Smartsheet vs Hive

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Our analysts compared Smartsheet vs Hive 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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Hive is a cloud-based service that allows teams to schedule, execute, communicate, and track projects while predicting activities that may affect work. Access files, share and collaborate with team members with its thousands of external integrations. It sends out notifications in real time that alert users to team productivity. All project views reflect updates to ensure that all team members are always on the same page.

It caters to teams of all sizes in industries like marketing, operations, education and more. It is available for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. It also provides a 14-day free trial without collecting credit card information, and pricing plans are measured per user, per month.
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$9/User, Monthly
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$5/User, Monthly
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Product Assistance

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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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  • Communication & Collaboration: A built-in messaging tool allows individuals to converse with the team and facilitates file sharing by connecting with Google Drive, Dropbox and Box. External partners, such as customers and stakeholders, can also be invited for project collaboration. 
  • Gain Project Insight: Offers analytics that summarizes personal and workspace productivity, identify inefficient areas and enable managers to find ways to correct them. 
  • Employee Management: Ensures that employees have total visibility for assigned tasks using team-specific views. Under or over-use of employee time is also identified as the system sends automatic alerts to the relevant users. 
  • Organize Projects: Hive forms can be used to collect data to work on a project and send it to clients or customers. Compile a personal to-do list based on assigned projects and view their due dates for better decision making and productivity. 
  • Portfolio View: View progress across all projects to see which tasks within certain projects have been performed, which tasks are consistent across projects and which tasks are overdue. 
  • Resource Management: Provides information on resource utilization in real time in a single pool of available resources. Managers can use the resource dashboard to see if a resource is booked or needs to be booked and also view if an employee is assigned a role. 
  • External Application: It integrates with external applications into the dashboard, allowing users to focus more on core tasks and less on providing access as it remembers passwords and sending invitations. 
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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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  • Personal Dashboard: View all assigned tasks in My Action cards. All actions are broken down by current, future, completed and assigned tasks for easy access. 
  • Analytics: Monitor project progress and potential risk with Hive Analytics. It provides an interactive and customizable dashboard to gain insights on individual or team progress. 
  • Visualization: Provides flexible Gantt, kanban, portfolio calendar and table views for projects. Users can switch between layouts, and updates are reflected across all project views, so everyone knows when changes are made. 
  • Summary View:  Lets managers combine several projects to look at progress across teams and departments from a macro view. 
  • Templates: Plan and repeat tasks with ease using action templates. Layout all required steps in a reusable action template for assigning tasks. Brings in sets of actions with pre-specified assignees, due dates and information. 
  • Proofing and Approval: Streamline approval cycles by sharing proofs and assigning approvals for tasks or projects. Users can also add feedback to simplify feedback loops 
  • Card Comments: Utilize comments on the card to attach files and communicate about issues, transfers or processes. 
  • Hive Mail: Integrate directly with Gmail and Outlook through its native mail system and directly attach an email to a new or existing task. Users can send and receive emails via a fully integrated email inbox. 
  • Hive Chat: Use the native chat or integrate with external software to simplify communication within the team. It can also alert individuals by dragging and dropping them into the chat window. 
  • Resourcing: Manage the use of teams across specific projects or customers by assigning current and future resources. 
  • Leverage Utilization: Its partnership with Zapier, a web app automation tool, connects Hive data to over 1,000 other apps to streamline workflow. 
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Product Ranking

#5

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Project Management Software

#19

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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

Smartsheet
Hive
+ 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 800 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

Hive has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 91% when considering 800 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (20)
n/a
4.4 (17366)
4.6 (463)
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4.5 (182)
4.5 (3333)
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4.7 (728)
5.0 (57)
4.3 (854)
4.2 (98)

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

Hive 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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Ease of Use: It is intuitive and user-friendly, as observed by 95% of users who refer to ease of use.
Functionality: It has a robust suite of features that helps boost efficiency, improve effectiveness and save time, as noted by nearly 100% of users who mention functionality.
Communication: Its inbuilt chat features for messaging members while sharing data and updates eases communication across departments and teams, as stated by nearly 98% of users who refer to communication.
Tracking: Nearly 100% of users who specify tracking said that its project view and analytics help track employees, project completion, overdue deadlines, and spot any risk to meet project allocation goals.
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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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Mobile Application: Approximately 92% of users who mentioned mobile applications reported that it is not as responsive as the desktop app and has many downsides.
Notification: Once read, notifications or follow-up requests can get lost and difficult to find, and some notifications are delayed or not notified at all, as noted by 83% of reviewers who specify notification.
Training: Finding tutorial videos or training during the initial set-up has been difficult, as noted by 78% of reviewers who refer to training.
Integration: Around 82% of the reviewers who specified integration said that they wished for more options for software integration such as Jabber, Teams and more.
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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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Hive is a user-friendly solution that offers a multitude of features like project planning, file sharing, task management automation, project views, reporting, scheduling and more. Time and project tracking help manage team utilization and resource allocation. Users can converse with individuals or groups and collaborate with clients using integrated tools. Users can organize and prioritize tasks based on color, tags, projects and schedules. Many reviewers noted that its mobile application is a downside and could benefit from an upgrade to its functions. Finding training is difficult; however support teams are responsive with queries and help, especially during initial set-up.

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