17 years helping Canadian businesses
choose better software
Basecamp
What Is Basecamp?
The Basecamp Way of working is used by thousands of teams that like to get work done without distractions and inefficiencies. Basecamp is opinionated about how work should flow, making it easy for teams to adopt and perfect for managers who want to get everyone in sync.
Basecamp includes all tools that teams may need to collaborate, including file sharing, messages, chat, to-dos, and Card Table.
Don't just take our word for it - see what people are saying, and give it a try with a free trial.
Who Uses Basecamp?
Entrepreneurs, freelancers, small businesses (1-99 employees), and groups inside large organizations.
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Reviews of Basecamp
Alternatives Considered:
I always come back to Basecamp
Comments: We have three sites. What Basecamp has provided is the unification of messages and tasks across all sites. It has added transparency that is invaluable to all of our team. We can keep important documents. Onboarding videos and other useful information. No more scraps of paper or post-it notes on peoples desks. It provides real accountability for everyone on the team. So simple to use which means 100% user adoption. Everyone loves Basecamp and we have tried every PM software out there. Basecamp is the best in the business!
Pros:
When you first start using basecamp, two things strike you the most. It’s clean super tight interface and the lack of some common functions. I see both of these things as a positive. This might seem odd but you soon realise that the makers at Basecamp are uncompromising in their relentless pursuit of keeping you efficient. No bloat. No complication. These all adds up to adoption by the whole team. Which for me is the most important thing. You can have a perfect project management system, but if no one uses it. It’s useless. Basecamp’s gets everything on the same page.
Cons:
I would love the app to give you persistent reminders for tasks! Snooze for 5 mins etc.
Alternatives Considered:
Great tool, but unfortunately the price is one of the highest values
Pros:
Basecamp is an incredibly strong task management tool. Great for small teams. As far as resource management and any medium sized projects basecamp lacks behind its competitors. With all this said, I love basecamp as it is nostalgic for decades now of work that I've been able to implement easy with teams and organizations.
Cons:
resource management, alignment, lack of scheduling, confusing interface that forces users to just use search, upgrades and updates... although good, only make it harder to leave and not actually fix needed overhauls.
Nearly great but not quite
Comments: We felt that the "all in one" nature of the software was great, but beyond our initial tests we found it lacking in adaptability to fitting into the way WE work, (it wants you to wholly adopt their approach and we felt that there was an internal resistance to that development style) - therefore we abandoned the platform and looked for alternatives.
Pros:
For years we have been looking for an all in one project and task management system to use with our business. And BaseCamp is so nearly it, it has most of the features you'd expect but presents them in a different way to most other task tracking systems. On the positive side, it's easy to use, friendly to the eye and everything is where it should be. It has some nifty features that you can easily become over-reliant on that aren't present in other management software tools. One recent addition was the Hill Chart where you plot a task on an "planning hill" - in a really visual way. This is totally unique and works well, helping you quickly identify the progress of any given task. As a project manager, this is a very useful way of seeing where everything currently "is at"
Cons:
Onto the Cons: For us, we found that the software was too verbose in its approach, it has a work log system where each user is expected to fill in a diary of what they have done today - sure, this can be switched off in the options, but the regularity of BaseCamp e-mailing you is far too high as a default. By default you're constantly managing e-mails from the system (which is precisely what is is meant to eliminate!) Once you disable these notifications, we felt that the software starts to lose its impact, our staff started to drift away from it over time and went back to other task tracking methods (such as trello) for different areas of the development. This caused us to reconsider the entire enterprise and look for alternatives, our team just couldn't seem to adopt the (very rigid) way that Basecamp wants you to work.
Comprehensive set of capabilities for us
Comments: Has special interface with other softwares which makes meeting management and scheduling great and possible.
Pros:
Basecamp is a unified workspace that manages all areas of everyday operations and duties for our company's management. It provides dozens of sales and marketing automation rules, charts, reports and calendar which are most appropriate for our organization.
Cons:
Very straightforward. It has maintained a clean reputation with us. I highly value Basecamp.
Alternatives Considered:
So glad I found Basecamp!!
Comments: I've had a great experience with Basecamp. I've collaborated with a number of projects on this tool and it's been essential in managing my projects. Since I'm in the growing phases of my business, I SO glad they have a free feature that allows me to use 3 free projects. Once I reach a level where I have a team and I'm serving more clients, then I can see myself getting the Basecamp paid plan. Thank you for offering such a great product!
Pros:
Another designer recommended Basecamp for managing web design projects. This product allows me to keep everything for my client projects in one place! I like being able to collaborate with clients on a timeline and assigning them tasks. The chat feature is very helpful. I like that we can upload all their documents and even link to Google documents. The mobile is very useful for doing business on the go. I can really stay organized with Basecamp and it keeps me accountable with timelines. I love that I can make it client-facing so there is a level of transparency on timelines. I can use this tool to do all communications with clients and not have a string of emails to go through.
Cons:
I've been going back and forth with the documents section and if I should use Google Drive to store documents or if I should use Basecamp. People are most familiar with Google Drive, however when I educate and train them on how to use Basecamp, then it will help them be more comfortable with navigating the software. I would like training videos for clients to be able to get an overview of how to get the most of Basecamp while working together. If Basecamp doesn't have a video overview, then this will be something that I can work on.