User Subscription Model Change - Implications on your business?

Jack24 · 09/10/24

We're one of the companies that took advantage of smartsheet's free internal editors, meaning staff with a company email address making changes to reports. Now that user type is changing to a paid seat, we'll go from 2 seats to up to 100. That's a big $$ change.

Smartsheet has been great, but this pricing change destroys the core value proposition that smartsheet had. No other alternative had this model.

Will others here:

Accept the (possibly minor to you) price change
Modify your use of the product to minimize the price change
Look at alternative that are now on a level per-seat price model
Other?

Brian_Richardson · 09/10/24

We're waiting to see what the impact will be to our costs. The account reps are doing what they can with pricing to mitigate the increase. It's not a straight conversion… meaning if you're paying $200 each today for a license for 2 people, you won't be paying $200 each tomorrow for the licenses for 100 people on the new model. Whether they make those licenses $20…unclear.

Also you don't need to convert right now if you're already a paying account. New accounts are on the new system, but existing accounts don't have to convert until the new year or longer. Your account rep should be talking to you about the impact.

To answer your other questions, for us at Iron Mountain, we have 5500 users, Advanced package addons, and many many solutions on Smartsheet. So pulling out entirely really isn't an option for us without incurring a lot of conversion pain. What's more likely is that we'll get more stringent and "auditing" on who gets to edit data and who just really needs to look at it, to keep our costs under control.

Although the pricing change is a little scary, Smartsheet frankly brings so much value, that we'll work it out.

My primary worry is that it's going to chill adoption. Although the model change is being made to improve adoption by opening the tool capabilities to a wider audience, the reality is that the company will make moves to control costs and therefore probably remove future paid access from people who have it today for free.

Jack24 · 09/10/24

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/453411#Comment_453411

Thanks for the insight Brian, a lot of this applies to us as well. It brings a lot of value and switch costs in man-hours are material.

I think we may lock in a year at current pricing and eat the upgrade late next year. We've been on a monthly since we started (8 months) but I don't have a good alternative tool, nor do we need the headache.

JessN · 09/11/24

Our company is in a similar situation as yours. We've been using Smartsheet for roughly 4 years now, and we have 11 licensed users and around 30 unlicensed users, all using the same company domain emails. The majority of our unlicensed users don't heavily handle sheets, but they do fill out forms as well as insert comments and complete update requests via automation. From the (many) tabs I have open as I've been working to figure out what this upcoming change will mean for us, I don't think any of our existing users will be able to be Guests and while many of them don't do much in the program, they need just a bit more access than what Viewer allows.

I came in this morning to the new model email, so we're going to be reaching out to our rep to try to get a clearer cost response so we can begin planning appropriately. We'd already been planning to downgrade our plan with our last renewal due to cost but were able to work with our rep to stay with the plan we had, so if this change means a large jump in price I'm not sure what we'll end up doing. At minimum I know I'll be looking through all of our existing users to see how much we can cut out to mitigate cost.

I would 100% prefer to continue using Smartsheet because I like what it offers and it will be a huge hassle to switch to something else, but I'm expecting that it will come down to cost.

aseals003 · 09/11/24

We are in the middle with a little over 100+ licensed users and have a very robust PMO Portfolio setup for a 3000+ Organization. The pricing model needs to be relative or else the "Feedback from customers like you" comment carries little weight. We just signed a multi year contract so we will see how they work this out as, fortunately, we have plenty of time to think of a transition. Yes, it has a lot of value but if the cost outweigh the value then our leadership will not get onboard.

jmhoward · 09/11/24

We're waiting to see how this affects us. We have had Smartsheet for about 5 years and are on an annual plan that renews soon. We have 65 licenses, but more than twice as many free users. Our current plan suits our needs, as most of the free users only need to view and edit data. We just started adding on advanced features, such as Data Shuttle and Data Mesh.

I am concerned about a few things with the new model, and have asked my rep about the following:

— Can admins no longer assign internal and external free (guest) users?

— Can free (guest) users no longer be sheet admins?

Much like others have mentioned, the value of the new model would need to exceed the new cost.

Jack24 · 09/11/24

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/453458#Comment_453458

Agree, it seems like we can price-lock by buying a year now and dealing with the cost change later. In the interim, we're training the team on a more software-agnostic approach such as form-filling and general kanban management to keep our options open.

Gotta say, I do love the versatility of smartsheets though.

SS_Andy · 09/11/24

Yeah, seems like they really are sticking it to their user base here. I would expect a lot of orgs to look at alternatives, us included. We have 300+ unlicensed users that do much of what you mentioned, basic filling out of data or form entry.

