azendoo vs. Basecamp

I think Azendoo is suited well to small office tracking projects and tasks together. The shared projects/calendar use is helpful and can make work easier if everyone uses it in a similar manner. The ability to add things from other sources (Dropbox, Evernote, etc) does make it a useful platform because you can integrate other things into the app well. The visibility and shared spaces provide good accountability and follow up for work being done.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Software Updates - The azendoo interface is constantly being updated with new features which are helpful to our organization. For example, they just rolled out the ability to assign subtasks, so that we don't have to manually update the assignee on each step of a large, multi-step task.
• Email Notifications - azendoo provides complete customization over the amount of notification emails you receive. Some of us prefer to be emailed with each update made within a task, whereas others prefer just a once-daily notification email.
• Levels of organization - azendoo provides many tiers of structure within the platform, making it easy for us to layer levels of detail for a single project. For example, at the workspace level we can define where our teams "live" on azendoo, and at the subject level we can categorize projects for tracking purposes. With the new addition of subtasks, we now have an additional layer of organization which helps us keep track of where a task is at in its lifecycle.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Despite being integrated with Google Calendar, this integration presents some inconveniences, so working with them together is not very convenient.
• It requires fairly stable internet access to avoid a slow connection with your platform.
• When performing searches, it must be done within the limit of work since otherwise no results are found.
• Its cost can be high but I think it's worth it.
• It is necessary to introduce it to the team slowly so that they can adapt to the software and thus get the most out of it.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

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.

Basecamp is a little tricky to learn. I've used it for quite a while but I feel like there's still so much I don't know. It took me a while to learn but having used it in college definitely helped me integrate it into my work career.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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)

azendoo is a different tool, meant for a different project type. While it's a good program on its own, Evernote ultimately had all I needed as a single employee/student is the only person within my workspaces. I did not need to network and as such, I did not find it applicable. Later down the road in a shared office, I might feel differently.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• azendoo's integration with Google Drive has been valuable to our organization, as we are heavy users of Drive. We've been able to seamlessly attach documents to tasks which has been very helpful from a collaboration perspective.
• Training new team members - It's relatively easy to get new team members up-to-speed on what's going on in the department, as they can just log into azendoo and catch up on all of our existing projects and things coming down the pipeline.
• App - azendoo's mobile app has been great for keeping up with progress on items while many of us are out of office or working away from the office. The app has a great user experience and is much easier than keeping tabs via email.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized