Basecamp vs. DocuSign

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

This product is well suited in the use case that I provided before: when it comes to onboarding employees and providing a clear channel for decision making for human resources, this is an excellent tool to accomplish that. I would say the weak points is when you have back and forth communication with users that it might seem a little redundant to have that back and forth communication in that scenario.

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

• Ease of sending the same document out to multiple recipients, at multiple locations, for multiple signatures
• Quick turnaround - once the recipient signs the document, we receive notification and the document back immediately
• Can resend, alter, change, and/or add to the email and/or document that is sent out very easily
• The recipient can save the document after signing, so they too have their own electronic copy for their records

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

• Tracking, particularly when collecting signatures through connected applications, such as an ATS, is not always clean or easily traceable.
• Formatting documents to handle electronic signature types (signatures, initials, etc.) is not always easy, and highly dependent on the partner's technology.
• It is not convenient to have to use DocuSign as a stand alone product if the signatures are required for 3rd party applications. It definitely excels on its own, but the scope of that usage, at least for us, is slim.

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.

I can't imagine doing business without DocuSign now. I would never want to go back to the way we used to do things. The "new way" is "the way" is "the right way." We can honestly be proud of a "one right way" process and not have to suffer through "5 ways for 5 days."

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

Generally user-friendly once you have command of the basics, but also has a lot of nuances that can make it difficult to train others on. DocuSign University is a helpful tool, but understandably a lot of content to get through to become a well-versed user. A lot of different functionalities but only a few I use on a weekly basis.

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

It does not go down. I have had zero issues with DocuSign, approaching 4 years.

Incentivized

Everything loads quickly. Reports are generated in a reasonable time. No noticeable difference in integrated software processing speeds.

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'd give them a 10, but there has been 1 or 2 small cases that seemed to fall to the wayside, but I was able to call them up and get them resolved. We were having a bad implementation night (after midnight) and we needed assistance from Docusign. They were able to get an engineer to help us in the early morning hours

Incentivized

Docusign is super easy to use, and apart from a few administration details, there was really nothing to train on. Post implementation, there were issues with configuration of auto-filled documents with the integrating 3rd party. That training required some time, because the DocuSign expert took the time to walk me through the 3rd party's configuration (how often does that happen?) so I could see how DocuSign should be best used to overcome weaknesses in the 3rd party platform. 10/10 expert care.

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)

Until you get the hang of it, I recommend doing several internal tests before sending a document to a client. As I mentioned earlier, you have to go through a bit of trial and error at first to verify that the workflow works as expected.

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

There has never been anything that we could really compare to Docusign. We have tried sending documents in a PDF version, but that was not nearly as efficient. DocuSign saves your signature in the system and uses that as it goes through your documents.

Incentivized

In my years of using DocuSign, I have never had an outage. I haven't even encountered a bug.

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

• Less paper use, faster signature times, less time standing at the printer/scanner to send documents to yourself
• Security over your signature! Security over your company's signature and authorization to approve projects, cash flow etc
• Love audit trails and the seamless tracking of the status of the document

Incentivized