10-second breakdown:
Focused on making complex projects with lots of teams much easier to manage, Basecamp is a great tool designed with simplicity in mind.
Basecamp is used in small (0-50 employees), and medium companies (51-1,000 employees).
The good:
Super quick set up and intuitive design. The focus on simplicity allow for quicker onboarding for your team.
One of the more unique features offered by Basecamp is the Catchup button, which summarizes the current day’s activity. This allows you to see what you might have missed while out of the office or just give you an update on the progress of your team.
Basecamp is one of the most budget friendly options out there. They offer one low cost for unlimited users as well as offering free accounts for verified teachers.
The bad:
Integration with some third party apps, such as Google Drive, is lacking.
Updates to Basecamp can be frustrating for some users due to pricing changes and the inability to migrate projects (from BC2 to BC3).
How it works:
Rather than try to be the jack-of-all-trades Basecamp doubled down on useful features businesses are looking for. Each ‘Basecamp’, not to be confused with the company name, is a shared space with a collection of 6 tools.
When you open up a basecamp, the name of your camp is up top with a picture for each member underneath in a bubble. Down below are the six main functions or tools basecamp offers, the first is ‘Campfire.’ This is essentially a live group chat feature very similar to group texts on your phone. It’s a temporary chat to encourage casual conversation and post links for research or reference.
To the right of Campfire is the ‘Message Board,’ it’s good for more permanent conversations. It functions exactly like an online forum, you can start threads, give existing ones a thumbs-up or comment on them.
Next to the Message Board is ‘To-dos.’ It’s a standard checklist that you can organize based on lists. Need to tidy up before the investors show up to take a look around? No problem, make a new to-do list and add everything that could use a polishing to it. Items on your to-do list can be given due dates, assigned to specific team members and can have attachments.
Underneath of the Campfire is your ‘Schedule.’ This tool lets you set appointments, milestones and deadlines. You can assign specific team members to certain events in the Schedule and each event gets it’s own page so you can add comments to discuss it or make plans.
Next to your Schedule is ‘Automatic Check-ins.’ It’s an interesting tool that lets you schedule out questions to ask your team at regular intervals. For instance, you could send out a question to the entire team every Monday morning saying something like ‘Hello! What do you plan on accomplishing this week?’ or on the flip side maybe ask everyone what their greatest accomplishment was that week, to be sent out Friday afternoon.
The last major tool is ‘Docs and Files.’ It’s essentially cloud storage where you can stash important documents for the entire team to access but it has a few cool features in addition to simple storage. You can link it up to live Google Docs to discuss from within Basecamp and it even keeps a history of all revisions.
In addition to the six main tools Basecamp offers a few other services for you to use. They have ‘Pings’ which are private, instant messages between as few as two people or as many as you want. They can be used to check if someone is available or send them a document without having to leave the program to email it out.
There’s also a comprehensive notification system built right in Basecamp calls ‘Hey!’ It compiles all messages, comments and chats onto one handy page. If you’re busy you can snooze Hey! and even set it up so it will only notify you during working hours. Those notifications can be sent to you through browser desktop alert, email, or through mobile alerts on your phone.
Basecamp included a few handy features for managers as well. There’s a ‘Reports’ page that shows you at a glance what your team has been up to. It displays what’s due soon or already overdue, you can view what work was completed or added to your basecamp on any specific day and you can even drill down into a specific team member to see what they’ve been up to.
If you don’t need a full-blown report but you still want to see what everyone has been up to, Basecamp offers the ‘Latest Activity’ tool. It’s a live feed of everything that happens in your group including new projects, discussions, completed to-dos and more. Best of all you can have the previous day’s activity emailed to you every morning!
Basecamp makes pricing dead simple, your first basecamp is free! That includes all of the features above and it comes with 100gb of storage. You can have as many users and projects as you want to boot!
If you want to make a second basecamp, perhaps you want to split your accounting and support departments, it’s a flat rate of $29/month. Same as the free version, unlimited users, unlimited projects and 100gb of storage, but now you can make as many different basecamps as you want. You can give each department their own and set one up for the entire company, or however you want to organize your structure.
The next step up is for ‘Basecamp with clients,’ it’s $79/month flat and is identical to the other paid version, but now they add in a feature that lets you make basecamps that include external parties like clients. All of the communication in internal and external basecamps will be kept completely separate.
Last but not least, if you run a very large corporation you might want to look at ‘Enterprise.’ For $3,000 per year, you get a whopping 2tb storage, a guaranteed uptime agreement, a personal account manager and more.
Due to the flat rate pricing and simple team collaboration Basecamp is a great option for mid-sized companies who need an easier time keeping track of complex projects with multiple moving parts.
For complete rankings of all project management software, go here.
via http://authority.org/project-management-software/basecamp/ http://waynejsimpson.tumblr.com/post/149642893101
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