Adobe Workfront, acquired by Adobe in late 2020, is a web-based project-management tool. It is designed for both IT and marketing teams, but can be implemented for any kind of project. Workfront offers all the features standard to project management platforms, as well as resource allocation, automation, and agile workflow.
N/A
Basecamp
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Basecamp is a web-based project-management tool. Basecamp offers features standard to project management platforms, as well as mobile accessibility, unlimited users, and 3rd party integrations. Basecamp is priced by space requirements and concurrent projects.
$15
per month per user
Workamajig
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Workamajig is a project management system with capabilities such as file sharing, resource management, and revenue projection.
Workfront lands in the middle between MS Project and Basecamp. Basecamp was too simplistic and didn't provide enough core project / task management features. MS Project was too rigid and difficult to share project information. Workfront has the right mix of project / task …
We were using a very old version of Basecamp that would be suitable for a small business. Considering the campaign and project volume our teams put out, it was not a great option for us. Workfront really gave us the workflow solution our team needed considering our size and …
FileMaker was rather cumbersome. Basecamp was good, but lacked some features. Workfront was the most robust tool we evaluated. Love that it's cloud-based and love that there are many features (some we may never use, but some we plan to further explore). So, it can grow with us.
Workamajig was not as robust as we needed it and the support staff was never available for us to reach out to. The system has a lot of limitations and we found ourselves changing our processes because that's what Workamajig would allow. Workfront allows us to do things the way …
Enovia is a product lifecycle tool, so not a good match for a marketing team. Basecamp and MS Project are comparable but we went with Workfront. The newly added Fusion is important to consider. With hundreds of integrations available, it will streamline your workflow across …
Verified User
Vice-President
Chose Adobe Workfront
Basecamp was also a good tool which had a few more collaboration features in terms of communication, but I really like the Workfront features that allow cascading of tasks and nesting them with dependencies. It really helps teams manage their workload while keeping everyone …
Compared to Basecamp, Workfront
software is more advanced and customizable. With it, we get enough choices to
mold the process the way we wish to without straining to rebuild it afresh.
I would find that feature-to-feature comparisons and extensive features put Workfront at the same class level as Workamajig. It may come down to preferences and UX of the platform that would make for the ultimate decision on which to go with for project management needs. Asana …
When I was employed at a smaller company, Basecamp and Smartsheet worked well. It's been several years, but I'm not sure they would scale to enterprise. My current company implemented Workfront prior to my arrival, but I believe everyone is generally happy with the decision. …
Workamajig is great specifically for marketing project management. Jira is great specifically for software development project management. However, if you want all of the company on the same PM software, you need something less purpose-built. Asana is good for both, but lacks …
Adobe Workfront blows the other systems out of the water. It just delivers more - out of the gate, and at every quarterly update. Innovation is top of mind, and meeting customers' needs is key. We have been extremely satisfied with Workfront and look forward to all the new …
I used these programs in comparison to it, in a handful of trials for the staff. I ended up not selecting Adobe (or the others) because the technology aspect became too overwhelming for some staff - meaning, they didn't use the program, would complain about every little thing, …
We have obtained the required results to manage projects in a robust, versatile, and efficient way, managing to maintain an organized management thanks to Workfront.
Workfront offers more features than lower cost options, allowing us to scale our business and not have to shift with each jump in headcount. it also provides more financial data support compared to simpler tools. It integrates into accounting software as well.
I love that Workfront is easy to configure and change as your organization grows. It's easy to stay up to speed with and make changes based on system changes and your organization changing. I also am in love with the reporting and custom data features. Custom forms and the …
Compared to other software which the organization had implemented before, Workfront has proved to be the best because of its detailed project reporting capabilities. Also, its ability to facilitate virtual proofing has been of great benefit to our project planning team. …
Workfront is much more advanced and customized than the other tools we either used or evaluated. It provided enough choices so we could mold the process the way we wanted to without feeling like we needed to build the entire thing from scratch. Most other tools were trying to …
Workfront has better integration into the tools we use, like Adobe Creative Suite, Outlook, Salesforce, and our CMS and DAM. We needed a solution that could work well with our MarCOMM Stack and didn't need a whole lot of support. Although we're a small shop (license-wise) …
Compared to JIRA, Workfront is a lot more user-friendly and less focused on IT/technical tasks. If you're looking for a resource tool that is for creative departments, I highly recommend Workfont.
