Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Expesite seems to be a good program for a client to communicate with their general contractor. It allows the GC to log in to one portal to handle all forms of communication rather than having to email certain things and use DocuSign for others and follow up via email to make sure that tasks are completed.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Provides a dashboard where you can see all jobs that are going on with a particular client. Makes submitting and tracking change order requests simple. Makes tracking the status of pay applications simple. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review User-friendliness. My biggest gripe about Expesite is that nothing is intuitive. I wouldn't intuitively think to look for anything in the place that I can actually find it. For example, why would I go to my "inbox" to see where all of my jobs are? I would think that would be what the dashboard would be for. I understand it's a security measure, but changing the password so frequently gets challenging and this is the only program that I use that it changes as often as it does.. Finding documents on Expesite is a nightmare. As a GC I need to be able to quickly log in and see if there are any brand new documents that I should be aware of, and perhaps I'm just using it wrong, but I haven't found any easy way to do that. It's very frustrating to have to dig through all of the files to figure out what has been updated. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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)
Jenni Waggoner Marketing Content Manager | Social Media | Newsletter | Blog | White Papers
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review It has made communicating with our important clients easier by centralizing the communication. It has made submitting change order requests quick and simple. It has helped to speed up the accounting process because we can log in at a glance and see a status. Read full review ScreenShots