Smartsheet alternatives for enterprise PMOs: The Jira-native decision

Only 37% of PMO teams with siloed planning report good portfolio visibility, according to Tempo’s 2026 State of SPM. If your teams deliver in Jira, Smartsheet might be that “silo”.

Portfolio views in Smartsheet typically start with a Jira export. You reconcile status fields that changed since the pull, then chase a still-active Slack thread. And the deck you share is already days old. When the reporting layer sits outside the live Jira data, every update adds a reconciliation step.

This article does two things: First, it explains what portfolio governance looks like when built natively inside Jira and why that’s different swapping spreadsheet-style tools.

Second, it compares six alternative platforms for PMO Directors not on Atlassian, with pricing and honest tradeoffs for each.

Why PMO Directors are leaving Smartsheet

Smartsheet's 2025 User Subscription Model is the immediate trigger. Under the new model, every editor becomes a paying seat. Any user who edits a sheet is automatically provisioned as a member, and after 90 days that member turns into a paid license. If you have hundreds of occasional contributors, the bill balloons fast.

The pricing structure adds to the pressure. Smartsheet locks Portfolio views (including project intake standardization and portfolio-level status reporting) behind Enterprise and Advanced Work Management tiers:

• The Business plan ($19/member/month, billed annually, 3-seat minimum) doesn't include portfolio views.

• Dynamic View starts at $125/month on top of Enterprise pricing.

• Resource Management and Control Center carry custom, quote-only pricing.

• Advanced Work Management, required for portfolio automation, is also custom-priced and separate from Enterprise.

For a PMO Director trying to build real portfolio governance, that means stitching together several separate line items.

There’s also a structural problem with Smartsheet’s grid. It’s a powerful, automatable grid with Gantt views and cross-sheet reporting, but it doesn't let you define the portfolio → program → project layers that match how your organization plans.

You build those hierarchies manually in sheets but cannot sync them with Jira. Every portfolio view still requires a reconciliation step.

What to look for in a Smartsheet alternative, for enterprise PMOs

The Smartsheet alternative for teams running on Jira

Each alternative below is evaluated against those six criteria. The comparison table gives you a quick overview, and the individual entries give you what you need to make a decision.

Let’s see these tools in detail now.

1. Structure PPM

Jira’s default hierarchy works well for engineering execution. Portfolio governance, though, needs something different: The portfolio → program → project → work layers that match how your organization plans.

Aleksandr Kliuchnikov, Senior Product Expert for Structure PPM at Tempo, explains what that means in practice: “Jira forces you to use their own logic; epics, stories, subtasks. Structure is agnostic to any type of hierarchy. It can build any type of relationship. You can invent your own way to look at the product.”

You define the hierarchy, then Structure PPM  reads from Jira since all issues, statuses, custom fields, and delivery data are already there. 

Custom formulas calculate rollups in real time, like program‑level delivery status and delay across the portfolio. When you edit something in Structure, those changes write back to the Jira issue instantly, so everything stays in sync and nothing duplicates.

This also replaces the spreadsheet workaround most Jira‑native PMOs rely on. Kliuchnikov adds: “Previously, customers needed to export data into Google Sheets to do simple calculations. They can do that directly in Structure now.”

For leadership without Jira access, Structure dashboards export and share current portfolio views as HTML, without requiring an Atlassian license for the executives receiving it.

At scale, Structure PPM handles 100,000+ Jira issues. Jira Plans (Atlassian’s bundled portfolio tool included in Jira Premium) caps at 10,000 issues. It also limits you to 100 projects and 50 teams. Enterprise portfolios that exceed those limits need Structure.

2. Strategic Roadmaps

Strategic Roadmaps is what executives and stakeholders see. Where Structure PPM organizes delivery, Strategic Roadmaps communicates portfolio status in a form leadership can act on.

Portfolio rollup is the core capability: Multiple roadmaps from across business units roll up into a single live URL, and leadership can access these roadmaps without a Jira or Tempo license. The view also reflects live Jira delivery data, and not what was planned when the last export ran.

You can switch between a timeline view for scheduling context and a swimlane for cross-team dependencies from the same underlying dataset.

The built-in Idea Manager turns requests from leadership and sales into structured prioritization (scoring frameworks and feedback portals) rather than a Slack thread you have to chase.

Two-way sync with Jira and Azure DevOps, available at Business tier and above, keeps the roadmap connected to delivery automatically.

How the suite works together

Structure PPM organizes delivery. Strategic Roadmaps communicates that delivery to leadership. 

Tempo Timesheets sits underneath both, measuring actual hours against planned hours and normalizing data across teams that work differently (some logging story points, others logging hours) into a single trackable layer. Each product works independently, so you can add them in sequence as your needs grow.

Explore Structure PPM on the Atlassian Marketplace.

What this looks like at enterprise scale

Pluxee consolidated 29 countries that were spread across separate Jira instances into a single portfolio view using Structure PPM and Timesheets. 

“With cooperation between Structure and Timesheets, we have a complete overview of projects and can identify risks early,” said Martin Ševčík, SIAM Processes and Tools Manager at Pluxee.

Rohde & Schwarz migrated from IBM Jazz to Jira and scaled to over 10,000 users, using Structure PPM and Gantt Charts for Structure PPM as the portfolio layer across the entire transition.

