ActiveCollab vs Smartsheet: What's the best pick for digital service businesses?

You're here because you need an honest, hand-on-heart comparison of ActiveCollab and Smartsheet, and that's exactly what you'll get.

 Now we totally get that there might be a speck of scepticism brewing in the back of your mind (after all, this comparison post is on ActiveCollab's website), but feel free to shut it down, right about now.

Why? 

Because when it comes to finding the best project and work management tool for agencies and service businesses, few can compare to ActiveCollab, and in the list of our direct competitors, Smartsheet is nowhere to be found.

Not because Smartsheet isn't a winning tool, but because it's not a tool made for agency operations.

It's super awesome for enterprises and complex ops projects, but when you compare the feature sets and capabilities each tool brings to the table, ActiveCollab easily wins out for businesses that deal with client projects, tight deadlines, collaboration, and deliverables. Keep reading to get the full download of why ActiveCollab is better, and if you don't believe us, you can always put us to the test by signing up for our 14-day free trial.

What makes ActiveCollab better pick than Smartsheet in 2026

We already talked about Smartsheet alternatives but in a nutsheel: if you're a digital service business, like a creative or marketing agency, a business consultancy, or a startup, ActiveCollab is a much better pick than Smartsheet because ActiveCollab is intentially made to serve it's customers which are agencies, consultancies and similar digital service businesses. But there's more to it.

Before we take you through each of the tool's strongest features and capabilities, here are 10 reasons why ActiveCollab is the smarter choice for agencies and client-facing teams:

1. Seamless end-to-end client project workflow
2. Native invoicing and payments via PayPal and Stripe
3. Real-time project profitability and budget tracking overviews
4. Dedicated client access for next-level project collaboration
5. Uncomplicated design and intuitive interface that's easy to use
6. Almost non-existent setup time
7. Agency-tailored design
8. Integrated money, time, and project features where data flows and connects instantly
9. Replaces communication tools like Slack thanks to its in-app chat feature
10. Consolidates multiple agency management tools into one centralized hub for your entire business.

To present it simply:

ActiveCollab is a ready-made agency tool, Smartsheet is made to be customized

This is one of the core differences between ActiveCollab and Smartsheet. While the first is an all-in-one, ready-made agency ops tool, the latter is a highly versatile, spreadsheet-like platform, made to be customized any way you like.

So ActiveCollab is purpose-built for any type of service business where you have clients and internal teams working to deliver projects and initiatives. The reason we say it's "ready-made" is that it consolidates all the core features an agency needs to connect and carry out the client workflow seamlessly without relying on add-ons or third-party integrations.

It's a complete hub that gives you:

• Client collaboration & management – You can set up clients in the system, invite them to projects, and control the level of access they have to see and communicate via different channels (comments, discussions & in-app chat).
• Workload & capacity planning – You get dedicated features for workload and capacity planning to prevent burnout and understand workforce utilization, as well as plan accurately for future projects.
• Productivity & profitability dashboards – Reports and dashboards are tailored to agency needs, where you can generate time reports, profitability by client or projec,ts and employee utilization reports so you get insights into the health of your business.
• Integrated project & financial management – It combines project management with financial tools that let you create estimates, track billable time, expenses, and budgets, and monitor project profitability.
• Invoicing & payments – You can generate invoices (and e-invoices) directly from tracked time and expenses, create your own for a one-off invoice, or set recurring invoices for retainer projects. Set up automatic overdue reminders and accept payments online via PayPal and Stripe.

On the other hand, Smartsheet gives you lots of options so you can create and structure workflows to your team's or organization's needs. It doesn't come with a predefined workflow like ActiveCollab. What you get instead is a flexible interface you can adapt and build out by adding custom columns, checkboxes, and status symbols.

Two of its strongest features are no-code automation to streamline repetitive processes and robust integrations. It offers built-in two-way data connectors with 175+ enterprise tools and native integrations with Google Workspace, Jira, Salesforce, Slack, and more.

ActiveCollab ties time to budgets and invoices, Smartsheet connects systems

Unlike Smartsheet, ActiveCollab removes one of the biggest challenges agencies face when it comes to time and money: having multiple client projects going and operating across different tools to match up billable hours and transfer them into invoices and profitability reports.

Because it comes with built-in financial management features that integrate into task workflows and time logs, it connects work, time, budgets, and invoices seamlessly.

This holistic setup means every component speaks to each other, and by keeping everything in one tool, there is real-time cohesion and zero chance for error.

Here's what this cohesion looks like in ActiveCollab:

• Time gets tracked – Team members track time against individual project tasks, both billable and unbillable (these time logs flow directly into financial management tools)
• Budget & productivity dashboards are updated – Tracked hours and logged expense update the project budget in real-time (the project overview dashboards let you monitor budget spend and estimated task time vs. logged time)
• Client hours are turned into invoices – Take client project timesheets and use them to generate invoices without doing manual calculations or taking data from other tools
• Run regular financial & productivity health checks – Because you have all your time, money, and client work data on one connected platform, you can run regular financial health checks to see if you are running a sustainable agency business that stays within set margins.

On the other hand, Smartsheet is more about having a master framework where you can set up, streamline, and centralize work execution that lets you connect to many different systems. While you can set up a similar level of connectedness between time logs and financials, it's actually going to require extensive setup and various integrations. So for everything from time tracking to invoicing and payments, you'll need to connect to other tools.

ActiveCollab does robust client collaboration, Smartsheet prioritizes data sharing

The other big thing you need to keep in mind when deciding between ActiveCollab and Smartsheet is how high on your list of priorities is client collaboration. This is another area in which the two tools differ when it comes to the scope of options and functionality.

