Is the Smartsheet free tier going away or becoming more restrictive?

jlong7542

My office has a handful of paid licenses that we uses to manage projects in Smartsheet. We rely on the free tiered users to be able to access/update certain components of a project. There's been a rumor that the free access will soon be removed or the capabilities of free users will be greatly reduced. Can anyone confirm?

Paul Newcome

What plan level do you have? Pro, Business, Enterprise, or Advance?

jlong7542

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/420818#Comment_420818

I have the Enterprise plan.

Paul Newcome

There could be some billing differences if you are moving to one of the Advanced packages, but otherwise I haven't heard of any major changes coming to unlicensed users. Even on the Advanced packages, unlicensed users still have the same capabilities. They are just treated a little differently for billing purposes.

jlong7542

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/420837#Comment_420837

Those that have enterprise accounts will keep them - the concern is that if there are changes or restrictions for the free users, Smartsheet will no longer be effective for our organization because upgrading the free users isn't an option for us.

Paul Newcome

I haven't heard anything about permissions and capabilities changing. I don't think there is anything to worry about.

clarkc24

We use Smartsheet Advance and are being told that everyone has to have a license, and there will be no more free users.

That being said, we have a few thousand licensed users and thousands and thousands of free users currently under the existing contract - but we're being told this is all going away and our free users would have to have a license - has anyone else heard this or anything similar?

Paul Newcome

@clarkc24 There was an announcement a couple of weeks ago. They are making some changes to their pricing structures to include more users / capabilities requiring licenses, but that is a very generalized way of putting it. I suggest reaching out to your sales rep for more details.

clarkc24

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/445821#Comment_445821

Thanks for the feedback, Paul.

Smartsheet account managers request a singular point of contact for an enterprise, and if you're not int, you're getting second, third, fourth hand details at best - so that makes it a bit tricky to understand the actual changes that are being pushed out.

I read the earnings call and the CEO and CFO of Smartsheet did articulate they're not divulging the pricing models at the moment except to those larger contracts that are being impacted - they did articulate that users who do what editors do will just be pushed to licensed users & companies will pay for that on the front end in their pricing model.

So, we'll have to wait until 2025 when the existing users are officially migrated to the new agreement model for Smartsheet Advance users…in the interim we'll see if the market pushes their rates higher as well or if they use this as an opportunity to absorb Smartsheet users.

EPetersen

Employees using Smartsheet are getting emails from sales reps saying that the free user capabilities are going away. We are in the middle of creating a workspace for people external to our company to provide us with data updates on a quarterly basis. We cannot require all of our consultants to have Smartsheet licenses, so we are trying to understand if these upcoming changes will make our plans impossible.

Is there any official information on what these changes will actually be? The mystery around this is making it tough to know if we are wasting our time with Smartsheet.

MaryAnn Amari

Just confirmed our enterprise plan will only have free users able to view or at the very most Comment. No longer will non-licensed (now called Members) users be able to collaborate in sheets. Extremely disappointed, Smartsheet.