Our team chose to implement Workfront for its detailed project reporting capabilities. Furthermore, Workfront's ability to perform complex virtual proofing is a huge benefit to our work team. Overall, my team's experience has been extremely positive as we continue to implement …
Workfront is one of the most expensive tools in the market but it offers a lot as well. From budget management to resource management, to support levels, reporting, usability, and even the mobile app. All of those things combined made for a great tool that was easy to use and …
Basecamp is a feature-rich and user-friendly platform that outpaces other solutions we've explored. The vast number of integrations available, as well as the years of dedicated developers as well as the natively available mobile apps, really make Basecamp a leader in this …
My previous company felt that it was an "all in one" platform because it was one place to house our documents, it has the messaging option, and it was easy to keep track of important dates through it where clients/assisting teams could see.
Workfront was way too robust for our team to manage, while Basecamp is very easy for any user to set up and does not require lengthy training sessions. Communication within Basecamp (at the project or company level) is much easier to facilitate than in Workfront or Trello. …
Customization and Project Request submission were two of the biggest draws that our organization valued back when our contract with Workamajig started. Those two features were deemed more important than some of its inadequacies. However, the project management products have …
Having requests for immediate work being routed directly to the team members who perform the function. Proofreading needs to happen fast and turnaround quickly while retaining visibility everywhere. Through reporting and statuses, we can show progress at every stage. A large campaign organization means multiple requests and documents going between departments. By using requests alongside related rejects, we have everything in one place.
Basecamp is a wonderful tool for teams of varying degrees of technical knowledge, teams managing lots of different types of "agifall" and waterfall projects, and teams that are remotely distributed. It's probably less useful for more strictly agile-focused development teams, compared to other more flexible software applications like Jira and Asana.
If you're looking for a system to help you address accounting that's not suited for marketing agency structures, this is the right tool. It is a bit cumbersome, but it has streamlined our reporting, billing, estimating, and tracking. As for project management, it's great that it integrates with the estimating and finances, but it's just not enjoyable to use. The interface is clunky. So if project management is your main criteria, I'd choose something else. We would never use it to collaborate with clients either because I'd be afraid of making them frustrated by the tool, so we use Basecamp to do that.
Task management - It is very easy to add, organize and discuss tasks within Basecamp's interface.
The "Campfire" function is great for communicating when you just have a quick question for someone on the team.
Notifications - Basecamp lets you decide how often and about what you'd like to be notified. The ability to respond to messages in Basecamp directly via email saves a lot of time.
The Platinum version has a particularly robust time tracking system, down to a 'timer' function that can be critical for an agency like mine where you want to be accountable for billing a client arruately
The ability to make projects available only to those who are permitted to assign their time to it has apparently been very helpful during our revenue reconciliation meetings where time incurred is reviewed against scope
The mobile app, while I still feel needs some work, is pretty handy for a quick calendar check if I'm in a client meeting and cannot utilize my browser to get information
High Learning Curve. It's true that it can be easy to use, but to use well and effectively takes some time to learn. It's recommended to have an agreed-upon system in your team of what tools to use and when.
Notification Overload. If people aren't careful they could send a notification to everyone when only a couple people were meant to be prompted. And since emails are sent by default, you could have your mailbox overloaded with unnecessary updates. This is where it takes a bit of training in your team to have an agreed-upon system.
Lack of organization with Archived Projects. I will often need to reference an archived project to make a new one, but there is only a list of archived projects in alphabetical order, with no way to organize by archive date, or even search.
WMJ's interface is dated. Despite an html5 driven "sheets"-based interface, it takes a lot of time and effort to manage the interface, which could be streamlined considerably. On a UX/UI scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best, WMJ would earn a 6 from me.
Despite the amount of documentation available, there is a distinct lack of clarity in that documentation, and it doesn't fully cover everything you would expect. Branching thoughts, for instance, are not addressed. Additionally, because there are two editions of the software online, there are two support sites that aren't sequestered. So information from both commingles, creating confusion.
Support is available on an email and phone basis. They strongly encourage you to use email, however, and they are resistant to phone time. This is likely because the support staff is limited in number, but has a great depth of knowledge. If you want immediate phone support, however, YOU ARE OUT OF LUCK. You are placed in a queue and the odds of same-day help are low. For email, the response is usually within an hour, but when you are stuck with a configuration issue, or need to generate a report and don't know how to do something, waiting is not optimal. That said, the support team is TERRIFIC.
Workfront is sometimes a bit clunky to use, but overall it works well for our teams when it comes to project management and collaboration across multiple, involved teams. It also has flexibility that allows us to adapt it to diverse use cases, some of which aren't necessarily always the first things that one would think of using workfront for.
When I bring new people onto a project, it's immediately obvious how to use Basecamp. I don't have to worry about teaching them the features or walking them through it, it's just incredibly user-friendly. For this reason, I'll continue to renew my subscription even as new people are brought onto production jobs or the client changes.
Workfront is overly complex, but it is functional as a tool to keep track of projects. It is a shame that sometimes it takes a lot of clicks to find anything. Workfront is slowly modernizing its interface but at the same time, hides certain information away thus making the experience feels worse.
