Basecamp vs. ClickUp vs. Linear App

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

My team and I use ClickUp to manage program implementations, volunteer recruitment and communication, in-house event management, invoice tracking, and team task management that requires input and communication among multiple members, as well as individual tasks. We use the team Spaces so everyone can see where each project is in its process and dependencies to let others know when the next step is ready to be done. I use it for personal goal setting and achievements.

Incentivized

If you are a product based company, Linear is the most powerful fine-tuned platform. Their methodology really works well. It's fast, got nice UI/UX, feels modern, ability to manage projects, love how they show comments as a thread, the integrations like Figma works really well But if you are a software service company and have multiple client projects, it is hard to manage that in Linear plus you would have to pay for guests if you are inviting client stakeholders to overlook progress.

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

• Customizable setup and views for any personal preference (works for EVERYONE)
• The communication tools inside of ClickUp help reduce emails
• The ability to share ClickUp forms and documents with people outside of ClickUp is powerful
• Unlimited file size for form attachments is amazing

Incentivized

• Managing the high level goals and roadmap of our product
• Manage the tasks for dev, QA and design teams
• Visualise the progress of the sprints and projects
• Collaborate on tasks

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

• I would like to see when scheduling a task for someone, their available hours, as I am scheduling instead of having to go back to the workload view
• I'd like easier UX and understanding of what all of the different levels of folders, lists, tasks, can do and what they should be used for
• Notifications can be cleaned up

Incentivized

• Linear is missing documentation features like Jira Confluence. We can use Notion but it would have been great if Linear offered more comprehensive solution
• Eventhough we can manage releases with projects, it is hard to manage them when there are multiple projects being released at the same time. The initiatives feature kind of handles this but if we can assign tasks to a release that would be awesome
• Being able to invite guests without costing extra money. Platforms like Clickup allow you to invite a limited no of guests without costing extra money.
• Linear is not good if you are software services company and want to manage multiple client projects. Linear is built for product teams.

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.

It has been a game-changer in terms of project tracking, as animation is a demanding product that requires multiple layers of analysis, revisions, tracking, scheduling, etc. ClickUp simplifies many approvals as anyone can easily add items, and you can tag the people who need to look at them.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Far easier to use than any other PM tool. ClickUp is incredibly intuitive and had us saving time and energy within the first week of implementation. In my opinion, PM software should make it easier to focus on the deliverables - it shouldn't take all your time and energy to learn how to use the tool in the first place. ClickUp is a user-friendly tool that actually helps us focus on what's important.

Incentivized

Linear is the most UI/UX friendly, modern and well though project management tool out there. I've used ClickUp, Jira, Monday, Asana in the past.

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 over a year ClickUp was unavailable to us just twice for a couple of hours. I would say for a system this big and working globally that was a minor issue. They managed to fix all the issues within a couple hours and then it was back up and running perfectly fine.

Incentivized

The speed of ClickUp is average to be honest. This is one of the biggest flaws of the system, sometimes it's also lagging a little bit but we also have a lot of documents, lists etc. on our workspace. However, with the next version of ClickUp I've seen they are planning to increase the speed by almost 500%, probably by changing the technology, so I am more than looking forward to it.

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

I started using ClickUp when it was what most would consider a baby company. There were the occasional bugs that made working in ClickUp a little bit of a headache, but the support feature allowed me to chat with a real persona and communicate my issues. I would always get prompt support and someone willing to really help me, not just point me to FAQ pages. Not feeling like a number really makes a difference.

Incentivized

There are multiple guides on literally all of the functions you can find within the system, therefore it's easy to learn anything you'd really like to use, starting from project and people management, down to Gantts, mind maps, time tracking, inviting Clients as guests to work with you on the projects and so much more.

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)

Start small. Don’t try to build the most elaborate plans first. Resist the urge to get into Gantt charts if no one is used to them. Just get work written, add dates and assignees, and start getting used to it. If you did not use a work management tool before, you need to be gracious with yourself about the fact that you likely do not have the muscle memory for working this way yet. But you will get there.

And leverage people who know it if possible. Look for ClickUp experts and vendors. They can really supercharge your effectiveness at building the tool out and speed up the process.

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

It’s far better than Slack. However, I found Monday mobile app much better and they have a good CRM. I chose ClickUp because it was already being used my the company who invested in us and they asked us to use it. We quickly adopted

Incentivized

Even though platforms like ClickUp are pretty flexible, Linear is fast, simple, has a lot of keyboard shortcuts, better UI/UX, modern product development concepts built into it, listens to user feedback

Incentivized

Scaling with ClickUp is superb. If you create a workflow best suited for your organization then it's all about creating new accounts and teaching the new employees the workflow you're using. It's that simple. There is no black magic when it comes to Clickup.

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

• Significant reduction in turnaround times on many types of reportable data - as we moved from completely untrackable (manual) data collection to CU, its impossible to give a hard number, but at an estimate we have seen between turnaround times halve overall, some even more significantly.

• Linear decreased the time we take for releases of features
• Linear has helped us work on multiple projects saving time
• Customer support cases are handled well through Linear which improved customer satisfaction

Incentivized