| Functionality | 9 <p>Jira delivers nearly all the functionality that SMBs—and even enterprises—will need.</p><p>Its task and project management capabilities are incredibly powerful and flexible. You can customize Jira to fit virtually any project, even those with complex structures like five layers of sub-tasks, each with their own custom fields.</p><p>That said, Jira does have some gaps. It doesn’t natively offer features like invoicing, billing, or expense tracking, which other tools sometimes include. Plus, for built-in docs or wikis, you’ll need to use its sister product, Confluence.</p> | 8 <p>Smartsheet has all the functionality that companies will need - including some more sophisticated functions required only my large companies. Smartsheet offers: excellent portfolio management features, cell history, strong automation and some nifty team capacity reporting features.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 4 <p>Compared to other project management tools, we find Jira complex to navigate. The interface is packed with features and options, which can make it overwhelming and unintuitive—especially for new users. The learning curve is steep, and it can take weeks for team members to get fully comfortable.</p><p>For example, even for simple projects, there are multiple configuration pages to manage: settings for the entire project, specific project views, built-in fields, custom fields—you name it. It’s powerful, but all these layers can quickly become confusing.</p> | 5 <p>Smartsheet is designed to function in a similar way to a spreadsheet. If you are comfortable using these or have used them before, learning your way around Smartsheet will be easier. However, even if this is the case, processes can be a bit fiddley compared to other project management tools. We estimate that average start-up employee and would require a few days and some guidance before being able to use the product fluently.</p><p><br></p><p>Key information and processes are generally easy to find but not always easy to perform.</p> |
| Look and feel | 5 <p>While Jira has made strides in design and usability with recent updates, it still feels a bit dated compared to more modern Project Management tools like Linear. Customizing the UI is pretty limited, so you’re mostly stuck with the default look and feel.</p><p>Our main gripe, though, is page load times. At 2–3+ seconds per page, things can feel sluggish—and this gets gets compounded as your projects and teams grow. It's a frustration that can niggle you every day.</p> | 6 <p>Smartsheet lacks colour and is generally a bit plain to look at. That being said, the software is visually acceptable and for the most part has fast loading times (~1 second). When first creating a new project or workspace, loading times can be slower (upwards of 6 seconds) - but this is a one off occurrence.</p> |
| Customisability | 10 <p>We find Jira to be impressively, and overwhelmingly, customisable.</p><p>You can customise almost anything you can think of - custom task types, workflows, specialized screens, validation rules, and more. For ultimate flexibility, there’s even Jira’s own query language (JQL), which lets you search and filter issues with incredible precision.</p> | 8 <p>Smartsheet has some very strong customisation features. The most impressive being their forms which are customisable in almost every way - from question type to, condition logic, to cosmetics etc. Automation is also nicely customisable with a vast array of action and trigger functions, as well as conditional logic available. Smartsheet could benefit from a few more task views - other similar project management tools offer far more!</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 4 <p>Jira offers a self-serve free trial and lets you purchase without dealing with sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks or subtasks takes about 30–40 minutes, which can feel a bit more confusing compared to other tools. That said, its rich library of templates helps streamline the process.</p><p>Be prepared, though—a full setup will likely take at least a few days, especially if you’re customizing it for more complex workflows.</p> | 8 <p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, because it has a very rich library of templates. Full setup should take a day or two at most.</p> |
| Customer Support | 4 <p>We find that Jira's support leaves a lot to be desired. Atlassian (the maker of Jira) nudge users toward self-service options like documentation and community forums, which can be frustrating when you need quick, direct help. Even when you reach out for support, the experience can be hit-or-miss—especially if you’re a smaller customer without a premium support plan.</p> | 6 <p>Personalised support is available via email and and in-app chat. The in-app chat feature is not something to rely on too much as responses are not always fast. Email agents are very accommodating, useful and fast (relies in less than 6 hours). </p><p><br></p><p>Self-serve materials are strong but not exceptional. They do not have 'how to's' for every feature. This is likely to drive traffic to their paid 'Smartsheet University' where they charge to teach you basic, intermediate and advanced functions in Smartsheet. </p> |
| Integratability | 9 <p>Jira, powered by Atlassian, has a thriving app marketplace with thousands of plugins. If there’s a feature you need that Jira doesn’t offer natively, chances are there’s a third-party app for it. Plus, Jira provides an API, giving you the flexibility to build custom integrations when needed.</p> | 7 <p>Smartsheet offers integrations with most third-parties that companies will need. However, some notable exceptions are Notion, Github and Zendesk.</p><p><br></p><p>Smartsheet also offers can API that allows teams to build custom integrations where necessary.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 5 <p>Migrating away from Jira can be a bit of a headache. Exporting data isn’t exactly seamless, and you’ll likely need to spend time cleaning and reformatting it before it’s usable in another tool. Custom fields, workflows, and issue types often don’t have direct equivalents elsewhere, which can lead to data loss or tricky mapping processes. It’s definitely something to plan for if you’re considering switching.</p> | 8 <p>Key data and custom reports are available self-serve to export to a CSV file.</p> |
