Basecamp Reviews

Pros
Basecamp 3 offers an intuitive platform and interface for project and operational collaboration across a wide distributed team. It's easy to onboard new team members both inside and outside the organization. The flat-rate price is a steal compared to all of its competitors.

Cons
Basecamp does not try to be all things to all people, which is a blessing and a curse. There are dozens of other features offered by other platform that are not offered by Basecamp. So if those features are critical, you may have to turn to one of the API-driven integrations for a separate fee.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Basecamp is a project management solution that allows me to stay on top of my team's projects with ease. Projects can be categorized and organized so that only members working on a particular project are exposed to the communications and back and forth. We use Basecamp as our primary solution because it is easy to implement and onboard, simple to use and has a robust set of features that are among the best in the industry for what we need.

Cons
My only complaint is that the different versions of Basecamp have different features. For example, the version we use does not allow for time tracking. While this is not necessary, as we don't bill out by the quarter hour, it would be a nice feature that would allow me to better understand how long certain tasks take my team members. If Basecamp had universal features across all versions, this would be a miracle solution.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
It's better than an excel spreadsheet. I consider it to be a 'starter' PMS. Sort of like a starter home, or first car (if you're parents aren't rich).

Cons
None of our users can use it properly no matter how many times I instruct them, send them cheat sheets, walk them through the process, justify my requirements for how to use it properly. There's too many places for users to put things, too many ways to make it confusing. Nobody seems to be able to find a thread to continue a conversation, and they just keep starting new messages for everything. If you have a lot of files to add to a project, it gets really confusing on which one is the right one - even if you explain that the newest one is top right. If there's too many messages or files - the oldest ones get buried and nobody can figure out how to find them. The archiving system is a nightmare - impossible to find and pull up projects, you can't search by project, you can only search by a file name, and you can't sort your search - it's just a long list, and you'd better hope you were super consistent in naming your files if you ever want to find something again. There's no analytics

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 5/10

Pros
Very affordable especially considering how many other solutions it replaces. Very clean minimal interface that gets out of your way and lets you get work done. Very fast and reliable. The mobile app is fantastic as well.

Cons
There is a little bit of a learning curve with the single page interface but that is be design.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I think the system is very user-friendly. If someone was new to it, it wouldn't take much time for them to catch onto how to create and assign out tasks and task lists.

Cons
Using it as a daily task organizer only worked for select departments who had ALL tasks housed within the system. For departments that had additional tasks (client phone calls etc.) keeping up with daily tasks/keeping all teams up-to-date within the system was difficult. You can only view one persons task list at a time to see what they have overdue, what is on deck for the day and what tasks are upcoming. If you have multiple team members on the project there is no easy way to see a quick overview of where everything stands aside from looking the actual project folder.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
I have been a Basecamp user for many companies and when starting my own, I needed the same features. Basecamp had scalable plans to allow me to start small and expand. There was a bit of a learning curve from Basecamp Classic to Basecamp what it is now but I like the changes and the flexibility you have with features for each project you work with.

Cons
The task management part isn't as great as other softwares that focus on task and project management. I feel this is something they can improve on for their out of the box solution instead of relying on other addons or using another software.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Basecamp is an excellent intersection between project management software and cloud storage. Not only do we produce projects here but we can store and organize all of our file types here as well. I’m able to access every document and file I need throughout the day solely in Basecamp. I’ve seen teams need 2-3 softwares to function. Basecamp brings all of that functionality into one platform.

Cons
The user interface isn’t great. Visually the software isn’t engaging and it’s easy to get lost. There isn’t a clear hierarchy on the homepage or within projects. Everything looks the same.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Basecamp provides a user experience that allows for significant ease of use, allowing for much more time spent on work rather than program adjustment.

Cons
Notifications can be inconsistent, and not always received in a timely manner. But this can be a minor problem for daily use, which is predominantly how I use the software. Distance or periodic users may want to look into this further.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
One of the key features I would recommend in the Basecamp apart from the features in traditional other PM applications are interactive communication channels , informative dashboards , mobile friendliness. Basecamp comes with the various communication channel such as group chats , pings and etc which help users to interact with the others and get information distribute easily. Interactive and easy managing dashboards help users to virtualise the data in more accurate way. All mobile platforms support very well.

Cons
Basecamp has given less priority for the time managment and that will make bit hard for users to track down the completion of the tasks.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
The free version is usable, and I also like that basecamp did not set a “per user” pricing. Basecamp also provides an easy way to keep all of our project info in one place. And the mobile app also fully-featured just like the desktop.

Cons
Basecamp interface might be a little overwhelming for beginners, it also lacks some advanced features. Well, the interface can be confusing at times. But for the experienced managers, they will appreciate the efficient way it handles projects and client communication.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
The integrations that Basecamp provides make communication for cross-departmental projects quick and effective. The integration we use the most is the support of Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Calendar. Within Google Drive, the folder system makes it often difficult to find documents, but Basecamp allows not only Google Docs and Google Sheets to be linked to, but conversations about that specific document to take place in one place. This makes it easy to hand off documents and files to another department, route items to our publication team, or to request feedback from partners. As an original user from Basecamp 1, there have been so many improvements to the second and third editions. Basecamp certainly does an excellent job listening to its users.

