Beware the New Licensing Model

Russell Anderson

Just a warning to anyone currently using Smartsheet or considering it. The new licensing model will blow up your costs to use Smartsheet very quickly. They provide no administrative control to prevent average users from elevating users to require a license.

Here's the scenario:

1. User is added as a "free" viewer. They don't need to pay for this.
2. Another user who is the owner of an asset in the system decides they want to share their asset with this new user. They don't understand how the licensing works, so they grant them editor access to contribute to the work.
3. Bam, the user is now a provisional member and you will have to true up and pay for them to have a license.

Basically any user with a license, now can grant a license to any other user in your system, no admin intervention required. All an admin can do is constantly try to revoke and downgrade access to prevent license creep, but it will take constant oversight and breaking of workflows for this to happen.

Whatever you do, do not buy Smartsheet and if you are using it now, do whatever you can to dump it.

Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/139931/beware-the-new-licensing-model

Hi,

I hope you're well and safe!

I'm sorry to hear that you're not having the best experience.

FYI: Smartsheet paused the process, and just the other day it was improved with the following. (see below)

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/139860/manage-seat-types-more-effectively-at-scale

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic day!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Smartsheet Expert Consultant & Partner / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/139931/beware-the-new-licensing-model

1. Bam, the user is now a provisional member and you will have to true up and pay for them to have a license.

This is something that can be changed before the true-up, as you mentioned, and it will be done once each quarter; the process will be much improved.

❓What's your issue with this?

Russell Anderson

So you're saying that once a month I have to go through and remove access from all the users that have been granted access and then the asset owner gets an email from the user saying "I can't access this anymore" and they just reshare it. And we continue this every month?

And that's a good method?

I'm just a customer giving feedback that this is terrible. I guess you can choose to listen to that feedback or not. Not listening to customer feedback is also not a great look for a brand.

Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/486193#Comment_486193

No, that's not what I'm saying at all, and of course, you should voice your thoughts.

That isn't the way it works or will work. The true-up occurs once per quarter, meaning four times per year, and Smartsheet is working diligently to make the necessary changes to improve that process.

I agree that the launch of this was not perfect in any way, and that's also why they paused it.

Also, to clarify, I'm not a Smartsheet employee. I'm a Smartsheet Expert Consultant & Partner.

As a partner, I have visibility into things that are not yet public, so I urge you and anyone else to be patient and at least allow Smartsheet to "fix" things.

Make sense?

Marc Hauge

I have been with Smartsheet since 2013 and we will renew for one more year but only to work on transitioning out of it. Smartsheet used to be unique and awesome, but now it has turned into "New Coke"