Basecamp vs. Dropbox DocSend vs. ONCE Campfire

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

DocSend works really great if you want to send out a doc to a prospect and want to track when they open it and what content they view. The reporting on this works really well and I've been happy with this functionality. Where it falls short is when you're trying to use it for a live demo utilizing the join.me integration. There are a lot of issues when you try to switch your screen and it only works 2/3s the time. I'd prefer an all-in-one solution instead of this Frankenstein model.

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

• Additional information from users who have already downloaded the files or material.
• Additional information if the download link(s) have been resent.
• Password encryption if necessary.
• Email verification for third-party download via email.
• Add-ons with other platforms and applications, such as Outlook and Gmail.
• Seal of documents by electronic signature

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

• DocSend has a newer feature called Spaces, it lets you place multiple files into a single "deal room". Unfortunately for us, we need it to support nested file structures for larger content sets. Their support team says this is on the way.
• I'd like to be able to change the icons for links add to Space, currently, they're a default icon.
• Navigating the UI is just a bit laborious, it feels like it should be easier to get to link creation since that is what you're doing 90% of the time you go to the site.

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 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

The platform and UI are great. never faced any problems.

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

I haven’t used the support as our internal teams do a great job of fixing and supporting our DocSend use.

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)

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

DocSend is more convenient than DocuSign if you are already using Dropbox, otherwise a lot of these solutions come down to pricing and preference on user interface. For us, DocSend was great until our needs changed to needing a more sophisticated contract management tool. With further integrations and API accesses in the future, I think it will be easier to have all systems communicating and working together .

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

• For about $100 you can optimize all
• Of your pipelines that rely on decks or documents - worth it!
• The time you’d spend having to send each link to individual clients without tracking is well worth the $100 on the product
• We’ve been able to close our fundraising round and increase partnerships by utilizing DocSend - would recommend!

Incentivized