Cons
The only change in version 3 that I am disappointed with is the elimination of the built-in calendar. What used to be "Events" with an interactive project calendar became the "Schedule." The Events interactive project calendar functioned a lot like a Google Calendar, which allowed someone to see all touch points on the calendar itself. The "Schedule" is mostly a list of upcoming events. However, the benefits of the folder systems, the access to resources, and the task assignments outweighs this issue. Plus, if you are a new user to Basecamp 3, you won't even be aware that anything is missing.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
I love Basecamp! I think it is a great software for keeping tabs on projects and people you work with. It is a collaborative space for users to update each other on what parts of the project they are working on or finishing up. It gives our team the balance needed to ensure no one is working on the same thing or on overlapping projects. It has been a huge asset and we have all loved watching the progression of projects and campaigns we are working on. It has many settings so you can really set it up based on how your team would best thrive.

Cons
One con is that this product could easily turn into a micromanaging tool for bad managers and leaders. When utilized properly it will do wonders for your team but if overused it could be a huge pain point and stressor for employees. They allow an option to have your team give a daily summary of their tasks and I could easily see that going wrong if used by the wrong manager.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Basecamp is incredibly intuitive and easy-to-use. New users can start using the system in a very short period of time. I love the ability to upload files to specific projects or teams and to organize them into folders and update them with new versions. I also really appreciate how Basecamp makes sharing news, messages, and schedules with members of the team. Basecamp is also very affordable, even for small teams.

Cons
I would like to see some additional project management features added. Specifically, project milestones and Gantt charts. A few of the features are not particularly useful, such as the Gaussian-looking completion chart.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The pros of basecamp are the company wide team access and usage, easy access to current project related data, storage for project photos and renders. We have an archive of our projects for the past 6 years as well, so we can always go back in and find any info we may have had in the past but are missing now.

Cons
Basecamp is just difficult enough that our team members who are a little less tech savvy can feel overwhelmed with navigating the software. We tend to have 150 -250 open, active projects at any given time, so they struggle to know which project relates to them and get discouraged by the navigation. Since there are so many ways to use the software, to-dos, conversations, calendars, file browsing, etc. it can become disjointed and unorganized quickly. You really need to stay on top of keeping everything in a manner that cuts down confusion.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Prior to basecamp, my organization was unorganized and working organically, there was no structure or timelines to our projects. Basecamp brought all that and MORE! It’s so simple to use and assign team members the tasks. It has a great user interface structure. There’s not a day that goes by where I’m not on Basecamp. It made such a positive impact in my organization!

Cons
When it comes to tracking, Basecamp doesn’t give a good overview of this. You need to consistent check what tasks have been completed and which ones aren’t. I hope they make an improvement on the Gantt Charts along with full project reports!

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The best thing about Basecamp is that it provides a secure and easily accessible central hub for your project. It is easy to invite all key project stakeholders and has features that allow for quick and easy discussion around the project, easy communications of important notices and action points and acts as a central storage place that gives everyone oversight to essential project documents and files. Basecamp also provides an accurate project timeline based around the actions of the individuals who use it, meaning that assists with project traceability and track. In addition it will also send automated reminders to the inboxes of those registered which is a fantastic feature for keeping on top of all project details. These reminder emails can be customised to specific individuals which means you can easily reach/remind/engage with the action point owner.

Cons
The main frustration with Basecamp is the updating of personnel profiles when the original creator has left the company. For example, I have needed to update the job titles and email addresses associated with people for accounts I have inherited after my predecessor has left the company. However, this action is blocked as I was not the original creator which was highly frustrating.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Since switching to Basecamp we've seen better communication, collaboration, and better delivery on projects for our marketing team. The way Basecamp delivers information—keeping it all up front and easily accessible—makes it super easy to find out where a project is at at any given time. We've also seen an increase in productivity. People are spending less time trying to figure out what it is they are doing and spending more time getting tasks checked off their list. It has also improved team morale. PM software can be frustrating, but the user interface has made it more fun. While we haven't rolled this out company wide, we are looking forward to it.

Cons
I think there is room to improve the educational components of Basecamp. Based on their customer experience, are there best usage stories? Are there best practices for implementation and usage that we can use? Key piece is communication. There's a lot of choices for where people can submit updates: Campfire, in the task list, in individual tasks. What are the best practices? Someone, please tell me.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I love how intuitive Basecamp is to use and how easy it is to keep track of upcoming projects and set priorities. I'm new to project management and it's been so easy to set up every project and teach new employees how to navigate the system. You can set different projects for different teams and even invite clients to view projects. Plus, you don't have a limited number of seats so everyone in our organization can access it without us needing to purchase anything additional.