The rumored buyout from private equity is scaring us too. We have been told by a couple of our people in the space (we are an accounting firm) that the rumored buyers have an MO of rapidly increasing pricing to generate revenues. The timing doesnt seem right for the licensing change to be directly related to the rumored buyout, but together, definitely puts a fright in us.

Luckily, we have already started moving some of our processes out of Smartsheet.

Jake_ · 09/12/24

This will quadruple our license requirement 😑

The price per license will not be reduced according to our account mgr.

Kyle Morgan · 09/20/24

At first glance, this does not bode well for our organization. We rely heavily on our users being able to comment on sheets and it is sounding like were are now going to have to pay for each user to continue to do what they have been able to do all along as unlicensed users. I am still not 100% clear on what, exactly, all of the changes are (I have been unable to get clear, definitive answers to my questions) and what the potential financial impact these changes will have on our organization. I am waiting to hear more from our Smartsheet sales rep before I make any decisions. But, I have begun researching other options as a precautionary step so we don't have the rug pulled out from under us, financially. We have utilized Smartsheet for well over 10 years and I don't know if my budget will be able to accomodate any further increases. Unfortunately, with the recent talks/aquisiton of Smartsheet (Blackstone/Vista Equity), their switch to a dual President model coupled with yesterday's resignation of COO Stephen Bransetter, my instincts are telling me that this will not be the last major pricing change coming our way.

Jack24 · 09/23/24

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/454933#Comment_454933

Super interesting context, I hadn't paid any attention to the M&A news.

For competition (we are behind partner lines here…) I'm not aware of any tools that mirror the old license model and allow for any interaction without a paid seat. Smartsheet's price change erodes the pricing value proposition and puts them priced squarely against:

Airtable
Monday.com
what else?

Kathryn Wells · 09/24/24

We are likewise concerned. We also collaborate heavily with external partners and were told that external collaborators will not need a license, but we want to verify this with the community.

Can anyone confirm whether external collaborators will still be able to view/edit things shared with them for collaboration, like a dashboard or a project plan sheet, without needing a Smartsheet license of their own?

Debbie Sawyer · 09/30/24

Yes, I am seeing renewals coming in for our clients which are slightly eye watering…

It appears that the Business Plan license has been reduced from £19 a month (£228 a year) to £15 a month (£180 a year) according to the Pricing Plan on the Smartsheet Website. So Yes, I can see the "lowering of costs" for the larger scale of licenses. However, this might not be enough for a lot of our clients.

I am working with a client that has just seen a 1286% increase in their licensing numbers required for them to renew!

I will be reaching out to them to see if we can keep them using Smartsheet by offering different ways of working with the tool combined with some of our Smarter Apps.

Please reach out to me if you are considering other platforms, we have solutions in our suite of apps that are worth considering before a decision to move on is made.

Debbie

Email address available in my profile

Debbie Sawyer

CSSO (Chief Smartsheet Solutions Officer)

Smarter Business Processes

Smartsheet Community Champion & Ambassador

Book your free consultation Consultancy | Training | Smarter Apps | API Integration

Emily T. · 10/08/24

We have 55 licensed users and over 300 non-licensed editors. This will cause us to audit our usage, but I believe you also have to have a license to fill out a form, which is a huge issue for us as we use that as part of a PMO intake process. This will cause us to either look at other alternatives or double some of our work as we may need to move to Google forms and then manually move the data to Smartsheets. This pricing model is forcing us to create new time-consuming processes instead of streamlining for the end-user, as we will not be purchasing a ton of licenses in the event someone from management may want to input a project request.

Debbie Sawyer · 10/09/24

@Genevieve P. are you able to clarify the point that @Emily T. has mentioned about form filling?

I can understand that filling out a form is technically editing a sheet, as data is being added but if the form is not requiring someone to login to Smartsheet to be filled, i.e. the entry is from a "Form User" and not a known user, would it still be seen as free collaboration?

Also, adding to Emilys point, are Update Requests affected too? At the moment you can update a sheet using an update request (technically editing the sheet) without being shared to the sheet. So it was a great way to capture data from non shared users. If you are sending an update request to an internal user now (someone with same domain email) then will they need a license to fill in an update request form?

Thank you anyone from #Smartsheet with clarification on these points.

Genevieve P. · 10/09/24

Hi @Debbie Sawyer

Creating and collaborating (i.e. editing and commenting) on Smartsheet items like sheets, reports, dashboards requires users to be paid Members on the plan.

Viewing items, filling out forms, and submitting update requests are free.

Here are more resources regarding the new User Subscription Model:
User Subscription Model overview
User Subscription Model System Admin overview
Sharing permissions on sheets, reports, or workspaces

If the Help Articles above do not address your questions, please direct them internally to an Account Manager and they can help clarify details regarding your specific account.

Cheers,
Genevieve

User Subscription Model Change - Implications on your business?

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