Organizations with fully integrated portfolio processes report good visibility (82%), more than double the rate of siloed teams, according to Tempo's 2026 State of SPM report.

Smartsheet alternatives if your team isn't on Jira

For PMO Directors who aren’t standardized on Atlassian, the Jira‑native argument doesn’t apply. Below is a direct comparison of the four main alternatives, what each offers over Smartsheet, where it falls short, and what you’ll actually pay.

3. Wrike

Wrike is a strong general-purpose replacement for Smartsheet in large, cross-departmental project management.

The Business plan ($25/user/month, billed annually, 5-user minimum) includes interactive Gantt charts and cross-project dependency tracking with customizable workflows. Resource management, budget tracking, and advanced BI reporting sit in the Pinnacle tier, which carries custom pricing and requires a sales conversation before you can fully evaluate it.

What Wrike gives you over Smartsheet: Stronger native reporting at the Business tier, without the layered add‑on structure that inflates Smartsheet’s total cost. SSO, RBAC, and audit controls are included at the higher tiers instead of being split off into separate purchases.

Wrike’s limitation is that the interface has a steeper learning curve than Smartsheet. If you relied on Smartsheet’s spreadsheet‑like accessibility for non‑PM stakeholders (people who could navigate a sheet without training) you’ll feel that difference in Wrike. 

Portfolio governance also lives in the custom‑priced Pinnacle tier, so you can’t confirm the fit without going through a sales process. And if your engineering teams stay on Jira, Wrike adds a second system to maintain.

4. Monday.com

Monday.com starts at $9/user/month (Basic, billed annually) and scales to $19/user/month (Pro, billed annually). Monthly billing is $12/user/month (Basic) and $24/user/month (Pro). Portfolio management gates to the Enterprise tier, which carries custom pricing.

At Enterprise, Monday.com provides real‑time health snapshots across connected projects and resource management for workload planning and capacity optimization. The Pro plan includes automations and dashboards that are sufficient for most mid‑market PMO teams without forcing a custom‑tier conversation.

What Monday.com does better than Smartsheet: Adoption speed. Non‑PM stakeholders can navigate it without training. Visual boards and color‑coded status tracking are genuinely intuitive, and the Enterprise tier adds the governance controls and permissions that larger organizations need.

The ceiling PMO Directors hit: Monday.com is built for teams managing work, not for PMOs governing programs. Its portfolio views give you health snapshots and risk flags across connected projects, but you can’t define deep organizational hierarchies or compute formula‑based rollups across program levels.

PMO Directors managing 20+ formal programs with complex dependency structures will outgrow it faster than they expect. The Portfolio module at Enterprise also requires a pricing conversation before you can confirm whether it fits your governance model.

5. Asana

Asana's Advanced plan ($24.99/user/month billed annually, or $30.49/user/month billed monthly) includes unlimited portfolios – health and progress views across related projects in a consolidated view – without requiring a custom Enterprise tier conversation. That's the strongest pricing argument for Asana at this comparison: you can access portfolio management with a credit card, not a sales call.

Advanced also includes goal tracking tied directly to tasks and objectives, plus portfolio dashboards that you can export to PDF. The Enterprise tier adds universal workload visibility across all portfolios and automated user provisioning via SCIM, which matters for organizations managing user access at scale.

The real limit shows up in hierarchy depth. Asana’s portfolio views are clean and easy to read. PMO Directors managing structured but relatively flat portfolios (a set of projects rolling up into a program with clear ownership) will usually find Advanced enough.

But PMO Directors running complex, multilevel hierarchies with formula‑based rollups across portfolio, program, and project levels will hit the ceiling faster than Asana’s documentation lets on.

Asana works well as a Smartsheet replacement for organizations in the 50–500 person range, but it's not a natural fit for full‑scale enterprise PMO complexity with formal governance requirements.

6. Planview

Planview is an enterprise PPM platform. It combines portfolio hierarchy, demand intake, resource capacity planning, financial forecasting, and scenario analysis in a single platform.

What Planview gives you over Smartsheet is portfolio governance depth that Smartsheet can’t match. You can define multi‑level portfolio hierarchies, and model what‑if scenarios before committing resources. Financial planning (budget vs. actuals and CapEx/OpEx tracking) is built into the core, and not layered on as an add‑on.

Jira integration connects delivery execution data back to portfolio reporting without manual exports, so your portfolio view stays in sync with delivery.

The tradeoff is implementation weight and pricing opacity. Planview doesn't publish list rates; you'll need a sales conversation before you can confirm cost or fit. Implementation typically spans months and often requires external consultants and at least one dedicated admin, unlike Tempo’s shorter Jira‑native rollout.

If you value Smartsheet’s accessibility (stakeholders self‑serving status views without training) Planview moves in the opposite direction. It works best for mature PMO processes with formal governance structures. Teams that are still building those processes will feel the overhead first.

Before you pick your next tool

Smartsheet’s pricing changes created real exit intent. What is that move toward? Another grid tool that replicates the export cycle on a new platform, or portfolio governance connected directly to where delivery happens?

For PMO Directors on Jira, Structure PPM and Strategic Roadmaps from Tempo add that layer inside Jira (custom hierarchy and formula rollups, with live executive reporting) without a second system to maintain.

Explore Structure PPM on the Atlassian Marketplace or request a Tempo demo to see how it maps to your portfolio structure.