Smartsheet started as a spreadsheet and grew into work management, which is why it is unbeatable at the kind of work that really is a grid. This page is about everything that is not a grid: the conversation, the people who never open the sheet, and what a company pays to put its data in Europe.
Capability by capability
Every line about Smartsheet was read on its own pages on 24 September 2026. Where we are still building something, the table says so.
| Smartsheet |  |
|
|---|---|---|
| Conversation | ||
| Team chat | None. Smartsheet describes its own collaboration as asynchronous; there are no channels and no direct messages on its platform page. | Channels, threads, voice notes with transcription, GIFs and meetings — on every plan. |
| From talk to work | ||
| A free plan | There is no free plan for new customers: it stopped being available to new signups on 28 August 2024. The lowest plan sold is Pro. | Free is a real plan and stays free: eight people, chat, two Boards projects, surveys and kudos. |
| Timeline view | Gantt, table, board and calendar views are on Pro; Timeline view starts at Business. | Kanban, list, table and Gantt on every plan that has Boards. |
| Automation | 250 automations per month on Pro; unlimited from Business. | Workflow templates with steps, relative deadlines, an owner per stage and branching conditions. |
| People and focus | ||
| Guests | Pro includes unlimited free Contributors but no Guests; unlimited free Guests start at Business. A Guest is an external user whose email domain does not match your organisation’s. | Guests from the free plan up, each with one named channel and one project on Boards. |
| Admin capabilities | Managing users and groups starts at Business. | Roles on every plan. |
| Single sign-on | SAML-based SSO is Enterprise only. | In development. |
| Culture, clients, tickets | ||
| Culture: kudos, surveys, eNPS | Not part of the product. | Feedback Friday, kudos and surveys from Free; pulse surveys and eNPS from Workspace. |
| Where it runs | ||
| Data in Europe | Smartsheet Regions puts data in Germany with backup in Ireland, on Pro, Business and Enterprise. You must contact sales to buy it, you choose the region when the account is created and cannot change it later, and you cannot share an item between regional instances. | European infrastructure at OVHcloud, with no region to choose and nothing to buy. |
| Who you sign with | Smartsheet Inc., Bellevue, Washington. The agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Washington, with exclusive jurisdiction in the courts of Seattle. | HOMtu® sp. z o.o., a Polish company, under Polish jurisdiction. |
Sources: Smartsheet pricing and plan limits · Smartsheet platform · Smartsheet user types · Smartsheet free plan (withdrawn) · Introducing Smartsheet Regions · Smartsheet User Agreement. Checked against Smartsheet’s own pages on 24 September 2026.
Giving the point away
Three of them, and none is a throwaway. If these are what your team runs on, Smartsheet is the right answer and we would rather you knew now.
Formulas, cross-sheet references, rollups, pivots. If your work is genuinely tabular — budgets, inventories, rosters, programme plans — Smartsheet handles it with a precision our Boards do not attempt.
Control Center, Dynamic View, DataMesh, Data Shuttle and portfolio reporting. For an organisation running hundreds of similar projects from a template, this machinery exists and ours does not.
Anyone shared into a sheet can view and, with the right permission, comment and attach — without a licence, from Pro up. For a company that needs many read-mostly participants, that is more generous than our guest allowance.
Where the difference shows
Smartsheet calls its own collaboration asynchronous, and it is: comments on rows, updates, requests. The talking happens in Slack or Teams, and the sheet receives a decision without the argument behind it. In taos the message and the work are the same system.
Smartsheet withdrew its free plan from new customers in August 2024. Ours is not a trial: eight people, chat, boards, surveys, kudos and the dashboard, with no card and no expiry.
Smartsheet Regions is real and it puts data in Germany — but you contact sales to buy it, you pick the region at signup and can never change it, and instances in different regions cannot share an item. Ours is European by default, on every plan, with nothing to configure.
Kudos, Feedback Friday, leaderboards, anniversaries and surveys from the free plan; pulse surveys and eNPS from Workspace. Smartsheet has no layer for any of it.
Managing users and groups begins at Smartsheet’s Business plan. In taos, who can see and change what is part of the product from the first plan, because a small team has that question immediately.
The agreement is with Smartsheet Inc. under the laws of Washington State, with the courts of Seattle, and there is no European contracting entity in their legal index. Ours is a Polish company under Polish jurisdiction.