Because ActiveCollab is built for the client workflow, it's also been designed to give you multiple and customizable options for client communication, feedback, and access.

This kind of setup means you can moderate the level of client access and interaction based on individual clients or your preferred way of working.

In ActiveCollab, you can:

• Manage the client relationship within the platform
• Choose between two client access roles (Client and Client+), where one offers mostly view-only permission, and the other can be a full-level collaborator
• Select individual items you don't want clients to have access to (tasks or discussions)
• Choose the level of transparency you want to provide on time tracking or timesheets, and budget information
• See structured feedback loops on all client communication (comments, feedback, and file sharing)

On the other hand, Smartsheet's collaboration features are built around the need for security and granular data-sharing features, instead of client project-specific tasks. These aren't the type of collaboration features most agencies look for in their work management software.

Smartsheet will give you granular permission controls on who sees what data, and give you a choice of several permission levels for external collaborators. It will also let you grant external access for free collaboration with external vendors and partners, but its focus is on data governance, security protocols, and encryption.

ActiveCollab keeps workload management simple, Smartsheet goes enterprise-heavy

When you sign up for ActiveCollab, the moment you land on the platform, you'll have the easy-to-use visual workload feature ready and waiting for you to take advantage of it. The only thing you need to do before you can manage workloads via the super handy drag-and-drop feature is set your team's daily capacity hours.

Now, before you roll your eyes thinking, "Great – how long's that going to take?" we'll tell you it won't take longer than it took you to read that previous paragraph. So we're not even talking about a "minutes" setup, it's more like "seconds".

All you need to do is set daily capacities for your team members. The minute you add a team member to the system, their daily capacity will be set to the default 8-hour day. However, you can adjust this by setting individual daily capacity hours.

So you can see, even just from the way the tool's been initially set up, workload management has been made to be easy for agency owners and HR and Ops leads if that's who manages your people and resources.

What you get with ActiveCollab's workload management features is:

• Real-time visibility of availability, utilization, and breakdown of projects and tasks across your team
• A visual dashboard showing you who is assigned what, who is overloaded, and who has time on their hands
• Drag-and-drop management of tasks, where you can quickly move tasks around, reassign them, and change timelines as necessary

On the other hand, Smartsheet focuses more on resource management for large enterprises. It's a platform that can handle thousands of projects along with complex data flows and rigorous governance requirements. With their premium add-on, Resource Management by Smartsheet, users get full-scale capacity and scenario planning, and availability tracking across large and diverse teams. But this feature would be overkill for most service businesses.

ActiveCollab vs Smartsheet – Which is easier to use & scale with?

When you compare the two tools on ease of use, ActiveCollab is hands-down the easier tool to learn, adopt, and use, no matter what your team size or workflow looks like. Because it's designed for immediate use (rather than inital setup), you could even say the learning curve is non-existent.

The navigation menu is simple, and all the functions are intuitive and integrated. Its usability is also what makes it a good choice for teams that are new to project management, want a good level of robustness, but don't need or want to go full-scale advanced project management software.

Smartsheet is less intuitive and demands more setup and training time. However, it is a more advanced tool that's generally foreseen to be used by large organizations that need deeper functionality and more customization options. This is also why it comes with a steeper learning curve and also demands some training time if you want to get the most out of the tool's rich feature set.

When it comes to scalability, both tools scale well, but for different business models.

While Smartsheet is built to scale large organizations and enterprises, thanks to its powerful portfolio management, governance, and security controls, ActiveCollab focuses on helping agencies scale their operations profitably.

So in a nutshell, ActiveCollab is perfect if you need a simple but comprehensive end-to-end solution for a service business. However, if you need a built-it-out-yourself kind of tool to fit complex organization-wide processes, then Smartsheet is a better choice.

When you compare ActiveCollab & Smartsheet on price, which offers better value?

Finally, when it comes to weighing up the two tools based on value and price, here's what the consensus looks like:

ActiveCollab is better value for small and mid-sized businesses that want an all-in-one work management tool.

The reason for this is that ActiveCollab offers:

• An inclusive and complete feature set for agency operations
• Transparent pricing and multiple core features across plans that many competitors only offer in high-tier plans
• Unlimited clients for your workflows and projects, which is another area where many similar tools operate with caps or limits.

Smartsheet is good value for large and cross-departmental teams where security and customization are key priorities.

So the reality is that the two tools provide good value, but for different audiences.

The verdict: ActiveCollab for complete agency management

What's right for one team won't be right for another, and that's exactly the point we make in this ActiveCollab vs Smartsheet comparison post. Choosing the right tool is all about landing the right use cases and features that your business prioritizes.

ActiveCollab is designed for real-life, day-to-day agency and client workflows. It covers and connects all the moving parts from projects and tasks to time tracking, budgets, timesheets, workloads, invoicing, collaboration, and business reporting. It's one ready-made ecosystem that lets you start working instantly.

For any service business, juggling multiple clients, competing deadlines, tight budgets, and complicated deliverables, cohesion matters. When everything stays connected the way it does in ActiveCollab, it makes it easier to plan workloads and future projects, uncover profitability margins, and reveal productivity sore spots.

So if you need a tool that's going to be your one and only source of truth and the home of all your client work and collaboration, you need to give ActiveCollab a chance.

Sign up for our 14-day trial or book a demo with one of our people so you can get a complete tour of the platform and find out which pain points it will solve for your service business.