Basecamp is a real-time communication tool that helps teams stay on the same page; it's less for traditional project management tasks (e.g., resource planning and long-term scheduling). With to-do-lists, calendaring, due dates and file-sharing, Basecamp provides a way for teams to keep track of priorities and actionable items.
Since 2004, Basecamp has focused on developing a simple interface in which users can create projects, document progress and manage tasks. It is a web-based software, allowing users to sign in anywhere, any time, either through a web browser or through apps compatible with a large number of mobile devices.
Not specific to a single industry, Basecamp can be deployed by any organization that needs to manage a group, including nonprofits, startups and client service firms—and it can even be used by freelancers. Subscriptions are scalable, with tiers for varying amounts of storage and numbers of users.
The fundamental advantage of Basecamp is the capacity to allot out explicit undertakings to explicit people and with a due date. Basecamp helps organizations to know which individuals from every office on chipping away at a customer. With the due date highlight, clients can demonstrate time-touchy or important matters. This component is discretionary, which enables our organization to recognize transient undertakings and long haul objectives. Basecamp's plan is agenda arranged. Agendas advance incredibly to our increasingly fastidious representatives, yet in addition, empowers the more Type B workers to center their thoughts into convenient and quantifiable assignments. The freshest move up to Basecamp 3 presented the Campfire include which is perfect for inward ventures, an advantage that was missing from the past rendition. This part of the product is ideal for intra-office non-customer work. For instance, the record supervisory crew utilizes this element to work together on building another layout for our customer introductions. In general, Basecamp enables my organization to accomplish extensive scale objectives by separating them into particular objectives.
I have been dealing with the customer confronting side of a medium-sized computerized advertising organization. I cherish that Basecamp adjusts superbly with our multi-customer firm. The latest upgrade to Basecamp 3 contributed to the item's utility. Basecamp's plan enables my collaborators and me to dole out and oversee undertakings crosswise over divisions. The new Campfire highlight extends Basecamp's utility to incorporate inner tasks, besides the principle advantage of sorting out customer work. This element takes into account an increasingly easygoing stream of thoughts for ventures that my group is chipping away at as a team.
After you have transferred documents, you can not download them combined at once. You need to exclusively download each document that you need. This can prompt having different form of a record. On the off chance that you don't erase a past adaptation of an archive, at that point there will be two. the best way to not keep running into this is to us the record fuction in Basecamp. This element is exceptionally essential. in the event that you don't remain over record the executives and discourse you could be soon over run and end up with a ton of tidy up work.
Maryellen from First Impressions, Inc.
I am a fundraiser, and often - OFTEN - have several big fundraising projects in preparation at the same time. Before Basecamp, it was a nightmare to keep all of the details for each event separate and clear, without dropping the ball on some important responsibilities. Unfortunately, failing to take care of an important detail on any of these events can be devastating, so I could barely sleep because of the stress of worrying about where I was on each project. Also, since I often use some of the same vendors (caterers, tent rental, hotel space) it was hard to remember if I had talked to them about each individual event, and had all of my facts straight for each individual event. Basecamp makes it possible to track each and every event carefully, set up connecting emails to keep everyone informed, and makes it very easy to set deadlines, timers, and reminders for every important goal and part of the event. It took an entire weekend to set up all of the lists, timelines, and connections needed within Basecamp for the eight complex fundraising events I had on my calendar when I first set up in Basecamp. But after that weekend, I slept better than I had in months because everything was organized, I could see in a few seconds exactly what was on my "To-do" list for each day, each week, and up until the day or the event, as well as what I was waiting for from anyone else. This program is certainly an expense. But it gave me incredible peace of mind.
It is so well integrated. For example, taking one action will also notify several team members who need to know about that action without me having to send numerous emails. The software makes it possible to track several or many projects with dozens of people without losing a step or forgetting anything.
A bit of a learning curve to get started, but technical support is good, and the program quickly becomes intuitive.
The other members of your team - not only your staff, but your client - must also be willing to learn Basecamp. On the other hand, once they do, they will love it - and you!
Basecamp provides a platform for collaboration and project management that can be the backbone of digital marketing agencies, software development companies, or any other company which has a team of 5+ and at least 5+ projects (my estimates, not limitations of the product). It just helps the team to keep it all in one place and more importantly - it helps bring together remote teams, which is an ever-increasing scenario for many IT companies hiring VAs, content writers, PPC specialists, developers.
It gives you the opportunity to manage a complex business with multiple projects and team members, providing a platform for communication and collaboration. I've personally used Basecamp for two years and have liked it in general for organizing Digital Marketing projects within an agency. You also get the ability to add the client to the project and choose what to show or hide from them, making it just a bit easier to keep them in the loop and get required feedback from them.
Like any software with vast functionality, you have to learn all of its features to use it as it is intended to be used. Collaboration with teammates adds one more layer of complexity and problems can arise if the team is not coached to use it in a common way.
It helps us keep the communication with clients in one place versus using email which is helpful. I wish they had a free version though. I like the style and branding of the app, but if I wasn't using it for client work I doubt I'd be using it for my own projects.
- The interface is fun to navigate, it's just pleasant to look at. I like all the little buttons, the way that the check marks are designed, it's fun to comment and check things off. I'm a big nerd when it comes to the actual enjoyment of a platform. The brand is on point.
- I like that you can set up different sections for todo's versus having them all be in place. It's also helpful to have a separate files section and discussions section for things not related to specific to-do's although we do rarely use them with my clients.
