Smartsheet vs Assembla

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Our analysts compared Smartsheet vs Assembla 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.

Assembla Software Tool

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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Assembla is an extensive suite of applications for software development, enabling distributed agile teams. It allows development teams to manage, initiate and maintain agile projects, applications and websites. It offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card needed. The suite offers Assembla Workspaces and Assembla Portfolios.

Assembla Workplaces is designed to provide a range of modules, including problem management and ticketing, code repository administration and collaborations. Assembla Portfolio, on the other hand, includes support for managing team jobs and multiple projects. The console also provides a unified user management console, a branded portal and multiple reporting modules.
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$9/User, Monthly
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$10 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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Knowledge Base
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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  • Robust and Versatile Platform: Provides its users with an efficient yet versatile platform that incorporates several tools and services to facilitate collaborative processes and project management, providing mobile and widely distributed teams with a cohesive digital workplace. 
  • Responsive and Flexible Functions: This solution is designed to keep up with changes in priority and needs that companies face when dealing with projects. 
  • Tracking and Management Capabilities: Users can use problem tracking and management capabilities during product development or ongoing projects to quickly and efficiently monitor and tackle potential problems. 
  • User-Defined Reporting: Offers practical user-defined reporting that allows users to make custom reports based on the organization's need. 
  • Accelerate Teams: Provides time-saving tools to accelerate teams. These tools include a wiki, message board, tools for collaboration and file sharing. The tools are integrated into a comprehensive activity stream, reinforced with other specialized tools to simplify team activities. 
  • Innovative Version Control: The platform provides an innovative multifunctional system, which allows users to manage their code securely in the cloud. Provides multiple infrastructure design options, including private cloud management, global deployment options in North America, EMEA and APAC with multi-node infrastructure and personalization options to meet the unique requirements of compliance safety and SLA. 
  • Streamline Issue and Ticketing Management: Allows users to view tickets in a cardwall view or simple list. Users can use the milestone feature to set critical dates for key tasks irrespective of their implementation phase. It makes code management easier and integrates with GitHub, Gmail, Facebook and Amazon Web Services. 
  • Enterprise-Grade Cloud Platform: Partnered with Hansoft, it offers large scale backlog management, Gantt chart planning and portfolio management. Use a combination of methodologies for planning to meet the needs of each project in a single tool. It supports Gantt, Kanban, Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall and SAFe tools. 
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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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  • Project Management: Use cardwalls and task boards to visually manage projects that update automatically, in real time. Create tickets quickly and easily and add as many details as the project requires. Assign owners, due dates, add large files, create sub-tasks, co-workers, @mention teams and more. Set important dates in various phases of execution for a group of important tasks. 
  • Client Management: The Support tool enables customer project management through a simple mechanism for customers to collaborate. It integrates the tickets tool to provide customers with a supporting ticketing system to submit problems, bugs and requests for information. 
  • Time Tracking: Users can add working hours straight from a ticket or task they are working on or through the time tool. The time tool allows for time tracking, reporting and analyzing, while the track time page allows users to view all tickets/tasks assigned and export work hours from all spaces. 
  • Built-In Collaboration: Provides a variety of collaborative features and capabilities designed to maintain consistent information flows between teams and their respective members. It works like most social media platforms, so everyone is kept informed and up to date. 
  • Security: It exceeds compliance, controls and security norms, ensuring that the software development process is locked down from end to end. It protects, audits and monitors the company's most valuable assets to guarantee a safe DevOps life cycle. 
  • Code Analysis: AlphaScan finds access keys and hard-coded passwords in the source code and notifies teams before they’re deployed. It supports most desktop, web and mobile languages like Java, NET, PhoneGap, Cordova, Python and more. 
  • Assembla MyGet: It integrates existing source code ecosystems with a universal package manager and allows users to manage end-to-end packages. Centralized package management provides DevOps workflows with security, consistency and management. MyGet automates building and packaging processes from a central cloud platform. 
  • Wiki Tool: Embed and upload files or videos directly to the wiki to create content libraries or knowledge bases. It helps store and share team knowledge that can be lost in email inboxes and network drives. Users can create meeting notes, project plans, product specifications and look at the history of page changes to learn how they developed. 
  • Assembla NextGen SVN: It offers SVN applications for desktop, WebApp and mobile applications. It supports modern workflows that use merge/pull requests and also supports code searches in real time. Users can review code, lock files, identify defect roots, search repos and version files, create and edit code, check activity audits and more. 
  • Integration: Offers out-of-the-box integrations and APIs to enhance the user experience and boost productivity. It allows integration with various platforms like Slack, GitHub, Trialtext, Jenkins CI, Zapier, Trello and Jira. 
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Product Ranking

#5

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Project Management Software

#89

among all
Project Management Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

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

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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
Great User Sentiment 312 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.

85%
of users recommend this product

Assembla has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 312 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (20)
4.9 (10)
4.4 (17366)
4.2 (126)
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4.22 (84)
4.5 (3333)
4.2 (86)
4.7 (728)
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4.3 (854)
4.7 (6)

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

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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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Intuitive Interface: Users praise Assembla for its user-friendly design, making it easy to navigate and manage projects without a steep learning curve.
Robust Feature Set: Assembla offers a comprehensive suite of tools, including task management, issue tracking, and code repositories, catering to diverse project management needs.
Effective Collaboration: Assembla facilitates seamless team collaboration through features like shared workspaces, threaded discussions, and real-time notifications, fostering efficient communication and progress tracking.
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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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Limited Project Management Features: Assembla's strength lies in version control and code management, making it less suitable for comprehensive project management. Users seeking robust features like Gantt charts, resource management, and budgeting tools may find Assembla lacking.
Clunky User Interface: Some users find Assembla's interface outdated and cumbersome, leading to a steeper learning curve and potential frustration during navigation.
Cost: Assembla's pricing structure can be a deterrent for smaller teams or projects with budget constraints, especially when compared to more affordable alternatives in the market.
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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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Is Assembla truly assembling all the best features of project management software? Assembla is a project management software that has been around for a while, and users have mixed feelings about it. While some appreciate its ease of use and ability to help manage projects effectively, others have expressed concerns about its high price point and lackluster customer support. One of the standout features of Assembla is its Kanban board, which allows users to visually track the progress of their projects. This is particularly useful for teams that are using agile methodologies. However, some users have found that the software's interface can be clunky and outdated compared to newer alternatives like ClickUp or Monday.com. Ultimately, Assembla might be best suited for smaller teams who are already familiar with the software and are not overly concerned about its price. Larger teams or those looking for a more modern and feature-rich project management solution might want to explore other options.

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