Updates to our Pricing, Seats, and Licensing Experience: Our Commitment to Customers with the Smartsheet Customer Loyalty Benefit

Here are details and what you need to know.

Overview

In our two decades of business, Smartsheet has accumulated a wealth of experience helping customers with Enterprise Work Management solutions. Our products have evolved and improved to help customers stay ahead of the curve so they can focus on innovation in their core businesses. While our products and solutions have steadily expanded and improved, our approach to enabling new users and how user licenses are managed has remained largely static. We are modernizing our approach with the Smartsheet User Subscription Model (USM).

The Smartsheet User Subscription Model helps customers realize more value from Smartsheet by simplifying pricing, budgeting, and administration.  Elements of the new model include:

• Simple seat types - Smartsheet has four seat types: Members, Provisional Members, Guests, and Viewers. These seat types enable customers to classify users as paid or free for greater control over user related subscription fees. 
• Members  - These are users who require paid seats which enables them to create and manage assets, comment, edit, or upload files. Consistent with how Smartsheet has operated since inception, Guests and Viewers are always free.  Guests are users outside of your domain and may edit, comment on, or view information. Viewers can be internal or external to your domain and view information.
• Provisional use - A major new benefit introduced with the User Subscription Model, Members can share assets with anyone as Admin, Editor, Commenter, or Viewer with no obligation to pay during a trial period. During this 90-day period, a user is designated as a Provisional Member and they are able to freely create, edit, comment, upload files, and utilize AI—unlocking the platform's full potential. 
• Reconciliation periods and true-ups - Organizations can monitor all seat types to make informed budget decisions. At the end of the period, customers can review their list of Provisional Members and decide whether to change their seat type to Viewer, or take no action and have them automatically converted to paid Members.

Updates to the USM portal

We’ve made numerous improvements to the USM True-Up Portal since its launch earlier this year. These updates enable system administrators to more easily review and manage licensing and access during the reconciliation process.  The changes will increase governance and control for organizations, and deliver improved manageability for System Administrators. Customers will now benefit from:

An Enhanced System Admin Experience: Through the inclusion of a Billing column, it is now easier to see the date on which Provisional Members would convert to a paid Member if no action was taken.  

Active User Information: During the monthly or quarterly reconciliation periods, organizations will see all activity and corresponding usage data. This information can be helpful in determining if a Provisional Member should convert to a paid member. If it’s more appropriate to limit their access, a System Admin can take action to reclassify the user to a free Viewer or Guest. 

Faster Seat Management:  We increased the capacity to do bulk seat type adjustments to 200 users at a time, enabling easier management of larger environments. 

Usage Summary: Customers will receive a summary of usage by email either monthly or quarterly, depending on their subscription term. This serves as an additional reminder to review their list of provisional users and make any desired adjustments to their Member seat type.   

Our Commitment to Existing Customers Transitioning to USM: The Smartsheet Customer Loyalty Benefit 

Today we are announcing the Smartsheet Customer Loyalty Benefit, designed to assist customers experiencing large increases in total members as they transition to the USM model.  The loyalty benefit is calculated using a customer’s annual user subscription fees and the number of active free collaborators under their legacy Smartsheet plan. Qualifying customers who already transitioned to USM saw the benefit presented as a one-time transition discount on their quotes.  Going forward, we will standardize our invoices and all qualifying customers will see the loyalty benefit applied to their future renewals, provided they are in good standing¹. The thousands of customers who have already transitioned to USM on average are realizing 70% more seats with a less than 10% increase in total user subscription fees.   

What’s next 

We’ve made numerous updates to the Smartsheet pricing, user, and licensing experience to address customer and partner feedback.  We believe these enhancements provide a better experience, and further simplify administration of Smartsheet environments. We’re not stopping here, and will continuously update our products to ensure we stay ahead of customer and partner expectations.  In the coming months, you will see us improve the platform to include additional policy management features about classifying users at the end of a provisional period (enabling default to Viewer vs. Member), and an expanded administration API for deeper integration with ITSM and third party license management systems. 

We thank you for the ongoing feedback and helping us improve our products and services.
 

Additional resources

Smartsheet user subscription video
Manage your True-up Process video
Introduction to the User Subscription Model | Smartsheet Learning Center
Understand provisional access | Smartsheet Learning Center
User type report details | Smartsheet Learning Center 
 

¹To qualify for the loyalty benefit on subsequent renewals, a customer must maintain or increase subscription service spend year over year with Smartsheet under their USM plan.