- I see they have an option to use Clientside where the client doesn't get to see all the things in Basecamp, and they can still use email primarily when it comes to the communication. I personally don't use this option and we just have the client in their own Basecamp but it's a great option for folks if they don't want their clients IN the actual project.
- It's easy to attach images, write quick comments, and send pings to team members.
- The price point, it's obviously not a free option like Trello or others and it is the same in terms of quality as those two except for the design and having clients in there.
- It can get confusing for the client. They don't know where to go.
- Sometimes we don't know where to write things, there are too many options for communication and discussion which makes the organization of our conversations a bit trickier to manage.
- I wish it was possible to see a visual representation of the deadlines for each task, like a gantt chart or something. I feel like Asana has more options when it comes to all of that and it's easier to organize things.
Great idea for team management!
Allows my team to stay organized, communicate effectively, and accomplish tasks all from one platform!
- It has a very simple design and feel. It's extremely "boiled down" and there's no reason to worry about less techy folks getting lost. It's easy to learn to use and navigate the platform.
- It organizes everything in one place, so it's easy to find key documents, hold individuals accountable, find help, etc. There's no email chains, certain things saved in the Cloud, while other things are saved on someone's computer - it's all there.
- When you enter a project folder, I like that there are really three categories for communication. Things that need to be done are filed in the "to do" thread, on-going communication/questions occur through the "message" thread, and just general questions or thoughts or concerns can be posed through the "campfire" thread. This is simple idea, but is really quite brilliant. It allows your team to rank or categorize the message they're about to send (Is this urgent? Is this a general question? Is this a task that needs we need to get done?). This really provides structure that effective teams need.
- Another cool feature is that in that you have access to all of the important, shared files in the project folder. I would compare that to "team drives" on Drive, if you're familiar.
Basecamp is not too technical, it feels human-friendly! But because of this, you do occasionally find yourself looking for something more, a feature that would really be helpful. For example, the to do lists could be a little more robust (graphics, attachments, etc.). Another idea would be to add a bit of customization. I understand the desire to maintain simplicity, but just the ability to add your brand would be a nice feature or even change the color designs. Not crucial, but would be nice.
Always feels like I'm just using bits of BC, and possibly for jobs that could be done with simpler tools. My advice would be to trim it down to what it does best and overhaul the design.
Very easy to set up a project, invite people and create tasks. Strong community of users, well developed product with lots of features. UX generally pretty good, with a clean layout and usually intuitive flow. The 'check ins' feature in v3 which prompts regular updates from colleagues is especially useful. v3 also supports mentions which is useful for communicating on the project.
BC is certainly useful for many types of project, but lacks structure in certain key areas. For example it collects all files into one (albeit searchable) view, ditto tasks, people etc. So there's no way you can break down a project into phases, streams etc., let alone manage tasks properly; these are just to-dos in a list. Some features just don't get used because they duplicate other products (e.g. Pings = Slack, Schedule = yet another diary, Campfire = er, Slack).
Also the overall UX is surprisingly poor. The design system follows some annoying trends apparently designed by sheep-like designers rather than aiming to provide an excellent experience for the user. Muted, horrible coffee shop colours, tiny text for important CTAs, generally style over substance and not a nice style at that. At my current employer we use BC for client comms, but they pretty much all hate having to use another app and prefer email or Slack; there is some email integration but the rendering is terrible.
Basecamp is where we keep all of our assignments and initiatives, and we've become diligent about not letting any lists or to-dos creep outside the system. This relies heavily on managing the project list carefully and making sure everything has its place. There are not guide-rails to keep you from placing a task in the "wrong" place - fortunately you can move tasks all around if someone puts something in an incorrect place. It's important that you define what Projects exist and create a framework for where assignments should go. A frequent complaint we hear around the office is "I don't know where to put this" so it's important that you outline your project structure and communicate it clearly. If you can nominate a gate-keeper to watch over the system organization, Basecamp can be a very effective way to manage all assignments across an organization and allow people to simply see what's due, when, with ease.
Basecamp still has some key missing features that create workflow issues every now and then. You can create recurring events, but not recurring to-dos. So, for example, if you want to create a "Close Accounting Books" to-do and assign it to a user to be finished each month by the 15th, there is not currently support for that. There's also no built-in gannt views, although they continue to innovate project management with new simpler ideas such as the "Hill Chart" which i'm a fan of. A lot of the lack of complex features comes from their desire to carefully curate features to keep the application from ballooning into a beast that's unwieldy and hard to learn.
I work in the non-profit world and we have many volunteers that help for a season, or a project or some other random and unpredictable way. Basecamp allows us to invite users into a specific task or project in a way that is almost fool-proof. Using Basecamp means I don't have to get a volunteer network clearance to be on our internal network. Basecamp lets us store files in the cloud so all can access items easily. We even have staff creating weekly virtual meetings and updates for volunteers can access info at their best time and know what is happening that week and what expectations are for their volunteer teams. Basecamp allows our staff and volunteers to think outside the traditional uses of project management apps and gain some real productivity and communication value.
f a feature isn't intuitive for you (or you forgot how to do something), the quick videos located throughout the app bring the feature into focus quickly and easily.
Basecamp is simple enough for the masses to use without using expensive live training resources. They have really figured out how to get people on board and up to speed quickly.
Basecamp has the ability to store files with specific projects. that saves me lots of time when I want to find that obscure file but I can't remember where I saved it or what I called it.
Basecamp presents itself as 'project management' software. I am not so sure I would place it in that genre of software. I see it more of an easy access, bring the crowd together to collaborate and make sure you have an easy place to catch up with conversations, read files or see what is next on the to do list.