Cons
There are too many places to communicate within Basecamp so it's important that you have a clear process. You can comment on an overall project thread, a group and in each individual to-do so sometimes it's hard to tell where a comment is located. However, it does show you which to-dos have comments within them and there are easy-access notifications at the top of your screen at all times so as long as comments are recent, they're easy to find.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Basecamp's user interface has changed over the years and has become for easier for clients and client facing individuals. Basecamp became a part of a sales pitch in terms of giving access to clients to a platform where we were accessible and there to help them.

Cons
Basecamp has a lot of bells and whistles that are not immediately apparent. We did have to do a little digging under the hood in order to take advantage of some key features!

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Centralise all traffic, in-house and with clients.

Cons
It is a single approach to Project Management. The client side could be more developped as well.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I love the ease of use, and the how it allows us to keep very complex projects organized via the To-dos etc. I love the fact it lets our teams collaborate in a single location and keep everything related to a project organized. (We use Basecamp B2 FYI)

Cons
DISCUSSIONS. If I had a way to turn off the ability to start a new discussion I would. I like the fact the discussion area shows the chronological listing of activities, but I DO NOT like the concept of a discussion. Everything we do in Basecamp is in the TO-DO section because you can assign ownership and due dates. A DISCUSSION on the other hand, cannot be assigned to someone or a date added. Anything we need to discuss, can be done inside a specific TO-DO item and at the point someone needs to take action it can then be assigned to someone for ownership. A discussion without the ability to assign ownership and a time element is Just a bunch of talking and worthless to a business. I'm also continually having customers go out there and open new discussions when they want something instead of opening a to-do because discussions are the first thing they see. If I could turn off the ability to open a new discussion I would. Because of the issue I just mentioned, it would be VERY HELPFUL if there was an easy way to move an item from a DISCUSSION to a TO-DO. That would make it easy to deal with the situation if someone opened a discussion instead of a to-do and also would make logical sense that people are talking about something for a long time (Discussing it) and then when it's time to get off their butt and do something they could move it to a to-do (have the history of the discussion) and assign ownership.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The reintroduction of client permissions made BC3 instantly more usable as it reintroduced the collaborative nature that wa a hallmark of this product (The "clientside" approach was garbage) Basecamp offers a clean and approachable structure to project management. It is not intended for software development really, but can be used to run a project or even as a company hub (we use it for both, though in full honesty we have mostly transitioned to slack).

Cons
As above, the initial clientside approach was really underwhelming. It worked for specific low-touch clients, but if you were actively collaborating, it was offputting and cumbersome. It can be sort of cumbersome to navigate files, and I wish there were data integrations to link Google Shared drives

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
It is easy to enter, search and assign tasks in this online tool. As an E-Commerce Manager, I find it easy to enter our online order information, keep track of them with due dates, assign tasks to my team members and update our higher management on the goals and their progress.

Cons
The Export feature of this online tool is the worst!! I have tried contacting their support about exporting my tasks to excel or CSV format and they informed me that they do not have that option. We receive over 200 to 600 + orders a month which we have to keep track of, this helps us do that, but when our account manager asks me to get him details of orders then my life goes to hell. It takes me 2-4 days to extract all the data and organize it and send it to our accounts manager. This is the RED Flag for me for this software, I have my team looking at other options to switch to, however, if they do incorporate it, I have no problem sticking to Basecamp. Another thing I would like to point out, which is not a red flag or an issue but in the last month we had basecamp service unavailable or crash twice. Since it is a company solution, we are using, and I have been using it for the past 3 years, I never had seen this issue, maybe an upgrade in their services or some other bug is causing this but it did happen. Hope it does not happen again as it will affect our work seriously.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 4/10

Pros
Base camp has very competitive pricing for project management software. Is very user friendly for Project managers. You can organize individual projects with todos and then assign those todos to specific people. You can easily keep up with the status of what the team is working on and keep up with files and documents associated with each Project.

Cons
If you are on the administration side, it’s great. I mean real great. If your on the receiving end it can be a little confusing at times. The common complaint from myself and others I know, is that there are too many ways to revive a message and thus keep up with messages. Sometimes the message is on a “Ping ”, some times it’s on a “todo” or a “camp fire”. There is no central inbox to keep up with messages. There is a thing called a “Hey Stack” that functions kind of like an “in box “ that will let you know when someone has sent you something or commented on something , but the message disappears when you read it. No option to keep it and delegate it later, mark as in read or send it to a personal todo. Unless you go back previously read messages and dig it up. Then you can book mark it. It Should just function like a standard email inbox. Unless you get sent a “ping” wich is kinda like an instant message app with in base camp wich is on a different icon. Granted there may be a better way of using it that we are not aware of. Having used other project management software, I can say this is not a problem unique to base camp. I still feel it is the better software but needs some improvements. Specifically keeping in mind the people that are trying to do a good job for their project managers and sort through all of the information.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 5/10

Pros
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.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10