SmartSuite Review

Best Features, Pricing, Alternatives & Verdict

SmartSuite is like if Airtable and monday.com had a baby. But does it work well for your team and a place for your to bring them all in one?

What is SmartSuite?

SmartSuite is an all-in-one solution for managing projects and building workspaces.

What does SmartSuite do?

SmartSuite is a project management software that wants to be the homepage for you and your team. It offers a range of templates and setups for your team to jump in and start building their own workspaces for project management.

A lot of people say that SmartSuite is a combination of the flexible nature of Airtable but with the power of monday.com and wants to be your "all-in-one" hub for managing everything project management.

Inside of SmartSuite, teams tend to like the way it handle expressing information - like projects, tasks, and data in a wide variety of views that allow teams to better make decisions and actions on what matters.

SmartSuite Best Features

The best bits to note when exploring SmartSuite:

1. Range of Views

SmartSuite brings a range of great views for everyone.

Choose between grid, card, kanban, calendar, timeline, gantt, map and chart - which is a decent amount of view options for each and every database you make. You create databases and have a way to sort, filter, group and a whole bunch of customizations like row sizing, find, spotlight and breaking them into windows of views too.

The best bit about this is the views can be accessed on any plan, but note you have more limitations when it comes to record management, something next up in this review.

2. Record Management

The way that SmartSuite offer their plans isn't by feature which many other project management software options choose to go by.

For those who love features and hate being capped by the access to them per team account, or higher tier pricing, this is a nice option, as long as you're open to the record management approach which allows users in SmartSuite to essentially think of everything they add to a "solution" as a record.

Free caps you at 5 solutions and 1,000 records which for getting started isn't too bad, whilst the team plan limits you to 5,000 records and unlimited solutions. For many people this is a pro over the focused pricing for feature specifics.

3. Solution Guide

The final element we loved about the SmartSuite experience is attention to detail.

Customizing the solutions you make is all possible, from the color of the background, icon, permissions and what automations it has, including the solution API access too. One of the best things we loved was the "solution guide" which allowed new or existing team members to view what the solution is about how and how to correctly use it.

This will help to reduce clashes within the team of knowledge and use of areas.

SmartSuite Cons

Things we didn't like when reviewing SmartSuite:

1. Limiting Pricing

Pricing is like Marmite for many.

People will love that all features are accessible, but the limitations on records does put a mindful awareness of whether you're adding enough data and information to the account. For some that constant worry about the limitation is like using broadband with caps, you always check the limits and concern that you'll surpass them.

For those who love getting the best features like Gantt, Timeline, Chart views - they'll like the pricing as there's no barrier to entry.

2. Solutions vs Workspaces

Solutions are separate meaning, you can create using templates new areas that are separated from each other. Workspaces keep everything accessible, whereas in SmartSuite, you have to go back to the main area to find new solutions to manage.

This is just a quality of life thing, but some people might not like that.

How much does SmartSuite cost?

Updated January 2024.

SmartSuite is free with $10 per month Team pricing for unlimited users and 5,000 records.

Verdict: Is SmartSuite good for our team?

We'd recommend SmartSuite for those who want to build their workspaces.

Probably best suited to small to medium sized teams that want to build their layout, open the concept of limiting your use to records, looking for a wide range of views. SmartSuite is really open plan meaning it could be used by a sales team to manage their relationships as a Sales CRM (heavy on records) or those want to plan projects as a team (light use).

The most important thing to note is that SmartSuite will take time to learn and build the layouts you will need to manage a team.

Best SmartSuite Alternatives

Airtable and monday.com are the best alternatives to SmartSuite to consider.