, organize, add structure and nest related notes. Use note templates, add tables and embed images while consolidating feedback and audit changes.  
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Product Ranking

#5

among all
Project Management Software

#34

among all
Project Management Software

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

81
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88
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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Smartsheet
Aha!
+ Add Product + Add Product
Customizations Dashboards And Reporting Mobile Capabilities Platform Features Project Planning And Scheduling Project Tracking Task Management Team Collaboration Time Tracking And Management 83 80 88 92 78 96 85 77 56 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 22301 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 1001 reviews
88%
of users recommend this product

Smartsheet has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 88% when considering 22301 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

91%
of users recommend this product

Aha! has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 91% when considering 1001 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (20)
5.0 (7)
4.4 (17366)
4.3 (242)
n/a
4.7 (514)
4.5 (3333)
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4.7 (728)
4.5 (137)
4.3 (854)
4.5 (101)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Smartsheet and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Mobile Capabilities and Project Tracking.

Mobile Capabilities Award
Project Tracking Award

Aha! stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Automation: Reviewers appreciated the no-code automation and said that it helps to eliminate productivity killers and saves time.
Collaboration: Users liked the sharing option with level-based permissions that allow collaboration with non-users and help coworkers and external stakeholders stay up-to-date on projects and processes.
Ease of Use: A user-friendly interface and templates make it easy to set up, customize and access multiple views, according to reviewers.
What Users Like
Customization: “We can customize it to fit various projects, whether we’re tracking client cases, managing document revisions, or planning team tasks. For instance, I created a project tracker for a major client contract negotiation. The ability to set deadlines, assign tasks, and update statuses in real time has streamlined our communication and kept everyone on the same page.” - Russ Johnson, Founder of Linx Legal
Collaboration: “We had this one job in a high-rise condo that put Smartsheet to the test. The sliding door system was an older model with custom-sized panels that aren’t easy to source, and it needed specific adjustments due to the unique structure of the frame. Typically, coordinating the right parts, tools, and technician experience for something like this would require several phone calls and a lot of back-and-forth. With Smartsheet, we were able to set up the job details to track not only the special parts needed but also assign a technician who was experienced with that model. When the parts came in, the technician was notified directly through Smartsheet, so he knew the moment everything was ready. It saved us from potential delays and kept the customer fully updated on when the work could be done.” - Gal Cohen, Business Development Leader and Field Area Manager JDM Sliding Doors
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User Friendly: Aha! is easy to use, as noted by approximately 97% of users who mention the system’s user-friendliness.
Feature Rich: Aha! offers a robust suite of successful roadmapping tools, as reported by 94% of the users who mention the product’s functionality.
Support: Support for the system is robust, with 83% of the users who mention support endorsing it.
Integrations: The system’s integration options help add value to the base product, as reported by 71% of reviewers who mention integrations.
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System Integration: Limited integrations and complex configurations were an issue for reviewers.
Premium Add-Ons: Reviewers noted that advanced features come with a price tag that can be prohibitive for some businesses.
Slow Loading Time: Users reported it takes time to display screens export formats occasionally.
What Users Dislike
Integration: “Despite its many benefits, integrating Smartsheet with other systems posed some challenges. Initially, we experienced issues with data syncing between Smartsheet and our CRM software, leading to discrepancies in our financial reporting. Recognizing this, I allocated specific time for thorough testing before our full implementation, allowing us to identify and resolve any integration issues early on.” - Austin Rulfs, Founder of Zanda Wealth Mortgage Brokers
Learning Curve: “While Smartsheet is powerful, it can feel a bit overwhelming at first. I found that investing time in training sessions helped bridge that gap, making it easier for everyone to adapt and use the tool effectively.” - Russ Johnson, Founder of Linx Legal
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Cost: Nearly 100% of users who mentioned cost reported that Aha!’s offerings were too expensive for smaller businesses.
Learning Curve: About 100% of users who mentioned the tool’s learning curve noted that it was difficult to learn and configure in the beginning.
Interface: The user interface is confusing for 80% of the users who mention Aha!’s interface and navigation.
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Smartsheet is a cloud-based work management platform that helps users streamline and organize processes with a spreadsheet-esque interface, flexible templates, multiple views and team collaboration. Apart from the grid view, you can visualize projects using a Gantt chart, Kanban board, calendar view, card view or timeline view. No-code automations are another note-worthy feature, where you can build from templates or scratch.It streamlines project creation with templates suited to different industries and end goals, so you have a jumping-off point instead of going in blind. Team collaboration is another area where Smartsheet shines, with comments, conversations and file and sheet sharing (even with people outside your organization). It also offers a customizable dashboard view, although I did find some of the chart widgets a little tricky to work, without training.Highlights for me were definitely the familiarity of spreadsheet formatting (but with more views and automations), robust collaboration capabilities and guided explainers throughout the setup. However, user reviews noted limited filters and integrations, lags and expensive add-ons as downsides.Overall, Smartsheet is a great option for teams familiar with spreadsheets but are on the lookout for more visualization and collaboration, along with the budget to spend on advanced features.

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Aha! provides a robust suite of roadmapping tools that most users find accessible and intuitive. It is flexible and can be configured to suit users’ needs. Collaborative features help boost teamwork and streamline task assignments. Users appreciate Aha! for its ability to structure data and access everything from one location. Users find it to be comprehensive, but they don’t have OKR support. It supports teams of all sizes and users like the pre-built templates. The tool has a learning curve, and some users suggest adopting the tool if there is an internal champion who can help train the team and standardize its usage.

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