It is easy to use, even for clients who have no experience with the platform. It can only get a little cumbersome to ensure that a client can't see certain documents you might want to keep in the Docs & Files folders. And sometimes, getting a client to actually use an unfamiliar platform can be a challenge.
I have found that Adobe Workfront is a reliable resource, because in the post 6 years of using it, rarely has it been unavailable to our team. I think I could count on one hand the number of times the site has been down over my time using it with my team.
I've never experienced downtime while using Basecamp, or been unable to access it when I needed it. That's not to say they've never had downtime, but I've been lucky enough not to encounter any, and I work odd hours, including late nights when maintenance is often undertaken.
I think overall, Adobe Workfront performs well. There have been some times when it doesn't load or run as quickly as our team would like. This is frustrating when it is such a crucial tool that our team utilizes on a daily basis. It can show our workflow when it lags.
I know that this particular company has it's own Adobe Workfront employee that builds out things they need from the software, and meets with them regularly to troubleshoot. I'm not part of this process, but it's refreshing to see Adobe provide this level of customer service to people, and they're expedient.
For the many reasons I've given, Basecamp is a very strong program. There are a few features I can imagine that might make it even better, but I don't have a basis for comparison to be able to say that there is definitely a better one out there. I've noticed that Basecamp has evolved a bit from the time I started using it until now, so that makes me think that the producer of this program values it and believes in continuous improvement. If you could use the features offered by Basecamp, I would think you could use it with confidence.
The training is very easy to use and you can simply choose the topics included in the course(s) that are most important to your training needs. After each training course, you are tested on what you have learned. If you need a refresher course, they provide Course Catalogs as well as instructor-led courses & workshops.
Most people learn as you go, a lot of this stuff requires trial and error throughout so my suggestion is to provide as much information in the upfront and keep it as simple as possible. You can add other tools and features as you go but everyone should have the basics down so no bad habits can start to develop. Be persistent with everyone, and don't be afraid to correct and talk through steps again so everyone is on the same page
Decide the process before implementation - i.e. when it's due 8/9 does that mean 8am, noon, 5pm, 11:59pm? Check your to-do list frequently Set-up templates - just not with the dates (they can be funky)
Adobe Workfront blows the other systems out of the water. It just delivers more - out of the gate, and at every quarterly update. Innovation is top of mind, and meeting customers' needs is key. We have been extremely satisfied with Workfront and look forward to all the new features on the horizon, especially AI.
Pretty good, but [Basecamp] has its drawbacks. Honestly I find the interface non-intuitive and sometimes have trouble figuring out how to change the status of a task. Perhaps it has something to do with the way it was originally set up by the admin, but I'm not sure. I liked Jira's drag and drop obvious functionality, but the project management side of the software was lacking. Smartsheet has excellent project management functionality, but the task management isn't as good.
Workamajig was selected over a decade ago when there were very few project management platforms that has integrations with other platforms, support for Agile, KanBan, etc etc. Most of the other offerings did not offer the type of security available with us hosting an on premises server behind a VPN although now there are plenty of cloud based solutions that have security compliance greater than what we can provide (fedRamp, etc.)
As I stated earlier, I didn't have to pay for Workfront myself- I'm a user under a large organization. I know it's not cheap to implement, I don't know how the price scales for a small-business, but I do like the product enough that I'm going to look into it in the future for my own company.
Our organization has thousands of users that use Workfront and it seems to hold up very well. I have not encountered any issues using it and I think it makes it very easy for multiple people to be involved in a project and keep things organized and clear for everyone involved.
Resource Management - Year over year, we were able to validate time and money saved by the implementation of Workfront by more than 2%, saving in non-working dollars and 9% savings in working media dollars.
Organization Restructuring and Automation- We also restructured our teams and implemented automation based on our analysis of how and what we spend our time on and the ROI for our respective business units.
It has saved me time when having to get the same message out to multiple restaurants
It has helped us make smarter operational decisions because we can all collaborate on an answer in a shorter amount of time (instead of calling a meeting!!!)
The calendar function allows us to plot out our marketing agenda for the month and add/change it together as needed. The chef will post his recipe, the managers will cost it out, the social media manager will post pictures on it, and ultimately we will get that information out on an info sheet to the staff by printing the page.
The agency switched to an hourly allocation so our clients were subject to a certain amount of hours each quarter. JIG helped us keep track of who was going over hours or who had some to spare. Once the clients went over we would use JIG to help charge the additional fees for going over. It helped keep clients accountable.
It was used to keep track of time sheets and through those time sheets, the directors were able to make a case for more employees on certain accounts. The corporate team hired 3 additional people that were truly needed and our time sheets helped reflect that.